[PB78] Underdogs and undercats: The Mrrshan warlords visit the world of Civ IV

[xist10]

Whipping is a science for it self, but generally, it's better to whip to much instead of whipping to less.

Generally speaking, with a 4->2 whip, you exchange 1f for 2p (and still can work cottages).
Add (small) snowballing effects if you get building earlier you want to run slavery the whole game.
(in fact, this is the strength of SPI, they can run 5 turns castesystem or serfdom if the needs arise).

[Donovan Zoi]

Thanks to everyone for your input. Before I play another wraparound turn, I’d like to reply to some of the main points of concern mentioned above using an old build screen for reference.




Forbidden Palace

I like Whynil because it’s a nice central location whose radius lines up nicely with our SW coast.  We’ve got 4 fledgling cities which do not yet have the existing infrastructure to justify a CH, so the FP would add about 25gpt to both sides of the slider via those alone.  We’ll also get a smaller bit of relief in the established first ring cities.

It’s going to take a bit for Whynil to grow back into its production tiles, but I’d still like to put some hammers into this wonder before the GA ends.


War Strategy

I’m pretty firm on not being the one to start any hot or cold wars for now, especially as our domestic numbers improve.  And by rushing a bunch of expensive buildings during the GA, we’ll be able to favor more slow-growth military builds as our cities grow naturally into production.  We’ll have Theo and likely Macemen before I would consider us strong enough to set any chain reactions in motion.  


Whip Smarts?

I agree with Xist that Whipping is a bit of a science and I hope I'm optimizing things correctly. This topic does requires a delicate balance, as we will need to exploit the major benefits of OR during our short window while leaving as many prime commerce and production tiles in place for the duration of the GA.  For that reason, I’ll be minimizing the use of 3-whips at this time except in cases where we are growing into unimproved tiles.

And make sure to check out the stats above for garrisons against happiness.  We are nowhere near the threshold necessary to quell unrest and we’ll also be bringing aboard 3 more  soon via Furs and Wine.  These are exciting times.

This next turn will be a bit of a mega post, as I’ll be spoiler tagging city screens from turns 1-3-5 of the GA so you can get an idea of what I’m trying to accomplish.  It will also be a good resource for me to determine how we can best close things out.


It may be awhile before you get that update, but I'll post it as soon as I can.  Thanks again, team!

[thrawn]

Barracks and walls don't benefit from OR almost at all since you already have a +100% multiplier on them so the difference is 23h with OR vs 25h without (or 20h vs 23h if there is a forge). Not worth the whipping during a golden age even if your goal is to make use of OR to improve infrastructure. Forges/markets/courthouses would make a better use of the multiplier and can be 3 or 4 whipped at the end of the GA.

But I agree that it can be helpful to get buildings faster while not whipping down to the point of not using good tiles.

[Donovan Zoi]

Barracks and walls don't benefit from OR almost at all since you already have a +100% multiplier on them so the difference is 23h with OR vs 25h without (or 20h vs 23h if there is a forge). Not worth the whipping during a golden age even if your goal is to make use of OR to improve infrastructure. Forges/markets/courthouses would make a better use of the multiplier and can be 3 or 4 whipped at the end of the GA.

But I agree that it can be helpful to get buildings faster while not whipping down to the point of not using good tiles.

The idea here with the Barracks is not to whip them early, but to grow then to around 47/50 with the multiplier and then engage the 1-whip to get 40-odd OR hammers into a larger building.  It's been working pretty good so far, as evidenced by the latest build screen, where we're set to build 10 items on six T149 whips.  Many of those come with decent parlays, and the population is still thriving for the most part.

And we lose the OR multiplier in 3 turns as well (and though there's a case to be made for staying in OR, it's with 95% certainty I won't), which is the difference between an easy 2- or 3-whip of a Market.  And also in this case, there are enough strong production tiles to exploit the GA to organically supply enough hammers on these big builds to preserve pop points across the board there as well.




When you see the city screens later (i'll be out in RL-land for awhile), it will hopefully make more sense why I am guarding the pop numbers so vigorously.  I also wanted to hasten tech a bit faster during the GA, which is only now starting to happen.  As it stands, I spent the first 4 turns at 0% so I could get Machinery and (likely) Engineering before the GA expires.

As always, I do enjoy discussing these details with you, thrawn.  And I'm definitely game to be more cavalier with the whips on any remaining buildings once the GA is over.  Especially while using 8xp units as lead ins!  I think we're gonna be in a good place soon.

