A case study on the utility of whipping

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
You know Aeson most of those look like strategic judgement calls rather than questions with a hard and fast answer.

That was my point. I am not refuting your case study or the assessments you made based off of it, just expanding upon the question of how (or if) to set yourself up in the first place.

That's precisely why I chose the settler case study - there IS a decisive answer, either one option or the other is going to be superior, given that you do one or the other and not some 3rd thing.

That is fine. I am just saying there are 3rd (and so on) options to consider as well, as well as what the tradeoffs are to set yourself up for those options to exist in the first place.

I do think that building settlers ASAP is usually a strategically Good Thing, especially early in the game.

Situational. Especially how many and how soon. I've won Conquest/Domination victories without building a single Settler before. Sometimes military units are more efficient at increasing number of cities. Often efficient expansion is limited by Maintenance.

What is the oppurtunity cost of getting Caste System before Slavery? .

Are you laughing at the idea of getting CoL before BW?

The simple fact is you can run Caste System or Slavery. I presented that decision without implication as to which is more favorable. A player can go either way and make good use of it. Which is better is situational.

Given that the settler is typically coming out about 2 turns faster, with extra hammers, I think the 1 turn in Anarchy for Slavery is more than paid for.

What about when you factor in the extra research time (Bronze Working) and extra production into a Granary? Which gets out a Settler first? (If that is the goal.) How long does it take for the other method to "catch up"?

I'm not a fan of Caste System for non-spi so can't comment on that.

Really? Plenty of uses for Caste System. Should definitely look into it.

I think generally speaking, Slavery is at it's best for situations where there is expected early confrontation or low production empires. Caste System for blowing past people in the tech tree without direct conflict. A few early GPs on the right beeline and the game is effectively over in many cases.

Even the Artist option should not be ignored. I've flipped 3 cities with a single Artist, and actually hit peaceful Domination on land based maps with silly GW+Settler spam on lower difficulties.

It's medium upkeep compared with low for slavery, btw.

Wasn't sure what Slavery had been changed back to. Thanks.

Now this is a good and very valid question. However given that health/happy caps tend to go up, and reasonably quickly, in most cases I think it can't help but pay for itself. It's true you can go for much longer without a granary if you don't use slavery - the granary really is a tool of slavery. Of course if you need the health, you need the granary.

That is the question, when?

If you have Grains, otherwise the Health benefit is nil. And if you are growing anyways. Which is clearly not your "no growth" option for building a Settler.

Granaries are good options, but there are other good options to consider too. Is a Granary worth a Settler up-front? Is it worth a Library? Is it worth a couple Axes? Very situational.

I think in cases where you are going for early religion, or other techs (archery for raging barbs?) it is best to build your first settler the old fashioned way, just due to the difficulty in getting both Pottery and Bronze Working.

Yep.

I don't see any tradeoff, I just see Profit. You get Cottages, and it provides a pre-req/discount on writing. Only rarely would cottages not be useful. It's a keystone tech, can't really argue with that.

Are you missing the "in time for" qualification in my question? I'm not saying you avoid getting it indefinitely, just that there is variation on whether or not you will get it before population hits Health/Happiness limits or you have built your Settler(s) already.

You just touched on the potential tradeoffs in the last quote. In cases where you are going for early religion, you aren't getting Pottery ASAP. Same can be said for Horse or Axe rushes, and super-early Oracle plays.

Another question would be: How does it compare to build the settler, vs whipping the settler NOW and regrowing BACK to caps? Given that we know regrowing will take around 7-12 turns if it's got good food, and the happy hit will wear off in 10 turns, in most cases whipping the settler out will be a free lunch, the time the city spends at a low population would be time it's otherwise tied up with the settler. And the settler comes out NOW instead of LATER, which gives it a good head start on life.

You gotta take it all into consideration. Can't just pick and choose factors to account for.

Building Settlers at max pop reverses the Commerce side of the equation. You can work all your Cottages constantly, instead of losing the use of some of them some times. Plus you can pass off high Food tiles to other cities and use high Production tiles instead. Whether that is going to offset a later "first" Settler or not is situational.

