How to "pop rush" in rep/demo

What i have been thinking about is a way to rush improvements and units in governments where gold is usually the way

We all know the case: it's a democracy/republic and there is a lot of fully corrupted cities far out in the empire. The trouble is that those cities get a lot of population but the population is useless because all it produces will be corrupted. And we can't use them for poprushing... or can we

I have actually found a way. After we have researched nationalism we get the draft ability. At that time we will be able to draft rifles and a little later infantry. The trick is then to use those cities to draft with. the units produces can then be disbanded for 20-22 shields depending on if it is a rifle or infantry. Poprushing gives 20 shields per citizen lost. That way citizens can be turned into production under rep/demo

Advantages:
It can be used under rep/demo
The drafted unit can be disbanded in any city, thus the "poprush" can help other cities as well

Disadvantages:
It cannot rush things in one turn as standard poprushing can do (unless you draft with several cities and disband all in the same city)
The HUGE disadvantage is that only cities with population 7 or more can draft so it wont grow as fast as a town would
Only native citizens can be drafted

Other things to consider:
the unhappiness is the same for drafting and poprushing (1 citizen unhappy for 20 turns for each citizen drafted/whipped)
The shield amount gained is roughly the same (20-22 versus 20)

To summarise I find this a slightly less useful way of poprushing, but a good way to get arund being in rep/demo with a relatively large empire.

Theoden

And of course it gets even more useful if you are able to draft mechanized infantery.

Yes, a mech inf would give 27 shileds upon disbanding. That is around 33% more than if the citizen was used for standard poprush, so with mech inf there comes another significant advantage.

You should do this in corrupt cities when they are size 7.

This puts them down to size 6 and they only need 20 food to grow (or 10 if you have the pyramids). I usually have very cramped corrupt cites and can get growth every 1 or 2 towns in most cities. groucho

This can carry on for about 30 or 40 turns if you have 6+ lux's before your cities are so unhappy they simply can't grow at all. At this point I often use drafted units to part-rush settlers in them instead.

For these corrupt cities, why not just irrigate everything, have extra citizens as tax collectors, then use the extra gold to rush build?

Does anyone know which is more efficient?

That would depend on how fast the city is growing. A tax collecter produces 2 gpt and rushing costs 4 gold per shield so each tax collecter would give 0.5 shield per turn. using the citizen for a one time rush gives 20 shields (if you are drafting rifles)
So it's either 0.5 shields per turn or 20 shields per citizen used. Unless the city was growing very slow i think it would be best to "poprush". It becomes rather annoying at last though, since unhappines plays a factor here.

Theoden

Still, you get a whole load of units before unhappiness is a problem (providing you have the lux's of course).

I reckon over 20 turns I can get 10 rifles/inf from a city with 4 or 5 grassland tiles. Obviously bonus tiles means you need less citizens to grow and you can therefore get the city to last longer at drafting. Still, 10 rifles = 200 shields, which is 800 gold in rushing. With the Pyramids you can really pump them out!

But you still lose out on the best use of pop rushing - killing off unwanted foreign citizens. You can only draft native citizens.

DaveMcW said:

You can only draft native citizens.

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Really? I didn't know that.
You're right about the benefit fo getting rid of foreigners. But after you've gotten rid of them and the city grows again then this tactic becomes viable.

anarres said:

Still, you get a whole load of units before unhappiness is a problem (providing you have the lux's of course).

I reckon over 20 turns I can get 10 rifles/inf from a city with 4 or 5 grassland tiles. Obviously bonus tiles means you need less citizens to grow and you can therefore get the city to last longer at drafting. Still, 10 rifles = 200 shields, which is 800 gold in rushing. With the Pyramids you can really pump them out!

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It gets even better if you combine the Pyramids later with Longevity...

I think what makes this way of rushing really effective is the presence of railroads in this stage of the game - it means instant rushing in every city connected to RR network to an extend of hundreds of shields every turn.

Theoden said:

That would depend on how fast the city is growing. A tax collecter produces 2 gpt and rushing costs 4 gold per shield so each tax collecter would give 0.5 shield per turn. using the citizen for a one time rush gives 20 shields (if you are drafting rifles)
So it's either 0.5 shields per turn or 20 shields per citizen used. Unless the city was growing very slow i think it would be best to "poprush". It becomes rather annoying at last though, since unhappines plays a factor here.

Theoden

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Your logic is good on a per citizen used basis, but it does not count the cost of replacing the citizen when it is spent. It should also be noted that the drafted unit (let's say riflemen), costs a lot more than 20 shields, so I think the benefit you receive from drafting should be rated above 20 shields per citizen. If you draft a riflemen, you get a 2 hit point version of a 70 shield unit at the cost of one population - right?

If I had 8 tiles that could generate 24 food/turn, 8 citizens working can generate food, that leaves 4 tax collectors generating gold. That makes 4 gpt every turn with no major improvements needed except possibly aqueduct, assuming you have enough luxury.

In one turn it appears this might be less effective than a pop rush, but you will probably not be able to pop rush every turn, as cities this size need time to grow. Not too mention the eventual doom of the city as everyone is so mad from drafting that you start losing citizens to entertainer which further slows growth. Once you get to that point you must expend the cost to pop rush a settler, abandon the city, start over and wait for the population to get up to the right size for pop rush and then start over. In this approach turns are wasted while the original tax collector approach keeps building 4 gpt into the kitty. Besides that the unhappy or specialist citizens count less toward your score, and you have to spend all this time managing these pop rushes.

