Workshops/Farms/Mills + SP transition Lategame

[Olafeson]

Hello and good evening folks,

with my small IQ i can not answer thge important questions in life. Where we go after death, if god is real,
if i should eat a burito or a pizza.

And of course how to properly do a transition into hammer economy lategame with SP/Biology and Caste System and Factories + coal plants. Especially in my current deity game.

Unfortunately in this game, the UN resolution suggestet Emancipation so i can not go into caste system anymore.

I just do the quick math here, in most of my cities i have:

Multiplier hammer : +110% (factories 25% + coal plants 50% +forge 25% + SP 10%)
Multiplier commerce +75% (library 25% + uni 25% + observatorium 25%) (commerce to research)

1)So if i run Research or Wealth (what is better?), i would produce more beakers than commerce would produce at 100 % tech rate. Also i could tech and build the lategame units and buildings fast that i need.
Either for a space victory or domination.

2)Also regarding mines vs windmills ( i guess its more efficient to have windmills and grow to max size and then work engineers with the food surplus?), or would mines + railroads (+4-5 hammers) be better?

3)What to do with my towns? Replace all towns with watermills at rivers and with farms and workshops on the other tiles? Or should i keep fully grown towns. Should i replace river towns with watermills before electricity?

4) I usually stay in Slavery/Free Market until i can whip the Levees / Factories then switch to
SP and Caste System.

Would be nice if someone with expierence could tell me how to properly exectute this switch from commerce to hammers economy. I do not want to pull out a calculator and paper to do the math myself.

Save Game attached if someone wants to take a look at the game.

 

[Pangaea]

Although I've played some space games, this part can be tricky, and I may not do it perfectly, so take it for what it's worth.

Usually I don't raze towns. I prioritise other tiles instead. The Ironworks city is an exception, here I go for max hammers so no windmills. Other than that it's about changing tiles to windmills on hills and farms+workshops elsewhere. I usually don't bother with watermills, or only have a select few. In the late game the yields are excellent, especially with SP, but usually I go with farms and workshops instead (watermills take longer to build too). Coupled with corporations (so obviously no SP), this works pretty well too, as you gain tons of extra food from corporations, meaning you can workshop a good deal -- or grow and run a truckload or three of specialists. Obviously the UN could throw a spanner in the works here, as in your game.

In a sense, it probably doesn't matter much if you go down the SP or corps route. Either way you want to transition to a hammer economy with workshops. Whipping large cities simply isn't very efficient, and you can produce most things very fast anyway with +100% multipliers, even more so with Mininc Inc.

Between Wealth and Research, Wealth is usually better. But in the late game you can ofc then build Wealth until break even at 100%, and then switch other cities to Research. No point gaining tons of gold when you're teching at 100% anyway. Obviously there are exceptions, like pre-Currency and when you want to get an important tech a turn earlier, where building Research can make sense.

 

[Anysense]

I'm too lazy for calculating such things too, but after I took a glance at your empire I can point out a few things that cost you rather a lot.
The most striking thing is connected oil, when you don't really need it. It cost you ~1000 in health care buildings.
Then you built 6 drydocks, thats 720 that only add.
And in the light of switching into hammer economy universities were, probably, a waste of hammers too. At least in cities with ~20 base beakers.
Wall Street in Gondar is out of place; it should be in Barcelona (+38 shrine). Although I'd just skip WS and only build bank and grocer in the shrine city.
In short, you seem to have a habit of building a lot of unnecessary stuff.

 

[Olafeson]

@Anysense

yeah the Wall Street in Gondor was a mistake. I was building it for failgold while Barcelona was still in revolt from capture and forgot to cancel it.
Was bugging me a lot but i didnt want to reload, since it was my mistake.
regarding the oil. You mean i should build the ships with uranium and dont connect the oil?

Does oil and coal add unhealthiness to the citiesjust when you hook it up? I thought it only adds unhealthiness when you build for example the factory and the coal plant .
I have to take a look at this next game.

@Pangaea

Do you recommend ironworks in most of the games? It is so hard to build with 800 hammers pre factories and coal plant. Usually i only build it when i get a Great engineer.

Another question, i di pillage my own oil to remove -1 unhealthiness and build naval units with uran. But even though i have 3 uran hooked up with roads and mines, it does not show up in city screen and i can not build naval units anymore. I assumed physics unlocks uran and then you can hook it up with a mine, or did i get smth wrong here.

