The Civics Thread

[sooooo]

Unfortunately we have to reveal our hand by revolting during our own portion of the turn in order to be able to move the troops we draft. That leaves us less time to deal with Imperio. I think Imperio will be more likely to secure peace and trade us gunpowder before our golden age and revolt to nationhood, since letting us draft oromos would not be happy times for them. Maybe Imperio won't even notice our golden age

Any opinions on serfdom? Another downside I thought of was that we can't draft from MY before whipping the settler, so the city is only draftable when it grows back to size 6. But that's rather small. I don't really see any other downsides except for flexibility, but if we have clear plans for our cities and can rely on nationhood to cover military emergencies, I see it as only upsides.

[T-hawk]

I'm not sold on Serfdom. It's a neat idea, but it's not that great. It's only +50% worker labor, not double. And it doesn't do anything to speed roads (50% faster than 2 turns is still 2 turns) or travel time, so overall it's more like +30% or so worker labor. I think we would look pretty silly if we lost a city to inability to whip a defender in order to squeeze out about 10 turns of worker labor.

If we're that confident in defense, and don't need to whip any settlers or anything, we could try it and I wouldn't object, though.

[sunrise089]

I'm not sold on Serfdom. It's a neat idea, but it's not that great. It's only +50% worker labor, not double. And it doesn't do anything to speed roads (50% faster than 2 turns is still 2 turns) or travel time, so overall it's more like +30% or so worker labor. I think we would look pretty silly if we lost a city to inability to whip a defender in order to squeeze out about 10 turns of worker labor.

If we're that confident in defense, and don't need to whip any settlers or anything, we could try it and I wouldn't object, though.

Is this definitely true on Normal speed? On Quick speed workers in serfdom can chop a forest in 2 turns and complete a road in 1 turn. I would suspect that under Normal speed both of those things would be true, but that a desert road would take one worker 2 turns.

[timmy827]

Yes, still 2 turns for a road on Normal speed with Serfdom (without steam power or Hagia Sophia of course). Fractional worker turns are always rounded up (example, farm taking 5/8 turns on normal/epic) and the normal speed times is the "true" value; so we have 2 turns * 2/3 (50% faster for one of Serfdom or (HG or Steam)) = 4/3, rounds back up to 2.

On quick in Serfdom workers can chop in 2 turns, although they can do that on Quick speed without Serfdom. Chop is 3/2 turns on Normal with/without Serfdom.

[sunrise089]

Yes, still 2 turns for a road on Normal speed with Serfdom (without steam power or Hagia Sophia of course). Fractional worker turns are always rounded up (example, farm taking 5/8 turns on normal/epic) and the normal speed times is the "true" value; so we have 2 turns * 2/3 (50% faster for one of Serfdom or (HG or Steam)) = 4/3, rounds back up to 2.

On quick in Serfdom workers can chop in 2 turns, although they can do that on Quick speed without Serfdom. Chop is 3/2 turns on Normal with/without Serfdom.

Some of this info isn't right guys.

On quick, workers take three turns to chop w/o serfdom and 2 with it. Workers take 2 turns to road without serfdom and 1 with it. Why would 2 turns on normal not convert to 1 when 2 turns on quick does?

EDIT: Same with mining - normally three turns, converts to 2. I think serfdom makes worker actions take 50% of the time, rounded up. That would be consistent with all of my in-game experience.

[Swiss Pauli]

Any opinions on serfdom? Another downside I thought of was that we can't draft from MY before whipping the settler, so the city is only draftable when it grows back to size 6. But that's rather small. I don't really see any other downsides except for flexibility, but if we have clear plans for our cities and can rely on nationhood to cover military emergencies, I see it as only upsides.

I'd be fine with serfdom during our GA: we have the odd plantation to build and farm to create in our current empire, but if we're settling in the jungle east of SF then we'll get a significant benefit from it.

[timmy827]

OK lets try again. To the best of my knowledge, this is how it works
Take worker turns for common actions on normal terrain (grass/plains, incl. hills), normal speed:
Mine, Cottage, Pasture, Camp, Clear Jungle - 4
Plantation, Farm, Wine, Windmill - 5
Road - 2
Workshop, Quarry - 6
Lumbermill, Watermill - 8
Chop - 3 (add to other action if tell worker to do that while on forested tile)

Two ways to get 50% faster - either serfdom, or Hagia Sophia/Steam Power
Multiply time by 2/3 for one of those, or 1/2 for both.
Also multiply by 2/3 for Quick, 3/2 for Epic, or 3 for Marathon. Round any fractions up.

