Why is Civ 4 so Hard!?

[Yin Cognito]

You're off base with how good you think slavery is. It's not only possible to win deity without slavery, but I was ignorant of the mechanic when I first started beating deity. (Granted I relied on like chopping praets and stuff). And since you asked for a forum game example.... I get to share mine ^^ https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/k-mod-deity-quick-writeup.511322/
It's Deity, quick speed, K-Mod, and I didn't use slavery. Not a self-imposed restriction, I didn't think slavery was useful.

Oh, wow, a fellow K-Mod player! Thanks for posting the link to your save, I'll probably check it out to see the details (of course, I'll have to see whether or not the savegame is compatible with my older version of K-Mod, since Karadoc sometimes makes slight changes in the savegame format, according to the changelog).

Anyway, I think it's better to slightly overestimate the impact of slavery and be wrong, than to underestimate it and suffer the consequences. I'm not sure what you said would change things if I play Slavery at Deity with my setup, because although the map I'd like to try it on (for same standards comparison purposes) is huge, I'm still in Asia as the Chinese on Earth map, which means most of the civs will be on my continent (so no isolation environment). Plus, I play on Marathon, where Slavery, as far as I know, has a lower impact. That being said, I'd still like to make a comparison between no Slavery and Slavery (maybe even coupled with Deity?) in the same game environment, to see just how much it would affect the winning chances and the finish date (i.e. spaceship's arrival). And yeah, I also switch to Rep/Bureau/Caste very early in the game, changing to the "Free" civics later on, but I don't use workshops or SP though (I know their benefits, I just don't like the drawbacks). Chopping is my slavery, on the other hand - too bad I can't chop the parks in the city itself as well...

Isolation means you start on an island from where you cannot make contact with any AIs until Optics, due to the need to cross Ocean tiles. This means no early trades or religion unless you found one yourself, but also no early DoWs from an opportunistic neighbour.

Thanks for clarifying it for me.

Soren Johnson briefly talks about Slavery in this Twitch video at the 16 minute mark

Yep, the developers have a point. They tried, but often people find ways to make good things even better.

 

[Fish Man]

Soren Johnson briefly talks about Slavery in this Twitch video at the 16 minute mark:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/48798300

Saw what he said, and yeah that makes sense. Slavery seems like one of those things that could either be made completely useless or really OP, with no in-between, because as he said if it WAS worthwhile it would be spammed and if it WASN'T it would be ignored. Imagine if whipping gave, say, 15h instead of 30h per pop...then everyone would just be working mines all day, as in the beginning of the game with happy cap would simply not be able to support the monumental amount of pop needed to whip anything. And deity would mostly be unbeatable, which brings me to my second point: I'm glad slavery is as OP as it is, because without it, so many fewer deity maps would even be approachable. You have threads like @Fippy 's cringe starts or @Lain 's deity iso workshops which are good challenges as it stands, but would be completely unthinkable without slavery being powerful as it is now. No whipping army? Good luck putting together more than like 6 cannons and 6 muskets by the time everyone's reached tanks, in isolation. Or good luck getting more than 2 settlers out before the entire map runs out of room, on certain pangaea situations. Having a tool whip makes up for the MASSIVE human disadvantages in production on deity makes the hardest difficulty much more possible, and the game much more fun. So, slavery is OP yes - maybe even the game designer agrees as much. But Civ IV wouldn't be what it is without it.

 

[Fippy]

Hmm..imo it's not so difficult to balance Slavery, 20 and done.
Still useful in cities with little production (coastal i.e.), but not possible anymore to whip almost everything no matter how many
Actually they had a big hint in front of them when looking at chops, 20 before maths is good and helpful but not too strong.
30 makes mines look weak again. Tbh they are just not testing their games in depth, or they would easily see an unbalance like that.

- Do you think one could consistently win (say, in 50%+ of the cases) in a no Slavery peaceful Deity scenario (e.g. space race), or would you rather rate the success as being a once in a dozen (or more) type of thing? How much do you think a no isolation map would (negatively, I assume) influence the winning chance?
- You implied in your last paragraph that State Property was the alternative to Slavery in the late game (I guess coupled with workshops everywhere, maybe?). Would this combination be an absolute necessity if at Deity, or could other combos work (as in keeping your winning chances alive) as well? Like, say, Free Market and a "normal" distribution of mines and cottages as opposed to workshops?

Again, thanks for sharing your experience with such scenarios. People should try self-restricted games more, as it can only improve one's skills, compared to always relying on a single best way to play the game (I'm talking about overall directions here, not the micromanagement of things).

Think i would win 50%+ yup, for early rushes chops are good enuf (need to be more careful with losses probably).
Later you can get 4 workshops (Caste, Guilds & Chemistry), all covered on the cannons line. With irrigation from CS, most food tiles are 5 and they can support 5 green workshops = 25 with a forge.

In 100% peaceful games, no idea..Slavery is most important for units, buildings are mostly optional and granaries cost only 60

State Property makes workshops food neutral, green ones at least, meaning that even cities without a food resi can be transformed into large production places.
At this point Slavery obsoletes, unless your empire is coastal or so

Overall Deity means they get lots of bonuses, but AIs are not smarter and can still be manipulated or outclassed in wars as Drew pointed out.

