To whip or not to whip?

[Zionel]

I am looking for some opinions on when and how ofthen you should use the whip. I've had games where i have whipped way to much, and others where i believe i have used it too little. My general rule is not to whip if I haven't reached the happiness cap, unless there is an urgent need ofcourse, such as shaka beeing on my doorstep and and not in a friendly manner. I've read some articles wich describes everything there is to know about whipping, but I still find it hard to decide when to use it. Too much whipping will stagnate my economy, but I can't help feeling that i'm missing something if i'm not using it, since many people argue that slavery is the best civic in the game.

Let me know how you take advantage of slavery, i'm sure you can help me improve my game

 

[Ruler]

Whipping is hard thing to learn and it's not worth to ruin your game because of that and from that my advice is that you shouldn't bother yourself with wipping if you are playing on Monarch or below or even on Emperor although get your early army ready requires some whipping time to time in my opinion on that level. it's still nice to know that you can whip ie if you are thinking AI is going to beat you on wonders or get some units fast.

 

[Zionel]

Perhaps I should have mentioned that. Yes, it's monarch, and sometimes a visit to emperor.

 

[Breunor]

There are some easy cases. Whipping is obvious if you have run into your happiness limit, which is more likely in higher levels.

In some cities without hammers, you need towhip often to get basic buildings, like graneries and courthouses.

As ruler said, its often useful for the obvious, 'oh no, those axemen are coming.' This happens to me quite a lot. Also, losing that wonder by one turn is awful, look to ship to make sure youget an important wonder like the Oracle or the Great Library.

A more complex issue is city type. If you have a lot of cotteges, you don't want to whip as often, since you need to work them for them to be valuable. Conversely, if you have a lot of food from wheat, fish, or the like, its a very good candidate to whip.


Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Giaur]

Some cities (with enough food) take great advantage of whiping, but some cities grow slow. And you have to decide how many cities would take advantage of whiping in each particular game. When only one city seems to take benefit from this strat do not bother with Slavery civic.

 

[DigitalBoy]

There are some easy cases. Whipping is obvious if you have run into your happiness limit, which is more likely in higher levels.

In some cities without hammers, you need towhip often to get basic buildings, like graneries and courthouses.

As ruler said, its often useful for the obvious, 'oh no, those axemen are coming.' This happens to me quite a lot. Also, losing that wonder by one turn is awful, look to ship to make sure youget an important wonder like the Oracle or the Great Library.

A more complex issue is city type. If you have a lot of cotteges, you don't want to whip as often, since you need to work them for them to be valuable. Conversely, if you have a lot of food from wheat, fish, or the like, its a very good candidate to whip.


Best wishes,

Breunor

Pretty much everything Breunor said here is dead on.

Do whip to get out crucial buildings, do whip to "utilize" angry citizens, and do whip in cities with disproportionally large amounts of food.

Cottage cities can be hurt the most by excessive whipping since it stunts the development of cottages.

 

[tycoonist]

a few general rules that i have found:

1. only whip with a granary (at least after the starting few turns). this means the lost population can regrow twice as fast. without granary, whipping is not as effective.

2. whip out early settlers ASAP.

3. always whip angry citizens away if you can because they privide useful hammers and do nothing themselves.

4. if you have tons of food and a lot of happiness (ie Globe theatre) just whip like crazy. whole armies can be whipped quite quickly

 

[svv]

First, except in emergencies (or where you have Globe Theater), make sure the unhappiness from the last whip is gone before you start the next whip. Of course the happiness report will tell you if there's any remaining "cruel oppression" unhappiness. You can tell if the unhappiness is gone by looking at the partial city screen - when you put the cursor over the whip icon, it will tell you how many turns of unhappiness will be created. If this is at the base amount (10 in normal, 30 in marathon), then the previous unhappiness is gone.

Second, don't whip on the first turn you started building something, because then your return is 20 hammers/pop instead of 30.

I'll often whip whenever I can, subject to the above two conditions and so long as the city has decent food/growth. The 30 hammers/pop is a pretty good return of food for hammers. I don't know the exact numbers; I think the hammer to food ratio goes down as the population of the city goes up. But in any case I find it's a pretty efficient way to get things built.