 

[Anysense]

Coal is +2 with factory and further 2 with coal plant. Oil adds +2 if just connected, +1 with public transportation. You need Fission to build ships with uranium. I meant that you don't need naval units, except galleons, if you want to attack Shaka, but you aren't preparing for war. And my main point was that those hammers would be a lot more useful if invested in units; in all likelyhood Shaka would have been your vassal for quite a while.
Another use for hammers is build wealth/research. I adjusted some tiles, gave up destroyer and other unnecessary stuff and the bpt jumped to 1742. On the next turn Toledo finished observatory, Madrid - library and they start building research too, along with Mordor and Murcia. A few more adjustments and there you are, biology in 2 turns (1655->1665). Of course, I squeezed every beaker from your empire to finish biology ASAP, but ~1600 per turn is an easily affordable rate. And I'm quite sure it is a lot more important than observatories that will pay back in ~15 turns, let alone grocers and PT.
Edit: I've just noticed that you settled 3 Great Scientists in Gondar. That is the worst use for GS (except, may be, feeding them to lions), and that is the most significant mistake you made in this game, and the main reason you struggle now.

Spoiler :

 

[Pangaea]

Do you recommend ironworks in most of the games? It is so hard to build with 800 hammers pre factories and coal plant. Usually i only build it when i get a Great engineer.

Only if you intend to go to space. Otherwise it's pointless really. Way too expensive and takes an eternity to build without resource bonus. But it's an excellent city to build Apollo and an engine in, once you have workshopped the lot. Naturally the best locations have many river tiles too, so a levee adds many hammers.

 

[Olafeson]

@Anysense

Ah there you got a good point i think. That of course was not the main question here, but may i ask you this one too.
I got these Great Scientists after i already bulbed Education and my 2nd golden age. The tech they could have bulbed was Scientific method.
I did not want my GL and Parthenon to go obsolete already. Would it be more useful to Bulb Scientifc Method or Physics/Electricity.
Settling in Oxford with Representation civic not efficient? Too long term?

Another question is if it is more efficient to go for Assembly Line first and whip the factories / coal plants or to tech SP/Biology and then go for Assembly line?
I saw Lain go this route in his last Youtube lets Play.

Also i wasted so much time to flip a city of Isabella (who is now dead) with Sixtine chapel and monastery/temple culture from 3 angles (Barb City Hurrier). Also spreading culture with spies. In the end the city was 50% spanish/50% byzantine and all my effort was wasted. Not even a single revolt.

 

[Pangaea]

You don't have to use the great people (whether GS or others) right away. You can save them for later. In space games that is typically golden ages or bulbs. Usually you should be able to launch the 4GP golden age, plus Taj Mahal - preferably all boosted by MoM. 5GP golden age is tricky, but can be done if you are a little lucky with types of GPs.

Bulbing SciMeth can make sense, but that late I'd probably just hold on to them for later golden ages. If you have too many of one type, use them for a bulb that makes sense. SciMethod in itself doesn't do all that much, so make sure you have enough gold to get something after, like Biology. What you want to Lib also comes into play here, and going 'deep' in the tech tree is of course more tricky on Deity. You may not even win Lib. Recently I played a game on Immortal where Mansa was teching like mad, and won Lib in 2-300AD or thereabouts.

@Lain can answer that question better I am sure (or @WastinTime ), and I've not seen that video. Personally I don't do much math in the game, it's a game after all and not a job, but gut feeling is to probably go for Biology first and Assembly Line later. Corps come into play here too, possibly. Maybe you want Sushi first? Or Mining? In that part of the tech tree it's important to get AL fast, however, and get up the hammer multipliers. Going for corporations, Mining+Sushi+AL and you're set.

SP is much easier micro-wise. For starters you don't have the hassle of spamming execs and spreading the corporations. And you don't need courthouses everywhere. SP removes distance maintenance, so costs will always be negligible. Basically just farm-workshop-windmill the lot and keep teching to space. Corps can be more powerful, sometimes a lot more powerful - especially on slower speeds and bigger maps. More turns to gain food and hammers, and relatively faster spread.

Probably not uncommon, but what I find most challenging, and it's often a luck-based rng roll, is when (or if!) you get a great engineer. Sometimes you simply don't get one in time, despite good odds in several cities, and have to resort to a backup plan of SP instead. Therefore it's a good idea if you can get MC early and run an engineer - ideally in a city with HG and/or Pyramids too. Then hope for a GE as the 2nd or 3rd great person. Especially as Philosophical this is quite doable.

 

[Anysense]

Too long term, yes. If sought long-term benefit, then another academy would be 2-3 times better than a settled GS. But bulbs are much more powerful, they deliver the same amount of beakers that a settled GS could generate in ~80 turns; and if the best use you saw for your GS was settling, then you should not be reluctant to obsolete Parthenon and GL, because it indicates that their value is very small. On the other hand, earlier Biology and SP would have given you economy a good boost.
I suppose, it depends, but getting more food first and then whipping infrastructure seems more logical.

