Hey! I was the one (or one of the ones) who tweeted his video to your team, amazing to see a company so willing so work with new promising creators, I'll definitely be signing up for skill share
I am not trying to be a negative nancy butI can't stand the way every informational youtube video articulates their voice this way. It's almost unwatchable since every video since 2016 where random youtube videos were trying to affect the way I vote. Not to mention, It's filled with so much erroneous information because of the way the information is presented, the length of the video should be 1/5th of it's length.
I'd go with the rule of thumb: City has a bunch of amazing tiles in its first ring? Granary, so it works them all sooner. City has mediocre tiles in first ring, but good tiles farther out? Monument, so it grabs those tiles faster. Also, resources like silk that give culture give me an incentive to build granary first, while having Banana or Horses or such in the second ring, Monument first seems good to grab those quick. Of course the whole thing may fall apart if you got the money to just buy the tiles or even the granary/monument right away.
Monument is especialy better ealry games due that 2 culture is a huge % improvement so you can unlock goverments and policys faster to make produktion more cost effective. I mean policys encourage you to play communist style if you catch my drift. Focus on settlers and military if you have the 50% for it and then switch it out to get the most bang of the production. Anyway in early game you should just consider geting granary if you risk geting over population when there are more production/gold etc avilable you can get with bigger population. In the end there are no golden rule due to every city is unique, sometimes is best to get a worker first. One thing that you should do in most multiplayer games in citys is to start build a wall and switch so opponent think there is a wall comming up soon so it might be good consider to not attack that city unless you have the force to handel the walls or else you waste a loot of time..
I mean skill share is an actual good site, and we all have to pay for bills. I wouldn't mind either! As long as he doesn't take sponsors just to take sponsors. I like when TH-camrs go with sponsors that they actually use and believe in!
Connotation of selling out is a bad one, no? I mean, couldn't we describe it in a different light that he's innovative and finding ways to continue creating content sustainably? I love his videos-- this one was awesome, too.
It's impressive to see a youtube video say "this is where my study fell short" instead of "so yeah this pretty much 100% proves why I'm right no need to ask questions" 10/10 for scientific method
Potato, you could use world builder... you make 2 cities have the same tiles and just compare it? Hopefully a good advice made by me. UwU. I assume you did some reloading for this video or maybe even just basic calculations (didn't finish the video yet).
@@PotatoMcWhiskey You can do real world on two identical cities. you could test "A coastal city with bad production" and then change it to run "A city with a 2/2 tile" or "a city surrounded by 2/2 tiles" or whatever config you want to test. then you can just shift+enter to gather the next turn of data
Well you could probably just add the same amount of faith as culture to the monument graph. Since it provides either plus 1 or plus 2 faith along with the regular monument bonuses. So in the end you'd get 50 more yields than granary first.
You've really honed in on your target audience with your videos recently. Please continue to help focus on the ancient era! What is realistic to accomplish in the first era of the game. I find for example as Sparta that I am conflicted between building a phalanax of hoplites and capitalizing on a high yields district.
I'd say that stuff depends more on the situation than anything else. If theres not room to expand and you have an ai with bad relations near you, phalanx is the way to go. However, if you've got a good amount of space and friendly relations with your AI neighbors, its probably best to focus on district and get great yields from international trade routes
I got an advertisement on 2/3rds in about some yet-another-kitchen-wondertool, taking a Potato and shredding it to hundreds of pieces. TH-cam Ad placement AI is a psychopath.
Do let me know if you want any help with some of these analyses (as a lot of my job and expertise is in modelling of optimal decision making and 'real options' and I love playing civ and it is great to see somebody else being interested in the more numberphile and nerdy aspects of the game.)
Another benefit that I think cannot be ignored is border growth in a city with a monument early. Especially in a situation like that of Ulm in this video, potentially competing for tiles with a neighbouring city.
A potentially more time-efficient way to experiment more with such scenarios as these is to artificially construct them in the map builder first, and play with minimal AI interference so as to get consistent results (on a duel map, perhaps). That way you don't have to try and spend more time trying to find good spots to test your theories.
I think there are too many variables to ever have a definitive answer. I tend to go monument first in the early game when the culture you get from it, per turn, has an actual impact, but that impact has a steep decline once you're earning 30-40-50+ culture per turn. At the same time I might settle an early city that has great potential in the long run but might struggle early, in which case the granary is quite useful. Then there are the games I don't bother with either because I've got plenty of food and housing, plenty of culture, and I need units because the AI keeps attacking me. I would definitely enjoy more comparison videos like this, though.
For the long term benefits of the granary I would argue that you're going to hit population plateau's driven by housing limitations that would allow a monument start to catch up to a granary start in the intermediary ages (in terms of population). Additionally, it can be easy to rush your population from chopping which if done strategically can immediately catch you back up the turn after you build your granary.
Hey Potato, big fan and great video! A couple notes: I would try to coordinate the colors a little more. The purple being associated with granary first was a bit confusing since we generally attribute purple to culture and that makes a little more sense for monument first I know you talked about how time consuming the video-making process is for these kinda of videos. Would you consider livestreaming your test runs? I try to watch your livestreams whenever I can and would definitely tune into one like this (even if it's in the background during work) I'd love to see an "ideal" coastal settle. I think a coastal settle next to bananas, for example, would change the outcome drastically Thanks for the huge amount of time and effort you put into your content! I've been using your videos to bring my friends up to speed with civ since they are just starting out due to the quarantine. Not only are you allowing us to enjoy civ more, but you make it so much easier to share our love for this game with friends and family :)
Hey Potato, I've been a viewer for a long time, and love your videos when I have time to watch them. I also have a type of red-green colorblindness, it doesn't really affect me much in a usual day but being an engineering student it can be a mild bother when looking through slides or at graphs and stuff. Those colors were perfect and I actually really enjoyed that you took the time to call it out when almost no body does. So I just wanted to say thanks, also Irish Pride!!
You see this often in scientific papers, where things are still getting printed into magazines. Moreover, I'd chose the colors thematically. I'd have put the monument graph in purple (cause culture is purple in the game). If comparing two things to each other, try using the "split screen" more often, like you did when showing the overall differences in each yield at the end. This makes it much easier to grab the absolute numbers in comparison while you are speaking. I really enjoyed the introduction tbh, when talking about the theoretical advantages each option has. This with the following number crunching really helps understanding your reasoning. Keep it up.