[Blake]

Remember I am working on the assumption that this is early enough in the game that there isn't a lot of choice in what you can work. A city can grow from size 3 to size 6 in the time it takes a worker to build a single farm. It is extremely rare to have an abundance of worker time unless you really make workers a priority (I usually lean towards about 1-1.5 workers per city depending on coast/lake use, altough I think some people might go to 2 workers per city or maybe even higher).

I've already said that it's not a good idea to kill off workers working good tiles, so if it's a size 6 city with every worker on a cottage or better? I wouldn't condone whipping it (well, not always, if it can grow back crazy quick not much will be lost with a quick lash). But if it's size 6 with 3 workers on forests? Whip that sucker, every time.

It's situational, but there are situations where it's flat out best to lash.

I also feel the effiency upgrades from lashing in a food rich enviroment make the investment in pottery and BW more than worthwhile.

If it's not a food rich enviroment? Don't lash, conserve your food for growing to caps. Use hammers to make settlers.

Please, it's about SETTLERS IN FOOD RICH ENVIROMENTS and bringing up other enviroments is legitimate though annoying.

Situational. Especially how many and how soon. I've won Conquest/Domination victories without building a single Settler before. Sometimes military units are more efficient at increasing number of cities. Often efficient expansion is limited by Maintenance.

Well I'm really talking about Emperor or lower, when it's usually fairly easily to expand twice, especially with the eased up upkeeps in the latest patch.

If you're playing extreme conditions this thread isn't for you, and you're more than capable of doing the case-by-case judgement.

Really? Plenty of uses for Caste System. Should definitely look into it.

I think generally speaking, Slavery is at it's best for situations where there is expected early confrontation or low production empires. Caste System for blowing past people in the tech tree without direct conflict. A few early GPs on the right beeline and the game is effectively over in many cases.

Even the Artist option should not be ignored. I've flipped 3 cities with a single Artist, and actually hit peaceful Domination on land based maps with silly GW+Settler spam on lower difficulties.

*sigh*. Go make a thread to extol the virtues of Caste System?

Please, I started with the premise of a very simple comparison so people who havn't actually ever whipped (seriously) before can see how powerful it can be. I don't object to discussion of the more metagame issues (the grand game strategy and such) but I'm not sure if this is the thread for it and to be honest to me it seems like a hijacking, if I seem to be annoyed that's why.

[fed1943]

So, if I got it right, the central point is:

Food surplus (current,close to come) against hammer prodution (current,close to come).

If so, some more quantification should be very interesting.

Best regards,

[Mr Justice]

great stuff blake,

I likes to whip my citizens, ive never broken it down to such a precice level.

but to me, the pressence of happines caps tels me that my pop is limited to a finite number ( i see no point going beyond happiness limit, any extra pop are not usefull (unless i am building somethin, or get a reasource or something to get more happiness), healt limit is different tho, only a 1 food penalty).

so in high growth cities population is very very cheap.
and if u can supstitute population for shields, well thats just great.

given the choice i'd pick slavery ove caste system any day.

[uberfish]

Actually, I'd find it really interesting if Aeson would enlighten us in a new thread somewhere about how he makes use of Caste in early game to get a lead. Even with philosophical civs or Pyramid/Representation strats that are going to run quite a few specialists, I prefer using slavery to get the libraries and so on up quickly since most of the good food sites tend to have poor production.

[lockstep]

Until now, I was rather reluctant to switch to slavery as a non-spiritual civ. This thread definitely changed my mind.

[couerdelion]

Great post Blake and well organised. I think some of the numbers were not quite right but they still illustrate the point well that with food and pop-rushing you can out-produce the hammer rich cities.

Vel also quite rightly remarks that you’ve touched upon the tile selection question too and I recall writing something on this in an old thread (something about bacon sandwiches). Specifically, I had calculated some “conversion factors” which gave the relative values of food and hammers for cities that would quite happily use food as a substitute for hammers. If I recall, in a city with a granary and forge, food was the better source of production than hammers until city reaches size 13 or 14 leading to some interesting conclusions.

Maybe this could go into the strategy guide under a “Civics section”.