So for either normal speed with Serfdom, or Quick w/o any bonus,
Mine, Cottage, Pasture, Camp, Clear Jungle - 3 (33% faster)
Plantation, Farm, Wine, Windmill - 4 (only 25% faster!)
Road - 2 (no speedup)
Workshop, Quarry - 4 (actually 50% faster)
Lumbermill, Watermill - 6 (33%)

All those check out in-game. T-Hawk's 30% overall is probably still over-optimistic considering that we are not planning any workshops and at most a single quarry.

Now the only thing that does not fit is that times for chop w/o any worker speed bonus is 3 on both normal and quick, as sunrise pointed out (and on either speed, serfdom alone drops to 2). Not sure why, maybe it was to discourage mass lumberjacking rushes in MP quick games?

There is also a listed slowdown factor of 25% for desert (incl. floodplains) and tundra. I believe this works as advertised, ie multiply by another 5/4 factor before rounding up, but didn't check.

[mostly-harmless]

I am leaning against serfdom after seeing timmy's analysis.

mh

[sooooo]

Thanks for the analysis timmy. From the improvements we expect to make, it seems to shave a turn off: chopping, mining, plantationing, farming, clearing jungle and cottaging.

But I noticed you didn't mention whether you were for or against it

[timmy827]

I'm not sold on Serfdom. It's a neat idea, but it's not that great. It's only +50% worker labor, not double. And it doesn't do anything to speed roads (50% faster than 2 turns is still 2 turns) or travel time, so overall it's more like +30% or so worker labor. I think we would look pretty silly if we lost a city to inability to whip a defender in order to squeeze out about 10 turns of worker labor.

If we're that confident in defense, and don't need to whip any settlers or anything, we could try it and I wouldn't object, though.

Well, I'm not that involved and need to spend some more time looking at the plans to really weigh in with a yes/no. I think defense should not be a concern - we will have a stream of drafted units moving east soon, don't want to whip Cape Town anyways, Templars gassed, etc. However it does seem like we whip all of our settlers, and we will be doing a fair bit of that in the near future to plant cities in the Templar borderlands.

[T-hawk]

Why would 2 turns on normal not convert to 1 when 2 turns on quick does?

Because on Quick, a road does not really cost 2 worker turns. It's 1.333 worker turns. But there is no way to work for one third of a turn, so functionally it takes 2 full worker turns. But with Serfdom, a worker can apply 1.5 turns of labor, so it can complete a road in one turn.

On Normal, the road truly costs 2 turns. With Serfdom, each worker applies 1.5 turns of labor. But once again, there is no way to work for just half a turn, so functionally even with Serfdom a road still takes 2 turns.

EDIT: Same with mining - normally three turns, converts to 2. I think serfdom makes worker actions take 50% of the time, rounded up. That would be consistent with all of my in-game experience.

No. Serfdom does exactly what it says on the tin. Each worker applies 50% extra labor each turn. But a lot of that +50% gets lost to roundoff artifacts. Or in the singular case of roads on quick speed, Serfdom _avoids_ the roundoff artifact inherent in the game speed so functionally gives +100%.

This argument has been around in Civ games forever. The Alpha Centauri forums still argue over whether the Weather Paradigm reduces terraforming time by 50% or increases former productivity by 50%. (It's the latter, just like Serfdom.)

Everything in timmy's post is correct.

[sooooo]

Alright, I think we revolt to mercantilism and nationalism next turn.

If we do get a peace deal with Imperio then we can go back to decentralisation later in the golden age if we want. But probably we won't since we could find ourselves back at war with them.

I'm willing to abandon serfdom since it gives up flexibility.

[Swiss Pauli]

Alright, I think we revolt to mercantilism and nationalism next turn.

If we do get a peace deal with Imperio then we can go back to decentralisation later in the golden age if we want. But probably we won't since we could find ourselves back at war with them.

I'm willing to abandon serfdom since it gives up flexibility.

If we get the deal with Imperio, we don't need Nationalism at all: our sole aim is Jerusalem, and we have enough units for that already, seeing as we can spare the Cape Town stack for 10 turns. With Cape Back on units soon (maybe we can do some build queue tricks as well), and with Green whipping out the units like crazy, we'll be able to replace the Cape Stack pretty rapidly, anyway.

EDIT: we can also send the units invloved at Pink that need to heal up to Cape to guard against T11 backstab from Imperio.

A stint in Merc would be good to get the probable GS out sooner for sure.

[sooooo]

No, I don't think so. We have to assume that we are still at war with Imperio and therefore need to maintain a big army. If we capture and keep Jerusalem and maybe Constantinople, then we'll need armies to defend against both Cape Town and the templar lands.

[T-hawk]

We have until the end of next turn to change civics. Let's see what happens with Imperio peace first.