Whipping Granaries?

[TheBackStabber]

I am pretty much a new player to Civ III, competing on warlord difficulty. Is it a good idea to whip granaries in the beginning of the game when I am settling new cities? Or is it better to wait for them to be produced?

 

[Sparthage]

Whipping is almost always a bad idea. Granaries only help you grow and since whipping punishes growth, it's not that good of an idea to whip them. So, let them be built.

 

[vmxa]

Like most things there is a a time and place for it. Whipping is not an option used a lot in III. In IV it was a great tool. A granary will cost too many lives so early. Once you get out of despotism you usually are in a gov that does not allow whipping.

In IV you just need to have the correct policy (slavery iirc) and switch to it any time. In 3 you have to have the gov and switching is costly for non religious and even then it cost something.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Whipping is almost always a bad idea. Granaries only help you grow and since whipping punishes growth, it's not that good of an idea to whip them. So, let them be built.

I don't whip a lot, but I will whip a granary on occasion - I've also been known to whip libraries and temples when there is a cause for it.

Whipping can be a very useful way to get infrastructure in place. The main issue is that one of the first things you want to do is get out of despotism, and the early choices for that are republic and monarchy, neither of which allow pop rushing. And the cost of switching out is pretty high, so most of the time, you cash rushing instead of pop rush.

 

[Raliuven]

It might be fun to do the math on this.

I don't pop-rush much, but would a 59 shield granary cost 3 citizens to rush?

What type of set up would overcome a granary pop-rush? I think one of two possible starts would make it feasible - a high food start or a low shield start (hypothesis). High food would replace the lost citizens quickly (especially with a granary) mitigating the loss, low shield would give each sacrificed citizen an adjusted higher value (from a spt viewpoint). If you have both high food and low shield, that would be the best possible set up?

I suppose there are a lot of factors to consider - such as would it better to rush a settler to build the next city rather than killing 3 citizens to make a granary (assuming you have already decided to rush, period).

 

[Aabraxan]

Yes, a 59 shield granary would cost 3 citizens. To straight-rush it, you'd have to start at size 6 (or 7 maybe?). You could short-rush it if you wanted to start at a smaller size.

 

[DWetzel]

It might be fun to do the math on this.

I don't pop-rush much, but would a 59 shield granary cost 3 citizens to rush?

What type of set up would overcome a granary pop-rush? I think one of two possible starts would make it feasible - a high food start or a low shield start (hypothesis). High food would replace the lost citizens quickly (especially with a granary) mitigating the loss, low shield would give each sacrificed citizen an adjusted higher value (from a spt viewpoint). If you have both high food and low shield, that would be the best possible set up?

Pretty much this. Think a flood plains with wheat start with not much in the way of shields around. (This also has the side effect of getting rid of citizens which would become unhappy quickly anyway due to rapid growth.)

If you had a low food, low shields start you probably wouldn't be building a granary there anyway.

 

[Lanzelot]

It might be a good idea to pop-rush a few things right before you go into anarchy, because some cities would loose population anayway during anarchy.

But other than that I don't like poprushing that much. There may be certain exceptions, but most of the time it's a bad idea. Cracker, in his famous "Opening Moves" article, investigated a floodplain start and tried several different strategies, including a pop-rush strategy, and the results of that were not very convincing. Even the "mine a desert and alternate between irrigated floodplain and mined desert" strategy had the same results without sacrificing population causing unhappiness for the remaining pop...

Once the opening phase is over, pop-rushing may be ok for the totally corrupt towns, but by that time you should be out of Despotism anyway.

 

[RFHolloway]

It might be fun to do the math on this.

I don't pop-rush much, but would a 59 shield granary cost 3 citizens to rush?

What type of set up would overcome a granary pop-rush? I think one of two possible starts would make it feasible - a high food start or a low shield start (hypothesis). High food would replace the lost citizens quickly (especially with a granary) mitigating the loss, low shield would give each sacrificed citizen an adjusted higher value (from a spt viewpoint). If you have both high food and low shield, that would be the best possible set up?

I suppose there are a lot of factors to consider - such as would it better to rush a settler to build the next city rather than killing 3 citizens to make a granary (assuming you have already decided to rush, period).

Trouble is both of those are exactly when you don't need a granary - if the population growth is too fast the last thing you need is to speed it up, if the population growth is too slow then 3 pop is too expensive. Potentially it may be useful to rush the last bit, or if you have underproductive tiles (i.e. 1 food only, or possibly 1 food 1 shield) which if you work too many that will slow growth, but in those cases you probably have better things to build than a granery (like scientists)

 

[Siegmund]

Whipping the last 20 shields of a granary is quite often a viable strategy. If you have a city with +4 food, +2 with a granary and a specialist is still break-even on growth rate vs. no granary. If you have one early luxury the whip anger is survivable even up to emperor level.

