How much should you buy rush?

[Crossfire]

Usually at some point in the game I have built all that it makes sense to build in a city (except capitol and production center) and switch to cranking out military or research. Would I be even better off earlier if I lowered my research rate a tad in order to have gold to rush buy infrastructure to get the bonus' earlier? I noticed that Vel does this and I am not sure how effective this really is? If it matters I am playing at Monarch or Prince. Thanks.

[greenday_234]

Most games that I play my economy isn't really cranking quite enough to pay rush until the later game. However this could just be a practice thing for me. Also I find myself working representation for quite some time until I get enough of a strong production compacity to get happiness buildings quickly. Near the end game though I purchase mostly army as I'm planning major invasions in order to manipulate the UN. or win a domination victory if fesible.

[spammurabi]

I didn't do this until my most recent game- I certainly liked it better than my usual "no rushing, max science" play style. It was especially helpful getting all those cities I conqured up and running at high capacity *extremely* quickly.

Once you get the Kremlin built, it's *definitely* worth putting a good chunk of your slider bucks into the treasury. You can currently get pretty much a 1:1 ratio of gold to hammers then- which is huge.

A thread mostly complaining about how it's actually too powerful can be found here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145687

[Urban Ranger]

I don't rush buy units, only infrastructure. It's probably better used for bribery.

[couerdelion]

It's a very useful way of getting those new cities up and running quickly in an expanding empire.

[fed1943]

Yes,buy infrastructure and upgrade unities.
Best regards,

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I rush buy like a madman. I will often beeline to communism just to build the Kremlin and start spending some serious cash. Communism is one of the key techs since it also enables state property which almost always nets me huge financial gains. The Kremlin is also the best wonder of the game IMO. Once I get this I can just run everyone over.

I rush buy as much as I can afford including lots of units. I think it is much cheaper to just rush buy advanced units than to upgrade your old ones. Its quite useful to rushbuy theatres/culture buildings in newly conquered cities. Occasionaly I will also rush buy key wonders like the space elevator.

If you have tons of cash then Universal Suffrage is a must.

[uberfish]

1) By far the most efficient use of this is buying buildings in high commerce, low production cities. Wall Street in particular often gets finished off with cash.

2) Rushing West Point, Factory etc in your Heroic Epic city which might not be the #1 production city by now is rather useful too, so it can get back to its job.

3) Rushing late game wonders to make sure the AI can't beat you to them is also worth it.

4) As mentioned a couple of times already, new cities - the basic stuff like granaries and so on are very cheap and pay for themselves quickly.

5) Don't overdo it if you don't have the Kremlin. If you have the Kremlin (and planned for it by setting your empire up for high cash output) you can go nuts. Kremlin is probably overpowered.

I think rush buying is more of a builder tool though. I usually run police state in late game wars and build tanks out of my factories the normal way.

[Leo-T]

For early rushing, one trick I've used is to reduce science to 10% for a turn or two. You get a quick, large cash gain, but only delay your research one or two turns. Also, when a tech is one turn away, I'll lower my science to the lowest percentage that still gets the tech next turn. Then I bump it back up once I've selected the next tech.

[proviisori]

Originally posted by Leo-T
Also, when a tech is one turn away, I'll lower my science to the lowest percentage that still gets the tech next turn. Then I bump it back up once I've selected the next tech.

You don't benefit by doing this. The extra beakers will be transferred to the next tech.

[kittenOFchaos]

Originally posted by Leo-T
For early rushing, one trick I've used is to reduce science to 10% for a turn or two. You get a quick, large cash gain, but only delay your research one or two turns. Also, when a tech is one turn away, I'll lower my science to the lowest percentage that still gets the tech next turn. Then I bump it back up once I've selected the next tech.

Way to slow down your tech...

We had 'Lestat' doing that in a multiplayer teamer, god that anger that inspired

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by uberfish
I think rush buying is more of a builder tool though. I usually run police state in late game wars and build tanks out of my factories the normal way.

Police state is my choice as a final government. Universal suffrage is a builder's civic, though I might start out with universal suffrage and switch to police state as war weariness sets in. That 25% for military unit production, and 50% reduction in WW are hard to overlook. Also, who has spare money when you're using it all for science to discover Robotics or to upgrade old units?

[spammurabi]

Towns for rush buying can actually be cheaper than using workshops for production- 7 gold, +100% for Market, Grocer and Bank = 14 gold/turn. Rush buy something at 3:1 gold:hammers, you're getting ~4.7 hammers per town, +1 for US, for a total of 5.7, as opposed to a workshop or lumbermill which maxes out at 3 production a piece. If you've got the Kremlin, you can rush buy at the equivalent of ~10.4 hammers/town. Rush costs are also modified by factory, power, forge, resource bonuses, and organized religion, same as hammers.

This assumes that you're not building wonders (rush cost is x2) or national wonders (x1.5) or things on the first turn (x2). If you're looking for the fastest possible way to do things, ignore farm/mine combos, ignore workshops, just work as many towns as you can and rush rush rush.

The -50% WW of Police state is okay, but I think US is much more powerful. Production via commerce cities is much much faster than production via hammer cities at that point in the game.

[Quillan]

I think this is another case where the answer is "it depends". When I'm down to a space race, I'm usually concentrating so hard on science that I don't bring in enough spare money to do a whole lot of rush buying. However, if I'm going for diplomatic, cultural, or military then I've usually got science scaled back a little, and I rush buy a lot of infrastructure. I rarely rush buy units, but occasionally I do. In my last game, I'd been building tanks while I researched flight (already had radio, so that would let me build bombers). I went and rushed all the tanks on the last turn of research for flight, so I'd immediately be able to start massive bomber production.

[Crossfire]

Thanks for all the hints, and that thread at Fanatics was a realy eye-opener. I will definitely add this to my bag of tricks.