New patch, new strategy?

[LaRo]

What will you do to win at deity without pop rushing and size 7 city's bug?

 

[eyrei]

We still haven't had it confirmed that pop-rushing has been completely removed under despotism. I think the penalties may have increased enough to render slave camps useless however. After pop-rushing at population 2 to get s horsemen, the remaining pop point will be unhappy, and not be able to work the fields to cause the city to grow for twenty turns. I hope pop-rushing hasn't been removed completely, it might make even Monarch level almost impossible.

 

[Anglophile]

I don't have a real answer for this as I have only worked up to Emperor. I may pop rush a couple of times at this level but certainly don't use it as my base strategy, but I do understand that Deity is another quantum jump up. Frankly, if the only way to win is pop rushing, I won't play it because I would find it very 'unfun'. However, my reading of the patch stuff is that pop rushing is still allowed but that it will always leave an unhappy citizen behind rather than sacrificing the unhappy camper. To me, that seems eminently reasonable.

 

[MrFrodo]

Would that make the one citizen that is left over after the whip content? If so, then pop-rush is still going to dominate. If
not, there will still be uses for pop-rush, (it would still
out produce one sheild/turn cities) but you couldn't build a
strategy on it.

 

[Beamup]

According to what I read on the "patch changes" thread, the happiness effects are cumulative - so, if you've pop-rushed enough to generate 4 unhappy citizens, and only have 1 citizen, you'll actually have to provide 4 "content faces" to keep him from revolting! Should definitely make it not feasible to repeatedly pop-rush in the same city.

 

[Mapache]

Can't you convert that one and only citizen in an entertainer. Under version 1.16 I conquered a city with a single survivor who was 5 times unhappy(for the whip[80%] and the war[20%]). I made an entertainer.

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Mapache
Can't you convert that one and only citizen in an entertainer. Under version 1.16 I conquered a city with a single survivor who was 5 times unhappy(for the whip[80%] and the war[20%]). I made an entertainer.

That is the point of this change. If you make that citizen an entertainer, the city will cease to grow, effectively stopping pop-rushing in that city for 20 turns.

 

[SanPellegrino]

Originally posted by eyrei


That is the point of this change. If you make that citizen an entertainer, the city will cease to grow, effectively stopping pop-rushing in that city for 20 turns.

The duration is now 40, not 20 turns. That will make it quite hard, because poprush cities will NEVER get happy anymore.

 

[eyrei]

I am guessing that this will not effect one of my basic strategies of pop-rushing temples as soon as possible. The effect of the temple should keep that remaining citizens content, and then if you add a garrrison, the city should be able to grow to size three before unhappiness occurs. I hope this is the case anyway. I haven't actually had a chance to play with the new patch yet. 40 turns huh. That is a really long time!

 

[SanPellegrino]

I just read that in a post from Soren Johnson, hadn't a chance to try it either. He also said you can't rush more than half the pop of a city, so a size3 can't rush with 2 pop. I think with these points pop rushing will only be of marginal interest in the future.

 

[vanollefen]

As for the theory that you can't win on Diety without pop rush, I just won a game without using it. Large map, pangea, 7 other civs. Now to be honest, I did replay one 400 year segment starting at 300 BC twice because I foolishly started a war without realizin just how many units the AI builds. Also, for some reason both Russian and England had a clear tech lead and the ability to build a starship immenently, and decided to start a bunch of wars and built a lot of armor instead. I stayed out of the war and pointed for the starship. Won in 1490 AD.

 

[alexti]

I don't use pop-rushing and size 6-7 bug strategies (well, I've learned about them only a few days ago in this forum).

Still I am able to win about 50-70% of games on Deity. It is possible to find some way to win from almost any starting position. Most difficult setting is probably start alone on the small island

Alex.

 

[brody]

I'm a novice, so take this with a grain of salt, but the way I see it, if you consider pop-rushing NECESSARY in a level as low as Monarch (from eyrei's post), you have problems. I'm no power player, I just play and watch and see what happens. I don't look for ways to fool or confuse the AI. But in my first game I'm playing Persia in a huge Archipelago (sp?) map against 7 other civs, on Monarch. Everybody else has probably twice as many cities as me, but I'm leading the technology race, mainly from wonders and democracy. I am at war with the rather large Roman empire, but since my (small) continent is so far from them, they can barely get two knights to me before my riflemen kick their a$$es. And their obsolete navy is constantly running from mine...

