[BTS] Whipping vs Drafting - when to use which?

[placid_coolie]

As per the title, I've gotten very used to using slavery to whip out units and buildings. But I'm interested to know how and when one should utilize "drafting" via the Nationhood civic. Also, in terms of mechanics, are they not similar in the sense that both sacrifice population to churn out units? thanks...

 

[jnebbe]

It's pretty similar to whipping where you're trading population for units. The different units you can whip and the cost can be seen here https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Draft_(Civ4)
Most common use is a rifling attack, usually you'll whip/slowbuild trebuchets/cannons and then draft riflemen. It's really powerful since drafting a rifleman turns 1 pop into 110 whereas whipping a rifleman would cost 3 or 4 pop.
The big downside is that each draft gives 3 unhappiness vs 1 if you whipped. It's common to build the globe theater in a city with high food, so you can draft from the same city for multiple turns in a row without getting affected by unhappiness

 

[lymond]

I've not used drafting a great deal in my time. Drafting, besides coming far later, only applies to melee/no horsie gunpowder units. You only sacrifice a set number of citizen depending on how advance the unit. I forget the numbers, but up to Muskets or Rifles is one citizen, then it's two and so on. Drafting also costs more unhappiness if I recall. So it's really something you a) prepare for and b) really use it full bore when you do use it. Meaning you're gonna really be fightin'. I tend to use mounted more in my games so that's really why I don't draft a lot. However, it can be really good if you go the cannon route to draft muskets or rifles.

Also, I think a city has to be a certain size minimum to even draft a unit at all. (Size 6 I think)

If you can get up a high food Globe City, you can draft out of it constantly.

Note: If you just full on warfare, and you have the military techs you need for some time, then you can raise culture slider higher to offset happiness issues for a while, if it gets bad. Theatres and Coliseums will boost that even more, so you may want to get those up earlier before you start drafting.

 

[krikav]

Drafting is waaaay less common to come into play than whipping.
I recall this guide and think that most mechanics are explained correctly there:
https://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/military/drafting-for-fun-and-profit/

The key thing to focus on is the completely crazy production potential when drafting riflemen (last unit that requires only 1 population).
With a granary, you need about 15 food to grow from pop5 to pop6, and you get a rifleman worth 110 hammers.
Thats 7.33 hammers per food which is completely off the scale!

Since drafting costs 3 unhappines for 10 turns which stacks, it's hard to draft alot... Unless you have a big empire that is.
If you have 30 cities, you can draft 3 units per turn continiously.
Having a globe theatre city helps alot, that city can be drafted every turn w/o unhappines that leaves you with 20 cities if you want to draft continiously.
But in real play, thats quite uncommon. It's something that can happen lategame though, but the purpose off all that horde of low-xp rifles far from the front are not so much to participate in the fighting, but rather to bump up your own power rating, making capitulations easier.

When it comes to drafting, It's almost always about riflemen, you almost never draft anything prior to that, and you seldom draft after that.
I tend to think about drafting when I'm stuck with a small empire with little land, where I need to have cottages on the few precious tiles I have available. In that case I will have a hard time to whip out alot of units.
It's usually that I draft most cities 2 times, then thats it. But with a 5 city empire thats still 10 rifles which can play a crucial role at the initial phase.

Another trick I have utilized is to draft a marginal bordercity mercilessly, keeping it alive with mass military police with herarditrary rule.
Then I let my foe conquer that city to place his stack inside for me to shoot like fish in a barrel with cannons afterwards. That conquest clears all draft anger.
Also works to just gift the city away right before declaring, and then recapturing it with a chariot the same turn.

 

[krikav]

Note that the guide I posted is antique, and that strategic considerations can be way off. I posted it for the clearly laid out mechanics, take the rest with a grain of salt.

 

[Nick723]

Drafting is most likely in isolation games, at least in my experience. Cannons + rifles is more often than not the attack force, and then it’s good to draft the rifles and whip the cannons.

 

[placid_coolie]

Another trick I have utilized is to draft a marginal bordercity mercilessly, keeping it alive with mass military police with herarditrary rule.
Then I let my foe conquer that city to place his stack inside for me to shoot like fish in a barrel with cannons afterwards. That conquest clears all draft anger.

