As I understand the rule, workers may not be joined to cities with the sole intent of using them to pop-rush stuff.

What should I do with my workers once I have no more fieldwork for them to do? In my current game, I'm pop-rushing stuff all over my empire and will be until the end. Am I justified in breaking this rule purely in this instance? Or should I just leave my workers to roam free?

Chances are, if you're at the point where your workers have nothing left to do, you're going to start experiencing pollution soon enough. Just set them all on shift-P and they'll stay out of the way while probably getting all pollution up in one turn. (This is assuming you've railroaded everywhere, right?) Also, slaves don't cost you anything to keep, so there's no reason NOT to keep them around.

Well, thing is, i'm not building any hospitals or factories, so pollution won't be a problem.

Unit upkeep isn't a problem for me either.

I'm guessing you're playing a 100K game, and are in Communism (I can't think of another reason anyone would be pop-rushing late in the game!). If unit upkeep isn't a problem, keeping the workers fortified would be a safer bet.

Or set them all doing dumb tasks, like building fortresses and barricades all around your borders...

You could disband them for a couple of shields each. 15 will build you a temple.

The exploit is turning something that cost you 10 food and 10 shields into 20 shields by pop rushing, so disbanding is not in the same league.

I thought the rule was that you could not build workers with the sole purpose of using them for whipping when joining them into another town?
Doesn't that mean that joining existing workers to cities for poprushing would be allowed?

@Darkness: I only have experience of this in the current SGOTM, and mad-bax's ruling in that game was no pop rushing in towns where workers have been joined. It's a simpler rule than yours, where the player's intentions have to be interpreted. What constitutes "solely ..."? If a bunch of workers build a railway for one turn on their way to a pop-rush town, is that sufficient to be able to claim they were built for another purpose?

I thought the rule was that you could not build workers with the sole purpose of using them for whipping when joining them into another town?
Doesn't that mean that joining existing workers to cities for poprushing would be allowed?

It strikes me that that is just highlighting poor wording of the rule: presumably this is your aim. Surely the rule should be that joining workers for poprushing is illegal. I had assumed that was the case, and if it isn't it should be. Otherwise, you could use a worker to build one road and then join it to a town for poprushing quite legally: ridiculous .

edit: I see AlanH has beaten me to this, saying something similar :crazyeye:

The GOTM rule actually only addresses units, not cultural buildings. I personally don't think it should apply to cultural buildings once workers have nothing to do near the end of the game (but of course we're following mad-bax's ruling in the current SGOTM).

I'd prefer the rule to be along the lines of Darkness' understanding - that workers cannot be built for the purpose of using them to pop-rush or replaced once used to pop-rush. (This would allow both unit and improvement pop-rushing near the end of the game as long as the player doesn't build more workers after starting to joining workers.)

There have been hints in some fast 100k write-ups in the last few months that the players have joined workers once the land was completely improved. I'd be curious to know if that has been done in the fastest games. As I said, I don't think there's anything wrong with that (and joining workers to pop cultural buildings is currently within a strict reading of the rules).

Just to be clear, here is the text from the gotm.civfanatics.net, Code of Conduct section:

Pop-rushing
In despotism and communism it is possible to use cities purely for unit rush building. Workers can be added to such a city and then the city can then use them to rush build units. This is disallowed, so do not create these kind of cities. Pop rushing one or two regular citizens to finish a building or to build a unit is within the rules and the spirit of the game. What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.

WillowBrook: it specifically mentions using Joined Workers for pop-rushing Units as being completely unacceptable, but allows a limited pop-rush of "regular citizens" to finish a building or build a unit. Unlimited Joining of Workers and then pop-rushing of anything, units or buildings, is unacceptable based on what I'm reading.

What does unlimited mean? When this rule was implemented, at least one person was found to have cities of size1 with just a specialist in them; they'd been used to pop-rush down to complete unhappiness, and with a Barracks in them, you could Join workers and use Short-rushing to generate a Veteran unit every turn and transfer the unhappiness hit to this city, so virtually no effect.

My interpretation is that units and buildings can be pop-rushed and workers can be joined to a city that pop-rushes as long as the resulting unhappiness is small enough that some citizens are still working in the city's tiles and you don't pop-rush more than the original "pre-joined" population of the city. It's impossible to say under this scenario whether "regular citizens" or Joined Workers were used to pop-rush, and they are effectively interchangeable. I don't think there's any problem with Joining workers to a city, whether it's pop-rushed earlier or not, if that city never pop-rushes again; it has already taken the unhappiness so the player is not avoiding that effect of pop-rushing, which is the intent behind this rule.

