Why is plains cow considered a bad start?

[wodan11]

Once you get granaries, whipping is the most powerful method of production available in the majority of games (there are exceptions, mainly the low food/high hammer starts), because it lets you work cottages while growing.

How does it let you work cottages while growing? Don't you mean it lets you work cottages period? (The "growing" is meant to apply to the idea that you work them while regrowing to keep pace with the unhappy recovery, I believe is your intent. Correct me if that's not correct. If so, then the comparative case is comparing to the alternative which is grow to the limit, work some cottages or mines along the way if you want, and when you get the limit work cottages and mines.

So, seems like you should delete the "while growing" part of your statement.

Also, seems like this is a non-statement, because the alternative case also works cottages.

It's necessary to work the maths to reach the conclusion "whipping is the most powerful method of production available in the majority of games."

[Krill]

Well, you're not working cottages if you slave the population that was working them, and you aren't growing 100% of the time (say, only 80% of the time if you are salving workers/settler). It's a minor point really.

The comparison would be to working cottages while growing, and once at the happy cap working all mines and food (because that is the only way to match the production potential). Maybe you could work one cottage, But you aren't going to be growing larger than size 8ish, and most of the time size 6 is the maximum. This is early game production, HR is like the tail end of when you can do it productively, because quite often once you can easily hit size 10+ the land dictates what is better due to amount of hills/grasslands.

The alternative option of growing may therefore work cottages on the way up, but that is only for a few turns, so the cottage growth isn't capitalized upon, whereas with slaving the cottages are constantly worked so the commerce potential of slavery is constantly increasing.

Maths example is a bit stupid here. It depends on the food available, your happiness limit, the traits of the leader, the likelihood of being rushed, your macro strategy, and the metagame, plus countless other factors. Which example am I going to use? No FIN, happy cap of 4, and a total net food of 3, or CHM, happy cap of 8 and net food of 8? Hint: Former favours a no slaving approach to the game, the latter you need a cat 'o nine tails for.

[wodan11]

The comparison would be to working cottages while growing, and once at the happy cap working all mines and food (because that is the only way to match the production potential). Maybe you could work one cottage, But you aren't going to be growing larger than size 8ish, and most of the time size 6 is the maximum.

Again, we would need the maths, but I would expect 3 cottages, 1 food resource, and 2 mines (or marble etc.) would be a good comparison to a cottage/food/whip strat you're talking about. Thing is, 3 cottages is better than the cottages in the whip situation (which is going to be 0-2 cottages, I would think, depending on when in the whip cycle we take a look). So, it matches production, and works more cottages.

In my mind, it matters more how many food resources are in the city. If I had 2 wheat/corn/fish instead of just 1, I would expect slavery to vastly outperform the 2 mines in hammer production, which is a viable alternative to make up for still working less cottages.

[Krill]

The useful amount of food depends on the happy cap. If the happy cap is size 4, and you have a 6 food tile, slavery is pretty naff unless you don't bother getting the granary (which is the obvious choice really), but in that case you are generally stuck only whipping for 2 pop, so you need to invest at least 40 hammers into a settler to whip it, meaning you aren't doing a dedicated whip/regrow cycle on cottages. Generally 6 food is a good amount to have, more than that and you grow to fast (so probably end up working mines while growing). Normally splitting off the second food tile to a new city and slaving both gives you more hammers in the long run...and you can work more cottages that way as well.

The comparison you gave requires a happy cap of 6 (7 if you are slaving), which isn't all that common. However, every 10 turns the slavery city generates a minimum of 90 hammers via slavery (into a settler, which is the worst case scenario for slaving as it gives the limited regrowth time), and needs a grand total of 43 food to regrow to size 6. IN 8 turns that is a total of 6 food for 3 turns, and 5 food for 5 turns. So a grass pigs or irrigated corn, or fish with lighthouse is enough, but anything else and you need to consider farms which is bad (or multiple food res).

However, to keep a comparison fair, say both cities had only a 4 food tile, at size 6 your example city would have 8 hammers worth of production, so in 10 turns it would only make 80 hammers, it might make less haemmrs and more food though, in which case you have to slave it occasionally, or work less cottages. So that is 10 hammers down already compared to the none slaving option, or the partial slaving option limits the hammers it makes because it needs to regrow onto the mines, or limits the commerce because it needs to regrow onto the cottages.

