[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[antisocialmunky]

Janny's are useful for pretty much only defending against rushes in this set up. You can get a lot of use out of them in an ancient era game because there's so much old trash sitting around when Jannys show up.

As far as Hammam + UU vs Altars go, I'd lean Altars for this map. Why? Because as Sullla said, scooter will probably be able to leverage it for more than 2 's. We have HR available to us so if we have some extra units, then we can duplicate and even exceed the Hammam's bonus with 2+ units. The SA can also whip out the extra units for the extra happy. Unless you are hitting the happy cap, the Hammam is not better or useful at all. Hammams are better for maxxed cities that have everything cottaged or farmed.

I also found some an interesting write up from Fast Moves about UBs in the context of Teamers and Ironmans:

https://fastmoves.wordpress.com/2010/03/...buildings/

The Altar is probably the nost freakish of all unique buildings due to its unique ability. It reduces the anger duration from sacrificing population by 50%. Unfortunately – or probably luckily – this only applies to population sacrificed by Slaving. If it applied to Drafting as well, it would probably imbalance this mechanic entirely. Drafting already is the most efficient way of getting units massively over a short period of time at the cost of stacking unhappiness heavily. Would the Altar apply to it, Aztec could probably run Nationhood the entire game solely relying on Drafting.

My clan tested the altar in Medieval/Renaissance start games, where you heavily slave units all game long. The problem here is that if you use 2-pop slaving right, you won´t get into any trouble regarding the stacking of unhappiness anyway. Also you don´t want to invest the 80 hammers (quick speed) for Courthouses, a building with little effect in teamers started in those eras.

If the Altar substituted Barracks for example, it would become a strong option for Ancient/Classical start games, allowing 1-pop slaves much more often, which otherwise cripple your cities fast due to the stacked up unhappiness.

So apparently they gave SA's a middling rating in Med/Ren Teamers Quick. It is a shame that they didn't elaborate more on this though.

https://fastmoves.wordpress.com/2009/12/...ltiplayer/

These are a colloseum, an aqueduct and a jail that additionaly to what they usually do provide an extra +2 . This makes their three civs belong to the absolute top of picks in an Ironman / ffa game (click here for an article on game types in civ multiplayer). The reason being that while running a Cottage Economy (which is basically always, though not necessary solely) and in later game changing to civics “Universal Suffrage” + “Free Speech” + “Emancipation” etc. confronts you with a happines cap (max amount of population you can have till you get unhappy citizens) that is the main limiting factor of how big your cities can become. Those three buildings increase that cap by two, resulting in 20 or so cities being able to grow two population further each – that´s a lot of additional production, commerce and points.

The main differences between the three lie in the nature of the buildings they are replacing – though the main argument for which you pick in an Ironman rather being the starting techs of the civ and additionaly which Unique Unit they provide.

The Mausoleum (jail) comes rather late and is not a must have in every city, but in another way of argumenting you get +2 and potentially some advantage on spy points you´d otherwise not have seem worth getting for the needed investment.

The Ball Court requires Construction, which in many (most…) Ironman games is a technology with low priority you avoid for a very long time and start to want only if you have to defend against an attack and require catapults or finally want to attack your opponent, sometimes never. Since Ironman games though are in their nature games where you most of the time have to build up your empire first (till around guilds the first big attack waves come), you don´t want to tech Construction too soon. Not a big argument against the Ball Court, but plays a role more often then you´d think.

The Hammam is an aqueduct which you get with Mathematics, which is very high priority. Aqueducts you build anyway and together with their usual +2 health make the Hammam crawl up in the build order even a little bit more. They come early (though aren´t required necessarily too early), come with a must have technology and the building they replace is a must build in Ironman anyway.

Overall Ottomans have great starting techs (and Janissary are nice, too in Ironman), India has the Fast Worker and Maya the Holkan for being safe early against an opponent sending a couple of chariots. For a long game of civ without a city elimination with lots of buildup it probably goes 1. India 2. Ottomans 3. Maya. Besides that there aren´t many other civilizations that can compete with those three as picks in such a scenario.