Some constructive criticism for editing these: your graphs really tell the whole story, try to show them earlier and you'll find you have a lot less explaining to do while getting your point across sooner and clearer. No offense, but I don't think people are very interested in hearing you speak only numbers from 6:43 all to 8:04 when we already know how the experiment works. Show *and* tell simultaneously, that's the key.
@@PotatoMcWhiskey Also if you're using purple and yellow for the graph.... Maybe monument being purple (cause culture) and granary being yellow was better? :P It's one of those things that's easy to associate mentally. Oh green=growth, blue=science, orange = production, purple = culture. So yellow being kinda between green and orange fits perfect for granary. Either way, another thing you should consider is using trackers for "Growth". As in, I had no way of knowing "When did pop grow compared to the other version". Just a single marker on both the graphs, saying "Pop grew to 2/3/4". In terms of long term city planning, pop growth is much more important, and it allows us to mentally put better markers on it. "Oh so 30 turns in, the granary city has one pop more, so if you have a more growth heavy city than the video, I'll always focus granary first". And so on
@@adithyavraajkumar5923 I mean... Yellow/Purple is same as using Purple/Yellow, except Culture being purple makes more sense. I'm sure there are websites/ways to find versions of normal colours that are colour blind friendly. But it's good to keep track of "Oh purple is culture" alongside
I came into this vid with the opinion of granaries being king (aside from water wheels) but now I can see how monument first could snowball border growth into getting better tiles to improve your city even when not worked (+0.5 housing from farms, amenities from luxuries, etc) or just buy both with gold LUL
Yellow and purple work well for the graphs even though I prefer the yellow to be a little bit lighter. Very informative video. Thank you for caring about all of your viewers.
You might test how many turns earlier you can get a tier 1 government and add those benefits to your monument-first data. It sounds to me like this data supports - fresh water = monument first - coastal = monument first (before t1 government), else Granary first. - Granary first (after t1 government)
I don’t envy your task when it comes to data-collection and testing. I literally do physics research over the summer, but when it comes to civ strategy I’m like “oh christ that’s too much” Also: I’d love to see an appeal breakdown: base appeal for each terrain type and appeal modifiers from nearby improvements.
I usually go granary first to build up the city; monuments get you more culture and increase the cities tiles. It's really hard to decide which is best without studying the terrain & circumstances of the civilization you are playing.
Thanks, that’s a really good explanation. I’d say the big value in monument is to get to your first government quicker as it unlocks a lot more policies and makes the first big progress in your game overall. 👍
Oh. My. God. As a statistics and spreadsheet guy I absolutely love this style of video! Thank you for the effort and consideration you put into the investigation. I’m getting strong Jon Bois vibes and would 100% recommend his channel as a reference if you look to improve the style and delivery of this number heavy content.
didn't even know granary first was a thing, the only time I would consider granary first is my later settles on the coast. The cost of things is so high that the only thing possible to build is granary or monument in the mid-game. In the early game, there are so many more important things to focus on in order to snowball that these two minor buildings really should not be prioritised. I do build monuments from time to time if I can get away with it and I think this test supports that idea. Good job!
Hey potato, for addressing all types of colour blindness you should rely on non-colour-based indicators, such as changing the style of the lines (dashed lines, or lines graphs made our of shapes). Adding this to the already created colour palette will make sure that everybody understands the graphs!
It’s funny that just as Rome cities starts with a monument, there’s no civilisation with cities starting with a granary. I would have chosen Egypt for that ability for instance.
I appreciate that you tried your best to slow down your speech in this one. Though you did sound a little in pain. As a person who struggles with colours, your yellow in the graph looks more like somewhere between green and brown to me.
The conditions of your test actually bias it towards a granary. My logic is that 1 of the benefits of the monument is getting access to better tiles earlier. The extra turns that a worker could work that jungle tile is extra production per turn in favor of the monument which would also get that granary out a few turns earlier. (much in the same way the extra pop was generating additional production) Another consideration for building in your coastal capital is that you may miss some inspirations due to the extra culture per turn. While this won't completely offset the benefit of the culture per turn from the monument it will mitigate it's benefits a little bit. I don't know if this applies for future cities as much. I imagine it would have to have some impact but it could be immaterial.
I would suggest that if you do indeed follow up on this experiment that you try a game where you have no chance of interacting with your opponents. This will probably save you allot of time testing, without it interfering with the yields. In the same vien of thought you are now testing your 3th city. Perhaps if you next time test this on your second city it will again save you some time. Lastly switching off barbarian spawn is also something I would recommend.
A hotseat game with a custom map may be the best way to eliminate other variables in testing. You can set up a game with the same nation multiple times and the exact same map conditions for each player and test multiple variables at the same time this way too. Plus if you standardize these things you may be able to get others to help you collect data if you're interested in that sort of thing with the community
I'd go with 5 islands. 1 Island for the capital, 1 for the opponent, and then 3 near-identical islands with simply the water source varying (Add river, add ocean coast tile, no water)
Thanks for making the graphs accessible. Since you mentioned it - a handy tip that works for all colour blindness is changing the line styles, making them solid, dotted or dashed, etc. for different curves. Cool video though!
I believe you did answer the question. You made a viable test, analized it properly, and could not reach a definitive answer. Which then turns into a "it varies on your early goal", and varies from city to city, civilization and other conditions. Knowing that the reply is not simple is knowledge as well.
So like you said earlier, settling on a river means build a monument first since you wont need the benefit of extra housing. If you are elsewhere, granary first is a good way to go.
I'm always putting big emphasis on upgrading at least a few tiles near my new cities so I value growth quite highly because the faster my city grows the faster those yields contribute to the city.
May I suggest delegating some of the work to the community? If you share the save with trusted Spuddies, draw up a clear format for how each trial should be run, and define how data is to be recorded, you could potentially complete dozens of more trials than you would otherwise have been able to do on your own. All that would be left for you to do, Potato, is compile the data and wrap it all up in a nice video.
My take is that early game, having that +2 culture is hugely helpful to your empire overall. When you consider the civics tree as a factor vs purely looking at yields, unless you REALLY need a bunch of tiles worked quickly or you're at war, the monument is better. The only time I'd consider granary first is if you're later in the game and you're settling a city on a coast that has some poor yield tiles in the inner ring and really needs that food / housing boost. Still though, an interesting and well-made video. Good stuff.
