Waterwheels?

[AshenPlanet]

.

Communism is far less evil than slavery, serfdom, hereditary rule, theocracy, or organized religions.

I think state-property is great also, and switch to it when I can, but I don't know if it's the best civic out there.
Democracy, representation, and slavery are also extremely powerful civics, and arguably more influential than state property.

But even without state property, watermills are great.
I always build watermills as soon as I am able, even if it's a square that can hold a cottage.
Trading 3 gold for 2 hammers is always worthwhile.
With state property, the extra food translates into 1/2 an extra specialist which means more GP, an extra town in another square, less farms, etc.

.

[Arrian]

Do the warmongers here find that trade routes are hard to come by once you've conquered most people and pissed off all the others?

It really depends. I tend to play standard maps with the normal # of civs, so even if I conquer 2 I will probably have 2-3 others I can trade with, at least once I get into Free Religion. That's the key, usually. If you want to keep your religion, or if everyone would hate you even if you ran Free Rel, then Rep/Merc/Pacifism can be quite attractive. I personally like Univ Suff/Free Trade or State Property/Free Religion better in most cases.

Since I play continents maps primarily, I typically go through a Rep/Merc/Pac period pre-Astronomy. Once I get astro and want to trade resources over the ocean, I will switch to Free Rel. Heck, in my current game (the one I posted a screenie from in the Raging Barbs thread) I'm best buddies with Togugawa! That's hard to do, folks, and would be impossible if I'd clung to Confucism (he's Hindu, IIRC).

The difference between Merc/Pac and State Prop/Free Rel in that game was staggering. No contest at all.

-Arrian

[Dis]

Originally posted by couerdelion


I wonder then how you manage to get by in this game if you don't use Slavery, Serfdom, Hereditary Rule, Police State, Mercantilism, Theocracy, Organised Religion etc...

yeah good point. I have been known to use slavery to whip some troops. But normally I hate converting to slavery. I hate the turn of anarchy for a civic I'll never use. But what usually happens, is a whole bunch of barbarians (or enemy civ) will come into my borders forcing me to switch to slavery and rush some troops.

[Brael]

I'll see if I still have a save of the game but I don't think I do... I have one where I have 2 watermills on the same piece of river, one on each side of it. Perhaps it changed in Warlords? Or it could just be a bug.

[MasterDave]

I would never tear down a town for a waterwheel. A town with Universal Suffrage and pringing press on a river makes 7 gold and a hammer (8 gold if you are financial). That is a lot of commerce to tear down for a net gain of one food and one hammer! I do like a couple of waterwheels near cities that have low production, but tearing down towns to make them does not make sense IMO.

[JackRudd]

Slavery is an awesomely strong civic. If you're not using it for anything other than rushing troops, you're not making sufficient use of it.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by JackRudd
Slavery is an awesomely strong civic. If you're not using it for anything other than rushing troops, you're not making sufficient use of it.

Strongest in the game IMHO.

[Blake]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Also, a severe shortage of trade routes made a complelling case for Mercantilism. Do the warmongers here find that trade routes are hard to come by once you've conquered most people and pissed off all the others?

If anything I find shortage of trade routes to be more of an argument against Free Market. I'll typically have at least one staunch ally (for me typically Alexander since he conquers himself a larger empire) and possibly an AI or two who will tolerate open borders. This does provide a useful amount of trade income in my largest cities (it can be like +30 commerce which really helps in an Oxfords city..), this concentration of the trade route income into the best cities means that getting those few trade routes is quite worthwhile (60 commerce of trade can be better than 100 from mercantilism). But anyway in the larger empire there just isn't enough trade routes to go around - which makes free market fairly useless except to further concentrate trade routes in the best trading cities.

Under most circumstance Free Market provides a flat +1 commerce per city and is medium upkeep.

Mercantilism provides +3 or +6 commerce per city and is medium upkeep, it eliminates all trade income.

State Property saves around 4g per city (although not multiplied like commerce is, this number is multiplied by inflation), you get trade income and it's low upkeep.
Even with no trade partners SP will beat Non-rep mercantilism and one trade partner will probably be enough for SP to beat rep mercantilism.

Using rep has it's own downsides - no Police State or Universal Suffrage, these late game civics are both extremely useful for the larger empire and I'm usually going to favor a pairing of one of these+SP over rep+merchantalism.


