How much whipping is too much?

[TheScoutBomb]

I understand that whipping out settlers, workers, infrastructure, or even an early rush is crucial to winning the early game. But I am EXTREMELY conservative with the whip. It seems to stick around for ages on Epic speed games. And while the whip means that my cities will be more productive at the time it means that the city in general will be very ineffective due to lack of pop and whip weariness. So what are whipping techniques that are important to utilize besides whip any high food city with a granary?

 

[CivCorpse]

I understand that whipping out settlers, workers, infrastructure, or even an early rush is crucial to winning the early game. But I am EXTREMELY conservative with the whip. It seems to stick around for ages on Epic speed games. And while the whip means that my cities will be more productive at the time it means that the city in general will be very ineffective due to lack of pop and whip weariness. So what are whipping techniques that are important to utilize besides whip any high food city with a granary?

Try and whip atleast 2 pop at a time. This allows you to regrow quickly to your new happy cap then time your growth of the 2nd whipped pop to coincide with the whip anger going away...then repeat the process.

 

[duckstab]

I whip a lot more freely than I used to, but my general guidelines are
1) Let the whip anger fade before whipping again
2) Whip on the turn before growth, so the population grows back almost immediately

The only exceptions I tend to make are for
1) military emergencies
2) when I have a lot of angry citizens I need to get rid of quickly due to war weariness, homeland yearning, or a civics switch.

Yes, I've read "The Whipping Thread" which is probably the definitive reference on the subject, but my eyes just glaze over when people start doing food and hammer calculations...

 

[Refar]

As your happy cap goes up, mass whipping becomes less attractive. You can still whip on occassion / some cities / for emergency, but generally you don't want to fall behind too badly in term of population.

If the citizen you are going to kill (e.g. the worst worked plot in your city), would give you more over the regrow period, you might want to reconcider killing him...

 

[Stolen Rutters]

What everyone else said so far, whip 2 at a time if possible, let whip anger fade, etc... personally, I would like to add "I don't whip citizens working high-output tiles unless I absolutely have to", though any pop working an unimproved tile is fair game for the whip.

 

[obsolete]

I don't quite agree with the 2-pop whip thing anymore. There's been changes since the good old days.

Why should he stack penalties now just because he heard an old rule-of-thumb to whip 2? This should not determine when or how much you should be whipping. You need culture? You whip it NOW... you need units? You whip it now! Forget about sitting on your butt waiting for when you can whip 2, or finding something JUST so you can whip 2...

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

I don't quite agree with the 2-pop whip thing anymore. There's been changes since the good old days.

Why should he stack penalties now just because he heard an old rule-of-thumb to whip 2? This should not determine when or how much you should be whipping. You need culture? You whip it NOW... you need units? You whip it now! Forget about sitting on your butt waiting for when you can whip 2, or finding something JUST so you can whip 2...

I'm finding this to be true too. Too often, I box myself into this belief that I have to 2 pop whip, so I end up whipping stuff I don't need. And then of course I avoid the 1 pop whips like the plague, when in some situations, it's probably better to just whip it.

 

[Iranon]

Whip freely if you need the building to make your city productive in the first place. Granaries and Lighthouses often qualify, particularly in production-poor locations. Courthouses sometimes do if those are needed to turn the city from a liability into an asset.

Whip if you need things now rather than a few turns later - this often applies for settlers when you fear a good spot might be taken by a neighbour and you aren't ready for war. Also to units you need in a hurry (emergency defenders or the last few units of an attacking stack you're about to send away)

Whip specialists or citizens working food-deficit tiles away if their yields aren't worth the food they eat (when converted into hammers) - very often happens on poor land with a few food resources.

***

Whipping can beat regular production in efficiency, especially if you have many relatively small cities close enough together that you can shuffle the high-food tiles around (to cities that need to regrow).
The rewards aren't great and it's easy to mess things up though.

 

[Gooblah]

I whip like hell if the city has access to food..which all should.

At any rate, I prefer 2-pop whips, but use 1-pop whips. If there's more than two unhappy citizens due to the whip, I head for the 2-pop whip, since a one-pop whip keeps the same amount of unhappiness at a lower population, making it harder to regrow.

 

[Ibian]

The problem with 2pops is that you will either be whipping away something useful like a mine, or sitting on a plains forest or unimproved grassland or something while you wait to grow.

The only case where i find 2pops useful from a hammer-perspective is if i am working grass forests. They are more useful than whipping in the long run, but not useful enough to not get some quick hammers now.

 

[Gumbolt]

Whipping can be useful in terms of low production in a city. Whipping 2 pop for a 20-30 turn build adds value esp if its a granary or court house.

 

[Skallagrimson]

As your happy cap goes up, mass whipping becomes less attractive. You can still whip on occassion / some cities / for emergency, but generally you don't want to fall behind too badly in term of population.

If the citizen you are going to kill (e.g. the worst worked plot in your city), would give you more over the regrow period, you might want to reconcider killing him...

Whipping never becomes unattractive to me. If I'm at a 16 cap (which by then is usually a health cap, not a happy cap), I'll still whip 8 for some major improvement that'll boost the city's value, productivity, etc. I just leave specialists unflipped and prioritize working higher-food tiles for the grow-back period (which can include 2 food lumbermills after RP). And they're still productive during that period.

Earlier in the game it's more common for me to whip a temple to boost the hapcap in a unit pump city. 2 or 3 pop, bump down from 10, regrow just about the same time as whip anger's gone.

 

[Joshua368]

Whipping + Kremlin is godly, it brings the effeciently of whipping in the early game down to the late game and the more expensive buildings. If you get it early enough to have a pre-emancipation window or are spiritual it can really give you huge results.

 

[Cashew]

Prior to hereditary rule I'll whip 1 pop in a lot of the cities with low food yields. Like... one rice is not gonna give me explosive growth and if all I have around that are grasslands and plains with no irrigation I'm basically looking at slaving away the rice every 6 turns.

Stacking unhappiness in slaving is how people build massive armies in multiplayer games. Essentially, whenever you can do an ideal whip you do it regardless of how much unhappiness you already have. You just keep doing this as long as your cities are growing, which for some cities that have huge food resources this ends up being a lot. The only thing you shouldn't slave away though is your food.

 

[Zeiter]

My general idea is, whip until you have infrastructure and all the multipliers that you want in each specific city (forges for production cities, markets and grocers for commerce cities, etc.). THEN grow, and only go back to the whip in emergencies or for wonders. There should be a definitive point when you more or less hang up the whip, even if you haven't reached emancipation yet. You may still want to stay in slavery for the flexibility in emergencies (there's nothing like making your invader pay with a scorched-earth policy of whipping your once-brilliantly-shining cities into heaps of corpses surrounded by swarms of troops), but for whipping to be most efficient, your approach to the whip needs to be definitive. Nothing half-@%^#&.

Compare to: growing to work more tiles without multipliers, and then whipping (lost turn advantage). Or, not whipping at all, and working more tiles, but with fewer multipliers.

 

[Bleys]

Once I get past the point where my happy cap is starting to get some room, I only look to 1-pop whip. In most cases, your not getting extra hammers 2-pop whipping, you're just saving some time.

But early on, those first few settlers/workers/axes, especially if you get food-heavy starts, I 2-pop whip exclusively. My main city from 6, my 2nd+ cities from 4 or 5.