Whipping + Granaries

[slobberinbear]

I'll let the wiser mathematicians sort out the micro aspects of it.

I am a building whipper. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting on a key building to finish so that you can resume building your SoD, worker, etc. If I can get away with it, I will try to whip all of my buildings. Often I will do this just to get rid of excess citizens that are already over the happy cap.

Because I always try to settle my best cities near two or more food resources, I am also a big fan of the 3-pop whip. 2-pop is just not enough of a reduction; you regrow to unhappiness too fast. So unless I am whipping a happiness building, about to hook up a happy resource, or building a worker or settler right after whipping, I don't like 2-pop whips.

As others have said, you really need to practice whipping with the Aztecs.

Food is everything in the early game, and slavery makes food even better.

 

[futurehermit]

Outside of whipping though the Aztecs have a poor economy so getting to CoL in a timely manner is dicey in my experience. Aztecs are good if you can rush someone, but aside from that I don't know I don't have good games with them really. I guess I could give it a try though.

 

[JujuLautre]

Excuse me Vale, there something I don't get in you example: The first ScreenShot shows a city with 6 workers, 7 unhappy and 1 unhappy from whipping. Ok. The second also, no problem. But the 3rd SS is short of one citizen: where is it ?

Also, if possible, I'd like to know how much food was in the city bar at the end of each experiment.

 

[vale]

Hrm, lemme replay through that that is odd. I was lazy and did city governor, I just assumed he would be smart about it and use the plains forest instead of an engineer.

My best guess is that since he sees I am building a library in that last screenshot, he is willing to work the 0 food engineer specialist to slow growth as we are at the happy cap. I'm 95% sure he worked that plains forest the rest of the time though (will verify right now).

I guarantee there was no intentional fudging. That would be pretty bad cheating the non whipping 14 hammers from the food on the tile. Checking now.

Edit to add: That's exactly what it was. The city governor was putting an engineer specialist in on that final turn (which wasn't being counted) when the production swapped from a settler to a library. The rest of the turns though it worked the plains forest.

 

[siggboy]

That is not a valid exception.

Dave, you are an established member here, and you've seen it ALL. You've probably also beaten a lot of dead cows in those 4k+ postings. Still, some of your one-sentence replies are utterly useless because they convey ZERO information to those actually interested in the subject matter.

Please at least link to "extended versions" of your comments or give some explanations in the first place, otherwise it's more confusing than anything. (Since I tend to give you the benefit of the doubt, I keep thinking to myself "Fair enough, but WHY, WHY, WHY?")

And this is why i like Bismarck cheap forges and granaries paired with cheap workers --> great early game. If this aint good enough for you to win the game, then the lategame UU should do the job

Sadly this requires an Oracle->MC slingshot which just might not be an option (don't get me wrong, I love the MC slingshot).

Let's use simultaneous equations:
1) 2f = 4
2) f + m = 3
[...blah blah subtract substitute take sqrt of pi to the sine of e...]
f + 1 = 3, therefore f = 2

Erm, with 2f=4 you've already established f=2 in equation (1)... and m=1 directly follows from that through equation (2).

What was the substituting and subtracting about?

I feel the user interface is severely lacking in this regard.

I'm not sure if I'd want the city governor to do all of the micromanagement for me. At certain points of the game, good micromanagement is what separates the great players from the good ones, and those that can beat Deity from those that can't.

I wholeheartedly agree that the game should deliver more information out of the box, the kind of stuff that BUG Mod does for you ("you can now whip <x> for <y> pop with <z> overflow"). I'd also love to see a city governor that actually makes smart BASIC decisions (for example where to assign new population), and automated workers that build proper mines on those extra uranium tiles instead of bloody FORTS!

"BetterAI" has done a great job in improving the city governor back in the days, I'm wondering why those changes didn't go into the official release of the game. In that regard, does anybody know what happened to BetterAI and which of the improvements are actually in the current release of BtS?

Whip what you need when you need it. Until you hit size 10.

