Shoot the Moon Wrote:Well, it depends. The reason he is doing it the way he is is so that the pop he loses from whipping grows back immediately. That is generally the preferable way to whip. The main problem is that the most efficient time to complete a granary is half food and the most efficient time to whip is 2 food from growth. By one criteria, he is certainly micro managing correctly, by the other he is not.
My name was invoked, so here I am...
You're right about the two conflicting guidelines for when to whip. For most whips, the best time is right before growth, so the city regrows immediately and at a smaller food cost, minimizing the duration and impact of the lost population.
Granary whips are different since the whipped item itself provides food and is sensitive to the state of the food box. Most of the time, "food half full" wins. If whipped right before growth, the granary doesn't actually do anything until the food box refills to half.* So instead of whipping the laborer immediately, let him work the next tile for a few turns until the granary whip. This was the point of my analysis in the Apolyton game.
Even that isn't strictly superior either way, though. It's a tradeoff of the 2 food of smaller food box versus whatever the next laborer produces in the turns before he's killed. And if the next laborer doesn't have a 2-food tile to work, you will come out ahead on food by whipping the granary sooner before the city grows. Finally, the other tradeoff comes if the whip anger clock will not run out before you want to whip this city again; in that case, it can be correct to whip the granary ASAP to start the anger clock sooner. This is uncommon though as most cities will want to take 10+ turns without more whipping, to grow onto their good tiles and to the happy cap.
*Technically the granary starts filling its hidden store immediately on the turn after it's finished. But that fills up when the food box is half full, so then the granary doesn't do anything during the second half of filling the city's food box. This is functionally identical to switching the order of those operations so it's simpler to think of the process the other way around.
The magnitude of the effect is small in any case, no more than a couple hammers or food. It's not like in Civ 3 where a single turn error on completing the granary could cost 10 or 20 food.