Strategy on Pop Rushing

[Email10]

Is there anyone who know's about an article about Pop-rushing or feel like writing somethings about it? I am interested in knowing how the amount of citizens used for rushing is calculated, how many you can sacrifice without the people getting unhappyand how long it will take until the unhappy people are getting content again.

I've read somewhere about short-rushing and I have a good idea about how to use it, with gold (when in republic or democracy, etc) but could this really be applied also with poprushing?

For people who don't have a clue about the words I'm talking about:

Pop-rushing (whip): Hurrying production in a city by sacrificing people.
Short-rushing: Same as pop-rushing, but after the sacrificing has been done, switch to a more expensive project which will now take shorter time. Ideally short-rushing should result that the project will be finished next turn, using the shields we will get from the normal city production.

I will illustrate ideal short-rushing with an example, similar to what I remember from when I read about it. In your city (pop 6) you have production set on archer (cost: 20 shields), but you really want a horseman (30) instead. You already have 10 shields put into production. You generate 10 shields/turn for this city so if you swith to horseman directly you will get it in 2 turns, but you want it faster! You hurry the archer by whipping and 1 citizen is sacrificed (not sure if this is correct though). Voila! You now have 20 shields and the city (now at pop 5) still generate 10 shields/turn and you will now get your horseman next turn.

 

[jammasterlee]

hm, i know that it takes 20 turns for the unhappiness effect to wear off..

 

[Email10]

Is that 20 turns per citizen you sacrifice or is it 20 turns for all. E.g. if you sacrifice 3 citizens will it take 20 turns and then all will be content again or will it take 60 turns to make all 3 content? (the first one getting content after 20, second after 40).

Also, does it depends on the level?

 

[jammasterlee]

my guess is 20 turns total...20 turns per seems a bit silly...

Steve

 

[taper]

In the editor, it says "Turn penalty for each hurry sacrifice" set at 20. It also gives a citizen a shield value of 20. I take to mean each citizen pop rushed causes one unhappy face for 20 turns. Two rushed gives two unhappy faces for 20 turns, etc.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Actually, if you rush more than 1 citizen in a single turn, there is a longer penalty.

Rushing 2 citizens causes you to have 2 unhappy people for 20 turns PLUS 1 of those will be unhappy for an extra 20 turns.

I am not exactly sure what the penalties are for whipping more than that, or if you whip on back to back turns. I think most people try not to whip a city more than once every 20 turns so that the unhappiness from the previous whip isn't compounding with your new whipping frenzy. It really depends on how much happiness you have for the city to counter the unhappiness from the whipping.

Generally, you don't want to pop-rush too much. There are of course times where it can be very useful, just don't over-do it.

If the citizen (that you would lose from pop-rushing) is working a good tile, then don't lose him. He does more good for you working that good tile than the short-term gain by killing him (except in emergency situations, of course).

 

[Bamspeedy]

Short-rushing in despotism can be done, but not advisable in most situations, IMO.

Let's say you want to build a 60-shield item. You build up 20 shields and now want to pop 2 citizens to get the 40 shields you need. If you are at population 3 you can't rush 2 citizens (you can't pop more than 50% of your population). You can set the build order to a 40-shield item, pop 1 citizen, then change the build order back to your 60-shield item and now you can pop another citizen for your last 20 shields.

Short-rushing in despot could also be done the way you were mentioning about how to do it with cash rushing, but there are a few problems with it.

1. Generally, the whole purpose of short rushing is to cut waste. For example: Instead of producing 36 shields for a 30 shield item (wasting 6 shields), you can rush some shields and not waste anything. Finding situations where exactly 20 shields saves you from having wastage, is harder (and you also have the loss of the citizen and increased unhappiness, so are you really 'saving' anything?). You could save a few turns of production of course, but not really reduce the 'waste'.

2. Since your city is now a smaller size from the rushing, that may screw up your production calculations.

 

[Email10]

Thanks for all the answers!

The reason I am interested is that I have been reading a long time about rushing (from Gotm reports and succession games) and many top players seems to use rushing a lot (although controlled). In my games I very seldom rush things, unless in case of emergencies (e.g. need spearman for protection against barbs).

So, if I understand correctly, the rules behind poprushing is that every citizen rushed adds 20 shields, you can't rush more than 50% pop and each citizen sacrificed makes another one unhappy for 20 turns. I think that's what I wanted to know

Btw, just read through your Beyond Sid report Bamspeedy - very interesting

 

[civ_steve]

I've used something similar to the short rushing method when playing as a Religious civ. A Religious civ has the advantage of only a 1 turn Anarchy period when changing governments. Assuming its later in the game (maybe Medieval time), and I know and am one of the Advanced government forms, I can get the most bang out of my pop-rushing by cash-rushing to something 20 shields less than what I want to produce in multiple cities, changing production to what I want, revolting to Despotism, then the following turn pop-rush the last 20 shields for all these items, start another revolution, and change back to my preferred government. In this matter I can rush lots of items in my cities that might be at different stages in production, combine cash and pop rushing, and only suffer 2 turns of anarchy while doing it.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Email10
So, if I understand correctly, the rules behind poprushing is that every citizen rushed adds 20 shields, you can't rush more than 50% pop and each citizen sacrificed makes another one unhappy for 20 turns. I think that's what I wanted to know

Note that the unhappiness effect of pop-rushing increases very fast with more than one sacrifized citizen. 1 pop-rush makes one unhappy citizen for 20 turns, but a pop-rush of 2 makes one unhappy citizen for 20 turns and another for 40 turns. Pop-rushing 3 will have the effects of 2, plus a third unhappy citizen for 60 turns etc.

In other words, you create as many unhappy faces as the number of sacrifized citizens, and 1 unhappy face goes back to content for each 20th turn.