This video was exceptional. It was a monumental contribution to the Civ player base. It was well-researched, well-written, well-presented, and well-prepared. You even used the scientific method and deemed your own work as insufficient to be considered a rigorous empirical study. When you completed this tedious task after hours of watching digits, rather than finally put it behind you and give us a quick rundown, “so basically long run go granary but for culture win or early success go monument,” you declared that MUCH more testing needed to be done. As someone who is new to the 4X genre, I have never seen such dedication to min-maxing in my life. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you put into this quality content. I feel privileged to consume it for free.
I feel like trade routes are always a conundrum for me. Should you go for money or food and production? International trade or national? Would love to see a more in depth video going into detail of trade routes and how to use them efficient!
I usually go fo internal routes so i can boost new cities to being useful but you must take in consideration that trading with other civs will improve relations and may cut you some slack on warring early
Early game: domestic trade route to support budding cities Mid to Late game: international because of alliances Sending a trader to neighboring civ early game pleases the AI. Or play as Poland and build their unique market.
you brought data to the argument and that helps me decide, also the difference seems slight. so that is good, and yes added up over 30 cities over 500 turns and slight ripples do become a wave.
Just a little point of note: if you were going to use pink and brown, you should have set T1 as pink (with pink signifying the monument's culture boost) and T2 as brown (the brown being the brown granary). At least, that felt like the most natural colour scheme to me, and it took me a while to figure out why the numbers seemed inverted.
Potato, I'm severely colorblind and struggle with games and work as a result. It means so much to me that you took the time to make it easier on people like me I got up out of my chair to grab my phone to leave this comment and that says a lot lmao. I was watching on PS4 btw and dont think theres a way to leave a comment there. Thanks bro. Love your vids. Keep up the great work.
I think definitely a granary in cities with really bad food, coastal city if it has a lot of good tiles to work nearby and even coastal cities in general, but monument in most fresh water cities
Once the Monument to the Old Gods is in the game I will be putting those up ASAP to help summon a Cthulu or two to my side. Which makes this video irrelevant ;) Great vid and good at-a-glance analysis!
Love the vids! Keep up the awesome work my starchy brother! Small tip: In your initial graph at 8:22, you have monument 1st as purple and granary as yellow-brown, but in the series on 8:28 you swap the colors, which is doubly confusing because the colors swapped meaning , and because you'd think monument as purple cuz culture and granary as yellow-brown cuz food
Shoutout to @PotatoMcWhiskey for being lowkey one of the best TH-camrs out there! He’s dedicated, particular, smart and he always keeps it real with us, whether he feels good or bad. I know this job is demanding, bro. But you nail it, and we appreciate it 🙂
I think it's a matter of where the most valuable tiles to work are in relation to your city. If your city has the most highly valued tiles in the 2nd or 3rd ring away from your city then the monument is more valuable than granary early because you get access to the tiles you want to be working with your population sooner; or if the 1st ring has some desert and/or mountains.
Another factor not accounted for is border growth. In the City of Ulm it was right next to a city stat, and while city state borders only grow when they receive an envoy you never know when the ai will send an envoy and take away a potential tile.
This video is fantastic. I know it took a LOT of work, but if you're able to make more of these I think they're super helpful and unique among content out there. Thank you for making this!
Love the format of the analysis. Thanks potato! Look forward to more such analyses in the future. It may be too complex- but using analysis to review things like city build locations (and how quickly to spread cities versus building tall in start game) would be cool.
Thanks for the effort in this it really shows! Love to see more content like this super useful for in game use. Good luck w getting the sponsorship man you deserve it.
I personally think granaries are stronger for exactly the same reasoning you said monuments are stronger : stuff now is better than stiff later, and granaries let me get builders, settlers etc more quickly. This is because I think production is much more important early, when you're in the main expansion phase of the empire and are racing for good city locations, or military strength. So I'm really curious what your further tests might show.
This! More food means more growth which means more of my favorite yield, Production, which itself creates more of the other yields! Plus early on, I like to focus heavily on getting a bunch of settlers out, and population growth is utterly invaluable for that. But to be fair, I do acknowledge that I undervalue culture, and I usually lag behind everyone else culturally. 😅
I usually go monument first so that my borders expand earlier. If my borders are not near another colony or the threat of having another colony settling next to me is pretty low then I'll go granary first.
Huge supporter of your videos, the quality has been off the charts recently. I happily tweeted your video at skill share to let them know they need to contact you asap, hope you continue to grow man your content is incredible
super cool video idea, theres so many variable you have to look out for as far as what your civilization values more, growth, culture, maybe you settled near a wonder which gives culture yields, in which case an extra 1 culture may be a bit less valuable in favor of getting more pop to work that tile, maybe you settled a city with poor inner ring yields, but excellent outer ring(strategic resources, luxuries, etc) in that case, quicker city growth will actually be more beneficial than slightly quicker pop growth. but in general this does give us a good idea of what each building will give as a baseline compared to the other.
To make a more imperial test you could try many different city locations including different combos of grassland, plains, desert, tundra, hills, coast, water availability, amenities, etc. to do that though you would need a better way to test than random seeds (i.e. a custom map) and compare the averages of these values all using the same leader or even a custom leader with no bonuses in order to remove any other variables Edit: you might want to have your community help you collect data because it would be a lot of work for one person.
Personally, I break it down by city. Usually, a builder first, then decide whether or not I need a monument for culture. Typically, I favor the monument over a granary as I settle most of the time in rivers, but if the city needs a granary first I'll go that route. Usually, in my games a district is going up before a granary. Is like to see a video on how to spend your gold. Keep up the great work Potato
I used to do that too but builders in new cities (early game) are usually not a good choice. That because even if you have great tiles to improve, your city growth will be too slow in order to work them anyway (unless you have +4 food +some production on a tile). Also in the very beggining of the game you wont have the necessary techs to improve them anyway.
I generally avoid builders entirely for a good chunk of the start game, simply because the barbarians are too aggressive and end up pillaging my tiles. Then I'm just wasting my time making another builder later to repair the tiles.
