Whipping + Granaries

[vale]

I guess my definition of efficient differs from yours.

A mined grass hill or plains hill is much more efficient in my opinion than a pre-biology farm assuming you are operating under a smallish happy cap.

Food resources and mines are where its at for early game production regardless of whether you are whipping or not. If a city site needs grassland farms to support an early whip cycle, it probably isn't a very good city for whipping.

 

[DaveMcW]

Ok, I got your numbers using Org Rel + Forge.

Mine are better too.

135 library
149 settler
36 partial axeman
80 partial settler
400 hammers

 

[vale]

Definitely there is no organized religion going on.

Not sure why you aren't getting the same numbers as me. That is just odd. I just tried out your path: Here's what I produced:
80 partial build of Settler
149 Settler
135 Library
12 Walls (I don't have copper hooked up yet to do the axeman)
376 total.

Definitely though, the number I gave you was not Organized Religion.

 

[vale]

Ahhhhh I figured it out.

In setting up the position I had just finished a build the turn before. So there was 10 hammers overflow that got cycled in. Lemme pull that out.

 

[vale]

120 Partial settler
103 Partial Library
149 Settler
372
So yes, it looks as if absorbing the anger for a few turns pays off with 4 extra hammers. The only problem is it will be hard to repeatedly do 3 pop whips with either of these as quickly as possible when we are using settlers (the easiest 3 pop sink) to stagnate ourselves at certain points.

Technically, I should check the food totals of both of these, because the extra hammers in one, might be substantiated as missing food. I'll check real quick.

Interesting. The unhappy path gains a food in the wash while the happy path breaks even. My gut instinct was that with this much food we would regrow fast enough to get the mines back in play early enough. I'll have to watch out for more of these types of examples.

 

[vicawoo]

Finally read through this, I thought the math was more complicated than it really was.

UncleJJ assumed the answer. First line, 2F=4. Last line, conclusion, F=2.

I think there was an earlier post about food conversions being overrated. 10 turn anger limits how much whipping you can do. You only need as much food surplus to grow back in 10 turns. A million food surplus != 2 million production, it equals maybe 60 or 90. The food conversion gets worse as you get larger, so in general, you lose a lot of effectiveness after 3 pop size 6-7 whips.

Two other points. First, you can "save up" hammers with food. Grow a huge, unhealthy city until just when you reach construction, then whip it to size 3 for 2 pop catapults. The ability to have 20 catapults in maybe 15 turns on epic/marathon when you're the first to construction can easily win you the game.

Second, high difficulty 10 turn cycle sustained whipping is a little overrated when your happy cap at normal cities is 3 and whipping keeps you at size 2, although my math is a probably a little off on that.

 

[kazapp]

Yeah. The UI sucks and the game mechanic blows.

Are you sarcastic or sincere?

I'm asking because the overwhelming majority of posters are what I'd call bean counters.

I would find a discussion on how to improve the UI much more worthwhile myself, but then my goal would be to remove the need for beancounting (i.e. making the computer do it for us).

As for your sentiment, I don't agree. I think the game mechanic is excellent. The problem is "only" that the UI doesn't keep pace with the mechanics once you have left the "win at Noble" stage, i.e. when you start thinking about using less obvious strategies like the one discussed in this thread.

In other words, Civ IV's user interface is great for newcomers and Warlord players. All the actions you need to do are prominently displayed by the UI and taken care by it as well.

It is when you start thinking about Specialist Economies, optimising trades, chops and whips etc you no longer get any active help from the UI.

This doesn't make the UI "suck", but it does mean it becomes inadequate for higher difficulty levels. Assuming you look at beancounting the way I do: a necessary evil which is only needed because the UI doesn't do it for you.

So the UI could be vastly improved, and it could become much more sophisticated. Then if you actually like the beancounting, then it would be an easy matter to turn those features of the UI off, which would be much better than today's situation where you lose efficiency as a Civ player just because you can't stand doing what the computer should do for you.

 

[UncleJJ]

Finally read through this, I thought the math was more complicated than it really was.

UncleJJ assumed the answer. First line, 2F=4. Last line, conclusion, F=2.

You're absolutely right and Siggyboy has already pointed out the mistake. In my defence, let me say it's been a good few years (something like 20) since I last used simultaneous equations and it seems I've forgotten even more than I'd thought. Besides that it was very much a tongue in cheek attempt to convince Ibian that he was wrong ... and that is no mean task

 

[Nares]

Are you sarcastic or sincere?

I read it as being sarcastic.

I almost responded to the poster he quoted, but I might have been a bit harsher.

I've seen other games decimated as the developers effectively "dumbed down" the game at the player base's request.

A more comprehensive UI would only serve to dumb the game down. As you noted yourself, kazapp, it doesn't "keep pace" when you move beyond noble, but I think this is intentional. As tedious as you may find it, managing specialists, tile assignments, whip anger cycles, etc. is the measure of your skill.

Tech paths and bulbing are easy. If the UI was any more involved than it is currently, all that would be left requiring any skill whatsoever would be managing worker turns and maintaining diplomatic relations with the AI.

 

[Jet]

Sincere. But not the whole UI, just the part related to whipping.