[Cyneheard]

Barracks and walls don't benefit from OR almost at all since you already have a +100% multiplier on them so the difference is 23h with OR vs 25h without (or 20h vs 23h if there is a forge). Not worth the whipping during a golden age even if your goal is to make use of OR to improve infrastructure. Forges/markets/courthouses would make a better use of the multiplier and can be 3 or 4 whipped at the end of the GA.

But I agree that it can be helpful to get buildings faster while not whipping down to the point of not using good tiles.

The idea here with the Barracks is not to whip them early, but to grow then to around 47/50 with the multiplier and then engage the 1-whip to get 40-odd OR hammers into a larger building.

Still doesn't help the Barracks side, because the overflow hammers get converted back into base hammers for overflow purposes.

[Donovan Zoi]

Still doesn't help the Barracks side, because the overflow hammers get converted back into base hammers for overflow purposes.

I’m not sure how to respond to this, because I calculated standard 40 overflow in the example above and not 70.  I never implied we’d get 100% overflow, but the OR/Forge level of 50% total minus 2-3 shields from the near complete (and accelerated) Barracks build before the whip.

Now admittedly, we don’t have that ideal scenario in every city that still needs a Barracks.  But when taken into consideration for illustrative purposes, the ridiculous amount of happiness we have allows us to basically put population decline on layaway and spread out the pop loss across 2 whips while tile value is at a premium.  And by getting a building we’re ramping toward anyway.  The extra whip anger that results from this will be close to phased out by the time the city grows large enough for it to become a factor.

[T-hawk]

You don't get the multiplied overflow. It's divided back by the production modifiers. If you overflow from a barracks getting +50% (so 150% total) from OR and Forge, the overflow gets divided by 1.50. The city screen may show you overflowing by 42 (plus the current turn's production) but then you will actually only have 28 overflow (again plus current turn's production.)

Whatever production modifiers are applicable to your next item will apply to the overflow. If you choose a building next, the +150% on the overflow from OR and Forge will get factored back in. If you choose a unit next, you only get the 25% from forge.

[Donovan Zoi]

Cmon guys, I haven’t even shown you any screenshots and youre assuming I haven't already done the math for you.  I’ve even shown my work here.  If I were to show you a screenshot it would likely show that 150% and I’ve already walked it back to the 50% amount for you here.

If anything, I’m looking at the overflow from the whip button itself, and aiming for 28 to 34 overflow resulting from the whip.  Plus you get all the unused land tile hammers that also get pushed to the next turn.

Whatever the case, buildings are still coming up fast so maybe I’m not explaining things correctly.  All I know is I’m getting the exact dynamite results I’ve been projecting, so I’ll just stick to posting pictures as this has been extremely frustrating.

[T-hawk]

I'll back up and ask it this way: what do you think you gain by whipping the barracks at 47/50 and overflowing, as compared to just finishing the barracks normally and whipping the next thing?

[RefSteel]

T-Hawk, I think that's pretty clear: He doesn't want to (say) 3-whip a courthouse; he's working mostly good tiles (or doesn't have 6 pop in the first place) and feels he has happiness to spare, so he wants to whip just one pop - the one that's working a bad tile, or that's otherwise available for whipping - into the build to speed it up. Since he's Agg and wants the barracks anyway, the whip fully pays for the 'rax with some left over, and is a net positive, assuming the unhappiness wears off by the time he needs it again. I do this very rarely, but I think there are situations where it makes sense.

There's a part I don't understand though: I didn't think Boudica could get 40h overflow for (say) a courthouse out of a barracks no matter what she did! My understanding was that even if you put 49h into the 'rax, put it on hold, built up an overflow chain to dump hundreds of hammers into it after completing something else, whipped the 'rax anyway, and chopped twenty BFC forests into it all on the last turn it was produced, the most (base) overflow an Agg player could get from a 50h barracks in a city with OR and forge would be 20h. (Well, or the city's current normal base production per turn, but I imagine that's less than 20 in all the relevant cases). Of course, that would turn into 40 actual hammers into the build if you were building (say) the National Epic with Marble, so maybe that's the kind of thing you meant with your example, DZ.

So if I'm not confused about the mechanics, then it wouldn't be a good idea to wait to whip an Agg 'rax until it's already at 47/50, because a bunch of potential production would be wasted: With forge + OR, you'd get just as much overflow if you whipped when the number of hammers already in the 'rax was (25 minus whatever you'll get this turn from natural production) while the other [EDIT: ~10 base hammers] could just be put directly into the new building (with the barracks on hold in the queue until pop growth onto a bad tile or whatever makes it a good time to whip). That is: I (thought I) was sure overflow hammers were limited to the cost of the build from which you're overflowing, in actual adjusted hammers, before it's "demultiplied" back to base hammers again. But maybe in practice, whipping with ~20h already invested in a low-hammer city was basically what you did?