Apologies @krikav, I don't quite follow this. seems like a disproportionate amount of work for what you aim to achieve. Just so I understand this correctly, you draft an army in a frontier city (to avert a revolt?) and to counter the ensuing unhappiness you run the HR civic. Why would you then allow the AI foes an open lane to take this city for all the hardwork you put in? sorry for this stupid question.

But in real play, thats quite uncommon. It's something that can happen lategame though, but the purpose off all that horde of low-xp rifles far from the front are not so much to participate in the fighting, but rather to bump up your own power rating, making capitulations easier.

great tip, i'll keep that in mind.

thanks for the article, i have 'instapaper' it for later reading.

 

[placid_coolie]

If you just full on warfare, and you have the military techs you need for some time, then you can raise culture slider higher to offset happiness issues for a while, if it gets bad.

Thanks @lymond this is interesting, I have never done this before. How does raising culture slider offset happiness? How much to min/max to achieve extra happiness? What's the underlying mechanics?

 

[lymond]

Thanks @lymond this is interesting, I have never done this before. How does raising culture slider offset happiness? How much to min/max to achieve extra happiness? What's the underlying mechanics?

Well, it's pretty simple really. Raise the slider 10% and get an extra happy in each city. Theatres and Colosseums increase an extra per 10% slider. I really don't give it much though as to min/max. I mean, the general rule is you always want to be running 100% research as much as you can. Using the culture slider only in dire cases where I want to offset unhappiness in cities due to...say..mass drafting or war weariness. I'll only raise 10% as needed. If research as become irrelevant at a give point in the game, then it really does not matter running the culture slider a bit.

 

[lymond]

Note

Nice to see you krik

 

[krikav]

@placid_coolie The situation is that I want to attack a neighbour.
I have a city that is relatively close by that neighbour, and in that city then I can draft it every single turn while at the same time all draftees from this city and others, and all other units I build, they all gather here.
So that city is still happy, so I can work tiles and continue to grow that city up to pop6 again, so I can draft it again.

If I would then just move out the army and go on with everything, that city would have -100 unhappines for the rest of the game, being unable to work any tiles at all.
What I instead do, is to let my foe conquer the city, or I gift it away before the war and then reconquer it.
When I get the city again, that city has forgotten all the centuries of merciless drafting that I have done to it, and I can just grow that city up and use it as normal.

It's just a neat trick to help combat drafting anger.

You can see it in action in screenshots in my post here:
Last screenshots, regarding the city Haarlem.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...llem-of-the-dutch.638242/page-2#post-15266000

 

[Fippy]

Main benefit of drafting: those Rifles are instantly available.
While for whipping we always put 1t of production in before to avoid "cold whip" penalties.
Drafted Rifles can also move on the same turn, so they are 2t faster in action overall

They get only 1xp with barracks, but that might not matter much if you just need more units.
-3 stacking unhappy can become a problem fast, but then again an army buildup might be so crucial that anything else can be tolerated.
There are many situations where i would rather lose more population (and also get extra xp on whipped Rifles), so it's just about speed with drafting and as we all know..speed matters the most in this game

Another mechanic where SPI really shines, not like we want to stay in Nationhood for too long.
/wave Krikav always good to see you back.

 

[sampsa]

I like drafted rifles quite a lot, when game goes that far. Globe is such a great building.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I draft when I get surprise attacked.

 

[ArchGhost]

Not much experience with it, but drafting is helpful for very quickly getting an escort force/unit killers to go along with your cannons -- in a hurry. If you don't do the pre-build trebs>upgrade with GM gold thing, then you have a lot of your cities' output tied up in whipping cannons or rifles -- not both, you must alternate or split your cities' tasks up -- over several turns. Which slows the mobilization.

Drafting can let you spam out a good amount of rifles over a few turns while you just whip away the anger into cannons, and get rolling that much earlier, since it doesn't interrupt the production queue and happens instantly. Best done with a large number of cities so you can cycle through and not build +3 anger each turn! Large empires already benefit from Nationhood for the cost reductions, as an aside.

Other than that I tend to only use drafting for fighting back surprise DoWs or to quickly get garrisons in my Industrial cities without interrupting their infrastructure builds. In large cities, taking a +3 anger per draft can actually be a net gain of happiness if your "fear for our protection" anger is high enough (example: size 13 city has 4 unhappiness from no garrison...drafting 1 pop restores 4 happiness while giving 3 unhappy for 10turns).