I prefer to purchase builders, or transport them from my capital when the city needs help getting up to speed, since I only improve resources or capital tiles early on
I'm confused. Is there already a video about villages on freshwater? The food growth means extra pop growth (if you're not near your limit already) and the decrease in prod hurts... - but to be fair to monument you'd really need to make use of the extra cards you get when government changes. -- Maybe play a game where you build monument first in all cities and replay granary first trying to keep other things the same? :D Gosh the work tracking it all would be tremendous. Wonder if Civ team did somehow.
I guess it also depends on what yields you prioritize/lack. If your civ is already good at science maybe you need the culture more or maybe you should spearhead those yields even more. But yeah as you say, the variables become so many and evaluating the result isn't always straight forward either
It's factorial unless repeat choices (army units) are allowed: 4 choose 3 choose 2 choose 1. 4! = 24. With repeats, it can be 4^4 unless it's unique like a granary or a monument where only one can be built.
I find my civs fall into 2 categories, culture starved or so much culture I grossly outstrip my production capability. Which means build monument first a little more often I suppose. Though if a new city starts with some tiles that would greatly boost it through improvement I often start builder first. I understand the abstract of tiles with resources is difficult to pin down, but I would be interested to see if this is a reasonable situational choice or outright incorrect.
If you want to test more rigorously, consider creating a map where you can always spawn at with the desired yields/location. That way if you really wanted to (yo don't have to but it'd be cool to know) when creating a Petra desert city or a tundra, in the rainforest or just in a river lush location.
Great content as always Potato. Your videos are super helpful to my games and I’d love to see more videos like Overexplained and this focused sort of style here. Thanks!
I feel like you're explaining the struggles I had as a 30 year old going back to university. All the kids around me were extremely used to the Google web programs like Sheets, Docs, and Slides and I'm sitting there like "I can do it in Microsoft Office, but I have no idea how to use Google's version." Luckily, a lot of the teachers included tutorials in how to do all the various stuff required of us in class - like creating charts and graphs. I was endlessly frustrated by how Google just didn't bother including some basic formatting stuff tho. There was just so much missing from their web programs that are included in open source office programs like Libre and I don't know why!
An addendum to this breakdown that I'd like to see (but that wouldn't merit its own video) would be worker-granary-monument and worker-monument-granary builds compared. Although there would have to be some caveats about techs completed when it comes to which tile improvements are available. Looking forward to more deep dives into the nitty gritty. Keep them charts comin!!!
PotatoMcWhiskey I loved the analysis, great video man. As I was watching I remembered something: Monuments yield gold indirectly as well, since your borders will expand faster hence saving you money (might be a good factor to take into account for future analysis :D)
Great video! I personally think that putting out all the numbers on the screen provides relatively little value. What matters in the end are: - How fast are both buildings built, with each combination? - What are the differences in yield after both buildings are built with each order? All the intermediate data isn't really that powerful. Thanks for the exploration! I think empirical testing on this is really tough, because there are a million scenarios to be tested. Maybe the exploration can be done in theory. You could ask yourself a question and then think about how it interacts with the system. What happens if a player is low on amenities? What happens if the city has few/a lot of production/food? Maybe a custom map could help to isolate one variable at the time. Anyways, good luck and thanks for the insights!
Good stuff Potato. Our team will send over an email. 👏
Hey! I was the one (or one of the ones) who tweeted his video to your team, amazing to see a company so willing so work with new promising creators, I'll definitely be signing up for skill share
Impressive, most impressive
That is sweet! Good work Potato!
I am not trying to be a negative nancy butI can't stand the way every informational youtube video articulates their voice this way. It's almost unwatchable since every video since 2016 where random youtube videos were trying to affect the way I vote. Not to mention, It's filled with so much erroneous information because of the way the information is presented, the length of the video should be 1/5th of it's length.
@@Hairybuffalo I'm sure it wouldn't be so bad if TH-cam wasn't borderline criminal in the way they "pay" their content creators. Blame TH-cam.
Putting in a non-sponsored sponsor spot may just be the biggest brain play that I've seen in order to get a channel sponsor XD
Sounds like you got inspiration for your vids now eh? hah
Reminds me of Inside the NBA. "Presented byyyyyy no one" lol
@@Copperhell144 great reference
Worked for the Spiffing Brit. Yorkshire Tea finally sponsored him!
@@petertrudelljr only for one video tho
I'd go with the rule of thumb: City has a bunch of amazing tiles in its first ring? Granary, so it works them all sooner.
City has mediocre tiles in first ring, but good tiles farther out? Monument, so it grabs those tiles faster.
Also, resources like silk that give culture give me an incentive to build granary first, while having Banana or Horses or such in the second ring, Monument first seems good to grab those quick.
Of course the whole thing may fall apart if you got the money to just buy the tiles or even the granary/monument right away.
Monument is especialy better ealry games due that 2 culture is a huge % improvement so you can unlock goverments and policys faster to make produktion more cost effective.
I mean policys encourage you to play communist style if you catch my drift.
Focus on settlers and military if you have the 50% for it and then switch it out to get the most bang of the production.
Anyway in early game you should just consider geting granary if you risk geting over population when there are more production/gold etc avilable you can get with bigger population.
In the end there are no golden rule due to every city is unique, sometimes is best to get a worker first.
One thing that you should do in most multiplayer games in citys is to start build a wall and switch so opponent think there is a wall comming up soon so it might be good consider to not attack that city unless you have the force to handel the walls or else you waste a loot of time..
I tend to be a money-grubber, so I tend to try to buy things when I can. Will try to keep this rule of thumb in mind, though.
exactly, they are so close by the numbers that i think the biggest factor is grabbing tiles with culture from the Monument
“With all that being said, I’m going with a settler first” -potato
Potato’s openness towards selling out and getting sponsored is enough for me to not mind if he actually gets sponsored and includes ads in his videos
I mean skill share is an actual good site, and we all have to pay for bills. I wouldn't mind either! As long as he doesn't take sponsors just to take sponsors. I like when TH-camrs go with sponsors that they actually use and believe in!
I don’t care when youtubers gets sponsors at all. I’m not going to complain about their livelihood over something I can just click past in 2 seconds.
Connotation of selling out is a bad one, no? I mean, couldn't we describe it in a different light that he's innovative and finding ways to continue creating content sustainably? I love his videos-- this one was awesome, too.
thats why sponser skip exists
As long as he's not getting sponsored by the monument or the granary I don't see the problem..
