Whipping Granaries?

[Skullsplitter]

Absolutely right, templar. The commonest situation where this case applies is a low-food start. If both your first and second cities are going to lack food, then both should get granaries.

In such cases, I often start my first city with a few warriors followed by a settler.

How could one know his second city would be a low food unless you had already started your first city with a few warriors? Unless you are expansionist, or you use your worker to scout, I mean.

My normal start usually is 3 warriors, the first 2 for scouting, the last as MP, then often as not, a 4th warrior before the first settler if the first two haven't found a good spot by then. While there's ample room for improvement in my gameplay, I rarely find a situation where my second town absolutely positively has to be in a lousy spot, too, and if things don't improve by about my 5th or 6th town, I have no qualms about restarting.

 

[Skullsplitter]

templar_x:
# 1 situation: +5fpt with or without granary
a) "with granary" gives a settler on turn 4 and every other 4 turns
b) "without granary" gives a settler on turn 8 and every other 8 turns
-> the time difference until settler 1 is built is 4 turns, until settler 2 is 8 turns, until settler 3 is 12 turns, etc.

Sure. Or, by the time you've got the town built up to the required 5 fpt and 8 spt, you could alternate chariots and settlers, and be set to take out a civ within a few turns of researching HBR. From Monarch on, the AI's starting position is almost always sweet -- at least one bonus food, plus a nearby luxury.

If your goal were only to expand peacefully, it makes the case for granary much better, but if you are even considering military expansion, I'm not sure the 60 shields is worth it.

 

[Abegweit]

How could one know his second city would be a low food unless you had already started your first city with a few warriors? Unless you are expansionist, or you use your worker to scout, I mean.

My normal start usually is 3 warriors, the first 2 for scouting, the last as MP, then often as not, a 4th warrior before the first settler if the first two haven't found a good spot by then. While there's ample room for improvement in my gameplay, I rarely find a situation where my second town absolutely positively has to be in a lousy spot, too, and if things don't improve by about my 5th or 6th town, I have no qualms about restarting.

If your first town is low-food, you pretty much have to build warriors so you are going to have plenty of time to find out what your second one will be like. A high-food start can be very different. In this game, we built a granary, a second worker and two settlers before any military. And no, we didn't start with a scout. Our first dot map is in post 76 and you can see quite clearly that all we had to go on was our initial border expansion.

 

[dhokarena56]

If you're dealing with a newly conquered, fairly large city, whip away-it'll give you more of your population faster. But if you're going to do that, why not just whip a Temple or a Library and give the place some culture?

 

[scratchthepitch]

"Whipping Granaries?"

I read that initially as whipping grannies.

Sorry - carry on.

 

[GamezRule]

I am never in a whipping government for long, and I tend to avoid wars in despotism.

 

[vorlon_mi]

If you're dealing with a newly conquered, fairly large city, whip away-it'll give you more of your population faster. But if you're going to do that, why not just whip a Temple or a Library and give the place some culture?

Indeed! Which leads to a key question ... what do you want this city to do?

Whipping a granary just helps it grow back faster, with citizens that are native to your tribe, not the former owners. Faster regrowth is not a strong motivation, except in certain cases. If this city has potential to be a worker farm, then having a granary would be useful.

OTOH, if the city is on the coast and needs a harbor, consider whipping that.
If you want to pop the cultural radius, consider whipping a temple. If there is enough commerce around the city, and it's not 95% corrupt, consider whipping a library.

 

[shl7070]

This is WARLORD level. I can't see a need for building granaries let alone whipping them in warlord. If the capital is poor with food I rather build a settler as early as possible and settle some better spot where granary will be built without whipping. Also if lacking food one can think of diverting some shields to rushing- with archers/horses/swords on this level and take the growth of the enemy. While the expansion phase is going they are vulnerable to concentrated and dedicated SOD even if they have twice the cities. I remember using 3 cities to construct a rush stack to remove 7 city AI from the face of the planet and take control of the continent, 8 archers did the job with minimal reinforcements as most cities had 1 defender which wasn't always a spearman.

 

[GamezRule]

 

[dominatr]

usually i will whip an extra spearman on my border cities if someone declares war on me

 

[Elephantium]