The economics of food velocity in a Despotism

[David Weldon]

I just came up with a way to avoid all long-term opportunity cost for rush-building with forced labor. When you're converting to "peaceful" mode, simply produce a settler out of your city, abandoning it in the process, and then re-build the city. Poof! No more unhappiness. You can even rush-build the settler if you wish.

The only caveat here is that you had to be using this city to rush-build military units, instead of city improvements. Any improvements are of course lost.

Still, If you're rushing every 3 turns in a good city with a granary, and all that unhappiness is piling up, then you can simply disband and rebuild the city and rush-build a new granary, maybe even a temple, and then you only have at most 4*20 turns of unhappiness left to dissipate.

The reason I feel this might be extremely useful is that as a previous poster mentioned, cities stay unhappy for _much_ longer than simply 20 turns. My hypothesis is that each force-labor causes 20 turns of unhappiness that must be "spent". So if you rush build with two population and then keep the city at size 1, it would take 40 turns before that one citizen was no longer suffering the effects of opression. If this is true, then rush-building every 3 to 5 turns will cause such a huge build-up of opression that it is extremely beneficial to start over with a fresh city.

[Gholam]

Uh, it was my impression that in Civ3, if you try to build a settler/worker in a city with insufficient population, it waits with full shields until there's enough pop instead of packing up.

[jack_frost]

-whistle-

Rebuilding the city to avoid the unhappyness. Now thats scary. Very effective.

But very much bordering on exploit.

[Dog of Justice]

Yes, I haven't played much yet, but it seems to me that you can't peacefully "unfound" a city?

However, I'm confident there are workarounds. For instance, trade the city to a vassal and raze it?

[David Weldon]

Thanks, Jack . I'm sure someone has said "exploits are in the eye of the beholder"?

As for you other guys, to abandon a city, there must be no food growth, as well as enough production for the settler (or worker). So if you make everyone an specialist (or just enough of them to cause zero excess food) then you get asked whether you want to abandon the city or not.

[nonamefits]

A better strategy would be to use the workers from the "fast growing" cities to join some "main" cities. Specialy in the early game where there is a pop limit off 6 on any city that is not close to a river. This way you can get 1 or more 12 cities very early on in the game, witch produce units and wonders much faster than the other civilizations can (even though they have twice as many cities)

As for rush building: The 12 cities will have such a high production rate compeared to 3 cities that you wont need to rush build.

Later in the game (hospital the high corruption citites on the fringe of your empire is perfect for getting 20+ cities quick as hell. And 1 worker inn a big, built out city is usualy much more worth than a 1 worker in one of the fringe cities. Getting granary/temple ++ in the fringe cities is usualy best done with money, since the 20+ cities will produce enough that u can both research pretty fast and get loads of money left over (and of course u can trade your scieneces for money)

Appologies for bad english and not being quite on topic

[Kuciwalker]

You're forgetting something known as the "time value" of money or resources. By pop-rushing, you get the resources faster, even if you get less. Also, you need to factor in the cultural, economic and/or military benefits you gain from pop-rushing.

[Matthew]

First of all, using depotism exclusively later in the game just for the sake of rushing isn't so valuable, when you factor in the multiplying effects that city improvements have on taxes and science, especially combined with the extra productivity a more advanced form of government can have. This is further multiplied if you intend to switch to republic, and have an entertainer keeping people happy instead of producing resources that would be multiplied by improvements.

Also, building city improvements in corruption cities is of limited value. What good is it to rush a market place in a city with virtually no commerce? It's valuable for culture and military, and perhaps to rush settlers that will be used to settle territory more near by. (Not that these aren't very attractive reasons for rushing.)

Also, if you are plying a religious civ, is it still worth rushing a temple, which would only cost 30 shields to build anyway? Perhaps you should rush a granary instead.

Also, consider that using up a population point or two from a small city also means that you will have to wait longer to churn out a settler that could build another city, along with a temple, that would churn out more culture, units, or whatever.


I think that rushing is too valuable an option not to make use of, but it isn't worth overdoing to the point where a city won't become productive again for centuries. I think I'll try using it to rush granaries (only) early from core cities, and culture, court houses, and military units from more distant cities.

[David Weldon]

I'm not really sure this belongs in this thread, but since I've already mentioned abandoning a city to avoid future unhappiness problems, here's another little nugget for people patient enough to read this far:

You can abandon your capital and move your palace to the most centrally located city in your empire, essentially for free!

