The "Disband and Rush" Trick

[nbarclay]

One trick I'm using in my current game (the mini-tourney game) is that if I want to rush improvements back to back in the same city, I can disband an old swordsman or longbowman to start work on the second improvement so I can rush it at normal cost instead of double cost. That's not the worst use in the world for obsolete, excess units that happen to be lying around if your numbers are high enough you can do without them. (I'm playing a democracy, so keeping obsolete units as police is pointless.)

Nathan

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by nbarclay
One trick I'm using in my current game (the mini-tourney game) is that if I want to rush improvements back to back in the same city, I can disband an old swordsman or longbowman to start work on the second improvement so I can rush it at normal cost instead of double cost. That's not the worst use in the world for obsolete, excess units that happen to be lying around if your numbers are high enough you can do without them. (I'm playing a democracy, so keeping obsolete units as police is pointless.)

Nathan

That's a very good strategy. In recently conquered cities, disbanding units will allow you to rush the required improvements in as many turns. For instance, rushing the temple, airport and barracks in a beachhead invasion.

http://www.crowncity.net/civ3/BeachHead.htm

[Ignorance]

After infantry and tanks roll in, I usually build whole lot of buildings in my distant, highly corrupted cities by disbanding most of my now obsolete cavalry.

[Sean]

I knew that disbanding a unit in a city gave a production bonus, but I never thought to use it in such a manner. I'll have to make a mental note of this. Thanks.

[nbarclay]

I hadn't really thought it through before my current game, but building and disbanding units is a much more efficient way of transferring production from one city to another than building wealth and using gold to rush build is. (Of course it's still grossly inefficient, with 75% waste minimum.) Building newer units and disbanding older ones can serve the double purpose of modernizing one's armed forces and transferring some production where it's needed at the same time, assuming the army is already as big as you want it. Of course I prefer not to disband elite units unless I know they've already produced a great leader, since I never know which elite unit might have a leader waiting to emerge.

Nathan

[heidlejohn]

Originally posted by Sean
I knew that disbanding a unit in a city gave a production bonus, but I never thought to use it in such a manner. I'll have to make a mental note of this. Thanks.

After nationalism, you can also DRAFT a citizen and disband the conscript unit in a distant corrupt city.
A mech inf will give you 22 shields. The trade-off is increased unhappiness in the city, but as long as you have the usual happiness improvements there seems to be few problems with this. I do it a lot and have not encountered many problems yet.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by heidlejohn

After nationalism, you can also DRAFT a citizen and disband the conscript unit in a distant corrupt city.
A mech inf will give you 22 shields. The trade-off is increased unhappiness in the city, but as long as you have the usual happiness improvements there seems to be few problems with this. I do it a lot and have not encountered many problems yet.

My math is 22 for infantry and 27 for mech inf.

I think I may have just found a chink in the game design. If drafting and pop rushing produce equal unhappiness (and I've never tested whether or not that's the case), once infantry become available, draft-and-disband is actually a better deal. Further, draft-and-disband is available to monarchies, republics, and democracies, so unless the happiness penalty for drafting is greater, those governments actually have as much pop rushing potential as despotism and communism do late in the game (as long as the right resources are available).

Nathan

[Theseus]

Disband and cash rush is tremendously effective. Post-1.21f, one can make even the most remote cities productive, if fully built out.

Draft, disband, and rush is a reason NOT to bombard enemy cities down to 1 pop and into the stone age... I'm developing a technique for effectively capturing large cities, considering flipping, drafting, rushing, and adding "pure" workers. It's hard, but worth it.

[Alkis]

Drafting and disbanding is a wellknown trick. There has been a thread on that some time ago. I have tried it a lot and the unhappiness it brings is not something you can't handle.

Some players consider it an exploit though. I usually build courthouses and factories in corrupted cities (ok and temples too). Then at some point far away cities become productive.

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