Glossary: Despotism Penalties

[sabrewolf]

these are most likely things, many of you people know already, but i thought i'd share the results of my experiments.

in two PBEMs i have worked on my territory only to find out the some things were completely unneccessary due to the despotism (same for anarchy too, but that's another matter) penalties. i was never really sure what works when and what doesn't so i did some tests.

A) my rule conclusions:
in despotism, any tile which WOULD have over 2 units of either food, shield or trade gets exactly 1 penalty of that type.

so "naturally" producing 1 or 2 of either kind on each tile doesn't harm, being in despotism
anything over that has 1 element less.

i'm obviously not very good at formulating it, so i would appreciate if someone call spell it out neater

B) "useless" worker actions:
some terrain improvements won't have a direct effect for your city until you leave despotism. these are (most important ones):

for grassland:
- any irrigation on tiles which don't have food bonuses
- roaded tobacco for tiles at a river

for plains:
- mined cattle
- irrigated wine
- irrigated sugar
- roaded sugar for tiles at a river


note: with "useless", here meant is in a direct city production sence.
roading sugar plains may be sensible if it's the shortest path to the next city. or irrigating may be needed just to get another tiles irrigated.

[sabrewolf]

if anyone is curious and wants to extend this test (i doubt it ), here's the BIQ i was working with.

sorry if this is too banal for anyone

[albiedamned]

Your point A) is correct. Your point B) is not a separate item but rather a result of A). For example, since grassland naturally produces 2 food, irrigating it takes it to 3 food, but then the Despotism penalty bumps it back to 2 food, thus the net is no effect. However grassland with a wheat naturally produces 4 food and 5 when irrigated, so under Despotism it will produce 3 food and 4 when irrigated. Thus irrigating grassland in Despotism is not always useless, but only on food bonus tiles.

[sabrewolf]

yes, i meant that B is the result of the "rule" i mentionned in A. i'm just not very good in expressing my thoughts, so i wrote down something which people can directly "use"

[Tarquinius]

This has been around since Civ 1.
There are a lot of tiles affected to the despotism tile penalty. The fact that irrigation on grasslands is useless under despotism is the most significant.

But some other things to consider, other than you mention:

- Mining on hills only yields one shield instead of two (while it takes a long time to achieve, so better wait for this, because you are also short of food under despotism, so you will not use hills much anyway)
This is not true when the hill has iron (or coal) on it, because then it will give 4 (1 basic + 2 for mine + 2 for iron -1 penalty) shields when mined, and 2 when not mined.
- Fish tiles only give 2 food and 2 commerce, instead of the normal 3 food and 3 commerce. This makes it not a very good tile, although it certainly is under other governments.Building a harbor will take it up to 3 food of course.

There is more of course but these were the most important I could think of.
It is not really complicated, just look up the values in the civilopedia if you need to and calculate the results for yourself.

The only tricky part comes when you are in a golden age. Normally under despotism, mined and roaded bonus grassland tiles on a river are great tile (giving 2f 2s 2c)
but a golden age will give you NO benefit: because both bonuses will be negated by the penalty. If you have many of these tiles you may have to think to delay your golden age until you get out of depsotism.
But on the other hand, if you have a lot of roaded and irrigated plains tiles without a river, then a golden age will really help you because it will make them as good as mined bonus grassland tiles!

It is just something to keep in mind, for it will determine how effective your GA will be.

[sabrewolf]

exactly... despotic GA can be useless if you've got mined bonus grassland tiles. worst is if you havn't roaded non-river tiles which your city is working on. you won't get any trade bonus at all. or regular grassland tiles without mines.

tarquinius, just one small mistake you made: with iron you only get 1 bonus shield, not 2. so mined in despotism means 3 shields...
otherwise everything correct

i used to play a lot of civ1 and civ2, but there was a long break until i started again with civ3... i wasn't aware that it has been the same ever since version 1

[Tarquinius]

Ah I didn't know that Sabrewolf. I thought it gave 2 shields. Like coal. Or does that give only 1 additional shield either

[sabrewolf]

just checked it:

iron: 1 shield
coal: 2 shields, 1 extra commerce

but by the time you have coal, you shouldn't be in despotism any more... or you've done something very wrong

[Harovan]

Re: Glossary: Despotism Penalties

Originally posted by sabrewolf
i'm obviously not very good at formulating it, so i would appreciate if someone call spell it out neater

I think the definition, that "the despotism penalty takes away the third instance of food, production and/or commerce, when calculating a tile's yield" is the most precise and accepted throughout the community, since Civ3 is out.

[Mad Bomber]

Looks like someone hasn't read Improving your opening play sequences by Cracker

[sabrewolf]

Re: Re: Glossary: Despotism Penalties

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
I think the definition, that "the despotism penalty takes away the third instance of food, production and/or commerce, when calculating a tile's yield" is the most precise and accepted throughout the community, since Civ3 is out.

i've been active on these boards for quite some time, but i never saw this formulation

and searching for "despotism"-threads doesn't lead to any instruction... so i just started a new thread which may help anyone who didn't know this

[sabrewolf]

Originally posted by Mad Bomber
Looks like someone hasn't read Improving your opening play sequences by Cracker

ah... a long time ago i read this one. had a second look now... great micromanaging! i had a similar start in the tournament but was a lot unluckier with diseases!

but i still didn't see a general formula, just a table of values with asterisks mentioning the penalty

[Harovan]

Re: Re: Re: Glossary: Despotism Penalties

Originally posted by sabrewolf
i've been active on these boards for quite some time, but i never saw this formulation

Nevertheless I didn't invent it, but remember to have read it long ago.

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by sabrewolf


ah... a long time ago i read this one. had a second look now... great micromanaging! i had a similar start in the tournament but was a lot unluckier with diseases!

but i still didn't see a general formula, just a table of values with asterisks mentioning the penalty

Perhaps not a formula, per se, but still a very valuable and useful reference for early development strategies and despotism penalties.

I detest the disease feature in C3C. I was on my way to an easy victory in the Middle Age conquest until nearly my entire empire was hit by the "Black Death"

[sabrewolf]

no, i meant the "normal" flood plains disease. that was in already in civ3 vanilla. it "only" kills one pop-point at a time.

i never tried the game with "black death" on. pest was the reason that drove me away from populous 2