I'm color blind and the chart looks very clear to me. Thank you.
I should specify, my color blindness is red-green (mild).
Thanks very much, I am color blind myself. So few people ever address this. So refreshing!
Ditto
Yes same here!!
Hey Potato, the mystery amenity at 10:20 came from Mexico City improving their spices and giving them to you.
It's impressive to see a youtube video say "this is where my study fell short" instead of "so yeah this pretty much 100% proves why I'm right no need to ask questions"
10/10 for scientific method
Everyone else: should I build Granary or monument first 🤔
Me: laughs in Roman
You mean Latin
I made an error at 4:56 when I spoke, but the numbers on screen are correct.
Potato, you could use world builder... you make 2 cities have the same tiles and just compare it? Hopefully a good advice made by me. UwU.
I assume you did some reloading for this video or maybe even just basic calculations (didn't finish the video yet).
@@robertposaric6419 I wanted real world tests
lol
Potato hearting his own comment. Never change dude, never change
@@PotatoMcWhiskey You can do real world on two identical cities. you could test "A coastal city with bad production" and then change it to run "A city with a 2/2 tile" or "a city surrounded by 2/2 tiles" or whatever config you want to test. then you can just shift+enter to gather the next turn of data
Wonder how the new secret societies and the old god monument will affect this.
We will see that soon...
considering that there is no special granary, I think it is pretty obvious which is best.
I’m wondering what is going to be the new adjacency to other districts regards to the diplomacy district.
Rome is gonna be crazy with that lol
Well you could probably just add the same amount of faith as culture to the monument graph. Since it provides either plus 1 or plus 2 faith along with the regular monument bonuses. So in the end you'd get 50 more yields than granary first.
You've really honed in on your target audience with your videos recently. Please continue to help focus on the ancient era! What is realistic to accomplish in the first era of the game. I find for example as Sparta that I am conflicted between building a phalanax of hoplites and capitalizing on a high yields district.
I'd say that stuff depends more on the situation than anything else. If theres not room to expand and you have an ai with bad relations near you, phalanx is the way to go. However, if you've got a good amount of space and friendly relations with your AI neighbors, its probably best to focus on district and get great yields from international trade routes
I got an advertisement on 2/3rds in about some yet-another-kitchen-wondertool, taking a Potato and shredding it to hundreds of pieces. TH-cam Ad placement AI is a psychopath.
Great to see you investigate these questions (semi) quantitatively. I would definitely like to see more of these.
Do let me know if you want any help with some of these analyses (as a lot of my job and expertise is in modelling of optimal decision making and 'real options' and I love playing civ and it is great to see somebody else being interested in the more numberphile and nerdy aspects of the game.)
Another benefit that I think cannot be ignored is border growth in a city with a monument early. Especially in a situation like that of Ulm in this video, potentially competing for tiles with a neighbouring city.
A potentially more time-efficient way to experiment more with such scenarios as these is to artificially construct them in the map builder first, and play with minimal AI interference so as to get consistent results (on a duel map, perhaps). That way you don't have to try and spend more time trying to find good spots to test your theories.
Would be interesting to see the same tests of 2f+1p hills, but with a plains hill city center (2f+2p) start.
I agree. A sterile, artificial environment created just for testing would make this job a whole lot easier for ya.
The Spirit of the Law Methodology.
I think there are too many variables to ever have a definitive answer. I tend to go monument first in the early game when the culture you get from it, per turn, has an actual impact, but that impact has a steep decline once you're earning 30-40-50+ culture per turn. At the same time I might settle an early city that has great potential in the long run but might struggle early, in which case the granary is quite useful. Then there are the games I don't bother with either because I've got plenty of food and housing, plenty of culture, and I need units because the AI keeps attacking me.
I would definitely enjoy more comparison videos like this, though.
For the long term benefits of the granary I would argue that you're going to hit population plateau's driven by housing limitations that would allow a monument start to catch up to a granary start in the intermediary ages (in terms of population).
Additionally, it can be easy to rush your population from chopping which if done strategically can immediately catch you back up the turn after you build your granary.
I would add that monument first, before you have your first government - it has big impact. After that, granary first.
Hey Potato, big fan and great video! A couple notes:
I would try to coordinate the colors a little more. The purple being associated with granary first was a bit confusing since we generally attribute purple to culture and that makes a little more sense for monument first
I know you talked about how time consuming the video-making process is for these kinda of videos. Would you consider livestreaming your test runs? I try to watch your livestreams whenever I can and would definitely tune into one like this (even if it's in the background during work)
I'd love to see an "ideal" coastal settle. I think a coastal settle next to bananas, for example, would change the outcome drastically
Thanks for the huge amount of time and effort you put into your content! I've been using your videos to bring my friends up to speed with civ since they are just starting out due to the quarantine. Not only are you allowing us to enjoy civ more, but you make it so much easier to share our love for this game with friends and family :)
Hey Potato, I've been a viewer for a long time, and love your videos when I have time to watch them. I also have a type of red-green colorblindness, it doesn't really affect me much in a usual day but being an engineering student it can be a mild bother when looking through slides or at graphs and stuff. Those colors were perfect and I actually really enjoyed that you took the time to call it out when almost no body does. So I just wanted to say thanks, also Irish Pride!!
Graph Color Blind Old Tip...vary lines style from Solid, Dashed, Hyphenated, Dotted Lines etc. (Cheaper to photocopy back in the day b4 internet)
You see this often in scientific papers, where things are still getting printed into magazines.
Moreover, I'd chose the colors thematically. I'd have put the monument graph in purple (cause culture is purple in the game).
If comparing two things to each other, try using the "split screen" more often, like you did when showing the overall differences in each yield at the end. This makes it much easier to grab the absolute numbers in comparison while you are speaking.
I really enjoyed the introduction tbh, when talking about the theoretical advantages each option has. This with the following number crunching really helps understanding your reasoning. Keep it up.
There was a BEFORE the Internet?
@@Eidenhoek underrated comment
Some constructive criticism for editing these: your graphs really tell the whole story, try to show them earlier and you'll find you have a lot less explaining to do while getting your point across sooner and clearer. No offense, but I don't think people are very interested in hearing you speak only numbers from 6:43 all to 8:04 when we already know how the experiment works. Show *and* tell simultaneously, that's the key.