Another possible use of Workers is to Join them to a city and then Draft a defensive unit (Rifleman, Infantry, etc.), potentially to use for disbanding somewhere else. The rule doesn't mention Drafting, but since a unit is generated, I'd feel doing this violates the rule, IMO. This has a much broader potential impact, since Drafting is available under all governments, and the staff should address this specifically, especially with the focus on 100K games recently.

(edited to discuss regular citizens)

There have been hints in some fast 100k write-ups in the last few months that the players have joined workers once the land was completely improved.

That seems like a logical use of those workers. Building workers after the land has been (nearly) fully improved, to use them for joining and rushing would a far more logical practise to be banned, IMHO...

Here is a link to the discussion civ_steve mentioned.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=33455

EDIT: nm...

It looks like the original concern was that people were pop-rushing and avoiding the resulting unhappiness, since a size-1 town can be made an entertainer, or a larger town can be left to starve. :nono: Those in the conversation linked to by DaveMcW didn't seem to think it was wrong to join workers for the purpose of pop-rushing as long as the player had to deal with the resulting unhappiness (this was before the rule in question was put in place). There were also concerns about the dogpile exploit (which I've never tried or taken the time to understand :blush: ).

I'd prefer something like the following rule to address that concern:
Players should have to bear the unhappiness cost of pop-rushing, and should not take advantage of the dog-pile exploit. In particular,
- no joining workers to cities that are starving or that have to starve to prevent rioting, and
- no joining workers to cities that require an entertainer to not riot at size 1.

Of course, the above rule would be hard to enforce. (But we can't really enforce the current rule well, either.) :crazyeye:

I agree that it appears that the spirit of the current rule would extend to joining workers for pop-rushing buildings or drafting, not just to units. But since the original concern was the creation of "throwaway" cities that would always be at size one and "absorb" the pop-rush unhappiness without penalty, the analogy doesn't really extend to either buildings or drafting.
- Buildings are built once and kept in the town; you can't pop-rush 5 libraries in a town to get five times the culture.
- Drafting requires a town of at least size 7, so the unhappiness effects have to be dealt with.

In sum, mad-bax's interpretation of the current rule is certainly plausible, but not the only one. I'd prefer a different interpretation, or, better yet, a different rule altogether.

More thoughts (in case anyone is still curious :p ) -
- Not allowing the conversion of unneeded workers into shields doesn't make sense as long as it's fine to disband units, especially drafted units, in order to hurry production. I would be extremely surprised if any of the fast finishes in the current SGOTM didn't make extensive use of drafting and disbanding (as well as a huge amount of pop-rushing of native citizens.) Yes, workers can be disbanded for 2 shields - but part of the cost of a worker is the pop-point, and I think that should be able to be recovered instead of the shields at the player's discretion.
- The restrictions in GOTM are generally there to avoid exploiting what players have decided is a "bug" in the game that messes with the built-in limitations/challenges of the game. Size 1 towns being able to absorb "infinite" unhappiness is one such bug. Moving a pop-point from one town to another at the cost of 10 shields is not.
- Drafting at size 7 seems to me to be as much of an exploit as building a worker for the purpose of pop-rushing it in another town. (Growth from size 6 to 7 uses the small, town-sized granary and can often be done in one turn, but growth takes much longer from size 7 and up.) I don't think there's anything wrong with taking advantage of this "window of opportunity". But I don't see how this is much different than building a worker in a town with 1-turn growth and 10 shields. In one case, there is unhappiness to deal with eventually; in the other, there have to be 10 shields available.

I would be extremely surprised if any of the fast finishes in the current SGOTM didn't make extensive use of drafting and disbanding

I think my teams' performance was pretty solid, and no we didn't do any drafting, and no disbanding until the bitter end when the difference made was marginal.

Very impressive digging out those old threads DaveMcW, even if it was partly about the odious dogpile exploit. And thanks to Civ-Steve for poiting out the actual rule, which says just what it should:

What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.

That sounds straightforward to me.

Well, yeah, I am playing 100K, and i'm in Feudalism (i wasn't trying to replicate Dynamic's COTM10 win by design, it just happened that way :) ).

Basically, joining my existing workers to the cities once they have finished all useful work will shave possibly a couple of turns at the most off of my win date, so I'm happy not to do it if it seems dodgy, as long as nobody beats me by a couple of turns :mischief: .

However, this is a quote from Dynamics CoTM10 industrial age spoiler:

I not built workers during the rush stage of the game and join only existing workers after they ended its work.