 

[6K Man]

My 2 cents

1. Usually you’ll have more Research multiplying buildings (Libraries etc) than Wealth multiplying (Markets etc) buildings. If that’s the case, build Wealth, and not Research, so you can push the Research slider higher.

2. Unless I have unlimited health/happiness or little to no food surplus, I prefer Mines to Windmills. No point growing on Windmills to size 20 if you hit unhappiness at size 17.

3. Like Pangaea, I keep almost all full grown Towns, unless I’ve captured a production city with 2 settled GGs that the AI for some reason built 2 towns in.

4. I like Slavery, but once you have Guilds or at the latest, Chemistry, your larger production cities seem to benefit more from Caste.


Don’t sell Watermills short. Under SP they’re IMO the best tile, hands down. +1 and immunity to the Emancipation nerfing that Workshops suffer from.

 

[Pangaea]

1. Usually you’ll have more Research multiplying buildings (Libraries etc) than Wealth multiplying (Markets etc) buildings. If that’s the case, build Wealth, and not Research, so you can push the Research slider higher.

Reading the start of this sentence had me thinking you had it wrong, because building wealth or research doesn't use those multipliers, but hammer multipliers. But I see my suspicion was unfounded As 6K Man says, or at least implies, the reason Wealth is better is that we typically have more research multiplier buildings, and building wealth means we can push up the slider (or for those running binary, running more turns at 100%), taking better advantage of the research multiplier buildings.

Typically, at least before the mid-to-end game, you may have a market here and there (capital, maybe a few more), and libraries in many places. That alone means building wealth is better than research. Just wanted to point out this here, in case others reading didn't get the difference

Don’t sell Watermills short. Under SP they’re IMO the best tile, hands down. +1 and immunity to the Emancipation nerfing that Workshops suffer from.

Water mills truly are great, the yield is the best in the end game. The reason I probably don't build them much is that they're only great in the end-game, post-electricity really, and they take longer to build than for instance farms and workshops. Pre-steam power, I think it's 8 turns (on normal speed) vs 5 and 6 for farms and workshops. Throughout a big empire that matters. And at that point in the tech tree, when you start transitioning to a hammer economy, it's a pretty good deal to put up biology farms and caste workshops. Usually I never then go around afterwards to put up watermills, because the workers are busy with other stuff. Fixing newly captured cities, putting up more workshops and windmills, forest preserves if you have a great national park spot, and then you have the big job with railroads (first over mines, but also to connect cities for faster movement).

Remember playing a game on rainforest way back where I went with SP and as many watermills as I could fit in. It sure looked great, but at the end of the day the finish wasn't as fast as it could have been. But as you say, they are relatively stronger if the UN forces your hand into emancipation, and thus nerfs workshops.

 

[Anysense]

Yep, usually build wealth is better. However, in the game posted in this thread we are well into industrial era, and a few cities can produce enough gold to keep slider at 100%. The rest can build research, infrastructure or units.

 

[elitetroops]

2. Unless I have unlimited health/happiness or little to no food surplus, I prefer Mines to Windmills. No point growing on Windmills to size 20 if you hit unhappiness at size 17.

Windmills are usually better. Only in IW city mines are clearly stronger.

In a space game much of the late game will be spent in a golden age. The windmill adds commerce to tiles that wouldn't otherwise have any commerce, which receives added benefit from the GA. A non-riverside grasshill in golden age gives 15 with railroaded mine and 233 with windmill. Assuming slider is at 100% and the city is building research, which a lot of my cities are doing at this point, the tile produces max 10.5 bpt (SP and factory/power plant). The windmill produces 10.8 bpt assuming the same production modifiers and two 25% research modifiers. On top of that the windmill also produces more food. With a FIN leader, the windmill advantage is even greater. Without Golden Age the windmill is slightly behind in these bpt calculations, but the added food makes up for that.

If you are close to hitting happy cap, then building mines instead of windmills is not the answer. Much rather build workshops instead of farms. In SP (with biology) you could have a farm and 2 mines for 68 or a workshop and 2 windmills for 684 (not taking into account possible GA, FIN or riverside bonus).

 

[6K Man]

Thanks for clarifying @Pangaea – guess instead of putting in 2 cents worth, I should have splurged on a nickel’s worth

But yes – it should be stressed that Libraries, Markets, and other Commerce multipliers have no effect on building Wealth and Research (or Culture); the only things that impact building Wealth/Research (and almost anything else) are hammer multipliers like Forges, Factories and Coal Plants. What building Wealth does is allow you to allocate your raw Commerce more efficiently.