I think an experiment is in order.

I know this thread is about pop rushing, but other benefits of the tax collector approach is the gold can generate interest, and there is no cost to having a big bank. Keep a big bank and use it to rush build units on demand, and save the gpt cost of upkeeping the units.

I still don't know which is better, thought you can probably guess which method I use.

Did you read my post zerksees?

I use drafting every game if I have the cities to do it and it certainly is a BIG boost to production.

If your priority is science and you have built everything you need then obviousy go for scientists, but otherwise drafting is the way to go...

zerksees said:

It should also be noted that the drafted unit (let's say riflemen), costs a lot more than 20 shields, so I think the benefit you receive from drafting should be rated above 20 shields per citizen. If you draft a riflemen, you get a 2 hit point version of a 70 shield unit at the cost of one population - right?

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A rifleman costs 80 shields but gives only one quarter when disbanded, resulting in 20 shields, and since this strategy is about how drafting can help production the 80 shield cost is irrelevant

zerksees said:

If I had 8 tiles that could generate 24 food/turn, 8 citizens working can generate food, that leaves 4 tax collectors generating gold. That makes 4 gpt every turn with no major improvements needed except possibly aqueduct, assuming you have enough luxury.

In one turn it appears this might be less effective than a pop rush, but you will probably not be able to pop rush every turn, as cities this size need time to grow. Not too mention the eventual doom of the city as everyone is so mad from drafting that you start losing citizens to entertainer which further slows growth.

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Let's take your example
assuming we have a standard empire in industrial age, so we have 6 luxuries
the drafting city will draft-rush a marketplace and a granary to begin with.
the city is size 8 so 6 luxuries goes to maintain unhaooiness from crowding(assuming we play regent/monarch but emperor wouldn't make too much difference)
That means 6 luxuries is still left to be used
The city will grow once every 3 turns with it's 8 surplus food so the city grows enough to draft 6.66 times in 20 turns(the unhappiness period)
However the luxuries only allows 6 citizens to be unhappy by drafting so no more than 6 citizens can be drafted every 20 turns without using entertainers.
By disbanding those riflemen we gain 6*20 = 120 shields per 20 turns

By using the tax collocter methid we can keep 4 tax collocter in the city while avoiding starvation. This gives 8 gold per turn which translates into 2 shields since our only purpose is to gain production.
By gaining 2 shileds/turn we can accumulate 40 shields in 20 turns

So this gives 120 shields versus 40 shields an improve of 200% by using poprushing. And this gets even better with infantry and mech inf

zerksees said:

Once you get to that point you must expend the cost to pop rush a settler, abandon the city, start over and wait for the population to get up to the right size for pop rush and then start over.

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That wouldn't be a good idea since drafting unhappiness is translated to the nearest friendly city when a city is abandoned

I hope this wasn't too long

Theoden

anarres said:

Did you read my post zerksees?

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Anarres. No I did not read your thread. No matter how many times I play deity, it still won't help me with reading! Thanks. This could come in real handy in one of my current PBEM games.

Theoden said:

That wouldn't be a good idea since drafting unhappiness is translated to the nearest friendly city when a city is abandoned

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I did not know this!

It is clear that my game will improve in the pop-rush area. Thanks.

That wouldn't be a good idea since drafting unhappiness is translated to the nearest friendly city when a city is abandoned


Really???

Of course you should do whatever you feel like, but this drafting with the only purpose to disband immediately in order to obtain shields, is a bit of an exploit imho.

Longasc: Yes, I have tested it in version 1.22, the draft gets translated. This also goes for whipping unhappines

Also if you raze an enemy city the drafting unhappiness gets translated to the enemys nearest city (im not 100% sure at this one)

Quite a few nice points you've got there.

Though this can sometimes be rather inefficient, this is still a very nice trick to get around that well known problem.

i tried this last game and it worked well but there is one thing i will do next time differently. i will not pop rush granaries anymore.

the reason why is the granary requires four draftees which means four happiness hits. while some cities can initially draft every turn and many can draft every two turns any city that drafts this often will soon find it self swimming in entertainers. by the time i rush an aqueduct and a granary i find myself in desparate need of a marketplace. after ive rushed the marketplace im in desparate need of a cathedral. next thing i know i have a size 6 city with 4 entertainers a temple a cathedral an aqueduct a marketplace and a granary about 4 gold per turn which i dont think even can pay for the improvements it has and im saying to myself "when is this city going to get a surplus draftee that can actually be applied to rushing something i want?

i will continue to use this method but i need to think about priorities on it more because the trick is not maximizing draftees per se but maximizing the number of draftees the city can export. and if we compare this number to the amount of equivalent shields that can be produced with taxmen i suspect the ratio will be a lot lower than 4 to 1.

I like to use a mixed strategy, myself: use draftees for the first 20+ shields in the production box and buy the rest, for instance.

Rush-buying production is prohibitively expensive if you don't already have some shields in the production box - double or even 4x the price, IIRC - so by first disbanding a unit I can avoid having to wait a turn to rush-buy!

This is especially useful when I'm on a conquering spree and want to build up those newly conquered but unproductive cities in a hurry.
Edit: I forgot - as long as newly conquered cities are in resistance, you can't rush-buy anyway, so here I often build the first building (often a temple) completely with draftees.

I used to use the draftee-rushing strategy far more extensively, but nowadays I prefer to use the engineer specialists and use draftees only for specific uses like above, thus avoiding the unhappiness issue.