The only upside is that it works a third cottage constantly, whereas the slaving option it would only work a third cottage for 8 out of every 10 turns, but it would work a fourth cottage for 6 out of every 10 turns. Taking into account cottage growth, after the first slave that fourth cottage is worth a minimum of 2 commerce anyway, so that is +12 commerce per slave cycle, which is roughly equal to the third cottage getting worked for the extra turns.

2 things that would affect this: limited rivers, sat if you could only get 3 cottages on rivers and the fourth wasn't, would possible mean that stick at size 6 is the balanced option.

Good MM: if you got to within 1 food of growing to size 7, and then slaved, the city would immediately grow to size 4 after the slave and you'd minimise the amount of time spent not working cottages etc.

[Norselord]

Wodan/Krill,

Regardless if which of your strats is employed, the main thing not to lose sight of is the amount of research needed to hook up a cow v. hooking up wheat.

No civ starts out with animal husbandry so at the minimum 100beakers will need to be generated to get access to cows. If a civ starts with agriculture and has wheat no beakers need to be spent.

The point being that regardless of which strat preference is employed both of them can be utilized sooner with wheat than with cows.

It makes a huge difference whether or not you can effectively slave sooner rather than later, or hit the happy cap sooner rather than later. Especially since the early units in the build queue (workers/settlers) treat food the same as hammers.

As long as we are going off-topic in threads. I think that beelining for steel is cheesy. I think the CS catapult is cheesy too. (now i am just like you guys, only going slightly off topic)

[Krill]

NL, the point that you highlight is a true one, and it isn't off topic. If you want to explore the theme further, look at the balance of starting techs, the increase in costs as the difficulty increases, the utility of chopping, the power of expansive granaries on growth, and the importance of workers on hooking up food.

You could probably write a doctoral thesis on opening strategy in CIV.

Hint: why is fishing such an important tech?

[Norselord]

NL, the point that you highlight is a true one, and it isn't off topic. If you want to explore the theme further, look at the balance of starting techs, the increase in costs as the difficulty increases, the utility of chopping, the power of expansive granaries on growth, and the importance of workers on hooking up food.

You could probably write a doctoral thesis on opening strategy in CIV.

Hint: why is fishing such an important tech?

Fish resources ARE HUGE.

I didn't mention them because they are so broken:
1) city grows as the workboat is being built.
2) food + money
3) relatively safe from early plunders
4) no roads required to connect
5) workboat costs 1/2 as many hammers as a worker
6) worked fish = 4f 2c (without wonders, without lighthouse), worked wheat = 4f 1h or 5f +1C (if river)
7) the water tiles get +1c if FIN, land food gets no plus from traits
8) water tiles can be improved much earlier with maori, lighthouse, great lighthouse, colossus...farms only get upped with civil service, biology, and possibly steam power.
9) animal husbandry costs 140beakers with no prereqs, or 100beakers with one prereq, agriculture costs 60beakers if not starting tech, fishing costs 40beakers if not starting tech.
10) i forget what 10 is for but everything everything everything.

early fish>>>early wheat/rice/corn>early cow/pig

[Krill]

Actually I disagree. Well, partially. Fish are great if you start with fishing, without fishing you have to wait a long time to get out your work boat, not long enough to get out a worker. If you get out a worker first you need to focus on worker techs, making the fish completely irrelevant, and if you get Fishing first you are delaying the hook up of your land based resources and chopping which delays the first settler (if you plan on chopping early on you generally need 2 workers to fulfil all of the required work jobs including roading to a new city and getting that hook up asap).

It's quite an important decision.

[Norselord]

Actually I disagree. Well, partially. Fish are great if you start with fishing, without fishing you have to wait a long time to get out your work boat, not long enough to get out a worker. If you get out a worker first you need to focus on worker techs, making the fish completely irrelevant, and if you get Fishing first you are delaying the hook up of your land based resources and chopping which delays the first settler (if you plan on chopping early on you generally need 2 workers to fulfil all of the required work jobs including roading to a new city and getting that hook up asap).

It's quite an important decision.

if you start off with fishing your start will automatically be next to water.

if you are near fish, and you don't have fishing you only take 2/3 as many turns to research your 'food' tech as someone who has wheat but no agriculture.

It takes only 1/2 as long to build a workboat as it takes to build a worker.

Additionally, the city is growing while the workboat is being built.

Then, it doesn't require a road to be built to get the +health bonus. So those turns are saved too.

All of these result in the fisherman's city growing faster than the farmer's city. The fisherman should still build a worker very early on, but he will do that faster than the farmer too, since his city will be at a larger size, and for the purposes of building workers/settlers food=hammers.