If you intend to do this, I would recommend using your capital as your early military base, so go ahead and rush a granary, barracks, temple, and then crank out fast units (so they can get to the front along your roads) until you have about 5-10 cities, depending on world size. Now go ahead and abandon your capital, and *poof* you get a new palace in the center of your empire. Rebuild your old capital city, transition away from despotism, and enjoy the middle ages!

[DanS]

...so you can't divorce the economics from the strategy you're pursuing. Also, you can't divorce corruption from location and that's where rushing really shines versus alternatives--units created far from your capital are worth more and cost less than those created at the capital (NB: the same cannot be said for most improvements, except granaries).

For instance, if you rush build an archer in a frontier city, you will most likely have saved 10 or more turns moving up the unit from the center. In this sense, and relatively speaking considering food is the only resource not subject to the corruption tax, you're not losing from corruption, but rather gaining from location.

The best thing that can be said for rushing is that it works in spades. Ultimately, the math should reflect that.

[Ekanata]

I used this trick to produce a worker/city/turn without pop lost or other penalty. It works because a city (size 7-12) need to accumulate 40 food surplus to grow, while a town (size 1-6) only need 20. It also because the game mechanics calculate foods (and pop. growth) first before it do shields (and production).

Ok, Assume we have a size 6 town with a granary, producing enough food to grow next turn, and producing about 10 shields. On the next turn the town grow to a size 7 city with granary residue of 20 foods.

If at the same time the town is instructed to produce a worker, then 1 pop is deducted from the city turning it back to a town, a Special town. This special town still have a CITY-class granary residue of 20 foods. 20 foods is the exact amount a town need to accumulate to grow. Even if producing no extra food this special town will become a city on the next turn. Even now, this special town is ready to be instructed to produce new worker.

Combined with other town diligently force laboring, this special town we discuss is practically a slave producing town . Just make sure the special town has a granary, an aqueduct or near freshwater, have enough food to grow into a city on the next turn and produce enough shields to produce a worker on the next turn.

[gnomos]

It is possible to disband a city by producing a settler or worker, but you must first take tiles out of production to achieve zero growth in the city.

[Fitz]

David, you are absolutely right that you can abandon a city to avoid the long term affects of pop-rushing, and in fact in my current game I am doing just that. Vel suggested in his stratagy thread that base-parining might be a good idea. Basically, each "real" base gets a training camp. That training camp rushes military until no longer feasible, then recycles into the main city.

This is a very powerful tactic, and I would definately term it an exploit. In my current game I anihilated two civs in short order, and could probably have taken out a third much stronger one if I hadn't voluntarily decided to switch to Republic.

Check on page seven of Vel's Strat thread part two for my more detailed analysis.

[Dimension]

Originally posted by zapperio
I just can't bring myself to rush under despotism/communism unless in dire strait. I mean...the people will hate me! Working people to death makes me feel so icky. Gee, I should never have taken this job.

Zap

That's another reason to be the Egyptians... You're not actually oppressing your own people--you're the evil Pharoah working Israeli slave labor to death.



Not that I need another reason to play the Egyptians. You just can't beat fast temples + dynamic government + fast workers.

Originally posted by David Weldon
I just came up with a way to avoid all long-term opportunity cost for rush-building with forced labor. When you're converting to "peaceful" mode, simply produce a settler out of your city, abandoning it in the process, and then re-build the city. Poof! No more unhappiness. You can even rush-build the settler if you wish.

Even if you have built a couple things, this isn't such a bad idea. You want to build temples early in every city for the culture, and the Cultural Advisor lists culture in terms of total culture produced over the course of the game by each city individually, but if you abandon a city, you don't actually lose any overall culture (the Cultural Advisor screen doesn't actually add up correctly).

It's not something that I do very often, but if you've got a city with two wheat squares, it's probably going to be especially angry from all the forced labor, and will regrow quickly if abandoned.

[karlmarx9001]

I'm on my way to winning my first emperor/standard game now, as I've conquered half the world with population rushing. Now that I've switched to communism, cleared off my continent, and I'm gearing up to switch to democracy, I've noticed something interesting: contentment due to buildings can't ever be overriden by rush-build unhappiness, and "extra" happiness appears to remove the rush-build unhappiness faster.