It gets interesting in the late game, when Factories and Power (perhaps via 3 Gorges Dam?) come online, and many or most of your cities will have +75% or +100% hammer modifiers. You’ll rarely see many cities with even +75% Research or +75% Wealth, so it can become more efficient to build Workshops to take advantage of +100% hammer cities. The complicated part is when you have a city with a Library, Forge, Factory and Coal plant, and it’s surrounded by Towns which are 0 hammer, 7 Commerce (w/ Free Speech). Replace the Towns with Workshops and for each one (at 100% Research slider) you go from 0 hammers and 8.75 beakers to 6 hammers, 0 beakers and -1 food. Worth it? If in State Property and Caste, the Workshop goes to 8 hammers and no food deficit. That sounds good, but if you are in Universal Suffrage, the Towns are 2 hammers and 8.75 beakers. Is that better?

 

[6K Man]

Windmills are usually better. Only in IW city mines are clearly stronger.

In a space game much of the late game will be spent in a golden age. The windmill adds commerce to tiles that wouldn't otherwise have any commerce, which receives added benefit from the GA. A non-riverside grasshill in golden age gives 15 with railroaded mine and 233 with windmill. Assuming slider is at 100% and the city is building research, which a lot of my cities are doing at this point, the tile produces max 10.5 bpt (SP and factory/power plant). The windmill produces 10.8 bpt assuming the same production modifiers and two 25% research modifiers. On top of that the windmill also produces more food. With a FIN leader, the windmill advantage is even greater. Without Golden Age the windmill is slightly behind in these bpt calculations, but the added food makes up for that.

If you are close to hitting happy cap, then building mines instead of windmills is not the answer. Much rather build workshops instead of farms. In SP (with biology) you could have a farm and 2 mines for 68 or a workshop and 2 windmills for 684 (not taking into account possible GA, FIN or riverside bonus).

I see your point - hard to argue with the math! - but I tend to use up all my GAs in civic changes before building Buddy Jesus

Spoiler :

. And in the late game, I tend to need hammers for units to conquer things more than beakers to learn things.

 

[Olafeson]

@6K Man

General advice is to windmill / workshop / farm (maybe watermill) most of your cities. Applies if you go down the SP route or the Corps route.
Tech via building research and wealth and keep slider at 100%.
Of course Universal suffrage paired with free speech will produce more .

#Lets assume you run Free Speech and Universal Suffrage, tech slider 100%.

Your riverside grasstile town will produce 8, grassland 7.
- Library + observatory + (maybe universtity but i tend to build only 6 for Oxford) = 175% x 7 = 12,25 (mostly only 10,5 without a uni)

-> faster teching

# Lets assume SP + caste and you build Research.

Grassland workshop produces 4
- Forge + Factory + Plant + SP = 210% x 4 = 8,4 transformed to 8,4 via building research.

On paper Free speech and US techs faster, but we take not into account here the possibility to tech always at 100%. You still get commerce from windmills and from traderoutes, which make use of your multipliers like libraries. So no need to collect gold with 0% research.

How efficient is Universal suffrage anyway? never felt too impactful for me. Buying buildings /units alays pretty expensive.

Looks like Pangaea prefers his corps, i tend to prefer communism (as long as its in a game ). Good ol american way of life vs comrades in arms, mother russia.

So let me recap this real quick.

Exceptions:

1. IW city should work as many mines and workshops as possible, i guess Corps are stronger here since they deliver more or .
2. Keep the Oxford city with towns, most of the time your capital?
3. The cities who build your space ship parts go full hammer mode too. Usually i dont like going for space. Only when it is last option.
4. If you hit a decent production already without razing too many towns, you can keep some.
5. In most cases just raze towns and build farms, mills and workshops.

 

[Pangaea]

Looks like Pangaea prefers his corps, i tend to prefer communism (as long as its in a game )

Hehe. Privately I'm rather less impressed, and think the Civ4 quote for Industrialism is hilariously inaccurate, but you can't really argue with their power in the game -- especially on slower speeds like Marathon. On Quick, SP is probably superior.

Ofc it depends a good deal on how many resources you can get too. If you'd get +3 or something from Mining Inc, it's pointless going for corps. You need much land and (near) monopolisation of resources -- which ironically (or realistically) enough is what actual corporations favour too.

Have played a decent chunk of SP games too, and it's great fun (especially if you have many cities on different landmasses - no distance/colony maintenance costs). However, in comparable scenarios, corporations often beat SP.

 

[Anysense]

In my attempt on the last NC Club game I ran into problem: 4 from coal plants slows growth, but ~30 is just too much too ignore. I suppose I should have grown cities to desirable size before Assembly Line. I did not whip anything even though I built Kremlin; most cities built Factories in 3 or 4 turns, I figured switching to slavery and whipping those would be rather wasteful, because regrowing 3-4 levels takes 8-10 turns and missing tile matters as well.
Still great to have Kremlin in Moscow