[Arrian]

Thanks, Blake. I almost never whip. I'm particularly interested by the idea of using a double-special fishing village for this (so the capital can be building wonders and whatnot).

Rules of thumb appear to be:

1) When whipping, make sure you use up 3-4 pop.
2) Get a granary up soon (perhaps whilst the city is growing back up after the first whip?).
3) Use the overflow on something other than a discounted building (SPI temples, etc).
4) Whip every ~10 turns, but no faster.

I'm curious to try this out and see if it feels more powerful than my usual playstyle (near-zero whippage).

-Arrian

[Metaliturtle]

Nobody better post the lyrics to any Devo songs here....

[Blake]

3) Use the overflow on something other than a discounted building (SPI temples, etc).

It's okay to overflow ONTO discounted buildings, just dont try and overwhip discounted buildings.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
Please, I started with the premise of a very simple comparison so people who havn't actually ever whipped (seriously) before can see how powerful it can be. I don't object to discussion of the more metagame issues (the grand game strategy and such) but I'm not sure if this is the thread for it and to be honest to me it seems like a hijacking, if I seem to be annoyed that's why.

Sorry to have annoyed you.

This (and Civ III's) strategy forum has, in the past, generally been about discussing all the minute implications of related factors, even on case studies. I supposed that would be the case here too, that further analysis of the decisions leading up to, and stemming off of the specific case would be welcomed.

[Blake]

Normally it would be, except that I was aiming for a simple and valid comparison between two different approaches to completing the same task.

When you start trying to compare building settlers (by any means), with flipping other civs cities... well it just brings in absolutely every variable. Like are they going to bumrush you with axemen when you switch the artists on? It gets way complex and the the strategy discussion becomes too sensitive to context, then most argument becomes changing the context so that the original strategy no longer works. The thing is, a strategy should never be taken outside of the context it is supposed to work in, because Civ4 requires using the right strategy for the circumstances.
Like saying "Yeah, but a fast workboat wont work if you don't have a seafood resource", it's just dumb.

Nice analysis. I think it goes much deeper than that though. Certainly playstyle and circumstance has a huge impact on the value of each method. (All the questions raised below have to be considered differently based on desired victory condition, early beelines/gambits planned, traits, terrain (city, and empire), neighbors, map type, ect. Even long term plans.)

See, in your original post, you begin by complety changing the context. To basically say, the context could be nearly anything. I prefered my old context of food rich enviroments where you want a settler.

So I would say... not nessecarly unwelcome... but still annoying. Try to keep it to only one or two side issues, rather than bringing in absolutely everything in the game.

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Blake
See, in your original post, you begin by complety changing the context. To basically say, the context could be nearly anything. I prefered my old context of food rich enviroments where you want a settler.

I did not "change" the context. The context of your post I did not really even address. I did not disagree with you at all. (I tend to quote everything I address. See the very end of Vel's strat thread II for detailed analysis on that. )

I qualified the context of my own post, which I feel is appropriate. I quoted your statement dealing with the ease of analysis in the case study just to lead into my own tangent which we both agree is not so easy to analyse.

Try to keep it to only one or two side issues, rather than bringing in absolutely everything in the game.

I discuss the issues I find relevent and interesting. I will of course observe your wishes as to how you want the discussion in your thread to proceed. (Not just your stated ones though, but also the implied ones you make when addressing issues yourself. Like this tangent we are on.)

[Blake]

CASE STUDY 3: Lots of food, lots of mines.

The city has extremely high food - say grassland pigs and corn (non-freshwater). It thus has a 9 food surplus.
This city also has a decent number of hills, two plains hill and 2 grassland hill. These are mined.

The objective is to complete a settler, then get to work on another project like a Wonder - altough this will be used mainly as a way to meaningfully compare the two options.

The city starts at size 6, and has a granary. It is happy at size 6, but only just. While whipped it's only happy at size 5.

Size 3 (1 turn ) 7 food surplus, 5 hammers.
Size 4 (1 turn ) 5 food surplus, 9 hammers.
Size 5 (3 turns) 4 food surplus, 12 hammers.
Size 6 (4 turns) 3 food surplus, 15 hammers.