Which will never happen as long as you keep whipping away pop... one might spontaneously think, at least. Why size 10, does the city growth behaviour change dramatically at that size? (Serious question as I don't know the mechanics there.)

Also note that because of the ridiculous regrowth rate, this city had to work some sub par tiles while finishing the library at population 6 to avoid growing into unhappiness. I could have skewed these numbers further by switching to a settler immediately at population 6 and working only the premium tiles the whole time.

Why don't you just continue working the premium tiles and in fact HAVE the city grow into unhappiness, then whip away the excess pop? What's wrong about having unhappy citizens in the city?

(Scratch the question if it was for the sake of reproducing the same situation, population-wise, in both examples.)

 

[vale]

We have discussed unhappy population before with regards to whip cycles. The main point is that every turn of unhappy population is -2 hammers to the total whip cycle. I won't bother proving it, but it has been discussed before with all the math behind it.

If you are looking to maximize total production while whipping, unhappiness is to be avoided. In some cases you allow it to whip a big ticket item or for other reasons. But in general, avoiding unhappiness is worth it.

 

[JujuLautre]

My best guess is that since he sees I am building a library in that last screenshot, he is willing to work the 0 food engineer specialist to slow growth as we are at the happy cap. I'm 95% sure he worked that plains forest the rest of the time though (will verify right now).

You are still cheating a little bit here Vale since you're at size 7, the best 7th tile (the whipped tile) the city can work is a plains forest, which is less good than a grassland mine.

Anyway, it more or less confirms what I was thinking. I made some maths about it, and would be happy if you could have a look at it to tell me if you see big mistakes, I'll send that to you in a few minutes

 

[vale]

Actually you are right in the short term. Working an improved clams + supporting an unhappy is equivalent to working one of the forests except with additional commerce.

Unfortunately long term, unless large ticket whip items appear that allow larger than 3 pop whips, each whip cycle will slowly grow Berlin further above the happy cap and the second it starts seeing 2 unhappy population a turn it gets very bad quickly. If you went that route, plans to deal with the happiness (probably HR) would have to be enacted quickly.

 

[vale]

You are still cheating a little bit here Vale since you're at size 7, the best 7th tile (the whipped tile) the city can work is a plains forest, which is less good than a grassland mine.

But the whip did kill 3 grassland mines right?

Make the plains forest a grassland mine and it adds 14 hammers to the non whip. Still not nearly enough to make up the deficit. Change it to a plains mine and give Berlin 2 more plains mines and the rounding with the forge makes that situation worth 28 hammers over the course of the round. Still not enough to make up the difference.

The "problem" is the overwhelming excess of food in this city. Until the health cap and happiness cap are raised, there isn't much to do about it except whip it away into massive amounts of production. And since that is more efficient than simply working mines, it is worth doing.

 

[vicawoo]

Dave, you are an established member here, and you've seen it ALL. You've probably also beaten a lot of dead cows in those 4k+ postings. Still, some of your one-sentence replies are utterly useless because they convey ZERO information to those actually interested in the subject matter.

Please at least link to "extended versions" of your comments or give some explanations in the first place, otherwise it's more confusing than anything. (Since I tend to give you the benefit of the doubt, I keep thinking to myself "Fair enough, but WHY, WHY, WHY?")

I vote against that. Imagine if prophets received exact instructions instead of cryptic messages, how boring would that be?

Also, you assume the purpose of posting is communication with other people, when entertaining yourself is also a reason.

For example, the answer is, you should whip when under half plus seven.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Two questions for the gallery...

1) is the amount of food in the food bin significant? That is to say, let's supposed that at population N we want to establish a stable cycle of whips, such that the amount of food F in in the bin is the same each time we whip. What's the optimal F for each N, and how much does that depend on the available tiles?

2) Under what conditions is double whipping (whipping two different units to completion on the same turn) superior to the equivalent in single whips?