One last point - if you're needing the whipping to keep the city's growth out of health/happiness problems, you'll want to sure you're whipping large items for two or more population, instead of small items like military units or itmes you have almost completed for one population. So, a turn before hitting the whip you might want to switch to an item that will take more population to build or which you don't already have nearly finished.

 

[lilnev]

VoiceOfUnreason's article is the best source on the mechanics, and how to translate them into efficient whipping.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=193659

I find I generally whip:
- Early workers/workboats/settlers. Getting your best tiles under cultivation and your chosen city sites claimed is so important, it's worth it even before you have a granary. Especially true when you have significant excess food, as is often the case for the capital.
- Building an early army. Axes, swords, catapults. Here you'll want to be at your happy-cap to have the most tiles under cultivation. Make sure you're whipping for 2 pop, as "cruel oppression" is the larger part of the cost. If a city has mines to work and only a modest food surplus, it's often better to simply work the good tiles, however. It's still reasonable to raise a Rennaisance army (maces/trebs) with the whip; but by the time you reach grens/cavs, that's costing a lot of pop from larger more food-balanced cities (at least in the CEs I run). Most troops will get built by regular hammers, or drafted, or upgraded from older troops, with only a small whip component.
- Monument and/or granary in new cities. If the fat cross is needed to access your best tiles, get it however's fastest. Whipping the granary will double your future growth rate, quickly paying for itself. These whips will wear off by the time the city has grown to its caps, so in that sense they're "free".
- Infrastructure in low-hammer cities, as needed.
- Recently captured cities. They're only going to starve anyway, might as well work them to death, eh?

peace,
lilnev

 

[Polycrates]

Whipping is immensely powerful, here's a few of my thoughts on it:

1) Whipping away 1 population point is rarely a good idea - save the whip for big builds and do the small builds in between. And whipping down from pop 2 to pop 1 is almost always a terrible idea that will significantly hinder the city's development (pretty much the only exception would be where you desperately need a monument ASAP to get a fat cross and connect a strategic resource).
Whipping from size 5 to size 3 is generally a quite sweet spot, where you're not overly crippling the city's output but also where the population will likely grow back nice and quickly

2) One of the best uses of the whip is to whip yourself out an axeman rush, but it takes a bit of micromanagement. If you can makes sure that the first turn production on it is 4 or less (6 or less on epic), you can whip two population away on the second turn and get the full 60 hammers, which gives you lots of overflow hammers and likely means you'll be producing two axemen in three turns, which lets you build yourself an army very quickly. Also works well with swordsmen and catapults.

3) When your happiness limits go up significantly (after calendar and hereditary rule and markets etc), you might consider holding off on the whip in the more developed cities so that they can grow up and benefit more from their developed infrastructure and terrain.

4) Whipping in heavily-production-focused cities is generally a no-no - they generally grow slowly since you're focusing on hammer-rich-food-poor tiles, and the temporarly hammer gain probably will be overshadowed by the potential hammers lost by not having more workers.

5) Cottage cities may be hurt by whipping, but they often have poor production and benefit from a significant number of expensive buildings which will otherwise almost never be built. Whipping in moderation can provide definite benefits. There's a growth and not-working-a-cottage cost for each hill you work anyway, so whipping works well.

6) Expansive and Imperialistic civs get a particularly good benefit from whipping workers or settlers respectively (to get the full benefit of their production bonuses).

7) Whipping in big newly-conquered cities is often very useful, particularly for courthouses and happiness buildings (whipping a market in a commerce city can be an excellent choice)

8) Whipping is awesome fun. It might not be quite as cool as nerve stapling (is there anything else that cool?) but it's way more useful.

 

[30+]

It normally takes a little bit of time before pottery and the granary will even become available...........So, I agree with everyone else who likes to whip monuments,workers,settlers. As a general rule of thumb, I normally wont use the whip if a city will produce more hammers from mines/forest in 10 turns (normal speed, same time takes for unhappiness from whip to deminish) than the whip will (excluding unhappy citizens of course). Otherwise you are losing production in long run.

