How does whipping work?

[Beerchugger]

I thought that when you whip a citizen you get 30 hammers towards production. But lately I have noticed that when you build something for a period of time you seem to get more than 30 hammers towards production per citizen whipped.

Do you get more production from a whipped citizen the longer you work on an item? How does this part of the game work?

 

[Ghpstage]

Whipping is subject to hammer multipliers such as forges, factories, trait bonuses and civic bonuses. So a whip with a forge is worth 30+25% per pop and so on.

 

[strijder20]

Whipping immediately (just after giving the build order) costs more than waiting a turn.

 

[capnvonbaron]

depends on gamespeed too. A whipped citizen on epic or marathon is more than normal.

When you hit the whip button, the game figures out how many hammers each citizen will generate toward the build. It'll then remove enough citizens to cover the cost of the build figuring in multipliers (as Ghpstage mentioned). If the amount of citizens was worth more than was left in the build (which it almost always will be, unless you hit it at just the right time), the rest of the will "overflow" into whatever you build next and speed up it's production as well.

 

[Beerchugger]

Thanks for the help; I see the mathematics behind it now.

 

[krazybastid]

One thing that always gets messed up for me is whipping unhappies, Everytime I goto whip I generally only like to do it when i can whip unhappies, but it never works out that way for some reason. I'm more of a benevolent leader when it comes to whipping. (Not saying I'm all in all right one) Just saying how I do it. I got a question. How do you know if you can whip out the unhappies instead of a productive citizen. I could never figure out the ins and outs of slavery. Sometimes I have 1 or 2 unhappies and I goto whip and I always whip out a productive and I'm a little fustrated. Is there any logistics to whipping how can I ensure that I whip unhappies as opposed to happys?

 

[Archon_Wing]

There is a severe penalty for whipping (also rushbuying) something you have no hammers invested in thus it's best to wait a turn which is why it seems so much easier if you've built it for a bit.

As for whipping out the worthless, the best is the 2 pop whip. (1 pop whip gives you back unhappiness), as for the other pop? Well, if you are growing out to a unimproved tile or otherwise worthless tile (say they're working a forrest) then it would be time to hit the whip. It's not an easy thing to do. It's also why you don't want to whip large cities.

I have a question too. If you will grow back into unhappiness before the whip anger subsides, do you slow down growth til it subsides? And does it mean if your city has many good tiles, that you should find somewhere else to whip?

The other thing is that later in the game with factories and power and biology farms... wouldn't slavery be pretty good again?

 

[civac]

Late game slavery with Kremlin, Bio and maybe a corporation can be extremely good. There are two drawbacks: It's less efficient to whip large cities as you already mentioned. Moreover, Emancipation unhappiness on top of massive whipping is hard to bear.

 

[Zx Zero Zx]

Every 1 pop you whip is worth 30 hammers. So say you need 78 hammers to finish your settler and you are size 6. You can then do a 3 pop whip to finish the settler AND get 12 overflow hammers into your next build. Now say we have the same situation, but you are only 5 pop. In order to get the needed hammers to 2 pop whip to finish you would have to invest 18 hammers into the settler. Then you could 2 pop whip for 60 hammers. If you have say 7 food + 3 hammers in the city it would take 2 turns to be able to whip, and you would get 2 overflow hammers. These values are for normal speed.

 

[dogwalksyou]

I have a question too. If you will grow back into unhappiness before the whip anger subsides, do you slow down growth til it subsides?

I typically handle this situation in one of two ways: either I grow anyway so that I have more pop to spare in that city, or I suspend growth and switch around the worked tiles and specialists so that growth stagnates close to growing a size (or even starves a bit), and I then have more production/science/whatever for a bit while the city is recuperating. I typically let it keep growing if the city is fairly small with multiple large food output tiles but little production.

Also, in reference to the OP's inquiry, I also suspect that rushing can give somewhat of a higher yield as whatever is being produced is constructed for longer. I have not observed this with whipping, but I have noticed it on occasion when I'm partially completing a World Wonder with a Great Engineer (as in I leave the engy in the city for a while, and the I'd get from hurrying production increases slightly after a few turns).

 

[6K Man]

One thing that always gets messed up for me is whipping unhappies, Everytime I goto whip I generally only like to do it when i can whip unhappies, but it never works out that way for some reason. I'm more of a benevolent leader when it comes to whipping. (Not saying I'm all in all right one) Just saying how I do it. I got a question. How do you know if you can whip out the unhappies instead of a productive citizen. I could never figure out the ins and outs of slavery. Sometimes I have 1 or 2 unhappies and I goto whip and I always whip out a productive and I'm a little fustrated. Is there any logistics to whipping how can I ensure that I whip unhappies as opposed to happys?

The trick is to whip 1 more population than you have surplus unhappies.

So, if your city has 2 unhappies, whip 3. That will eliminate the 2 unhappies, and the extra happy you kill off will be offset by the unhappy citizen you get for whipping.

 

[Iranon]

If you want maximum efficiency rather than volume:

Grow to Cap+1 at whatever rate is convenient
Whip 2-3 population
Grow to cap the turn anger wears off

Efficiency-wise, optimal whipping is ahead of stable output until city size 12-ish on most terrain, and at rather large sizes with the Kremlin. Since minor mistakes can put it behind, the question is whether it's worth the bother... after all, keeping things open for a trouble-free emergency whip has its own advantages.

Whipping is most attractive when you can't have enough regular production (e.g. island cities), you haven't grown into your stable cap yet but need production asap (you'll work more tiles sooner, compared to throttling growth for hammers), you're whipping cap raisers (same principle) or the marginal citizen(s) sucked anyway (often in food-rich cities that need to burn the excess, even with things like non-Rep specialists). A variant of the last is health trouble because otherwise decent tiles may not be worth a 3-food price tag.