Here they rate the Hammam highly for cottage spam strategies because you can just sit on large cities working towns in the late game which we aren't doing.

Then again, the resources might be a red herring and the map is relatively happy barren. Even then the SA might be better because it can get units out faster.

I can try to do the math, but I will probably miss something. If we assume every whip is a double whip, and we whip this hypothetical city every time it is available, we get 6bhpt (base hammers per turn) with ottomans and 12bhpt with Aztecs. This means that the extra 2 citizens that the ottomans would have due to the higher happy cap would need to produce the equivalent of 3bhpt each, which seems very doable. The Aztecs also need more food to run their setup, as they need to grow their pop twice as fast. Also, each pop point for the ottomans gets to be productive for a longer period of time due to the longer schedule. If we aren't going for Kremlin we might not want to go for Aztecs.

That's the lower bound, Dp101. Slavery front loads your production, you get the hammers next turn as opposed to over time. So your estimate of 3bhpt per pop is much lower. The most obvious example of this is when you whip out a worker and improve a few tiles. Someone not slaving might output the same hammers per turn over some set of turns but they miss out on the worker turns because the worker was being slow built.

[scooter]

So I took a closer look at this, and I think the Hamman wins. Here's the thing: it takes a really long time for the Sacrificial Altar to even break even with the Hamman. Given an infinite 5 turn whip cycle, it takes 15 turns just to break even in happiness with the Hamman, and it takes 25 turns to beat it by 1 unhappiness. From there it improves by 1 every 10 turns. (Of course, it takes much longer if a perfect 5-turn cycle is ever interrupted. ) In case this isn't clear, here it is illustrated in spoilers.

Here's what it looks like when we whip every 5 turns with both. N is the base happy level with the Aztecs (so N + 2 = Ottomans).

Aztecs:
T0: N
T1: N -> WHIP -> N-1
T2: N-1
T3: N-1
T4: N-1
T5: N-1
T6: DONE N -> WHIP -> N-1
T7: N-1
T8: N-1
T9: N-1
T10: N-1
T11: DONE N -> WHIP -> N-1

(this pattern continues indefinitely - N-1 every turn)

Ottomans:
T0: N + 2
T1: WHIP -> N + 1
T2: N + 1
T3: N + 1
T4: N + 1
T5: N + 1
T6: N + 1 -> WHIP -> N
T7: N
T8: N
T9: N
T10: N
T11: DONE N +1 -> WHIP -> N
T12: N
T13: N
T14: N
T15: N
T16: N -> WHIP -> N-1
T17: N - 1
T18: N - 1
T19: N - 1
T20: N - 1
T21: DONE N -> WHIP -> N-1
T22: N - 1
...
T26: WHIP -> N-2

Of course, there's the hammer cost of the Altar, which means anything whipped before it won't apply. So at minimum you should probably add another 10T to both of those numbers - so it takes 25T to break even and 35T to come out ahead. So I don't think the Altar is really much better. Also:

* We may not necessarily want to build a courthouse in every city, or at least not right away. In the first 30-40T we'll probably have too many important things to build (workers, settlers, etc) to build too many Courthouses. We also won't need to rush to hook up luxuries with the Hamman which may slightly improve worker micro early on. We don't have Rep happiness to rely on like we did early in 33.

* If/when we get to the point where we abandon the whip, the Hamman is better immediately.

* Janissary is an awfully nice cherry on top.

I dunno, is there something I'm missing in my analysis here? It's very possible I'm missing something - I just jotted this down in notepad.