Take the example of the pitiful conquered city of Zimbabwe. I've rush built, oh, a trillion units and buildings from this city. However, I have a marketplace (for the luxury resource bonuses), colosseum, temple, and a cathedral, along with 2 military police.

Total happiness modifiers: +6 happy, +8 content.

Now, the city is size ten, and I'm not putting any percentage of my income into luxuries. There's 8 content citizens, and 2 unhappy. Selling the colosseum, temple, and cathedral makes another 2, 1, and 3 citizens unhappy each. The obvious implication is that contentment due to religious buildings *cannot* be overriden. However, selling the marketplace has no effect whatsoever on the city, even though it results in the loss of 2 happy faces.

I haven't been able to verify whether producing "extra" happiness in a city draws down rush-build unhappiness faster, though I suspect it does.

Anyway, there's more of a point for religious buildings in rush-build centers than I thought.

[David Weldon]

Karl:
Your point about content faces not being able to be over-ridden by oppression is also true for content faces from MPs.

I take advantage of Sistine enhanced cathedrals to make my switch from despotism to Republic in many cases. The 6 content faces produced by each cathedral allow a kind of buffer so that the city can grow and stay orderly while it works off it's opression. If I can't manage a cathedral, then I'll abandond and re-build just before switching to Republic.

[karlmarx9001]

Further update: the "happy faces" luxuries give you are really contentment faces. Duh.

On further inspection, it appears that:

Religious buildings provide a "happiness floor" below which negative modifiers can't go.

All other luxuries first cancel out lingering unhappiness, and then start to affect the populace normally. That is, a city with 20 turns of 5 unhappy will take 5 more luxuries a turn (you can effectively treat military police and luxury goods as being the same as 1 gold in luxuries each) to pacify then one without the unhappiness.

As near as I can tell, unhappiness from rush-building is a constant. If you drive off 5 people at once through building something (the civilopedia insists that they "become unhappy and leave," amusingly), then that city will have -5 content faces for the next twenty turns. That is, you start with the raw number of content faces due to difficulty level and buildings, and then from there add/subtract content faces due to rush-building unhappiness and luxuries. Producing excess luxuries beyond what's necessary to make the entire city unhappy doesn't seem to change anything.

It appears to stack; that is, if you've got 15 turns left of 5 unhappiness, and you rush build using 3, then you'll have 15 turns of 8 unhappy followed by 5 turns of 3 unhappy.

Actually useful strategic advice based on this: produce just enough happiness buildings for a city to use all the high food production squares around it. That is, if you have 2 wheat, a cow, and a flood plain, you're better off rush-building a temple + colloseum there.

[karlmarx9001]

Whoops, you're right David. Communism looks better and better. ;0

The amazing thing from this is how useless luxury goods are under communism and depotism, if you use even a modicum of rushing.

The Sistine Chapel looks even better for a warmonger, which is kind of odd if you think about it.

[David Weldon]

Especially now that they fixed the corruption model for Communism in the patch!

I actually don't use pop-rushing past the Ancient Age because it's just not efficient enough for me. I prefer to have large cities and use gold to rush whatever I need at that point. I can always manage to hit the 4 turn limit with only 40-60% science, which gives me a lot left over to buy things with.

As a despot, on the other hand, I'm ruthless ...

[SirSebastian]

Although this has to be the most interesting thread around, I am going to spam to it.. because... I see that someone else is posting from Laguna Hills.... craziness. =P Hello!

[Cunning Planner]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Gatamelata
Pop rushing is an interesting topic, to be certain. I was first seduced by its allure - the promise of fast and easy production at a time when my empire needed it the most. But it has a long term cost.

Once my cities started growing, I noticed something horrible - Rome was somewhat hobbled, and Veii was stuck with one producer and three entertainers. Rome finally started growing again around 800 AD, but Veii didn't start growing until the 1600s, and its people remembered all of the oppression until the early 1800s.


From Cunning Planner

Just catching up with many of these posts - Being a Mac user I'm behind the game - still want an editor !!!.

Thought on problem of long term unhappiness in a city used to POP rush - If your last POP rush is a worker/ settler at city size 1/2, it can be abandoned and you can start a new city on the same square with no memory of the earlier 'slave driving' ? Sell any improvements first of course.

[Theseus]

CP,

Welcome aboard!!

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