City planning( the not messed up poll)

[Sparrowhawk]

When we knew little of our neighbours this plan of "Xinning" (or starvation of the population as I like to call it) made sense to me, and I encouraged its use as it increased the rate at which we discovered new technology.

However, as we have come to know more about our neighbours the population has become aware that other civilizations in the land do not starve the people to discover new technologies, preferring more traditional methods. Perhaps this idea has begun to outlive it's usefulness and we need to return to more traditional methods of research?

/me Foreign Minister

[cavebear]

I think perhaps the City-Planner should give us his views on the option of xinning vs not xinning. Not in general, but as it applies to our specific situation. I readily admit that there is much of this practice that I do not understand.

From what I know of it, xinning involves temporary deficits in some aspects in exchange for temporary advantages in others. The idea itself is not foreign to me; we do it all the time when placing Workers on terrain of one type or another, or by making them specialists.

What I'm not sure of is exactly how much loss we incurr. It seems to me that the major loss is in population growth, but there may be others. Is it possible that xinning is helping us in the short-term, but damaging us in the long-term?

[atawa]

It all depends on wether we want more tech any time soon. Without Xinning we have a techrate of 58 turns if we go to 50/50.
We might change that a bit with workerplacement but not much

[atawa]

As the next turn is a Xin turn I changed all workers of 5+ city's to Scientists.
On the turn after we'll only have 3 city's Xinning so perhaps 17-18 turns for a new tech.

[shade]

personally I don't like the idea behind Xinning...but that's just my opinion(and as president that had a value of NULL and VOID )

Now I have to support it, for 2 simple reasons.
1) due to our selfinflicted rules and this nice map op atomant we really need to squeeze everything out of our game. The only way to keep our science acceptable(at this moment) is using the art of Xinning. Same goes for gold(since no caravans are allowed)

2)We also live in a situation in wich we can not let our cities grow to large(Size5 and 6 really need everything they got not to go into disorder). Xinning here is a nice way of stabelizing the size of a city.

The moment we go Fundi we will need other ways to get our science to an acceptable rate, but then again we could also let our cities grow.
The moment we go fundi we also can start a period of internal growth instead of milateristic expansion.

So at least until we reach fundi we will continue Xinning, when we switch govt. I'll poll what we should do about it.

Shade

[Sparrowhawk]

Originally posted by shade
personally I don't like the idea behind Xinning...but that's just my opinion(and as president that had a value of NULL and VOID )

Now I have to support it, for 2 simple reasons.
1) due to our selfinflicted rules and this nice map op atomant we really need to squeeze everything out of our game. The only way to keep our science acceptable(at this moment) is using the art of Xinning. Same goes for gold(since no caravans are allowed)

2)We also live in a situation in wich we can not let our cities grow to large(Size5 and 6 really need everything they got not to go into disorder). Xinning here is a nice way of stabelizing the size of a city.

The moment we go Fundi we will need other ways to get our science to an acceptable rate, but then again we could also let our cities grow.
The moment we go fundi we also can start a period of internal growth instead of milateristic expansion.

So at least until we reach fundi we will continue Xinning, when we switch govt. I'll poll what we should do about it.

Shade

I could not have said it better myself, I agree that we will need to continue to use it until Fundamentalism, and hope that it will no longer be used after that. As cavebear and shade have both alluded to the cost of Xinning is great, and while in Monarchy we cannot afford not to Xin (the population growth would compound our happiness problems), I look forward to seeing what happens when we move to a Fundamentalist government. I think that with the city growth we should be able to sustain under Fundamentalism that our science rate will actually be higher then it currently is under Monarchy (despite the reduced rate of science under fundy).

It seems ironic however that our City Planner proposes to stop warring and focus on growth when we switch to Fundamentalism, the government most favourable to war

[cavebear]

As SMC, I consider that our chances of achieving our military goals in Monarchy at this stage of the game are about as likely as drowning our enemies by p*ssing into the wind.

We must acheive a more viable form of non-representative government as quickly as is possible. I think our immediate goal should be aimed at Fundamentalism with all else being secondary. I would rather defend our cities from onsloughts of foreign devils and create lakes of blood outside (and inside) our cities than continue in this unadvancing situation for another month.

[Sparrowhawk]

Perhaps our Science Minister ( who is that again? ) will poll on this matter, as I am not sure if anyone has recently polled on the next tech goal. I think we are still aiming for Explosives next, but I am not sure if this is still an up to date poll. Have our goals changed?

[cavebear]

We are researching Conscription, a prerequisite to Fundamentalism. I dearly hope we can research that next. Perhaps the Minister of Science can advise of of the likelihood of that being a possibility for the next tech?

[atawa]

I have PM'd Obiwan, if there is no science poll up tomorrow I will ask the VP to take over his duties untill he returns.

[cavebear]

A good firm decision by our new President. There is some great promise to this administration.

[Sparrowhawk]

That is, as long as our VP is around to fill in, you know how unreliable those Canadians can be!

btw, just kidding Obiwan and STYOM :

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Some thoughts:

We probably should Xin for science as fast as we can. For that reason, I voted that we should start Dominion Xinning ASAP. The sooner we get to Fundy, the sooner we can get out of disorder - a lot of problems would be solved. Finish the walls, and then Xin.

Science Xinning in Fundy is generally not a good idea. The science handicap in Fundy affects specialists, too, and one of the main advantages of Xinning is the fact corruption has no effect. In Fundy, corruption is low anyways.

Also, why are we irrigating around our core cities when they will not be growing anytime soon? And are we going to mine the hidden specials there?

[shade]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
Also, why are we irrigating around our core cities when they will not be growing anytime soon? And are we going to mine the hidden specials there?

because unlike the AI we can't just irrigate a random square

also the amount of water is very small on this map and the amount of settler we can sustain is low.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by shade


because unlike the AI we can't just irrigate a random square

also the amount of water is very small on this map and the amount of settler we can sustain is low.

Understood... BUT...

The cities in question are already size 5 and Xinning. They're not going to have a food surplus (due to Xin-starving) until we get Fundy. In the meantime, they don't really need irrigation. Better to found small cities with the Settlers, use them to build roads, or add them to some size 4 cities to make them size 5 and Xinnable.

IMO, of course