[Sullla]

Some additional context for the posts that antisocialmunky helpfully linked from the old Fastmoves Multiplayer blog:

1) Sacrificial Altars are much better on Normal speed than Quick speed, which is the assumption behind the MP ladder games. On Quick speed, normal whip duration is 6 turns and the sacrificial altar turns that into 3 turns. The problem is that 3 turns is just too short to run an efficient whip cycle. Remember, you need to spend 1 turn building the to-be-whipped item first, in order to avoid the swapping penalty, and so that ties up 2 of your 3 turns right there, the swapping turn and then the whipping turn. Even with the cheaper food costs on Quick, the sacrificial altar tends to be overkill because cities don't grow fast enough to make it worthwhile.

But on Normal speed, the swapping and whip turn only eat up 2 of the 5 turns of the whip cycle, leaving 3 other turns in between for growing. On Normal speed, there is enough time to set up an efficient 5 turn cycle for double whipping, and in rare cases with high food, for triple whipping. I think this is an important distinction to keep in mind.

2) The whole section about the Hamman and the Mausoleum and the Ball Court are based on Ironman games, which were Quick speed Free For Alls played from a normal Ancient start. Now you might think, why does the writeup emphasize happiness unique buildings so much, when the RB metagame doesn't seem to care about them at all? The answer is that these games were played on random maps, without anyone editing them ahead of time as we do here. That means that it was very easy to get screwed on luxury resources, and if one guy has ivory/gold/gems and another guy has incense... well, you might want that Ball Court to have any chance of competing. As a result, I don't think that particular writeup is especially pertinent to the conditions we'll have in this game, with a hand-tailored map that appears to be packed with resources everywhere.

Here's my final thought for scooter to mull over: ultimately I think it's just more fun to play as the Aztecs. The Hamman is boring, as it just raises the health and happy caps. I don't find that interesting, and I think this map will have enough resources that the health/happy caps won't play a major role. This doesn't look to be a Pitboss 31 type map. And the janissary is nice, but its only purpose is to defend against a knight/cataphract rush, only a map where we can see that we have ivory and iron at the start. I don't think it's that necessary (famous last words?)

The Aztec unique building, in contrast, both fits extremely well with our strategy and lets us play the game in a unique way. We can probably 1 pop whip the altars in most new cities, since they cost 81 production and a whip would produce 67 production. That's what, 14 production, and we get 3 production (doubled to 6 production from Organized) from the city center tile and the free Mercantilism Engineer specialist. So something like grow the city until the granary foodbox is full for 2-3 turns, then 1 pop whip the altar and immediately regrow back the same pop point, then we're off and rolling. Yes, I know that the math suggests that getting a building discount on the courthouse to sacrificial altar swap is inefficient since we're losing some of the Organized bonus, but it's really nice to have super cheap courthouses that also set up these crazy whip cycles. For non-Organized teams, a courthouse is a 3 pop whip. For us, it will be a 1.25 pop whip. That's pretty nice even leaving aside the unique whipping penalty aspect.

I think it would be fun to try and set up crazy 5 turn whipping cycles and see just what we can do with it. More fun than an aqueduct that raises the health/happy caps anyway. But scooter, it's your team, so this is your call. Good luck.

[Nekira Sudacne]

I think I get what Scooter is saying: because the 2 happiness for Ottoman is "Free" (No need to build aquaducts), then he is essentially saying he could use that a licence to routinely whip all cities into unhappiness--sitting at 2-3 unhappy faces due to whip penalties, rather than 5 turn whip cycles with only 1 unhappy face due to it expiring every 5 turns, he could still whip every 5 turns, with the two "Free" Happiness eating both unhappy faces to grow as if he was not whipping at all.

