Yet more whipping questions --

[DirtyMartini]

Just went back and looked over Blake's whipping threads again, as I'm trying to improve my use of the slavery civic.

Couple of questions remain. I think there was a tread on some of this stuff recently, but I can't seem to find it.

For reference, I generally play Monarch, Epic speed

1) what is the max allowable overflow from a whip? (or a chop for that matter)

2) when whipping a discounted building (expansive granary), are the bonus hammers lost on the overflow or do they carry? (i.e. 60 hammers left on an exansive granary, whip 2 pop, 0 raw hammers produced by city: how many hammers carry over? 60? (88 hammer whip x 1.25 for discounted building = 110 - 50 to complete granary = 60)?

3) when using carry over from a whip to build a discounted building/unit, does the bonus get applied?

Basically, I guess I'm asking if it makes sense to whip expansive granaries and workers or not. I'd figure it out myself, but I'm at work.

[Krill]

1. The max amount of overflow is the amount of hammers of the item in the production queue (ie, on normal speed, max overflow from a warrior is 15 hammers, max over flow from the pyramids is 500 hammers).
   
2. Best to ignore whipping from 0 hammers (it is a little more complicated, will return to the topic a little later). An expansize granary costs 60 hammers, 20 hammers already invested in the granary. Whipping for 1 pop while in org rel produces 30 hammers. If you are producing 2 hammer normally, the calculation is (2+30) hammers*(2+0.25) = 72 hammers. 72+20=92 hammers, so 32 hammers are overflowed, but the boni from the traits, forges, org rel etc are accounted for, reducing the overflowed hammers.
   
   32/(1*2+0.25)=14.222 which is rounded down to 14 hammers. Any production boni for the next item that wil be built is that applied to the overflow next turn.
   
3. I think I just answered this above.

Whipping expansize granaries depends on the situation; I don't normally do it in a city with decent production, because it's only whipping for one pop, but I'll do it if it's a crappy productino city such as a desert floodplains city. Whipping expansive workers is a good idea, if you can do it from two pop, which requires you to have 14 or less hammers/food invested without any other building boni applicable, and then over flowing into another worker. If you can time a chop to arrive at the same time, you can get two workers very quickly out of teh deal.

[DirtyMartini]

Krill,

Thanks -- looking back at my math, it was all messed up, so thanks for answering depite that fact that it probably looked like I had no idea whatsoever what I was talking about.

So, to see if I understand correctly, the bonus applies to whips and chops. It is removed from any overflow. Boni are then reapplied to the overflow the next turn based on what you put into the build queue. So, apart from rounding error, there's no intrinsic loss in whipping a discounted building or unit, but you can't scam extra bonus hammers toward something else either.

You said something about whipping from zero hammers, but didn't get back to it. What is the deal with that again? Do you ever do it?

edit: basically, has anything changed with the whipping mechanism since Blake's "everything you wanted to know about whipping.." thread after the vanilla 1.61 patch. I've been away from the game a bit and can't remember...like, is it still without penaltly to zero hammer whip an axeman at epic speed?

[Krill]

I think someone (not me) came up with a scam, such as whipping /chopping a walls/castle while there were boni such as bureaucracy, stone, org rel, then swapping out of the civics and trading away teh stone to get aload of overflow that wasn't scaled down, then swapping back into the civics and reaquiring the stone/marble later on after building wealth/research, so that the boni were reapplied to the overflow, sothat wonders could be built in one turn. I've never tried it, but can't really see why it wouldn't work.

[Krill]

Whipping at zero hammers costs twice as much, and produces no overflow. I think. I don;t know if boni are included in the calculation.

[DirtyMartini]

Well, apart from massive painful game-mechanic manipulation, you can't scam extra hammers.

But, there's no benefit to whipping with like 10 hammers left on an expansive granary trying to getting double hammer's worth of overflow for the axeman to follow. (30+2 *2.25 = 72 - 10 = 62 overflow / 2.25 = 27.55555, rounded down to 27 overflow for the axe) NOT the whole 62 overflow for the axe.