Fair call! I'll make some changes next time, this was the first attempt at something this numbers heavy
Not sure how long have you been watching this channel, but I pretty much come here just hear him talk, no matter how long.
@@PotatoMcWhiskey Also if you're using purple and yellow for the graph.... Maybe monument being purple (cause culture) and granary being yellow was better? :P
It's one of those things that's easy to associate mentally. Oh green=growth, blue=science, orange = production, purple = culture. So yellow being kinda between green and orange fits perfect for granary.
Either way, another thing you should consider is using trackers for "Growth". As in, I had no way of knowing "When did pop grow compared to the other version". Just a single marker on both the graphs, saying "Pop grew to 2/3/4".
In terms of long term city planning, pop growth is much more important, and it allows us to mentally put better markers on it. "Oh so 30 turns in, the granary city has one pop more, so if you have a more growth heavy city than the video, I'll always focus granary first". And so on
@@soni5996 I think he said he tried to make it colour-blind friendly...but your idea makes more sense tbh
@@adithyavraajkumar5923 I mean... Yellow/Purple is same as using Purple/Yellow, except Culture being purple makes more sense.
I'm sure there are websites/ways to find versions of normal colours that are colour blind friendly. But it's good to keep track of "Oh purple is culture" alongside
Just saying, I really like this smaller format for videos. It's much easier to watch than hour-long videos.
8:35 the next level up is to use different line features (thicker/thinner/tight dashes/dots/solid line/ spaced dashes).
I came into this vid with the opinion of granaries being king (aside from water wheels) but now I can see how monument first could snowball border growth into getting better tiles to improve your city even when not worked (+0.5 housing from farms, amenities from luxuries, etc)
or just buy both with gold LUL
Mansa Musa has entered the chat.
Why not both?
From the title I thought an monument and an granary were going to fight. Shame.
I would love to see more analyses like this one! Even with the limited variables, it was extremely informative.
Maybe one comparing religious beliefs?
Tim B that’s a tough one. There are too many possibilities to even count them.
If it took 8 hours to do that one then I wouldn't get your hopes up!
Let's analyses 46 possibilities multiplied by infinite!
Doesn't your day feel better too when potato says, "I love you all very much?" It feels so connected with everyone. We love you too! 😁😁
But you didn't get a love emoji from potato
@@JohnInSingapore big facts
I prefer it when he says 'it is what it is'
Yellow and purple work well for the graphs even though I prefer the yellow to be a little bit lighter.
Very informative video. Thank you for caring about all of your viewers.
You might test how many turns earlier you can get a tier 1 government and add those benefits to your monument-first data.
It sounds to me like this data supports
- fresh water = monument first
- coastal = monument first (before t1 government), else Granary first.
- Granary first (after t1 government)
Variations of policy card turns should make monument winner in most cases.
I don’t envy your task when it comes to data-collection and testing. I literally do physics research over the summer, but when it comes to civ strategy I’m like “oh christ that’s too much”
Also: I’d love to see an appeal breakdown: base appeal for each terrain type and appeal modifiers from nearby improvements.
I usually go granary first to build up the city; monuments get you more culture and increase the cities tiles. It's really hard to decide which is best without studying the terrain & circumstances of the civilization you are playing.
Thanks, that’s a really good explanation. I’d say the big value in monument is to get to your first government quicker as it unlocks a lot more policies and makes the first big progress in your game overall. 👍
Oh. My. God. As a statistics and spreadsheet guy I absolutely love this style of video! Thank you for the effort and consideration you put into the investigation. I’m getting strong Jon Bois vibes and would 100% recommend his channel as a reference if you look to improve the style and delivery of this number heavy content.
didn't even know granary first was a thing, the only time I would consider granary first is my later settles on the coast. The cost of things is so high that the only thing possible to build is granary or monument in the mid-game.
In the early game, there are so many more important things to focus on in order to snowball that these two minor buildings really should not be prioritised. I do build monuments from time to time if I can get away with it and I think this test supports that idea.
Good job!
Hey potato, for addressing all types of colour blindness you should rely on non-colour-based indicators, such as changing the style of the lines (dashed lines, or lines graphs made our of shapes). Adding this to the already created colour palette will make sure that everybody understands the graphs!
2:23 the legend has spawned, this game of civ is already over
Eu4 reference?
yep
I'm always glad to see an Eu4 reference around these parts.
It’s funny that just as Rome cities starts with a monument, there’s no civilisation with cities starting with a granary. I would have chosen Egypt for that ability for instance.
Nah. They have to build the pyramids to get their granaries. Or so I've heard...
Actual colorblind here, can confirm it was easy to differenciate lines. Loved the skillshare cameo!
I appreciate that you tried your best to slow down your speech in this one. Though you did sound a little in pain. As a person who struggles with colours, your yellow in the graph looks more like somewhere between green and brown to me.
With Australia, coastal cities get the same amount of housing as a standard city that is next to fresh water.
"..stuff now is worth more than stuff later". Don't tell that to compound interest.
I appreciate your videos.
The graphs make your lessons much easier to follow. Please keep up this type of work. This is the reason why you are my go to Civ 6 channel.
The conditions of your test actually bias it towards a granary.
My logic is that 1 of the benefits of the monument is getting access to better tiles earlier. The extra turns that a worker could work that jungle tile is extra production per turn in favor of the monument which would also get that granary out a few turns earlier. (much in the same way the extra pop was generating additional production)
Another consideration for building in your coastal capital is that you may miss some inspirations due to the extra culture per turn. While this won't completely offset the benefit of the culture per turn from the monument it will mitigate it's benefits a little bit.
I don't know if this applies for future cities as much. I imagine it would have to have some impact but it could be immaterial.
I would suggest that if you do indeed follow up on this experiment that you try a game where you have no chance of interacting with your opponents. This will probably save you allot of time testing, without it interfering with the yields. In the same vien of thought you are now testing your 3th city. Perhaps if you next time test this on your second city it will again save you some time. Lastly switching off barbarian spawn is also something I would recommend.
The watermill: imma about to end yous whole careeri
A hotseat game with a custom map may be the best way to eliminate other variables in testing. You can set up a game with the same nation multiple times and the exact same map conditions for each player and test multiple variables at the same time this way too. Plus if you standardize these things you may be able to get others to help you collect data if you're interested in that sort of thing with the community
I'd go with 5 islands. 1 Island for the capital, 1 for the opponent, and then 3 near-identical islands with simply the water source varying (Add river, add ocean coast tile, no water)
Thanks for making the graphs accessible. Since you mentioned it - a handy tip that works for all colour blindness is changing the line styles, making them solid, dotted or dashed, etc. for different curves.