Personally, I feel as though I invested a pop point and 10 shields earlier in the game, and therefore returning the pop point (and forfeiting the 10 shields) to another city isn't too exploitative at this point in the game, when I am approx 10-15 turns from reaching 100K.

As I indicated, I'm a noob with respect to pop rushing, and have none of Aeson's experience of the origins of these rules. My comments were based on the fact that you never get back anything like what you invest in units or buildings anywhere else, except by using them. Here it seems you get to use them AND get back a lot of what you put in.

Maybe it's as Aeson says, the compensating losses come from the rush or draft unhappiness, but until Ainwood gets back after the weekend and gives us the benefit of his wisdom, I can only speculate.

I think my teams' performance was pretty solid, and no we didn't do any drafting, and no disbanding until the bitter end when the difference made was marginal.

I am surprised! ("pretty solid" - what an understatement :lol: ) I'll be looking forward to reading your thread once we (Xteam) finish to try and figure out your secrets. ;)

Arrrr, I'll be interested in Ainwood's judgement on this case. Who is the final arbiter anyway? This is an issue that's concerned me for some time, one that has caused me to put weird limits on my games... like joining workers when the work is done, but not buying workers in corrupt towns, but going ahead and building more workers by hand... Personally, I think this needs clearing up!

What about when you are going for a 20k victory and have just finished building Shakespeare's Theater (I believe this is the one, allowing you to grow over pop 12). Is it allowed to use pre-existing workers to join the city to get it to pop 20? Is this allowed? Some of my workers had been around from the beginning.

What about when you are going for a 20k victory and have just finished building Shakespeare's Theater (I believe this is the one, allowing you to grow over pop 12). Is it allowed to use pre-existing workers to join the city to get it to pop 20? Is this allowed? Some of my workers had been around from the beginning.

Yes. As long as you don't join them expressly to "pop" a production task.

I´ve put some thought in to this and here r my conclusions:

In a 20K game it simply shouldnt be allowed to pop-rush after Shakespeare theater, this have a huge impact on the final result and its unfair to all of those that in that same game are pursuing other victory conditions.

In general, pop-rushing in the beggining of the game even if one or to citizens will have an exponencial result at the end. Its so good to see that city that will take 10 turns to reach size 4 get there instantly, isnt it? :D

The code of conduct should be CLEAR about this. The letter and spirit of the rule should be exactly the same. Not giving any latitude. Stating that "pop-rushing one or two regular citizens..." is basically ok is the same as saying that 3 in some cases is also ok and those that who are a bit more eager will take advantage of that. Thats human nature... Even if we are all true gentleman :mischief: we all like to have the best result possible. So it should say " no pop-rushing at ANY time in ANY circunstance" or " go ahead knock you self out, pop-rush what you want, whenever you want". After all there is some art in.

leopalas: pop rushing is an integral part of the game, and in my opinion should definitely be allowed. It is very weak now anyway compred with the initial versions of vanilla civ3. It is joining workers to enable pop rushing that is dodgy.

Methos: joining workers to boost population is fine as long as it doesn't lead to a food deficit. I think this is what led to the dogpile exploit, whereby some players added vast numbers of workers to cities, giving the cities populations in the hundreds, and thereby getting a vast boost in their score.

Offa, i think my english has been been betraying me... I thought pop-rushing a building or artificially increasing your city population were one and the same thing in what rules are concerned.You mean that there is no limitations as to join workers to the limit of food capabilities???

Offa, i think my english has been been betraying me... I thought pop-rushing a building or artificially increasing your city population were one and the same thing in what rules are concerned.You mean that there is no limitations as to join workers to the limit of food capabilities???

pop-rushing is rushing buildings in despotism, feudalism, communism and fascism by forced labor.. where every citizen (pop(ulation)) you rush away gives 20 shields.

in vanilla and ptw there is no limit to how big your cities can become once you have a hospital and start joining workers.

in c3c there is an upper limit of 255 city size, and in addition you can't join workers if you dont have the food to support them..
however you can get around this limitation by making the city riot before you start joining workers.. since citizens in riotting cities use 0 food.. by keeping the city in a state of riot you can also keep about 250 scientists/taxmen in the city for the rest of game without loosing them (1 per turn) to starvaton.

Joining workers into cities so they go over their natural size limits is known as dogpiling

Thx for the detailed explanation :) . But what i also meant is if joining workers to cities (not dogpilling) until the limits of their natural size in in accordance with GOTM rules?

But what i also meant is if joining workers to cities (not dogpilling) until the limits of their natural size in in accordance with GOTM rules?

