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 RUclipsrs 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
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.
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.)
I got an advertisement on 2/3rds in about some yet-another-kitchen-wondertool, taking a Potato and shredding it to hundreds of pieces. RUclips Ad placement AI is a psychopath.
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
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.
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.
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!!
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
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.
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. 👍
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.
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.
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, 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 :)
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.
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!
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)
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.
Love these kinds of “deep dive” videos! Thank you for doing this - it was very well done: entertaining but intellectual - and that is Civ in a nutshell anyway!
Wow! Thanks for the work testing this! I love this kind of stuff. I joined just because of this video. Well... and because I've watched and liked many of your videos, but this pushed me over the top. :-)
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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
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 all your passion that you input into your Civ 6 videos, all the data just makes my & our games much much better! Cheers and all the best !
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!
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)
Heeeyyyyyy potato, fantastic video, loved the meme in the middle too! I laughed a few times. Great work as always! Keep it up pal! (That's what she said)
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!
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
Great learning video! It's good to get some empirical evidence to show these things. I've always appreciated how you've tried to explain things during your run-throughs and doing something like this along with your last "learning to play" video series... simply amazing stuff. Oh, and as a strong protanope (red/green color deficiency), the two colors you used were distinct enough for me to tell them apart. Another good tip is to avoid pastels/light colors.
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.
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!
Thanks for these videos Mr. McWhiskey! I'm working my way towards being able to finish the game on Deity and understanding nuance like this is crucial to that goal! I'm on the cusp of winning my first game on Immortal as Congo thanks to your videos. Looks like it will be either a science or culture win.
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.
![Cordae - Saturday Mornings (feat. Lil Wayne) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/z2GYJua09F0/mqdefault.jpg)
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 RUclips wasn't borderline criminal in the way they "pay" their content creators. Blame RUclips.
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 RUclipsrs 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..
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
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.
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
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
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.)
I got an advertisement on 2/3rds in about some yet-another-kitchen-wondertool, taking a Potato and shredding it to hundreds of pieces. RUclips Ad placement AI is a psychopath.
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
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.
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.
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'
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.
I’ve always been hesitant to go for monuments until I started watching you
Just saying, I really like this smaller format for videos. It's much easier to watch than hour-long videos.
Actual colorblind here, can confirm it was easy to differenciate lines. Loved the skillshare cameo!
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!!
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.
From the title I thought an monument and an granary were going to fight. Shame.
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
8:35 the next level up is to use different line features (thicker/thinner/tight dashes/dots/solid line/ spaced dashes).
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.
Variations of policy card turns should make monument winner in most cases.
I like this in-depth analysis. I have no clue which scenarios to run next but keep these coming.
Absolutely incredible video topic, i would love to see tons more of these. Great work man!
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. 👍
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.
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
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!
This is awesome and I would love to see more in depth analysis videos like this.
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.
Love the hardcore dedication for best results! Would love to see more videos like this!
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!!
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!
The watermill: imma about to end yous whole careeri
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 :)
Great content please keep providing detailed analysis like this!
"..stuff now is worth more than stuff later". Don't tell that to compound interest.
I appreciate your videos.
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.
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!
Very well done video mate, it was clear and easy to follow. Keep up the good work Potato!
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)
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.
This video makes me happy. Potato realizing the scale of the game on camera. Priceless! 😂
Love these kinds of “deep dive” videos! Thank you for doing this - it was very well done: entertaining but intellectual - and that is Civ in a nutshell anyway!
Wow! Thanks for the work testing this! I love this kind of stuff. I joined just because of this video. Well... and because I've watched and liked many of your videos, but this pushed me over the top. :-)
I love these videos! Thank you for your hard work, genuinely.
This kind of video is realy interesting! Nice work!
I'm a severe protanope and appreciate your colorblind friendly graphs.
You are trying to awnser a question that's too complicated, but the info that you gave us is really important. Great video.
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!
Potato, thanks for the effort you put into this video. I love this kind of content. This kind of thinking is why I keep coming back to Civ VI.
Hey man, terrific content. I would definitely like to see more dilemas like this.
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.
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 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.
This reminded me of a poster presentation at a research conference. Great work! I hope we get to see more data! 💓💓😛
i love these types of videos...keep this stuff going!
I'm amazed you don't have millions of subs. You're my go-to channel for civ content
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...
Really good video. Appreciate the effort that went into it
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
Great video! Would love to see more analyses like this.
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.
With Australia, coastal cities get the same amount of housing as a standard city that is next to fresh water.
Thank you for all your passion that you input into your Civ 6 videos, all the data just makes my & our games much much better! Cheers and all the best !
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!
I live in Ulm. Did not notice until now that there was a beach nearby, happy to check it out tomorrow!
Thank you for considering my disabled eyes, huge shoutout to PotatoMcWhiskey
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)
I love these types of videos, keep up the good work
I really like this channel. Good job man. You really helping a civ 6 noob here
Heeeyyyyyy potato, fantastic video, loved the meme in the middle too! I laughed a few times. Great work as always! Keep it up pal! (That's what she said)
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!
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
Yo I'm loving these educational videos, and I know a lot of my friends are. Keep up the good work Potato I can't wait!
Keep up the good work potato
Great learning video! It's good to get some empirical evidence to show these things. I've always appreciated how you've tried to explain things during your run-throughs and doing something like this along with your last "learning to play" video series... simply amazing stuff.
Oh, and as a strong protanope (red/green color deficiency), the two colors you used were distinct enough for me to tell them apart. Another good tip is to avoid pastels/light colors.
Love the data driven work!
I am a big fan of yours and appreciate your creativity in trying to generate revenue. I support your efforts 100%
I was so curious about this, thanks for the video, now I have an answer!
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.
this was really well made potato thanks.
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!
Thanks for these videos Mr. McWhiskey! I'm working my way towards being able to finish the game on Deity and understanding nuance like this is crucial to that goal! I'm on the cusp of winning my first game on Immortal as Congo thanks to your videos. Looks like it will be either a science or culture win.
Thanks for yellow/purple lines. Helps a lot, and it's also my favorite color combination
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.
Dude, nice master thesis you got here! A different kind of game theory.
the zoom in on the potato at the beginning scared me for a sec, i thought this was secretly a horror movie
Local man talks about monuments and granaries for 13 minutes. Nice video though.
This video reminds me of the lessons on self-gratification in life but on civilization on what to build first.
gr8 video Potato! keep it up boi!