Whipping efficiency should be adjusted for city size

[ABigCivFan]

I think whipping should be adjusted for the size of the city.

Now each citizen is worth 30 hammers when whipped, regardless of the city size. This makes whipping smaller cities Much Much more efficient.

I did not check the precise numbers used in examples below, just rough esti. for demo purpose.

For instance it only takes a few surplus food to grow the city from size 1 to 2 with granary(in 1-2 turns), but it takes 20+ surplus food (or many turns) to grow a city from size 20 to 21. Especially if the smaller city has food sources(corn, pigs, fish and etc).

City population increases 10,000 from size 1 to size 2, but +1,000,000 when going from size 20 to size 21 in CIV4. So if you whip down the size 21 city to 20, that pop should be worth a lot more than 30 hammers imo.

Given the current system, it is always most efficient to whip the whole infrustructure from all your new cities/conqured cities, whip as soon as you can, and then let them grow when you have nothing worthy to whip.

In many games, my capital often carries bulk of the research early-mid game, it is always a priority to whip the required # of universities for the capital to build Oxford. This allows me to get Oxford much faster had I not whipped those unproductive size 5-6 cities. And that often translates into 50+ beakers/turn many turns earlier.

 

[LlamaCat]

It's a good point, but one thing to consider is that once you have a large city, after whipping you do lose a lot more "population" but it's still only 1 working city square that's lost. Now, the larger city has a much bigger advantage over the smaller city, in that it can produce more hammers for the next build, if necessary, not to mention it can be producing a lot more food. So maybe it's a balancing factor in the game to not give more benefit to whipping larger cities.
And while it does take more food to grow back in the larger city, that larger city is producing a lot more food. One strategy I've read about on here that I've been trying is to grow a really large city with a lot of food resources, and then build Barracks and Shakespeare's Theatre, so there is no anger from whipping or anything else. Then you can whip, whip, whip many military units quickly. I've found this kind of city, say around size 18-21, will still grow back fairly quickly (less than 8 turns on normal speed, say).

 

[ABigCivFan]

One strategy I've read about on here that I've been trying is to grow a really large city with a lot of food resources, and then build Barracks and Shakespeare's Theatre, so there is no anger from whipping or anything else. Then you can whip, whip, whip many military units quickly. I've found this kind of city, say around size 18-21, will still grow back fairly quickly (less than 8 turns on normal speed, say).

I d rather use that city as a GP farm/science city and never whip it. I always have my 2nd and or 3rd city as designated unit producing city, with all the added bonus (building,instructors,civics) i can often produce quality units from them every 1-2 turns.

Yes, for the same reason, i rarely whip my original large cities.

 

[Sparta]

I'm not so sure about that, tbh - I think there are a couple (or more) reasons that you might not want to scale whipping with city size.

For one, as the system is currently set up, you have to take into account a balance between whipping efficiency (in terms of hammers yield per food invested) and the overall city resource harvest (in terms of food, hammers, and commerce being brought in each turn). Specifically, while you are right that purely in terms of hammers-per-food ratios, whipping is most efficient at the smallest sizes, often times you have cities where there are several highly desirable tiles to work, and it can be regrettable to abandon working these tiles in favor of an incrementally more efficient whip. Conversely, if we scaled whips as you are advocating, this balance issue would disappear, as it would/could become most efficient to just keep growing and use whips far more sparingly and/or not at all. Since we all know () that these balances and tradeoffs are what make civ so interesting in the first place, I personally would be inclined to keep the system as is just for the sake of keeping the issue of what population level to whip at a debatable topic.

Another more minor aspect is that (IMHO) once your cities are approaching population levels in the teens, Emancipation and 'finalized' cities can become more alluring than whipping anymore at that point anyway. If we were scaling whips, it could potentially lead to scenarios where it would be more efficient to just run Slavery forever until killing everyone else around the gunpowder era, rather than Emancipation becoming the large player that it is and seems to be designed to be (IMHO the other civs' citizens demanding Emancipation is indicative of the designers' desire that it would eventually become the dominant labor civic as in real life (if the game goes on far enough)). Once again, I'd argue the idea that keeping elements in grey areas rather than providing clear-cut 'best' paths maintains a more strategic and customizable feel to the game(s).