Also agreed that whipping away unhappy citizens who are doing nothing but eating food is a good idea. Once the game progresses further and I have larger cities, say size 6-10, I love to let them grow into a very unhappy state, usually to the limit. This way you can grow a size 10 city to size 15 (with 5 unhappy citizens and lots of farms) and begin whipping 3-4 units out in 5-7 turns. If you have a bunch of cities doing this you can produce LOTs of units so fast its scarry. If you had six cities doing the above you could produce 24 units in 7 turns with the whip alone.....10 cities 40 units....etc.

 

[cabert]

I think lilnev has it right. Anyway, here is my opinion on this.
I'm sort of a whipper. I generally whip for 2+ pop.

What I very often whip :
- granary
- library (or monument, or theatre = the available culture building)
- forge (if I have gold, gems or silver)
- temples (more so if I'm spiritual)
- market (if I have ivory, fur, silk or whales)
- courthouse (more so if I'm organized) in captured cities

What I don't whip too often :
- wonders : I do whip for 3/4 pops wonders for which I have the special resource, when I feel there is a risk of losing it. Other than that it just costs too many pop points.
- archers/warriors/chariots...= all those things that cost less than 30 hammers.

When I do whip :
- when I have no good (=improved!) tiles to work (= whipping a worker is probably the best move then)
- when I am at or over or near the happiness cap : whipping a happy building for 2+ pop is often a good move then.
- when there is an emergency (preparing a war is an emergency)
- after I popped a Great Person (= I probably won't run the specialist anymore, so I can just whip them away )

When I most often don't whip:
- late game, when US can give me the hurried things
- when the population I could whip works good tiles (= 2 hammers or more, 4 commerce or more)
- when it will take too long to grow back the population (= I don't have a granary yet, or I have only 1 food surplus)
- when I have the feeling I will need to whip something else soon (happens very often when I'm researching education : I keep the population points growing, including over the happy cap, to be able to whip universities all over the place : oxford, here I come!)
- when I'm not spiritual and needed to switch out of slavery for some reason

 

[fed1943]

Good summary, Cabert.

I tend to give more importance to the don't than to the do, I'm a non whiper
(but I whip).

Best regards,

 

[Storminator]

If I have a relatively new city in an established empire, I often find myself 5 or 6 people below the happiness cap. In that case I'll do 3 or 4 whips as quick as is reasonable, since by the time I grow to the happy-cap, the Oppression penalty will have worn off... allowing another whip or two before I reach the happy cap again.

I've also overdone this strat, crippling a city's growth, so it takes some practice to time it right.

PS

 

[Harbourboy]

Biggest thing I used to do wrongly was whipping the 1 pop point when about to become unhappy (because I didn't want to cripple my cities too much). Of course, it was counter productive because I just got the unhappiness right back when the city grew.

 

[Jorunkun]

Excellent summaries, Cabert and IIlnev. I think the vast majority of civvers here (me included) don't whip enough, from a "maximising efficiency" pov anyway.

There was a funny and eye-opening post (for me anyways) in Aelfs last Immortal thread where Aelf had just whipped a bunch of improvements and Mutineer commented that this was still not enough and that he shouldn't be such a wuss about unhappiness.

To see how far you can take whipping, and go into the red with unhappiness, I recommend anyone to go check out Mutineer, Ueberfish, Acidsatyr et al. in their immortal SGs.

 

[Priah]

First off, every city should generally always have +5 food if you're below your happiness limit, and then try to peak it off when you hit your happiness limit.

After you capture a city, you should nearly always whip out the courthouse immediatly (the nice thing about immortal difficulty is the ai cities get 12+ by 0 ad, you need 4 pop to whip so your target city needs to be nine population to be able to whip the courthouse, and 5 population if you're organized.

I whip granaries the vast majority of the time under the assumption the quicker growing speed will make up for the lost population anyway.

You typically dont want to whip much of anything in production cities, except when they are really young, as in the long run you are probably losing out on production.

Another time I whip, is when my cities are growing too quickly that I really cant keep improving all the tiles with the amount of workers I have, just rush out a few workers in cities that you need more improvements around.