Cool video though!
I believe you did answer the question. You made a viable test, analized it properly, and could not reach a definitive answer. Which then turns into a "it varies on your early goal", and varies from city to city, civilization and other conditions. Knowing that the reply is not simple is knowledge as well.
Local man talks about monuments and granaries for 13 minutes. Nice video though.
I live in Ulm. Did not notice until now that there was a beach nearby, happy to check it out tomorrow!
So like you said earlier, settling on a river means build a monument first since you wont need the benefit of extra housing. If you are elsewhere, granary first is a good way to go.
I'm always putting big emphasis on upgrading at least a few tiles near my new cities so I value growth quite highly because the faster my city grows the faster those yields contribute to the city.
May I suggest delegating some of the work to the community?
If you share the save with trusted Spuddies, draw up a clear format for how each trial should be run, and define how data is to be recorded, you could potentially complete dozens of more trials than you would otherwise have been able to do on your own.
All that would be left for you to do, Potato, is compile the data and wrap it all up in a nice video.
For non-Capital cities, I generally go Monument -> Builder -> District
Same order for the Capital but with a scout first
My take is that early game, having that +2 culture is hugely helpful to your empire overall. When you consider the civics tree as a factor vs purely looking at yields, unless you REALLY need a bunch of tiles worked quickly or you're at war, the monument is better. The only time I'd consider granary first is if you're later in the game and you're settling a city on a coast that has some poor yield tiles in the inner ring and really needs that food / housing boost.
Still though, an interesting and well-made video. Good stuff.
This video was exceptional. It was a monumental contribution to the Civ player base. It was well-researched, well-written, well-presented, and well-prepared. You even used the scientific method and deemed your own work as insufficient to be considered a rigorous empirical study. When you completed this tedious task after hours of watching digits, rather than finally put it behind you and give us a quick rundown, “so basically long run go granary but for culture win or early success go monument,” you declared that MUCH more testing needed to be done. As someone who is new to the 4X genre, I have never seen such dedication to min-maxing in my life. Thank you so much for all of the hard work you put into this quality content. I feel privileged to consume it for free.
Thank you for considering my disabled eyes, huge shoutout to PotatoMcWhiskey
I feel like trade routes are always a conundrum for me. Should you go for money or food and production? International trade or national? Would love to see a more in depth video going into detail of trade routes and how to use them efficient!
I usually go fo internal routes so i can boost new cities to being useful but you must take in consideration that trading with other civs will improve relations and may cut you some slack on warring early
Almost always international
Early game: domestic trade route to support budding cities
Mid to Late game: international because of alliances
Sending a trader to neighboring civ early game pleases the AI.
Or play as Poland and build their unique market.
L0rem Ipsum supporting cities? Just do a chop to grow don’t invest gold for some food lol
you brought data to the argument and that helps me decide, also the difference seems slight. so that is good, and yes added up over 30 cities over 500 turns and slight ripples do become a wave.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO! THOUGH I WATCHES YOUR STREAMS AND YOU SHARE YOUR INSIGHTS THERE. STILL I THANK U FOR THIS!! MORE POWER
Just a little point of note: if you were going to use pink and brown, you should have set T1 as pink (with pink signifying the monument's culture boost) and T2 as brown (the brown being the brown granary). At least, that felt like the most natural colour scheme to me, and it took me a while to figure out why the numbers seemed inverted.
I’ve always been hesitant to go for monuments until I started watching you
Potato, I'm severely colorblind and struggle with games and work as a result. It means so much to me that you took the time to make it easier on people like me I got up out of my chair to grab my phone to leave this comment and that says a lot lmao. I was watching on PS4 btw and dont think theres a way to leave a comment there.
Thanks bro. Love your vids. Keep up the great work.
Love this kind of videos, you are now doing research on Civ VI, lol. I can see how much work this takes, but know that it is much appreciated!!
Often time, I do not have this luxury of choice. I am building unit as much as possible to protect myself from getting game over.
I thought we gonna see a duel of fates between the granary and monument, but nah it had to be actually helpful.
Po Tay toes for life
I think definitely a granary in cities with really bad food, coastal city if it has a lot of good tiles to work nearby and even coastal cities in general, but monument in most fresh water cities
Once the Monument to the Old Gods is in the game I will be putting those up ASAP to help summon a Cthulu or two to my side. Which makes this video irrelevant ;) Great vid and good at-a-glance analysis!
Love the vids! Keep up the awesome work my starchy brother!
Small tip: In your initial graph at 8:22, you have monument 1st as purple and granary as yellow-brown, but in the series on 8:28 you swap the colors, which is doubly confusing because the colors swapped meaning , and because you'd think monument as purple cuz culture and granary as yellow-brown cuz food
This video makes me happy. Potato realizing the scale of the game on camera. Priceless! 😂
Shoutout to @PotatoMcWhiskey for being lowkey one of the best TH-camrs out there!
He’s dedicated, particular, smart and he always keeps it real with us, whether he feels good or bad.
I know this job is demanding, bro. But you nail it, and we appreciate it 🙂
I think it's a matter of where the most valuable tiles to work are in relation to your city. If your city has the most highly valued tiles in the 2nd or 3rd ring away from your city then the monument is more valuable than granary early because you get access to the tiles you want to be working with your population sooner; or if the 1st ring has some desert and/or mountains.
I like this in-depth analysis. I have no clue which scenarios to run next but keep these coming.
Another factor not accounted for is border growth. In the City of Ulm it was right next to a city stat, and while city state borders only grow when they receive an envoy you never know when the ai will send an envoy and take away a potential tile.
This video is fantastic. I know it took a LOT of work, but if you're able to make more of these I think they're super helpful and unique among content out there. Thank you for making this!
I'm a severe protanope and appreciate your colorblind friendly graphs.
Love the format of the analysis. Thanks potato! Look forward to more such analyses in the future. It may be too complex- but using analysis to review things like city build locations (and how quickly to spread cities versus building tall in start game) would be cool.
Thanks for the effort in this it really shows! Love to see more content like this super useful for in game use. Good luck w getting the sponsorship man you deserve it.