I can understand your argument, and your frustration over whipping a pop point representing many citizens for the same result as one representing considerably fewer, but FWIW, that demographics pop count is a somewhat irrelevant extrapolation anyway (IMHO), and even if you want to argue it simply based on food required, I would personally still argue in favor of the current system simply for principles of balance and open-ended decision-making. I guess I could see maybe scaling hammer yields with pop if you did it along with scaling happiness issues (e.g. whips yield more hammers when whipping more pop, but more unhappiness (in magnitude or duration) as well), but tbh I still think that the current system does a pretty good job of it as is and would just as soon leave it unchanged were it up to me (which it most certainly is not of course).

I hope that makes sense; I don't mean to argue directly against your idea, but I just think it could lead to some unintended consequences in terms of balance issues (e.g. in terms of [already extremely powerful] Slavery vs. Emancipation, or in terms of how a smaller empire could ever hope to compete with a larger one later in the game). It is a reasonable thought to have, but FWIW, I personally think the current system works pretty well as is.

 

[LlamaCat]

I d rather use that city as a GP farm/science city and never whip it. I always have my 2nd and or 3rd city as designated unit producing city, with all the added bonus (building,instructors,civics) i can often produce quality units from them every 1-2 turns.

Yeah that works too if you are running specialists, but this is not necessarily my 2nd or 3rd city. And it's not the only military producing city, it's just an effective idea for one of them. Shakespeare's Theatre is a neat idea for a wonder, but I rarely have happiness problems to such an extent in any one city that other things couldn't deal with it. I just thought this was a unique way to really get a benefit of that wonder. You can let unhappiness from whipping pile up indefinitely and it doesn't matter.

Another thought in this whole whipping thing: yes you are whipping down a lot more population, but the total population of your city and your empire only really matters, it seems to me, when you are trying to win Diplomatic victory with UN votes. In that case, I wouldn't start whipping down population as the votes are coming in. Otherwise in theory anyway, you could be dominating the land for a conquest or cultural victory with moderately or small size cities.

 

[ABigCivFan]

Yes Sparta, my thoughts were driven by the math aspect of the food/pop-> hammer ratio. It was not a complaint of any sort.

Sometimes i do get a little impatient when seeing my smaller unproductive cities can whip the University in 1 turn but my largest and most "productive" cities are spending the next 8 turns building it . I guess it does add in a more strategic element when making these choices.

So I whip everything in smaller new/conquared cities, but specialize and only selectively build things in large cities

 

[LlamaCat]

holy crap I've been calling it Shakespeare's and it's Globe Theater... whatever I'm stuck on old versions of the game

 

[pigswill]

No mention yet of unhappiness which is another significant factor in whipping, especially early game when you tend to be happy capped. Its very easy to overwhip and get stuck for ages with unhappy and unproductive citizens regardless of city size.

 

[Welnic]

holy crap I've been calling it Shakespeare's and it's Globe Theater... whatever I'm stuck on old versions of the game

That was the name of the theater where his plays were performed.

 

[ABigCivFan]

I am usually a very aggressive warmonger/Diplomonger. I get enough land with happy res early from neighbors, but keep good diplo/trading relations with distant civs. So happiness is rarely a issue for me.

Besides, you can always whip forge/theater/market and other happy boosting buildings first if happy cap is low. If that is not enough, use cultural slider.

my normal whip order for new cities is as follows:

Granary/forge,courthouse/Liberary/Theater,University,Obervatory/Harbor,Market, Grocer,Bank/Temple, monerstery and etc.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

holy crap I've been calling it Shakespeare's and it's Globe Theater... whatever I'm stuck on old versions of the game

If you hadn't pointed out your mistake, I'd've never noticed ... my brain translated that straight into "no unhappiness" and kept on truckin'.

Mathematically, the idea of scaling whipping to represent the number of population slaved off makes perfect sense.

However, making that change for slavery would also require a scaling of everything in the game.

For example, if a pop 2 scientist (10,000 people) makes 3 , that's 0.0003 / person. Scaling that would mean a pop 21 scientist generates 300 per turn!!!

Likewise, a pop 21 worker would logically get +100 food from the farm.

I think the population : people ratio is just semantics. Or maybe Sid's trying to tell us something about unemployment and vagrancy in big cities ... who knows.

Nevertheless, whipping is strong enough already ...


-- my 2