Either I'm getting a serious streak of beginner's luck, or Monarch is playable without any exploits. I imagine Diety is infinitely harder, but even so, the point of Diety is to play a VERY difficult game and enjoy it (in my mind), not to see how you can exploit the game to make it as easy as Monarch. If you can't play Diety without exploiting the game, then why play it at all? Hopefully this new pop rush tweak weeds out some of the "lesser" players (assuming the patch gets more stabilized soon)

 

[eyrei]

Originally posted by brody
I'm a novice, so take this with a grain of salt, but the way I see it, if you consider pop-rushing NECESSARY in a level as low as Monarch (from eyrei's post), you have problems.

I was referring not to exploiting pop-rushing, but to not using it at all. The way it is set up now, is certainly playable. The reason I need pop-rushing to some extent, is to rush a cultural improvement in each of my cities to fill in my borders to keep the AI from snagging 'my' territory. After, this, I generally don't use it anyway.

 

[Anglophile]

In about half my games (on Monarch and more recently Emperor), I will use very limited Pop Rushing (maybe two or three times per game); in the others, I don't use it at all. Now I do play on very large maps with 10-12 civs, conditions which I think favour the human player. I do not think one needs the exploits to win, especially if one gets a good starting position. Pop rushing definitely makes the game easier but is not a happy fit for my play style. The original 'rules' gave no downsides, especially with the paired city concept so I think that the changes are good and probably 'historically valid'. I mean, how happy would you be living in a city where a significant portion of the population was routinely and frequently sacrificed to build stuff?

However, as I don't use the technique and won't miss it, you could argue that my opinion on this doesn't matter much.

 

[BillChin]

I was never a big fan of pop rushing. However, in 1.17 there are big loopholes remaining that some have posted about on other threads. I have not read it in this thread so will outline it again here.

Pop rushing under 1.17 involves using worker farms to feed processing centers. An ideal worker farm has +5 food and 5 shields per turn. A good worker farm has +4 or +3 food and shields. A mediocre worker farm has +2 food and 2 shields. Send these workers to a garbage city set up for processing only. Join the workers to the city then pop them to get military units.

For terrain without food bonuses, two mediocre worker farm cities can feed one processing center.

The other huge loophole is that capturing enemy workers and razing enemy cities generates more workers to process to fuel a Despot's early war.

If Firaxis really wants pop rushing gone from the game, possible solutions are to make empire wide effects for excessive pop rushing, or to prevent workers from joining cities with negative happiness. As it is now, pop rushing is alive, though a bit harder to set up.

 

[Beard Rinker]

Version 1.17 has harsher penalties for pop rushing. As I understand it, a city can have negative unhappiness when pop-rushed excessively. The aim of this is to make it more difficult to exploit pop rushing.

One side effect of this is in some cases, capturing and holding a city is pointless. When the AI's back is to the wall, it will draft and pop rush like mad trying to save its ass. When you take the city, the citizens have the memory of what the AI did and never forgive you. I have seen cases where a captured town will starve itself down to size 1 and stay at size 1 because I can't make anyone happy.

This differs from previous versions as in previous versions the citizens would eventually forgive you.

This may require a modification to some players’ strategies. When in a prolonged war with an AI, the cities taken towards the end of your campaign will be forever useless. Some possible ways to handle this are:
- Raze all cities towards the end of a campaign.
- Let the AI keep the cities. They will be useless to the AI to and a drain on their resources.
- Take the city and give it to another AI.

 

[brody]

Originally posted by eyrei


I was referring not to exploiting pop-rushing, but to not using it at all. The way it is set up now, is certainly playable. The reason I need pop-rushing to some extent, is to rush a cultural improvement in each of my cities to fill in my borders to keep the AI from snagging 'my' territory. After, this, I generally don't use it anyway.

I see, my mistake