Also, Slavery sucks slightly less in BTS in that it's less overpowered. But it's still broken and still has an appallingly bad UI.

 

[siggboy]

Also, Slavery sucks slightly less in BTS in that it's less overpowered. But it's still broken and still has an appallingly bad UI.

A sincere question from me, since I honestly don't know and can't be bothered to reverse engineer the answer:

In what way exactly has Slavery been nerfed going from Vanilla -> BtS, apart from the slave riots random event?

I've started with Civ IV Vanilla at about <forum join date> and did skip Warlords entirely, so I even don't remember anymore how Slavery exactly worked in Vanilla. To my best knowledge it was pretty similar to how it is now (hammers gained, unhappiness duration etc.).

 

[Jet]

Low to medium maintenance, slave revolts, and by comparison, no workshop hammer.

 

[IronCrown]

I would have liked the program to tell me exactly when the whip penalty is reduced from, say, three unhappy faces to two. And preferably I should be able to tell the advisor "whip at 2 unhappy" - one less visit to the city screen right there!

In the same way, I can't be bothered about stacking builds to take advantage of a Thocracy/Vassalage switch.

This is not me being lazy, it's the program not being user friendly. I should be able to tell the program "now I want to build an army. Delay all military production, and keep me informed how many turns until hammers start to decay, so I can plan my civics changes accordingly. And after the change, pour out the troops automatically." Obviously using whipping automatically if I have given the go-ahead.

The things discussed in this thread are expert stuff. You don't need any of this to win on Emperor and below. This is for civ cracks only so it is absolutely legit to make it some kind of 'hidden feature'. What you are requesting sounds like an automatic "beat Deity without player action required" mode. But the thing I love about Civ is that it requires skill, and some amount of efficient micromanagement is part of that.

 

[Perugia]

A couple of posters to this thread have stated that they whip the Granary as soon as possible in new cities. I would like to point out that unlike other whipping it really matters at what point in the growth cycle you whip the Granary.

It is most beneficial to whip the Granary when the city is 1 turn short of half filling its food basket.

This is because the Granary holds the same amount of food as half the food basket and fills with surplus food at the same rate as the food basket.

Time the whip like this and the Granary will start benefitting your city from the turn after it is built and will be nicely full the turn your city grows without any waste at all.

If you whip the Granary more than 1 turn before the food basket is half full, the Granary fills before the city grows rather than on the same turn and your whipped citizens could have worked tiles for the difference in turns or you could have put the hammers into some other build.

You can whip the Granary when the food basket is at least half full but the Granary efficiency will be less.However, don't bother whipping the Granary on the turn the city grows as this is the worst possible time of all.

 

[Nares]

no workshop hammer.

Are workshops even an issue pre-Guilds? At that point we'd be discussing 10pop+ cities, and are hitting the first real wall in slavery's efficiency.

 

[slaze]

This is because the Granary holds the same amount of food as half the food basket and fills with surplus food at the same rate as the food basket.

Are you sure about this? I was under the impression that this civ 3 feature was fixed and you actually have to fill the granary after it's built. I could be wrong though...

 

[slaze]

slave revolts

The slave revolts only occur in cities of 5 population (I beleive) and higher. Slavary's strengths come at low population and yes, pop 5 and greater may be involved in the whipping cycle but it doesn't have to be. In times of early, early war, I can see peripheral cities running a whip cycle at and below 5 pop.

 

[Nares]

I was under the impression that...you actually have to fill the granary after it's built.

I believe he said the same thing, only in a different way.

This is because the Granary holds the same amount of food as half the food basket

and fills with surplus food at the same rate as the food basket.

It probably should have been two separate sentences.

He does refer to filling the basket to 50%-1 prior to whipping the granary, which does not contradict what you say.

 

[brianb1974]

Slaze is correct. When a city grows after you build a granary, you only keep the food stored AFTER the granary build (up to 1/2).

The ideal time to whip the granary is so that it finishes just as the granary fills halfway. Whipping before that is usually unnecessary (unless you have no whip unhappiness and want to whip to get the cycle going, which happens sometimes in a new, fast-growing city). If the food is more than half full, you should whip as soon as you can unless the food is nearly completely full, in which case you may be better off letting the city grow and whipping just before it gets to halfway next time.

This dictates the reversed build order I often use in a coastal uber-seafood city. My first two buildings I want are granary and lighthouse. I can usually whip one for 2 pop when I grow to size 4 and then whip the other for 1 pop (With religion bonus applied to whips and a little production over time). So the ideal build is to do the lighthouse first and then spend a few turns (on marathon) using the super-powered seafood to fill the basket almost halfway before whipping the granary. The city will grow to large size quickest this way.

 

[Nares]

Slaze is correct. When a city grows after you build a granary, you only keep the food stored AFTER the granary build (up to 1/2).

That's what Perugia said...

And what I quoted and restated...

For the sake of clarity:

The granary holds half the food basket worth of food.

It fills at the same rate as the basket.

What was not said was that the granary starts at zero.

Perugia notes this, stating that you whip at 50%-1. This leaves 50% of the basket (aka 100% of the granary) to be filled after the whip, but with growth occurring at the same time as the granary fills to capacity.