It would be (27 x 1.25 =) 33 overflow toward a follow up expansive worker thought, right? (or is expansive +50% toward workers, can't remember)

sorry for the cross-edit. Thanks for the help. I think I get it.

[Krill]

expansive is +25% to workers, yeah. It's probably best to whip for two pop an EXP worker, because you'll almost certainly get the granary the turn after the worker in one turn, and you'll be a smaller pop base so you'll need less food to grow the city and gain from teh granary.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I guess I'm asking if it makes sense to whip expansive granaries and workers or not

I'll mention that these specific goodies are somewhat exceptional in the whole whipping scheme.

1) Whipping workers takes advantage of an edge case in the game mechanics: the expansive production bonus is applied to the hammers invested in training a worker, but not to the food invested.

2) Granary optimization is confused by the interplay between the granary and the food bar. This doesn't affect the construction cost, but there are some optimizations of timing that you may want to worry about, eventually.

[DirtyMartini]

VoU --

I assume you're alluding to the optimal timing for building/whipping the granary to get its benefit on the next growth phase. IIRC, you want to whip the granary when your food bar is 1/2 full in order to get maximum utility ASAP. Is that correct? I forget the calculations behind that idea, but I think I read that somewhere.

[snoopy369]

I don't think it really matters when you whip a granary... there are various things that affect the optimal time, including whether you actually WANT it to grow immediately or not (or when you want it to grow).

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I don't think it really matters when you whip a granary...

There's certainly an edge to timing it correctly - how important that edge is depends on circumstance.

DirtyMartini - yes, you have the right idea. The motivation is that the granary fills at the same rate that you collect surplus food, but is capped at 50%. So you want (at least) half of the food to come after the granary is constructed, but your next pop will appear on the same turn regardless of whether you gather the surplus food before the granary or after.

The easiest case to calculate is one in which the population you are going to whip away are working food neutral tiles. By waiting to whip, you get extra turns of (hammers/commerce/cottage growth/whatever). It's not a lot (generally 2 pop yield * two or three turns), but it is more than nothing.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I don't think it really matters when you whip a granary... there are various things that affect the optimal time, including whether you actually WANT it to grow immediately or not (or when you want it to grow).

I disagree. Since growth is key, there is a good advantage is keeping population working profitable tiles until you have a half-full food bar – too be more precise it is one turn before it is half full. You will grow back at the same time but will have a few extra hammers/commerce from the time before the whip.

Take the expansive example on a new city able to working two flood plains and building a granary (Epic speed).

Example 1: Whip one reaching size 2

Turns 1-11: Food = 33/33, Hammers = 22/90, Commerce =11
Turn 12: Whip (90 hammers) for overflow of 12, Food = 3/33, Commerce = 12
Turns 13-22 Growing back to size 2 – Hammers = 22, Food = 33/33, Commerce = 22

Example 2: Waiting a few turns

Turns 1-11: Food = 33/33, Hammers = 22, Commerce = 11
Turns 12-14: Food = 12/36, Hammers = 28, Commerce = 17
Turn 15: Whip (90 hammers) for overflow of 15, Food = 15/33, Commerce = 18
Turns 16-21 Grow back to size 2 – Hammers = 21, Food = 33/33 Commerce = 24
Turn 22 Hammers = 22, Food = 20/36, Commerce = 26

When the additional worked tiles are quite valuable, the difference can be quite big

[Blaupanzer]

We had a formula developed by one of the fine souls on this site, for Civ III. Anything related to Civ IV comparing potential output to whipping in various turn-related increments?

[Unimatrix11]

This is exactly, why i dont whip at all - this looks as much fun as working through some excel-sheet. I like to play from out of the guts, rather than getting my calculator out, when i play. If i wanted to do that, there would probably be some more useful occasions. But to each his/her own, of course...

I am just glad, that the guys i play with see it the same way, since if one started whipping, he would force the others to do the same, in order to keep up with him... In that sense, it was a cool game-design decision, to make slavery avaiable with a tech, that is undoubtfully one of the most valueable in the whole game with or without it. So neglecting slavery does not render any tech worthless.