 

[Yin Cognito]

Think i would win 50%+ yup, for early rushes chops are good enuf (need to be more careful with losses probably). [...]
In 100% peaceful games, no idea..Slavery is most important for units, buildings are mostly optional and granaries cost only 60[...]

Thanks for letting me know. So yeah, apparently I overestimated how powerful slavery is, since you can have decent chances sometimes without it, but it goes without saying that it's still too powerful compared to other elements in the game. The most solid argument for making it that strong is, of course, being able to keep up with the AI in terms of production at higher difficulties. Since I don't use it (yet), maybe my overestimation was due to its high frequency of use by the higher level players on this forum and the fact that it was always spoken of as a "must have or die" type of thing.

Hmm..imo it's not so difficult to balance Slavery, 20 and done.
Still useful in cities with little production (coastal i.e.), but not possible anymore to whip almost everything no matter how many
Actually they had a big hint in front of them when looking at chops, 20 before maths is good and helpful but not too strong.

Good point. Chopping helps everyone and it's not considered overpowered. Same with the production bonuses from forges, levees, powered factories or OR. Even the corporation benefits (Mining Inc., since we talk about production) were never mentioned as being too powerful. So making it more like those is one way of balancing it.

Another, more natural (and probably more realistic way) was to add an empire-wide unhappiness penalty (like that for civs without Emancipation) and the possibility of still being able to use it (despite the individual whip and empire-wide unhappiness) by having additional military units in the cities (the way Hereditary Rule works). Of course, that would have meant to change a bit the benefits of HR to avoid redundancy (and multiplying the happiness effect by using both civics at the same time), but it would also made sense: it would have made Slavery suitable only for empires with large military forces (in order to contain the unhappiness), and it would make it much less suitable (but not impossible) in modern times, especially with other civs switching to Emancipation (+2 unhappiness from Slavery and other civs emancipated added to the individual whip unhappiness). This is roughly the way it works in real world too: people are unhappy with slavery even if not "whipped" (but even more so by whipping them), and become much more reluctant (to say the least) to adopt slavery in the modern era; more military to contain slavery would mean less science and development buildings/units, making the civilization realistically more backward in all areas bar production. Obviously, the numbers involved in bonuses and penalties are open to debate and they would have to be reasonable.

EDIT: Also, being able to capture enemy troops (military units, not just workers) and turning them into workers/slaves in your empire would have been a realistic addition - as far as I know, you can do that quite effectively in Colonization. The problem is that unlike in Colonization, Civ's units are "built-in" (a worker can't turn into a conscript and viceversa) and not as flexible.

 

[Imperator Knoedel]

EDIT: Also, being able to capture enemy troops (military units, not just workers) and turning them into workers/slaves in your empire would have been a realistic addition - as far as I know, you can do that quite effectively in Colonization. The problem is that unlike in Colonization, Civ's units are "built-in" (a worker can't turn into a conscript and viceversa) and not as flexible.

In Fall From Heaven II Slavery gives a chance of enslaving defeated enemy units, which turns them into weaker workers. Some civs and religions have ways of "upgrading" those Slaves into conscripts.

 

[drewisfat]

@Yin Cognito that's part of the double standard you're applying here. You could replace almost word for word "slavery" with "chopping" and conclude it's OP because in virtually every game people chop. I'm not sure, but I suspect I'd rather play without slavery than without the ability to chop forests. "Overpowered" is hard to define, but I'd suggest a definition of whether it increases decisions or decreases decision. Both chopping and whipping while very powerful do not decrease the amount of decisions but rather greatly increase them. You have to make a decision about whether any single whip is worth it, even once you've chosen slavery, and you must weigh this against what tiles you'd be giving up, how long it will regrow and what the happiness situation is like. And of course how important it is to rush construction. Chopping is also always a decision. Do you need the 20 hammers now or the 30 hammers later? Is it better for the worker to improve a tile or chop a forest? etc. Is it worth it to chop a distant forest for a smaller amount of hammers? There's even a whole set of decisions on whether to pre-chop forests for a quick military buildup or to win a wonder race.

Also, I believe slavery is strongest on marathon. Even though unit cost isn't equally proportional with mara from my understanding, I think slavery still inherently gets weaker the faster the game speed. It's a rush mechanic, so there's a bigger impact to taking units from 20 turns to build to 2 turns as opposed to going from 5 turns to 2 turns. It's also important to note that whipping something the same turn as you select it incurs a huge 50% penalty, so you always want to put 1 turn into building the unit before whipping it. However, there's still pops/overflow to consider. On normal one whip is 30 production, so you need at least 30 production remaining on a unit to get a 2 pop whip. A lot of units you might want to whip especially early aren't much higher than that 30 hammer mark. If they're full fledged cities this may be an issue, where that one turn of production (plus any overflow) pushes them to below 30 hammers remaining. As a result you may have to adjust the tiles you work (which can mean running inefficient tiles) just to not put too many hammers into the unit. This is a much more significant issue on quick speed than other settings. Also that one turn of anarchy is a bigger negative on quick than normal than epic, etc. So when I went on a quick speed binge, I was much more hesitant to just choose slavery the second I finished bronze working. Chopping is also borked on quick speed, taking a full 3 turns instead of the intended 2 turns. So if you think these two rush mechanics are too strong, you can always swap to quick speed where they're much more constrained. It's a heck of a lot harder to win wars though.

