Is slavery broken? Or is just the 2 pop whip trick?

[MJW (ya that one)]

I think it is. The limiting factor was supposed to be the happyness cap. This trick allows you to get around it for free. I think that without it slavery would be balanced or maybe even underpowered.

The only way to fix the overpowerness this is to make slavery very bad unless you use the 2-pop whip trick or fix the 2-pop whip trick. I would fix the 2-pop whip trick by not making slavery hammers overflow. This would screw over the casual player but it will make no difference to his gameplay or fun level. The two-pop whip trick is sooo clear that even he is aware of it. I saw it on my first game without even trying. Wasting hammers and failing to get hammers feels the same after awhile unless your a roleplayer. Only a few casual players are role players. If the causal player is not willing to mirco he will resign himself to wasting hammers or failing to bet hammers and feel the same way. If he is into mirco he will mirco ether way. The same goes for hard core players. So both systems use the same mirco everyone but one breaks the game and the other does not...

Lastly, RB better do something otherwise games will turn into who can slave his citys better. That's unfun. It can start by banning slavery or the 2 pop whip trick. If anything thing is broken in this game and should be banned this is it.

[Dantski]

whats the trick?

[sunrise089]

can someone translate this thread for me?

[Sirian]

RB better do something otherwise games will turn into who can slave his citys better. That's unfun. It can start by banning slavery or the 2 pop whip trick.

Setting aside the question of whether we should ban slavery outright, let's look at the "ban the 2-pop whip trick" side of it. How could the rule be worded? How could the rule be enforced? How could it be applied fairly when most players will be confused about when it does or does not apply?

The problem with designing rules -- for games, for tournaments, for events, for anything including laws that govern real civilizations -- is that intentions count for nothing. It's easy to intend to fix something; quite something else actually to get that done without causing new and often worse problems.


Anyway, I'd be open to solutions that come ready-made. At the moment, any solution that requires input from me will have to wait a while. That includes proposals that the proposing party thinks are ready made but I do not. Certainly, if a majority of our skilled vets came to a general consensus on something that would be more likely to set changes in motion.


- Sirian

[Qwack]

More games with variants where you cannot adopt slavery, scored games where you get some extra points for not adopting slavery, and stuff like that may (or may not) work. Rocky climate maps are another thing which somewhat dumb down the effect of slavery(In that you dont need to whip to get production all the time).

[MJW (ya that one)]

How about this: If you sac two pop and the overflow is more than 15 hammers overflow then you can not let the city grow more than X-2, where X is the city's non-resisting pop before your sac. If you are not a 'powergamer' you do not have to follow this rule. You know who you are.

It is an unenforceable rule like but scouting the start then reloading is to.

[MJW (ya that one)]

More games with variants where you cannot adopt slavery, scored games where you get some extra points for not adopting slavery, and stuff like that may (or may not) work. Rocky climate maps are another thing which somewhat dumb down the effect of slavery(In that you dont need to whip to get production all the time).

That is de facto banning it.

[MJW (ya that one)]

whats the trick?

Like expected, the Great Lighthouse is built in 350 BC. After this was completed, I went into military buildup mode... once again using good old slavery. By basically using the 2 pop whip tactic I had a decent army together in 175 BC.

the 2 pop whip works like this: You put 4 hammers into a axeman on the first turn, meaning it needs 31 more to be completed, since whipping only gives 30 hammers, you would need to whip 2 population to complete the axe, but this also gives overflow of 29, which you put into another axeman, and finish it off using regular production. The only thing you need to use this tactic is size 4 cities, 3 size 4 cities can create 6 axeman in 3-4 turns. Overpowered? Cough. So anyways, I move the galley's towards Gandhi who would be the first AI I target. I declared war in 25 BC and take his first city 1 turn later.

http://qwack.byethost15.com/Civ/Adv13/2.htm
It is tottaly broken

[T-hawk]

Just to clarify for the rookies, here's the details of what MJW is talking about. When you whip (bug aside), you get 30 hammers per population killed and 10 turns of anger in the city regardless of the number of population killed. (On Epic speed, it's 44 hammers and 15 turns of anger.)

Because the anger doesn't scale with population killed, it's better to whip multiple population at once. Two separate 1-population whips give 60 hammers and cost 20 turns of anger. One single 2-population whip also gives 60 hammers but costs only 10 turns of anger.

So when whipping cheap items like axemen, you can mitigate the anger penalty by carefully making sure the game applies a two-population whip to one item, and let the overflow carry onto the next item. That gives you less anger as compared to simply whipping each item separately.

It's a micromanagement detail that can be gamed in the player's favor, but I'd hardly call it broken. IMO, it's not even worth the burden of RBCiv legislation. In the new Warlords patch, the AIs even use it. Blake has coded the AI to be aware of anger duration when considering whipping, being more inclined to whip when the item will cost 2 or more population.

[sunrise089]

I fail to see how this is a mistake. Even as a real noob, I always tried to whip when it would cost more than 1 pop, simply because I tend to whip to cure unhappiness. Whipping and killing only one pop doesn't fix the unhappiness problem, so I try not to do it. This 'bug', if I understant correctly, doesn't actually give the player any free hammers, it only provides two units (through the normal and much-appreciated overflow that seeks to avoid micromanagement) because they are cheap, no different than any other source of overflow. That early in the game, it isn't that much less beneficial to just whip each axeman seperatly, is it? I understand you would get an extra unhappiness, but if the percieved huge benefit is simply making a large army quickly, well saving one unhappy face doesn't seem to make this a bug or exploit to me.