Then we have Environmentalism which is one of my favorite civics since I like having extremely large cities. Environmentalism compares easily with State Property since both have open trade and both effect food, the difference is that SP increases food yield from Watermills and Workshops, while Environmentalism reduces food losses from poor health. Typically either one or the other will provide more total food depending on your health and river situation (since rivers provide health, it is likely going to be a matter of whether you have rivers or not).
Environmentalism also provides forest happiness which is sometimes useful. Obviously the increased population from State Property or Environmentalism will nearly always exceed the income from Free Market or Mercantilism.

As a spiritual civ, or if I control the UN (for anarchy-free switches), I may use transient Environmentalism after building Coal Plants but before later health boosters like Genetics. Generally once Genetics has been researched it's better to go back to State Property to help build the Spaceship. Although in a few games I've been so health starved that I've been able to use every single health booster in the game and still be limited by the health cap.

Overall the economics column is really quite well balanced - altough I do feel Free Market is a good deal weaker than the others.

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by Brael
I'll see if I still have a save of the game but I don't think I do... I have one where I have 2 watermills on the same piece of river, one on each side of it. Perhaps it changed in Warlords? Or it could just be a bug.

This can happen at a riverbend. Whether you can do this or not depends on which watermill you build first. If you build in the square outside of the bend first then it is O.K. to build another watermill in the square inside of the bend later (and have the watermills on both sides of the river). The reverse build sequence is not allowed.

Let's see if I can draw it. The letter R is the river which bends at a 90% angle, letter b is just the boundary lines between the squares and the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 represent the four squares.

bbbbbRbbbbb
b1111R2222b
b1111R2222b
bbbbbRRRRR
b3333b4444b
b3333b4444b
bbbbbbbbbbb

In this case, you can build 2 watermills in the sequence 1, then 2 (2 is O.K. since 4 does not have a watermill), or 4, then 2 (since 1 does not have a watermill), or 1 and 4 in any order.

However, if you build the watermill in square 2 first then you can only have one watermill.

[Brael]

No. It was a straight area. Using your diagram it would be having watermills in 1 and 2 both working that river between them. I'm assuming it was just a bug.

[Quillan]

I've done it in cases where I had two parallel rivers one square apart. One watermill was on each river, even though they were in adjacent squares. I couldn't put one on the third square.

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by Quillan
I've done it in cases where I had two parallel rivers one square apart. One watermill was on each river, even though they were in adjacent squares. I couldn't put one on the third square.

That too. Similarly, in this case, if you build the watermill for the square in the middle first then you can only have one watermill.

[Arrian]

I have to agree with Blake on Free Trade. I used to use it all the time... it was knee-jerk on my part. I figured more trade = good, and that sort of thing has generally been powerful in Civ games. I didn't do the math, and was lazy about checking out State Property at all.

But the more I learned about the trade route system in CIV, the more I realized that unless you are playing on a map with tons of civs and have good relations with many of them (and thus lotsa potential trade routes), that extra trade route might not do very much for you, because you will get a whole lotta +1c domestic routes. I figure the same is true of the much-discussed Carthage (cothons) + Great Lighthouse combo.

FT probably works best with a small/medium sized empire on a map with lots of civs, played by a builder/diplomat.

-Arrian

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by couerdelion
Calvin Yu, when you say that the question is if the square on the other side of a river has a watermill, does this relate to "any" square or "all" squares separated by a stretch of river?

For example, if you had a river that moves in a "step" pattern S-E-S-E-S-E....., would you still be forced to build watermills diagonally, or could you build them on all the tiles adjoining the river - each time the tile simply chooses the "spare" river section

I took me several days before I figure out what S-E-S-E-S-E was supposed to mean . Anyway, let me call the river step at the level of the first East branch Step 1, the second E branch Step 2, etc. and the square left of the first step as L1 and right as R1.

Then for a pattern S-E-S-E-S-E the maximum number of watermills you can build is 6 by following the build pattern L1 (use S1 branch of the river), R1 (use E1 brach of the river), L2 (use S2 branch), R2 (use E2 branch), L3 (use S3 branch), and then R3 (use E3 branch).

In the worst case scenario, you can only build 3 watermils at R1, R2, R3. In this case, these three watermills block you from building any more watermills.

[Calvin Vu]

Originally posted by Calvin Vu


I took me several days before I figure out what S-E-S-E-S-E was supposed to mean . Anyway, let me call the river step at the level of the first East branch Step 1, the second E branch Step 2, etc. and the square left of the first step as L1 and right as R1.

Forget the "step" terminology. It's probably easier to explain by saying that the square on the left of the first S branch is L1, and right of the first S branch is R1, etc.