The early game is all about acceleration. In the sense of obtaining food through fishing v. agriculture v. animal husbandry to create more population quickly, fishing wins hands down. This completely ignores the religion, hunting, mining branches; and this analysis only compares those three options. I am assuming that the more population one has through more and/or bigger cities, the faster one will be able to tech the other branches.

I think I will try to compare this in terms of actual turns gained by messing around with a trial game using the worldbuilder.


EDIT: Also, you mention chopping. This implies that you have prioritized BW over any of the food techs. I like going for BW early too, but i like hooking up food first, and only then doing BW. After that its a mater of taste of whether you want to focus on religion, military, infrastructure, or wonders.

[wodan11]

Misc comments rather than a bunch of one line quotes.

• Yes, teching AH is a concern and will impact any decision. However, if you're not whipping (which is exactly the comparitive decision we're discussing), then BW is less of a priority, and teching AH may be a good decision, especially if you want to go for HR or have war chariots etc.
• Teching Ag is also a concern. Norselord you said "If a civ starts with Ag and has wheat, no beakers need to be spent." Well, duh. The flip side is if the civ doesn't start with Ag, doesn't have wheat, and does start with cows.
• Krill, I totally agree with Norselord on the Fishing example except of course you're correct about starting with Fishing or not. That's another duh.
• Caveat: even if you need to tech Fishing, that's not necessarily a delay. Having the added food and commerce income is likely to make up for it. The added food will crank out your 2 workers that much faster, and the commerce will do wonders to make up for the beakers spent on Fishing. In fact, a worker focus is likely to be very commerce weak at the start of the game.

[Norselord]

Misc comments rather than a bunch of one line quotes.

• Yes, teching AH is a concern and will impact any decision. However, if you're not whipping (which is exactly the comparitive decision we're discussing), then BW is less of a priority, and teching AH may be a good decision, especially if you want to go for HR or have war chariots etc.
  
• Teching Ag is also a concern. Norselord you said "If a civ starts with Ag and has wheat, no beakers need to be spent." Well, duh. The flip side is if the civ doesn't start with Ag, doesn't have wheat, and does start with cows.
• Krill, I totally agree with Norselord on the Fishing example except of course you're correct about starting with Fishing or not. That's another duh.
• Caveat: even if you need to tech Fishing, that's not necessarily a delay. Having the added food and commerce income is likely to make up for it. The added food will crank out your 2 workers that much faster, and the commerce will do wonders to make up for the beakers spent on Fishing. In fact, a worker focus is likely to be very commerce weak at the start of the game.

Teching AG costs 60 beakers. Teching Animal Husbandry requires 100 beakers if you have hunting or ag, or 140 if you need to research hunting first as a prereq. It is not possible to start with AH, it is possible to start with AG. Regardless of what starting tech, a wheat is always better than a cow. Assuming both players start the game off by making a worker, the player with wheat will have the tech to get his resource at the worst in 60% the time than the other player, and at best will benefit from the food in the time it takes to generate 140 beakers. That extra food will generate the next worker sooner, the next settler sooner, and thanks to higher population will give the player a faster rate of research.

Point is: Even if player A has wheat but no AG, and player B has cows and the prereq, player A will steal get his food hooked up faster, this advantage only increases if Player A starts with AG or if player B does not start with a AH prereq.


Since everyone talks about whipping, you need granaries...the prereqs for those are fishing or ag, AH is off the path to granaries.

I have always thought that the key to early success is to get 4-5 cities to 5 pop as fast as possible to be able to work 20-25 tiles as soon as possible. After that point, it doesn't matter what road a player wants to take, the infrastructure is in place to either warmonger, CV, wonderwhore, tech crazy, or whatever.

[wodan11]

Regardless of what starting tech, a wheat is always better than a cow.

Why? Cow gives +2+2 while wheat is +3. On the face of it, cow would seem better.

Assuming both players start the game off by making a worker

Is that a fair assumption? Why not start with a warrior, scout, or work boat?

the player with wheat will have the tech to get his resource at the worst in 60% the time than the other player

That seems to ignore the work boat first scenario you were expounding the virtues of. As well as many other possibilities.

BTW I forgot one bullet from my previous post this afternoon that I just remembered. Krill said something about work boat first taking forever. With a little micromanagement, I find it's best to go into the city and manually assign a citizen to work the best hammer unimproved tile. Otherwise it always works the best food unimproved tile. My theory is to crank out the work boat as fast as possible, even if it means I'm not growing at all. As soon as I get the netted fish, I automate citizens again, and the city grows likety-split.

and thanks to higher population will give the player a faster rate of research.

