Slavery and pop-rushing?

[trev]

I have seen in my games in excess of 100 turns of unhappiness, so 58+ turns is nothing, repeated whipping in wartime can create significant unhappiness, but that is better than losing a war.

[khumak]

I generally don't do much whipping in my main cities except very early in the game and when I'm at the pop cap. I use it primarily for allowing my newly founded or newly conquered cities to "catch up" by poprushing buildings. I want my core group of largest cities to be at or near the pop cap for maximum production + money + research generation so generally they don't build units unless they've completed all of the buildings I want first. I will pop rush stuff at my biggest cities when I'm at the pop cap.

The point where I stop poprushing is when I get to where I'm generating enough money to switch to the civic that allows cash rushing buildings (Universal Suffrage?). That usually takes awhile and ideally you want some towns before then for the extra hammer production. At that point you can ditch slavery in favor of caste system or state property depending on where you are in the tech tree.

I generally try to save my forest chopping for wonders since wonders can't be poprushed. I like to selectively chop a few forests early on while leaving plenty of forests in place to grow back. Then I can chop some wonders after I get math. It takes a LONG time before most cities get to the point where you can actually work every tile in the fat cross so you might as well leave some bare tiles that forests can grow back into for future chops.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by khumak
I generally don't do much whipping in my main cities except very early in the game and when I'm at the pop cap. I use it primarily for allowing my newly founded or newly conquered cities to "catch up" by poprushing buildings. I want my core group of largest cities to be at or near the pop cap for maximum production + money + research generation so generally they don't build units unless they've completed all of the buildings I want first. I will pop rush stuff at my biggest cities when I'm at the pop cap.

The point where I stop poprushing is when I get to where I'm generating enough money to switch to the civic that allows cash rushing buildings (Universal Suffrage?). That usually takes awhile and ideally you want some towns before then for the extra hammer production. At that point you can ditch slavery in favor of caste system or state property depending on where you are in the tech tree.

I generally try to save my forest chopping for wonders since wonders can't be poprushed. I like to selectively chop a few forests early on while leaving plenty of forests in place to grow back. Then I can chop some wonders after I get math. It takes a LONG time before most cities get to the point where you can actually work every tile in the fat cross so you might as well leave some bare tiles that forests can grow back into for future chops.

As long as the city workers are using a tile that is decent enough, it may make little sense to rush – see The Whipping thread for some good guidelines here. Think about what it is you are whipping and what you lose when you do whip and you’ll get a general feeling about whether whipping is a good idea at any given point in time.

I can only say that I tend to have whipping working for a long time – well into Renaissance period. It only gives way to Emancipation and that is more of an enforced civic choice. (State Property is an economy civic).

I used to avoid whipping in a bureaucratic capital but now that the production multipliers work better in Warlords, the formulae here is still the same for whether a whip is a good or bad decision.

As regards wonders, these can be whipped but the population:hammer ratio is not good here. I need a good reason to whip them and agree that using forests for those builds is often a good tactic.