Despot rush problems?

[fujimi no]

Current game: Monarch, playing Persia and its around 590 AD. Standard map (pangea) w/8 civs. Own the Pyramids, Great Wall and Oracle.

I've been rushing units from the time I made my second city and just taking over cities from that point on. We exterminated the Zulus, French, Babs and Germans early on due to our superior numbers and Immortals. We have destroyed most of England as well (at the fringes of our empire. Water is on all other sides). We own approximately half the world.

The problem is Musketeers are starting to pop up. We have tons of Catapults and Immortals, but almost all my corrupt cities (pre-patch game) are size 1-3 which makes Knights too expensive to rush. We can demolish the English surely and Russia (north of England) hasn't discovered Gunpowder yet, but what happens when they do? By the time my Immortals get to Russia, they should have their Musketeers set up=/

Even if they don't...by the time we invade the huge island of China, we'll have no way to damage them. They have resources galore and our production is terrible aside from our first two cities due to rushing Immortals.

Any advice? I'm hoping to get a Domination victory while destroying Russia, but that may not work out as planned. And does anyone know what year you can kill a civ and have them stay dead? I had to kill the French like 5 or 6 times.

All this warring and 0 GLs as well, so I can't even get the Forribidden Palace in a decent location.

 

[Ferd]

You can rush your knights in two stages. Rush a longbowman, but switch to knights instead of building it. Then you can rush the rest of the knight next time you get a pop increase.

It takes a stack of cannon, but you can wear down the musketeers if there aren't too many in a city. Bomb the snot out of 'em until they're down to one hit point, then take 'em out with an immortal. Works OK if there are one or two.

 

[fujimi no]

Thanks Ferd. I'm trying to invade Russia now using that strategy and it seems to be working.

One thing I've noticed is that rushing kills any chance of a city to *ever* be productive as well. Even with temples and three units in town, I can't get some cities to population 3 without disorder.

 

[Ferd]

Luxuries and marketplace, baby!

Apparently the cities queue up the unhappy faces. Each citizen lost to pop rush is supposed to make another citizen unhappy for 20 turns. There's a limit to how much unhappiness it can have going at a time. I think it just queues it up. The bigger the city is, the quicker it will use up all the queued up unhappiness. I have a city that I used to pop rush units every two turns for a long time, and it queued up a BUNCH of unhappiness. I can still get it over size 3, though. Eight luxuries and a marketplace will counter a lot of unhappiness.

Are you in communism already? If so, you can stick 4 units in the cities for unhappiness control. If you're still in Despotism, only two. In the city screen, how many of the "garrisoned unit" icons have smileys by them?