Everything you wanted to know about pop-rush quirks, and far more.

[Thrak]

Its was a silly firefox/cache thingy got it now with IE.

Gonna play with this tonight methinks.

Can I ask tho even when you are rigging your cities for a whippin' do you still have some nice, high pop cottage ridden behemoths propping up research? or just go all out.

[Blake]

I whip the cottage ridden behemoths .

[Thrak]

I have to admit I am extremely curious as to how your early game progresses - do the AU 101 I say!

[NFIH]

Originally posted by Blake

The first thing you need to get used to is making sure your cities have high food surpluses. Whipping is by far the most effective way to turn food into hammers (generally better than working a mine), so a focus on food will yield more hammers than a focus on production.

I'll rush in things like a University.
Lets say, killing 5 population in a size 12 city.
With a forge bonus that will give up to 188 hammers.
To regrow that population will require a total of 95 food.
Thus we get 2 hammers/food.
Now it's worth noting that a Plains Hill Mine, eats 2 food and produces 4 hammers (2 hammers/food), so soaking up that food on Plains Mines will produce exactly the same hammers, but you'll get the university MUCH later than with whipping.
Convinced yet?

Ah, all good food for thought--pardon the pun.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

I've been playing CivIV since I got it on its release date, and I've only just now begun to realize the power of pop rushing.

Holy Cow, man!

I have a problem of failing to realize game mechanics and bringing my real-life biases and perceptions into Civ IV rather than just realizing it's a game mechanic... like anything else, like Spearman VS Tank really needs to be understood as a game mechanic between two units of varying ability (not necessarily actual spearmen or tanks).

Pop rushing through slavery is really just a way to sacrifice population for production.

But because it seems so hideous, I had always ass/u/me'd that using that game mechanic must include a rather stark penalty.. one that would prevent it from becoming a feature of anything more than last resort.

Well, that's clearly not the case. Moral and ethical considerations have not been taken into account and implemented in the game mechanic in order to make this option unpleasant.

Once I realized the moral and ethical issues were behind my assumption that the game must reflect MY belief system in its implementation of pop rushing, I started reading about pop rushing and found out that the game isn't reflective. The penalties for pop rushing simply aren't high.. in fact, they are incredibly low!

My latest game I'm poised to take out England, and I'm looking at all her huge and underdeveloped cities with multiple food specials and I'm salivating at the thought of conquering those and pop rushing the hell out of them to get them online to contribute to my economy!

[Chaos Theory]

IMO, the main downside to whipping is that you can't also run Caste System or (eventually) Emancipation. A Spiritual leader can bypass this to some extent, however.

[Rancidlunchmeat]

Speaking of Caste System.. how effective is it really?

Isn't there a commerce threshold where its more productive to actually work the tiles rather than support the specialists?

For example, don't you get more beakers from the commerce generated by one grassland cottage, then you would from two grassland farms (3 food) and running one scientist specialist?

Or do I have that wrong?

[Chaos Theory]

There are a variety of reasons I'll use significant numbers of specialists:

If my inner cities have large research bonuses, but none of my cities have large gold bonuses, each merchant I set on an outer city allows me to direct more commerce empire-wide towards research, effectively allowing me to get a little research out of each merchant.

Representation, especially fairly early (with Pyramid aid).

Caste System gives one of the major upsides of Creative - you can easily pop the borders of new cities.

Whipping can't directly produce research. A food-rich city that has little to build (suppose you've already subjugated your neighbors) might as well put that food to use supporting specialists.

Conquered cities' citizens can be put to much more productive use than anything other than whipping. If you're Spiritual, the turn after a large conquered city comes out of anarchy might be a great time to switch from Caste to Slavery.

All this said, I almost never use farms to boost specialist count. Surplus food comes from resources and flood plains.

[Blake]

There is now a mod solution to this:
Get it in this thread. I believe it to work correctely but it has not been rigorously tested.

[smacfan]

Thanks, Blake. Good work.

[asleepathewheel]

Fascinating. I've returned to civ after a long absence and this will be very helpful. I usually very hesitant to kill off pop, but will try to break out of wasteful habits.

[lockstep]

Hopefully this will make it into Warlords!

[wardhali]

i will attempt a whiping game, probably fail due to my own weakness, but i will try...

btw, what is the best game speed for whiping?

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
Fascinating. I've returned to civ after a long absence and this will be very helpful. I usually very hesitant to kill off pop, but will try to break out of wasteful habits.

Ditto on the break. However, I myself was very fond of whipping, but only from intuition. This thread is a very valuable resource. Nice one Blake.

[wardhali]

WOW


when i started to use whippings, I really pulled away from the pack. i was marathon with NO good production sites, and had overexpaned,

research CoL, whip up couthouses, granierys, libs... the game picked up, i began to win,


Blake, i am sorry i ever doubted you.


:EVIL: *manialcal laughing*