19-01-2005 05:17									#1
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I've got a situation which has me a little confused... perhaps I don't really understand how poprushing works:

This is under Feudalism, btw...

Turn 1: I capture a 10pop city, and fill it up with many units.

Turn 2: The city starves to 9pop, ends resistance, and has produced 1 shield. I rush a Temple, taking it to 6pop.

Turn 3: Temple built, still at 6 pop, 0 shields.

Turn 4: Still at 6pop, 1 shield produced. I try rushing a Library (79 shields needed)... no go. I rush a Granary (59 shields needed), costing 3pop. I am then able to rush a Library (20 shields needed), costing 1 pop, and thus leaving me with 2pop remaining.

Huh?? I couldn;t rush 79 shields directly for 5pop, but I got the same 79 shields for 4pop in two stages?



* Theseus , still messing about with nasty Viking stuff.

	19-01-2005 06:16									#2
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That doesn't seem to make any sense. What, exactly, happened when you tried to rush the full library? Nothing? Advisor message?

	19-01-2005 07:18									#3
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Advisor message... "cost the lives of too many citizens."

	19-01-2005 07:37									#4
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Huh. I can't find a thing on it.

	19-01-2005 08:20									#5
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You can't pop-rush more than half the city's citizens at once.

	19-01-2005 08:35									#6
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Really? In that case, that would apparently put the AI at a slight disadvantage to the human since it can't figure out that it can split the cost like a human can. But it's not like this will make the difference between winning and losing the game though.

	19-01-2005 09:08									#7
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The AI also does not know to rush-buy a Worker before a Temple instead of rushing the Temple outright in order to save on Gold. Not sure when and why the AI rushes with Gold, however, so this might not matter one bit.

	19-01-2005 10:56									#8
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quote: Originally posted by Xorbon Really? In that case, that would apparently put the AI at a slight disadvantage to the human since it can't figure out that it can split the cost like a human can. But it's not like this will make the difference between winning and losing the game though.

Yes, "short-rushing", as it is called, is considered to be an exploit by some. It's circumventing deliberate game-mechanics.

	19-01-2005 14:42									#9
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And it can very well make the difference on higher difficulty levels. Imagine every rush, throughout the game, costing you 10% less.

Theseus, you needed 8 population to rush the Library. It alwasy counts the numbers rounded down, so 7 wouldn't do it either. Have you tried pop-rushing the Settler yet?

	19-01-2005 17:33									#10
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quote: Originally posted by Modo44 And it can very well make the difference on higher difficulty levels. Imagine every rush, throughout the game, costing you 10% less.

Unless time is critical, I just wait a turn instead of using a short rush to start a rush. That way, I'm not circumventing game mechanics and I don't have to pay the higher cost on the first ten shields the way I would with a short rush.

Another trick with short rushing is to rush most of the shields for something and then build the remaining shields the normal way. That can be especially useful in cities capable of generating a meaningful number of shields because it avoids wasting the shields generated the turn of the rush. Of course that, like other uses of short-rushing, does circumvent the design of the game's mechanics.

	19-01-2005 19:17									#11
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quote: Originally posted by Modo44 Have you tried pop-rushing the Settler yet?

I remember having 'try' this accidentally.
City pop was 4, rush-build settler... uh!?! setller wasn'st produced... oops, yes, city pop reduced to 2, so ....
me.I had to wait until I grew 3 again.
This was with vanilla iirc.

	19-01-2005 19:30									#12
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quote: Originally posted by Modo44 And it can very well make the difference on higher difficulty levels. Imagine every rush, throughout the game, costing you 10% less.

Well, yes, it can, of course, as any exploit can. What one considers legal in their own games is a matter of taste, of course.

EDIT: Oh, and you'd be saving much more than 10%, in most cases. A Worker will cost you 80 gold to rush with no shields in the box. You can then rush that Temple, for example, for only 200 more, for a total of 280. To rush the Temple immediately would cost 420. 33% savings there, and the margin grows higher as the buildings get more expensive.

	19-01-2005 19:36									#13
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Short-rushing is a valid tactic.

Because it can't always be done.

It almost always requires a city with a net shield production of 10 or higher. (The exception when only a net production of 5 or higher is needed are for those civs with a UU costing an amount ending in 5 and also currently able to build it.)

Oh, and on Monarchy level, the AI does get a 10% cost reduction on everything.