So, the choice is simple. Put 1 turn into the settler, then whip it, or just let it complete normally. It's settler LATER, vs Settler NOW but with loss of population in a mature city.
I will describe what happens in full each turn, this could be slightly different with a different amount of food stored, however the results will not differ very much at all with different starting foods.

Note these are actually taken by logging results in-game, rather than by calculation. Although they do match the calculations.
The +#c is the amount of commerce generated at size 4+ by the hills being on a river.

A good Lashing:
Turn 1: 18 added to settler.
Turn 2: LASH. 12 added to settler. (note city is at 20/26 food)
Turn 3: Settler completes with 20 carryover. Growing.
Turn 4: Grows to size 4. +1c
Turn 5: Growing. +1c
Turn 6: Growing. +1c
Turn 7: Grow to size 5 +2c
Turn 8: Growing +2c
Turn 9: Growing. +2c
Turn 10: Growing. +2c
Turn 11: Grows to size 6, 1 unhappy. +2c
Turn 12: Finished, no unhappy. +3c

115 hammers on Pyramids.
+17 commerce generated if on river.

The normal way:
Turn 1: Settler. +3c
Turn 2: Settler. +3c
Turn 3: Settler. +3c
Turn 4: Settler. +3c
Turn 5: Settler. +3c
Turn 6: Settler completes. +3c
Turn 7: Growing. +3c
Turn 8: Growing. +3c
Turn 9: Growing. +3c
Turn 10: Grows to size 7, 1 unhappy. +3c
Turn 11: Growing, unhappy. +3c
Turn 12: Growing, unhappy. +3c

98 hammers on Pyramids.
+30 commerce generated if on river.


Comparison:

The whip gets the settler out 3 turns faster, and with 17 more hammers.

Training the settler results in 1 additional population, which could be whipped for 30 hammers.

The second city can be presumed to produce 4 stuff per turn - the city tile is 2-1, and then a forest has 1 profit.
3 turns of 1 stuff is 12 hammers. Added to the 17 extra hammers, and the whipped settler option comes out at 29 hammers.
If the settler had something really nice to work - like pigs, it would bring in 7 stuff profit, a total of 21, clearly beating the non-whipping option.
The head-start on life the 2nd city gets is hard to quantify. Its borders will expand 3 turns earlier and such, all other things being equal.

Were some or all the of the mines on a river, then there is up to 13 difference in commerce. The faster 2nd city shaves 3 commerce off the difference, so it's only 10. This is about 1/5th of fishing, or 1 turn of research at an average start.


Conclusion:

In this case, where there is a strong food surplus which can be soaked up by mines, it is probably a very good idea to whip the settler when it is heading to a very nice or contested city site. If it's going to settle a more marginal site things will be more equal.

A river doesn't cause a huge difference in commerce, about the same as 1 turn of research in the early game. But it is a difference of course.

As you can see though, it is really quite close. The whipping way only works with a granary. So a size 6 city with plenty of mines to work, but no granary (like if you've gone for religion), can happily train settlers the old fashioned way. A granary will still increase growth to size 7, of course and is great if you NEED to rush stuff.


Summary:

It's okay to whip out settlers from good cities if you have a granary to grow back quickly.
It's also okay to be not whipping out settlers if you don't have granary/slavery. This combo of techs is not essential for the food and hammer rich environment.
As usual, the Civ4 balance is good. The benefit of using slavery when you don't need to is marginal (ie decided by external factors, like the value of beating another player to a city site). The benefit of using slavery when you do need to (ie food rich, hammer poor) is high. The benefit of using slavery when you definitely shouldn't use it (ie food poor) is probably negative.

[fed1943]

Great study. I loved and trying to follow.

Condition: good food environment. Can that words be replaced by,let's say, xfood surplus,prospective food surplus with +1,2,3 pop?

Hammers gained and,so, hammers can be afforded to lose by turn,as previously set time to retrieve pop?

All remaining would strategic considerations,not necessary in a technical (and excellent sudy) like this one.

Blake? Some follower? Want you be kind enough to dig even deeper?

Best regards,