 

[Nergal]

I wouldnt whip for a granary, forest chopping is better.

 

[Raliuven]

Trouble is both of those are exactly when you don't need a granary - if the population growth is too fast the last thing you need is to speed it up, if the population growth is too slow then 3 pop is too expensive. Potentially it may be useful to rush the last bit, or if you have underproductive tiles (i.e. 1 food only, or possibly 1 food 1 shield) which if you work too many that will slow growth, but in those cases you probably have better things to build than a granery (like scientists)

Would there be any value in pop-rushing a granary to speed up food growth if you intend to use the town for continuous pop-rushing? If you have a low shield area, then you could almost turn 1fpt into 2spt (10 food for 19 shields). As I don't pop-rush, I don't know if this is a viable strategy. Keep the population low enough, with luxuries and MPs, then happiness is not a problem?

Of course, a big problem is that as soon as you are out of despotism, you have to figure out what to do with it all.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

The problem with continual poprushing is that you run out of happiness pretty fast.

That said - there's really no such thing as too MUCH food - just use specialists.

Granaries are almost never bad.

 

[Abegweit]

It's counter-intuitive but the only place for granaries is in high-food cities, about 2-4 of them. Once you have them in place, build settlers and workers from these towns forever. Ideal is a city that can generate 10 food and 10 shields in two turns or a city that can generate 20 food and thirty shields in four turns. Use the former to make workers and the latter to make settlers.

Aside from their obvious uses, these units can be folded them into your slower-growing cities to get them up to size. They don't need to have spare food at all. Just enough to keep them from starving.

 

[Hasdrubal Barca]

Nergal is on the money, always forest chop for granys, if you have forests nearby that is.

And if you´re building granaries, your chances of poping settlers or cities from goody huts increase

 

[darski]

Nergal is on the money, always forest chop for granys, if you have forests nearby that is.

And if you´re building granaries, your chances of popping settlers or cities from goody huts increase

say what? I've never heard of this one

Nice if true. I just might start building granaries.

 

[CKS]

Since you can only pop a settler if you don't have one and aren't building one, this is true, in the sense that if you are building granaries you aren't building settlers, so you might pop one from a hut. However, you can just change any settler builds prior to popping the hut and then switch back.

 

[RFHolloway]

It's counter-intuitive but the only place for granaries is in high-food cities, about 2-4 of them. Once you have them in place, build settlers and workers from these towns forever. Ideal is a city that can generate 10 food and 10 shields in two turns or a city that can generate 20 food and thirty shields in four turns. Use the former to make workers and the latter to make settlers.

Aside from their obvious uses, these units can be folded them into your slower-growing cities to get them up to size. They don't need to have spare food at all. Just enough to keep them from starving.

Yes its 60 shields as a one off investment, to produce extra food per turn equal to your surplus food. Clearly that investment is going to be better if your surplus food per turn is high, and worthless if it is only 0 or 1.

Also you will want to keep the population down below 6 to avoid negating the good work of the granery by requiring extra food per population point.

if you had a city in a desert, it could easily produce 5 extra FPT, but may only be able to produce at most 6 shields per turn at pop 6, and wouldn't produce that until you had irrigated 3 flood plains and mined 3 deserts. With a granery that would mean that you would produce workers every 2 turns but you need to invest 60 shields. It may be better in that case not to build the granery, but to invest those shields in earlier settlers.

 

[templar_x]

One has to point out on the statements of RF and Abegweit one specific assumption, which is not listed:
There have to be city sites with more than +2fpt around to make those true.

Otherwise it is exactly the opposite:
If you compare +2fpt towns with or +2fpt towns without a granary, then the importance of the gran becomes MUCH GREATER than in situations with a higher food output.

Here are the numbers, here with the assumption that there are always enough shields around to have the SF running:

# 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.

# 2 situation: +2fpt with or without granary
a) "with granary" gives a settler on turn 10 and every other 10 turns
b) "without granary" gives a settler on turn 20 and every other 20 turns
-> the time difference until settler 1 is built is 10 turns, until settler 2 is 20 turns, until settler 3 is 30 turns, etc.

The reason why one easily overlooks this is that one tends to think of the difference between #1 and #2 in absolute terms. You can do this, but you have to add that this is only correct under the assumption, that locations of both qualities are around! If you have only e.g. #2-qualities around, then you have to compare the relative advantages (thus, a) and b)). And the relative advantage between only e.g. +2fpt locations with a granary is even greater than the relative advantage between +5fpt locations with a granary.

templar_x

 

[Abegweit]

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. Then both cities can build granaries while they grow back to size 3 (or perhaps more). The worker moves over to build up the second city as the first one already has been.

This situation is fairly rare though. Generally there's at least one food tile somewhere.