 

[Yin Cognito]

@Yin Cognito that's part of the double standard you're applying here. You could replace almost word for word "slavery" with "chopping" and conclude it's OP because in virtually every game people chop.

I'm not so sure. Forests are a finite resource - no matter how much you want to chop rush something, once the forest around the city is gone, so is the "rush". Population, though, is infinite - since you can whip then grow a city as many times as you like over the course of a game. Of course, there is random forest growth, maybe influenced by a forest preserve nearby, but these depend on luck and how much you advanced technologically. Also, food is generally the most abundant resource on a map, while the amount of forests depends on the map type, latitude, humidity, etc. Assuming you have both the population and the forest at hand, chopping also takes time (9 turns on Marathon, I believe is 3 turns on Normal), while whipping is done instantly - although counting the turns needed to have some hammers invested before you whip something might level things up and probably make the time argument invalid. But ok, let's say you have half of a good point here - noted. I completely agree with the rest of the paragraph though.

Even though unit cost isn't equally proportional with mara from my understanding [...]

Yes, the marathon unit cost is the normal cost x 2, and normal cost x 3 for settlers. Everything else is x 3 (buildings, techs, etc). Unit cost (and movement, for that matter) are indeed an advantage for Marathon, but I suspect it has to do with the fact that Marathon was supposed to be played in combo with Huge maps (which I do) where it makes sense to have slightly different multipliers or you'll never get to explore all the map or wage war effectively.

Also, I believe slavery is strongest on marathon. [...] I think slavery still inherently gets weaker the faster the game speed. It's a rush mechanic, so there's a bigger impact to taking units from 20 turns to build to 2 turns as opposed to going from 5 turns to 2 turns.

The thing is that you're also applying double standards here, because you're not comparing how many rush turns does the same number of chops/whips buy you at different game speeds - which would analyze things based on the same starting criteria and not based on some random numbers thrown for the sake of proving a point. I'll try to prove why your approach was wrong in this case, hopefully I'm not wrong and you'll understand where I'm going with this (I'll just use the chop numbers as I'm more familiar with them and chopping is also a rush mechanic, as you correctly pointed out, plus, the numbers are roughly similar for Slavery - give or take)...

Let's assume a city has 20 H production. Now on Marathon, a Settler cost is 300 H, so normally it will be completed after 15 turns (not exactly the 20 turns you mentioned, but close). Taking the Settler from 15 turns to 2 turns on Marathon (assuming that we don't count the turns needed to chop the forests) would require 2.(8) chops, so "almost" 3 chops after Mathematics for 90 x 3 = 270 H, which added to the 2 x 20 = 40 H of the 2 "regular" turns would give 310 H, slightly over the 300 H total needed.

On Normal, a Settler cost is 100 H, so the same 20 H producing city would normally complete it in 5 turns. Taking the Settler from 5 turns to 2 turns (same assumptions as before) would require just 2 chops after Mathematics for 30 x 2 = 60 H, which added to the 2 x 20 = 40 H regular turns' output give the required 100 H total needed.

So yeah, I know what you meant that there is indeed a bigger impact to taking units from 15 turns to build to 2 turns as opposed to going from 5 turns to 2 turns (in absolute terms) ... but it also costs you more (in terms of chops/whips and such), as in the example above we chopped 3 forests on Marathon compared to 2 on Normal - and that's taking only 15 turns into account as opposed to your 20, for the sake of computing simplicity, not to mention not counting the turns or the worker movement if chopping is done sequentially (I think there's a similar additional turns' impact if we talk about slavery and the need to have some hammers invested before the whip). That's why when making such a comparison one should start from the same set of base assumptions and see where it takes him from there (e.g. how many rush turns would one "gain" at different game speeds if he would chop/whip the same number of times in a city producing the same number of hammers, and see if the results don't follow the proportion between the game speed factors - 3 to 1, in this case, but can be 2 to 1 for the rest of the units).

On the rest of the paragraph (as well as your opinion on slavery impact on different speeds - bar the numbers involved in what I pointed out above), you're probably right, you certainly have the experience to have an entitled opinion on it. On the anarchy turns though, as far as I know Civ 4 considers all the relevant variables (i.e. Anarchy Turns = (1 + Civics + [Cities × MapFactor / 100]) × SpeedFactor × 0.5), so the issue you encounted at Quick speed might come from rounding the number. Since you mentioned it, changing to Slavery for me on Marathon accounts for 2 turns of anarchy, not 1. I might be wrong, but I prefer to change civics as early as I can, because although the early turns are more important in the gameplay, you lose less Food/Production/Commerce and benefit the change for longer afterwards. Point is, that lost turn pays off eventually.