 

[DaveMcW]

The second test attempts to avoid killing of grassland mines. So it builds a library for one turn then shifts production to settlers (which are going to be the highest hammer yield it can get with these tiles, until time expires) It produces 2 settlers in the time frame, and ends up with 8 overflow (that will be modified by the forge to be 10 overflow) that I am counting. Total hammers produced:
149 (settler) + 149 (settler) + 25 (partial library build) + 10 (overflow) = 333 hammers.

Here's a better way to do your second test.

First, edit the save to add 5 turns of whip anger so the city is unhappy upon growth (we whip on turn 6 in this cycle). (See attachment)

Turn 1: Build a library at size 6
Turns 2-4: Build a library at size 7 (unhappy)
Turn 5: Build a settler
Turn 6: Whip the settler
Turns 7-10: Finish the library
Turn 11: Build a partial axeman (to grow back to our initial food)
Turns 12-15: Build a partial settler

135 (library) + 149 (settler) + 12 (partial axeman build) + 80 (partial settler build)= 376 hammers

The extra mines cancel out the food we lost feeding the unhappy citizen and we still turn a profit!

 

[vale]

If you are talking about a true cycle, the food bin should start and end on the same value. Technically, I should be giving that non slaved "cycle" some credit for the extra food in the bin (that grew it to population 7).

It is much easier to talk about cycles in theory than actually micromanage it to hit a specific food target though.

In general, it is better to avoid that stacking of whip anger that comes with a double whip. In fact I'm not positive what the value is because you can do the same overflow tricks waiting a turn to whip the second item and you get an extra turn on a tile that you would otherwise be unable to use.

 

[vale]

Here's a better way to do your second test.

First, edit the save to add 5 turns of whip anger so the city is unhappy upon growth (we whip on turn 6 in this cycle).

Turn 1: Build a library at size 6
Turns 2-4: Build a library at size 7 (unhappy)
Turn 5: Build a settler
Turn 6: Whip the settler
Turns 7-10: Finish the library
Turn 11: Build a partial axeman (to grow back to our initial food)
Turns 12-15: Build a partial settler

135 (library) + 149 (settler) + 12 (partial axeman build) + 80 (partial settler build)= 376 hammers

The extra mines cancel out the food we lost feeding the unhappy citizen and we still turn a profit!

Hold on. The second example isn't allowed to do a three pop whip. We aren't allowed to kill grassland hills there and that definitely kills 2 of them. It could do a one pop whip from population 7 since that doesn't kill any hills.

 

[DaveMcW]

Ok, you win.

Filling the city up to the happy cap with juicy resources and hills left no room to do a 3-pop whip.

I wish I had that problem in every city!

 

[vale]

Also, just to do the analogous whipping cycle from the save I actually have (1 turn of whip anger which makes sense for the beginning of a whip cycle)
turn 1 build a settler
turn 2 whip it
turn 3 - 9 grow while partial building a library
turn 10 - 15 partial build a settler

Total hammers:
159 settler
120 partial settler
116 partial library
395 hammers

So by not supporting unhappy population, we have produced even more hammers.

 

[vale]

Ok, you win.

Filling the city up to the happy cap with juicy resources and hills left no room to do a 3-pop whip.

I wish I had that problem in every city!

It is a real city, not generated just to suit my purpose.

Definitely not typical and most cities with one food resource are going to want to stagnate once their happy cap gets up around there. Two 6 food sources or 3 fives though really messes up the math.

 

[DaveMcW]

I can't get 395 using your method. Were you using organized religion?

 

[vale]

Forge is in the city, I mentioned it once in passing in my first post. I guess that is important to note.

 

[Ibian]

Which will never happen as long as you keep whipping away pop... one might spontaneously think, at least. Why size 10, does the city growth behaviour change dramatically at that size? (Serious question as I don't know the mechanics there.)

You will grow when you run out of things to build. And you dont need to build a harbor at size 4 anyway so there is time to grow between whippings too.

Slavery becomes less efficient the bigger the city is. Size 10 is the break even point where grassland mines are as efficient as farms.