I personally think granaries are stronger for exactly the same reasoning you said monuments are stronger : stuff now is better than stiff later, and granaries let me get builders, settlers etc more quickly.
This is because I think production is much more important early, when you're in the main expansion phase of the empire and are racing for good city locations, or military strength. So I'm really curious what your further tests might show.
This! More food means more growth which means more of my favorite yield, Production, which itself creates more of the other yields!
Plus early on, I like to focus heavily on getting a bunch of settlers out, and population growth is utterly invaluable for that.
But to be fair, I do acknowledge that I undervalue culture, and I usually lag behind everyone else culturally. 😅
I usually go monument first so that my borders expand earlier. If my borders are not near another colony or the threat of having another colony settling next to me is pretty low then I'll go granary first.
Huge supporter of your videos, the quality has been off the charts recently. I happily tweeted your video at skill share to let them know they need to contact you asap, hope you continue to grow man your content is incredible
super cool video idea, theres so many variable you have to look out for as far as what your civilization values more, growth, culture, maybe you settled near a wonder which gives culture yields, in which case an extra 1 culture may be a bit less valuable in favor of getting more pop to work that tile, maybe you settled a city with poor inner ring yields, but excellent outer ring(strategic resources, luxuries, etc) in that case, quicker city growth will actually be more beneficial than slightly quicker pop growth. but in general this does give us a good idea of what each building will give as a baseline compared to the other.
To make a more imperial test you could try many different city locations including different combos of grassland, plains, desert, tundra, hills, coast, water availability, amenities, etc. to do that though you would need a better way to test than random seeds (i.e. a custom map) and compare the averages of these values all using the same leader or even a custom leader with no bonuses in order to remove any other variables
Edit: you might want to have your community help you collect data because it would be a lot of work for one person.
Super colorblind here, and thank you for accomodating. Can't stand when I can't read a graph because I can't discern between the colors!
Too long a video? I enjoyed every second of that breakdown!
Personally, I break it down by city. Usually, a builder first, then decide whether or not I need a monument for culture. Typically, I favor the monument over a granary as I settle most of the time in rivers, but if the city needs a granary first I'll go that route.
Usually, in my games a district is going up before a granary.
Is like to see a video on how to spend your gold.
Keep up the great work Potato
I used to do that too but builders in new cities (early game) are usually not a good choice.
That because even if you have great tiles to improve, your city growth will be too slow in order to work them anyway (unless you have +4 food +some production on a tile). Also in the very beggining of the game you wont have the necessary techs to improve them anyway.
I generally avoid builders entirely for a good chunk of the start game, simply because the barbarians are too aggressive and end up pillaging my tiles. Then I'm just wasting my time making another builder later to repair the tiles.
I prefer to purchase builders, or transport them from my capital when the city needs help getting up to speed, since I only improve resources or capital tiles early on
Let me rephrase, builders aren't the first thing I build in the city but I usually pop one out before I choose a monument or granary.
I'm confused. Is there already a video about villages on freshwater? The food growth means extra pop growth (if you're not near your limit already) and the decrease in prod hurts... - but to be fair to monument you'd really need to make use of the extra cards you get when government changes. -- Maybe play a game where you build monument first in all cities and replay granary first trying to keep other things the same? :D Gosh the work tracking it all would be tremendous. Wonder if Civ team did somehow.
I guess it also depends on what yields you prioritize/lack. If your civ is already good at science maybe you need the culture more or maybe you should spearhead those yields even more. But yeah as you say, the variables become so many and evaluating the result isn't always straight forward either
It's factorial unless repeat choices (army units) are allowed: 4 choose 3 choose 2 choose 1. 4! = 24. With repeats, it can be 4^4 unless it's unique like a granary or a monument where only one can be built.
could you do another playthrough on Canada they go buffed awhile ago and would be fun to watch
I find my civs fall into 2 categories, culture starved or so much culture I grossly outstrip my production capability. Which means build monument first a little more often I suppose. Though if a new city starts with some tiles that would greatly boost it through improvement I often start builder first. I understand the abstract of tiles with resources is difficult to pin down, but I would be interested to see if this is a reasonable situational choice or outright incorrect.
If you want to test more rigorously, consider creating a map where you can always spawn at with the desired yields/location.
That way if you really wanted to (yo don't have to but it'd be cool to know) when creating a Petra desert city or a tundra, in the rainforest or just in a river lush location.
Great content as always Potato. Your videos are super helpful to my games and I’d love to see more videos like Overexplained and this focused sort of style here. Thanks!
I feel like you're explaining the struggles I had as a 30 year old going back to university. All the kids around me were extremely used to the Google web programs like Sheets, Docs, and Slides and I'm sitting there like "I can do it in Microsoft Office, but I have no idea how to use Google's version." Luckily, a lot of the teachers included tutorials in how to do all the various stuff required of us in class - like creating charts and graphs. I was endlessly frustrated by how Google just didn't bother including some basic formatting stuff tho. There was just so much missing from their web programs that are included in open source office programs like Libre and I don't know why!
An addendum to this breakdown that I'd like to see (but that wouldn't merit its own video) would be worker-granary-monument and worker-monument-granary builds compared. Although there would have to be some caveats about techs completed when it comes to which tile improvements are available.
Looking forward to more deep dives into the nitty gritty. Keep them charts comin!!!
PotatoMcWhiskey I loved the analysis, great video man. As I was watching I remembered something: Monuments yield gold indirectly as well, since your borders will expand faster hence saving you money (might be a good factor to take into account for future analysis :D)
I'm amazed you don't have millions of subs. You're my go-to channel for civ content
You are trying to awnser a question that's too complicated, but the info that you gave us is really important. Great video.
Great video!
I personally think that putting out all the numbers on the screen provides relatively little value.
What matters in the end are:
- How fast are both buildings built, with each combination?
- What are the differences in yield after both buildings are built with each order?
All the intermediate data isn't really that powerful.
Thanks for the exploration! I think empirical testing on this is really tough, because there are a million scenarios to be tested.
Maybe the exploration can be done in theory. You could ask yourself a question and then think about how it interacts with the system.
What happens if a player is low on amenities?
What happens if the city has few/a lot of production/food?
Maybe a custom map could help to isolate one variable at the time.
Anyways, good luck and thanks for the insights!