To whip or not to whip. Now THAT is the question!

[greenday_234]

I need this "whipping" strategy explained to me because I've noticed that I haven't the faintest clue how to do it so that it is benifical to me. I always figured it would be a bad thing to do unless absolutely necessary as it reduces population and causes unhappiness, but this apparently is not the case as many of you use it often.

Please, when explaining explain it to me as if I'm a noob. Using examples would be best.

Thanks again.

[trev]

Any poor production high food city should be whipped often, primarily for bigger buildings as a few bigger whips with greater loss of lives is better than smaller whips, so generally whip for marketplaces courthouses libraries, not barracks, units which are smaller items. The building whipped for should always have some use though.

[Tattila the Hun]

Settlers and workers might be good candidates, to cut down on the no-growth period. Granary too, for more people to whip. In desperate need for culture, and no drama yet? Whip a monument. Forges are good candidates for the increased hammers.

And, of course, should you get invaded, few whipped units might turn the tide for you. Though, war wearines with whipping woes might hurt you, in the long run... "War weariness with whipping woes", I love that sentence.

Of course, if you capture a large city, it might starve due to small workable area/unhappy people... Whip something, two birds with one whip. Might cut down on riots, too...

[MJW]

The whip is bad 'normally', but...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193659

It breaks Civ4 right in half with this. It also makes the game unfun because it takes a lot of micro to use. And I mean a lot. It caused me to only play Civ4 alone. Yes, I'm the same MJW.

The trick makes you able to whip as much as you want without the cost.

[Kuciwalker]

Whipping unhappiness doesn't matter very much because you're killing the citizens that would be unhappy.

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Re: To whip or not to whip. Now THAT is the question!

Originally posted by greenday_234
I need this "whipping" strategy explained to me because I've noticed that I haven't the faintest clue how to do it so that it is benifical to me. I always figured it would be a bad thing to do unless absolutely necessary as it reduces population and causes unhappiness, but this apparently is not the case as many of you use it often.

Play a game where you beeline to Bronze Working, and set yourself the goal of whipping in every city every 10 turns.

Some of the lessons you may observe:

If you watch the foodbar carefully, you can arrange the whip so that one of the population that you whip away grows back immediately - which minimizes the opportunity cost of the whip, in terms of lost tile/specialist yield.

That you can, with some attention, arrange to always have a build on the queue that requires two (or more) population to whip on your 10th turn.

When your cities are running at precisely the limit of happiness, they are in effect one size smaller than the would be otherwise. This one smaller size is compensated by an average production of 6 base hammers per turn, which is usually better than the tile that extra pop would have worked.

The lessons will vary somewhat if you are playing 1.61, where the whipping bugs significantly distort the results from what they should be.

[couerdelion]

The best advice I can give is to read Blake's whipping thread

[popejubal]

One other thing to keep in mind is that you get one extra unhappy per whipped unit/building, not one extra unhappy per population point sacrificed.

That means if you build 2 axemen without a whip and you whip one library for 2 population, you get one unhappy.

If you build one library normally and whip 2 axemen at 1 population each, you get 2 unhappy.

Remember to whip when you are making higher cost objects instead of cheap things when you can since you will generate fewer unhappyness points.

Also, read Blake's article (listed above).