I am sure it is okay to join workers to increase it's population, as long as you stay within the limits Gyathaar described, that is, no joining past the food limits of the town. The pop-rushing rule, as I understand it, prohibits behavior like this: In the ancient age, one town is a worker pump and one town is doomed as a pop-rush town. The workers are joined into the pop-rush town and promptly used to rush archers, say. Pop-rushing causes unhappiness, but if the pop-rush town is kept at size=1, a person could gain say 20 archers this way, without investing the shields it actually takes to get those units, and without suffering any unhappiness effects. It is considered an exploit.

The issue lately with pop-rushing is, does the rule apply just to units? Obviously the game allows pop-rushing. For victory conditions like culture 100k, by the end of the game players get in a situation where they have say 200 workers with nothing to do. Joining them to cities and drafting them is one use for them, disbanding the conscripts to rush culture buildings. Or the workers could be joined to say, 50 different towns in communism, and used to rush culture like crazy. A player could plan on having lots of extra workers to augment this effect.

So is this second example allowed? That's the question. Is it an exploit, or is it a strategy? Is it cheating, or is it using what the game provides to achieve a victory? The tension is between allowing a particularly powerful tecnique vs. requiring everyone to just waste all those workers that they created fair and sqare.

EDIT: IMHO, the pop-rushing rule is clearly about military units, not buildings.

Just to be clear, here is the text from the gotm.civfanatics.net, Code of Conduct section:

Pop-rushing
In despotism and communism it is possible to use cities purely for unit rush building. Workers can be added to such a city and then the city can then use them to rush build units. This is disallowed, so do not create these kind of cities. Pop rushing one or two regular citizens to finish a building or to build a unit is within the rules and the spirit of the game. What is against the rules is joining workers to cities for the purpose of pop rushing.

WillowBrook: it specifically mentions using Joined Workers for pop-rushing Units as being completely unacceptable, but allows a limited pop-rush of "regular citizens" to finish a building or build a unit. Unlimited Joining of Workers and then pop-rushing of anything, units or buildings, is unacceptable based on what I'm reading.

What does unlimited mean? When this rule was implemented, at least one person was found to have cities of size1 with just a specialist in them; they'd been used to pop-rush down to complete unhappiness, and with a Barracks in them, you could Join workers and use Short-rushing to generate a Veteran unit every turn and transfer the unhappiness hit to this city, so virtually no effect.

My interpretation is that units and buildings can be pop-rushed and workers can be joined to a city that pop-rushes as long as the resulting unhappiness is small enough that some citizens are still working in the city's tiles and you don't pop-rush more than the original "pre-joined" population of the city. It's impossible to say under this scenario whether "regular citizens" or Joined Workers were used to pop-rush, and they are effectively interchangeable. I don't think there's any problem with Joining workers to a city, whether it's pop-rushed earlier or not, if that city never pop-rushes again; it has already taken the unhappiness so the player is not avoiding that effect of pop-rushing, which is the intent behind this rule.

Another possible use of Workers is to Join them to a city and then Draft a defensive unit (Rifleman, Infantry, etc.), potentially to use for disbanding somewhere else. The rule doesn't mention Drafting, but since a unit is generated, I'd feel doing this violates the rule, IMO. This has a much broader potential impact, since Drafting is available under all governments, and the staff should address this specifically, especially with the focus on 100K games recently.

(edited to discuss regular citizens)

Would joining non-foreign workers to border cities to rush temples (or, more generally, cultural buildings) to avoid flipping problems be acceptable or not?

I did this once in the current GOTM before I reread the regulations and saw the pop-rushing part. As it reads, joining for pop-rushing units cannot be done, but it says nothing about buildings.

In this particular case, the cities could always support all the citizens joined with food, and did not starve after the rushing due to unhappiness.

As this is the current GOTM I won't post any more details. A save is available for the mods upon request; although it is a decent time after the rushing, the city is still feeling the unhappiness effects.

I haven't finished or turned in the game yet.

Pop-Rushing is a standard feature of the game (under certain governments), and so is Joining Workers.

This pop-rush rule was put in place because some players were making tons of Workers from cities with lots of excess food and shields, then joining them to other cities that were size 1 cities and popping a unit. These size1 cities were so unhappy that they could only sustain a single Specialist, but here they were building units frequently with no additional penalty from the poprush; this is exploitive so the rule was made to sanction this practice.

If the city is a growing thriving city I do not believe you would be violating the spirit of the pop-rush rule if you join a worker and then pop-rush. The city will suffer the unhappiness caused by the pop-rush and eventually overcome it. Under no circumstance may you join a worker to a size 1 specialist city and then pop-rush; this is clearly the case that the pop-rush rule is targetting.