I have to say that I actually experimented with something similar in a single player game and all I can tell you is this: the single problem with that assumption is that it assumes you always stick to your schedule. when an actual War breaks out, you can find yourself whipping 5 times in ten turns to get out enough defenders to stave off an attack (Byzantine rush anyone?), and THAT is the point where Sacraficial alter kicks in. your 2 happy faces "Free" from Ottoman will never be more than 2 free happy faces. Sacraficial alter will halve the time it takes to recover form a Wartime Whipping cycle (which routinely goes over the happy cap anyway to Maximum Before Starvation cap), at which point sacraficial alter wins, hands down. It allows you to whip like nobody else in the game, and no 2 free happy faces is going to compete with it. and that goes Double if you throw down a riverside farm or two instead of cottage to push up to +6-+8 food surplus in a Knight Factory

[Commodore]

My mind is breaking at the notion of preferring Aztecs to the Ottomen. Null UU vs. hugely useful UU, and always-on benefit UB vs. UB you have to build and stay stuck in one civic for (not Spiritual, sooo)

Put it this way. If you intend to fully use the SA, I want see THIS EVERY TURN:
   
If you're doing that...well, should have taken Byz/Cyrus and gone for my initial suggested gameplan of "never make a single beaker".

[antisocialmunky]

Thanks for the info, Sullla. I still like the SA pick more simply because you don't see people trying to abuse ORG + IMP + SAs much.

Pragmatically, I think at the end of the day it might come down to whether or not you want to spend the time to plan out all the whip micro or not, Scooter. Pick the civ that is most fun for you.

[GermanJoey]

Put it this way. If you intend to fully use the SA, I want see THIS EVERY TURN:

ohh yeah, now this is, 100%, The Way to Play when it comes to the Aztecs.

edit:

Here's my final thought for scooter to mull over: ultimately I think it's just more fun to play as the Aztecs.

Yes!!! Whatever else you say about the SA, it's really really fun. I was Aztecs in one of the last pitbosses I played, on another site, and it's so much more fun to be them because of how active it is to whip so much. Plus, you get to thinking that at some point, based on how the population calculation equation works, you've personally slaughtered countless more times as many citizens as you currently have in your empire. Millions upon millions sacrificed to the blood gods... others civs fight because they fear being conquered, but your Aztecs fight because they fear YOU!! The best flavor UB in the game, IMHO.

[Cheater Hater]

Wait--am I understanding whip mechanics wrong? My impression/understanding is that each individual whip unhappiness lasts 10 turns--scooter's (Hamnam) chart has it all going into a pile that has one unhappiness removed every 10 turns after the first whip. Using my impression, if we're only whipping every 5 turns the Hamnam wins easily. I feel like I remember this mechanic, but I haven't actually played Civ4 in months.

[GermanJoey]

Wait--am I understanding whip mechanics wrong? My impression/understanding is that each individual whip unhappiness lasts 10 turns--scooter's (Hamnam) chart has it all going into a pile that has one unhappiness removed every 10 turns after the first whip. Using my impression, if we're only whipping every 5 turns the Hamnam wins easily. I feel like I remember this mechanic, but I haven't actually played Civ4 in months.

Yes, each individual whip unhappy lasts exactly 10 turns, and it's 5 turns with the SA. But why would you only whip once every five turns? Do you think Huitzilopochtli wants his blood sacrifices to grow up, live a happy and healthy life, and then voluntarily lay down on the sacrificial altar only at the very end of their natural lives? No!!!

[Cheater Hater]

Wait--am I understanding whip mechanics wrong? My impression/understanding is that each individual whip unhappiness lasts 10 turns--scooter's (Hamnam) chart has it all going into a pile that has one unhappiness removed every 10 turns after the first whip. Using my impression, if we're only whipping every 5 turns the Hamnam wins easily. I feel like I remember this mechanic, but I haven't actually played Civ4 in months.

Yes, each individual whip unhappy lasts exactly 10 turns, and it's 5 turns with the SA. But why would you only whip once every five turns? Do you think Huitzilopochtli wants his blood sacrifices to grow up, live a happy and healthy life, and then voluntarily lay down on the sacrificial altar only at the very end of their natural lives? No!!!

So I'm right? Then, as I said, the break-even point is whipping every 2.5 turns (which hopefully appeases Huitzilopochtli ), with only the most-aggessive schedule of 2 turns (assuming you don't take take the whip penalty or whip a bunch of partial builds in a row) favoring the Sacrificial Altar.