That's not always true. Depends entirely on what tiles are being worked.

Point is: Even if player A has wheat but no AG, and player B has cows and the prereq, player A will still get his food hooked up faster

Again, that depends a lot on other things. Work boat first jumps out as a glaring example.

Since everyone talks about whipping, you need granaries...the prereqs for those are fishing or ag, AH is off the path to granaries.

You implied above that AH needs Hunting... that's not true. AH needs Ag OR Hunting.

I have always thought that the key to early success is to get 4-5 cities to 5 pop as fast as possible to be able to work 20-25 tiles as soon as possible. After that point, it doesn't matter what road a player wants to take, the infrastructure is in place to either warmonger, CV, wonderwhore, tech crazy, or whatever.

Nice theory but it seems to ignore a lot of things... scouts to go pop huts? Bad terrain? Hostile neighbors? Bad position such that you should rush early rather than REX to that extent?

[Norselord]

Wodan you are a poopie-head.

Make up your mind. Are we comparing wheat to cows or not? The original poster asks why cows is a bad start, compared to other foods. I outlined that fish start is best.

AH needs AG or Hunting...true...but if you have neither and need to get to AH quickly, then you go for hunting, since it is cheaper. Regardless AH take more research to get to REGARDLESS OF STARTING TECH compared to AG. Do the math.

I know that wheat is 3F (if its not on a river tile) and that cows get 2H2F, but it takes more RESEARCH to get to to cows, which means you have to invest turns. Turns that could be spent getting the extra food.

You are taking many of the things I am trying to explain out of context...that is probably because I am not explaining myself correctly. Sure, we can assume both players start making all sorts of different crap, but we are talking SPECIFICALLY about food resources. If all things are equal both players will still need to eventually hook their food up...the wheat takes less effort to do so.

Again, you are being an argumentative poopie head. There is more to a debate than just trying to pick at small details and shooting them down. There needs to be a counter argument. Why don't you come up with some solid arguments why a Plains Cow start is better than Plains Wheat.

When all you do is try to destroy someone elses argument the conversation can never result in a positive agreement...poopiehead.

[wodan11]

Wodan you are a poopie-head.

Make up your mind. Are we comparing wheat to cows or not? The original poster asks why cows is a bad start, compared to other foods. I outlined that fish start is best.

We're comparing to whatever we want. Wheat and fish are both fair game.

AH needs AG or Hunting...true...but if you have neither and need to get to AH quickly, then you go for hunting, since it is cheaper.

Unless you want Ag or start with Ag. Maybe you have wheat and cows.

Anyway the reason this came up is some blanket statements were made which are true in some limited situations only.

Regardless AH take more research to get to REGARDLESS OF STARTING TECH compared to AG. Do the math.

I agree with you. My counterpoint is that it isn't the raw beaker cost, it's the speed with which we generate the beakers. If case A has 4 beakers/turn while case B generates 15 bpt, B has a clear advantage. If A needs to generate 100 beakers while B needs to generate 140 beakers, I'll go with B every time.

I know that wheat is 3F (if its not on a river tile) and that cows get 2H2F, but it takes more RESEARCH to get to to cows, which means you have to invest turns.

Again, that's a blanket statement that clearly isn't true. You're using the raw beaker cost and concluding it costs "turns" which means you're equating raw beakers to time. We need to compare the rate.

You are taking many of the things I am trying to explain out of context...that is probably because I am not explaining myself correctly. Sure, we can assume both players start making all sorts of different crap, but we are talking SPECIFICALLY about food resources. If all things are equal both players will still need to eventually hook their food up...the wheat takes less effort to do so.

Less effort than what, cows? Well sure, that's clearly obvious.

Why don't you come up with some solid arguments why a Plains Cow start is better than Plains Wheat.

Such a general statement cannot be made. There may be some situations where plains cow is better than plains wheat. Is that what you're asking?

When all you do is try to destroy someone elses argument the conversation can never result in a positive agreement...poopiehead.

Not at all. There is quite a benefit to poking holes in a less-than-comprehensive argument. Especially when a situational assumption is made, and then a conclusion is made, using that assumption. Such as "wheat is better than cows". Logically, the conclusion is only as good as the assumption. If it's that easy to poke a hole in the assumption, then that is indicative the conclusion is pretty weak at best.

[trev]

AH should be an early tech to learn regardless of cow here or there, it is highly desirable to locate horses. So this bit about 100 beakers or whatever for cows is a bit academic, a person with any brains will learn it and learn it early.