Poprushing mechanics

[Iamgmm]

Hi everyone!
I'm new to the forum but not to the game. I've been into CivIII since 2003 but haven't played for the last five years or so due to real life issues. Now I've got a couple of spare winter evenings and am trying to restore the skills I had a decade ago.

I have read all the excellent strategy articles here but didn't find anything on how exactly poprushing works. If such an article exists please direct me to it. If no, I'd appreciate a few explanations:

1. Suppose I want to rush a 60-s temple in a size 4 city (having a few shields in the city box). First I rush a 40-s barracks, killing 2 pop, then switch to temple and kill one more pop. This would create three unhappy faces but only a single citizen is alive. So:

- Will the newly built temple automatically pacify him, or is he "3 times unhappy" and I will need two more MP units just to make him content?
- The next turn a new citizen is born who haven't witnessed the massacre. Assume the difficult level allows for two content citizens. Will the newly born be content or is "whip weariness" contagious?

2. Suppose I have a size 2 city where one of the citizens is "whip weary" and the other is content. I want to rush 20 shields in this city: which of the citizens will die? If the older one dies I will only have 20 unhappy turns left; if the younger one dies I will have 20 turns added to the previous unhappiness.

Thanks in advance!

 

[justanick]

It is simpler than that. Each poprush-killed citizen increases whip-unhappyness by 1. That unhappyness is not attached to a citizen, but to the city. Abandoning the city will not help either, it will make the unhappyness jump to another one of your cities. While there is whip-unhappyness in a city it is decreased by 1 every 20 turns.

Generally speaking it is best to avoid whipping. Similar is true for drafting, but the relative value of that can be a lot higher.

 

[Iamgmm]

So, what happens if the unhappiness count is greater than the city size? Will one MP unit or a temple still be enough for a single "very unhappy" citizen?

I'm planning a 100k culture game and expect to build 70-100 ICS cities. It seems whipping is the only feasible engine for this strategy.

 

[justanick]

So, what happens if the unhappiness count is greater than the city size? Will one MP unit or a temple still be enough for a single "very unhappy" citizen?

No. The unhappiness count does not depend on city size. So a size 1 city with 10 whipping unhappyness requires 10 happy or content faces to compensate. There is a trick, though. Make the 1 citizen into a specialist like a scientist and happyness does not matter. Only citizens working tiles need to be at least content on average.

I'm planning a 100k culture game and expect to build 70-100 ICS cities. It seems whipping is the only feasible engine for this strategy.

If you want to reach 100 k ASAP that might be so. But it is more fun to build 70 metropolises that can actually utilize those culture buildings.

 

[Iamgmm]

Thanks for clarification, justanick. Will have to keep cities at size 1 with a specialist then.

Managing 70 metros is surely fun but that's another sort of fun, not for a 100k game