	19-01-2005 19:45									#14
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Short-rushing can always be done, but I think you're misunderstanding the term. It is a simple manoeuveur, and though what you describe is short-rushing as well, it is not the whole thing. Say you have four citizens and want to pop-rush a Granary with only one shield in the box. You would need six, normally. But you can rush a Spearman, then a Barracks, and finally a Granary, circumventing the game-mechanic that stipulates that you may not pop-rush more than half of your citizens at once. BTW, I'm not sure what Monarch level has to do with it. The AI bonuses do not affect this exploit.

	19-01-2005 19:52									#15
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quote: Originally posted by Dry I remember having 'try' this accidentally. City pop was 4, rush-build settler... uh!?! setller wasn'st produced... oops, yes, city pop reduced to 2, so .... me.I had to wait until I grew 3 again. This was with vanilla iirc.

I didn't mean disbanding the city. I was referring to a tactic I used to get culture growing in conquered cities, when playing Fascist. I would make the city size 5 (usually pop-rushing structures), and then pop-rush the Settler. This way, the city would be left with only 1 population of foreign nationality. My civ's national majority would be there very quickly, allowing culture growth under Fascism. Plus, a 1-foreigner city is easy to keep from flipping, and it's more useful to rush things, than to starve the city.

Punkbass, I was referring to the saving you get by rushing something cheaper, so the city can produce the rest on it's own. And mostly to cash-rushing. This will save around 10-20%, not more, except in cities with very high production. I almost never rush things before I have the 1-turn prebuild.

	19-01-2005 20:18									#16
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OK... I'll take your word for it, though your post didn't mention that idea at all and it wasn't brought up until Nathan's post imediately after yours...

	19-01-2005 20:30									#17
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quote: Originally posted by punkbass2000 OK... I'll take your word for it, though your post didn't mention that idea at all and it wasn't brought up until Nathan's post imediately after yours...

Perhaps I have confused the name. Sorry.

	19-01-2005 21:20									#18
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The term "short-rushing" confusingly refers to two things:

1. When you rush a production item with Gold in a city that does not have any Shields accumulated in its production box, it costs more in Gold than if there were already at least one Shield in the box. So the trick involves rushing a lower-cost item first (say, a Worker) before a desired higher-cost item (say, a Library), to save on Gold. One way of looking at it is that you are artificially pumping 10 Shields into the production box to save on Gold.

2. If a city produces more Shields than are needed to complete a production item, those Shields are wasted. For instance, if a city produces 30spt is set to build Tanks, it will waste 20 Shields on every Tank because 30*3=90 < 100 so a fourth turn is needed. So, the trick here is filling up the production box in such a way that one the final turn a city is producing exactly as many Shields as is needed to complete a production item, and the way to do this is to rush a lower-cost item of the appropriate cost. In our example, after 30 Shields are accumulated on the Tank, you could rush a Coastal Fortress (40 Shields), switch back to Tank, and not waste any Shields when in two turns (60=30*2) the Tank completes. Note that if you do this constantly, you are paying a minimal amount of Gold every 3 turns in order to produce Tanks 25% faster.

You can use both of these methods in tandem. Method 1 you only want to use with hightly-corrupt or low-pop cities because even if you Gold-rush the entire target item, you will only waste 1 Shield. However, if your city is producing 5spt or more and you want to get a Factory ASAP, I suggest: rushing a Worker with Gold (10 Shields), rushing a Coal Plant with Gold (200 Shields), producing the final 40 Shields in 8 turns "the hard way". Whether or not you can afford to wait 8 turns for that Factory to go up is something that might require a calculator to figure out!

Edit: Note that you can use Forest Chops effectively in both methods.

Last edited by Dominae on 20-01-2005 at 00:34

	19-01-2005 21:27									#19
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quote: Originally posted by Dominae 2. If a city produces more Shields than are needed to complete a production item, those Shields are wasted. For instance, if a city produces 30spt is set to build Tanks, it will waste 20 Shields on every Tank because 30*3=90 < 100 so a fourth turn is needed. So, the trick here is filling up the production box in such a way that one the final turn a city is producing exactly as many Shields as is needed to complete a production item, and the way to do this is to rush a lower-cost item of the appropriate cost. In our example, after 30 Shields are accumulated on the Tank, you could rush a Coastal Fortress (40 Shields), switch back to Tank, and not waste any Shields when in two turns (60=30*2) the Tank completes. Note that if you do this constantly, you are paying a minimal amount of Gold every 3 turns in order to produce Tanks 25% faster.

This works of course only, if you aren't slapped with a polluted tile on the last turn, which leaves you with 99 shields and no tank.

	19-01-2005 21:55									#20
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quote: Originally posted by Sir Ralph This works of course only, if you aren't slapped with a polluted tile on the last turn, which leaves you with 99 shields and no tank.

Playing the latest AU (with a self-imposed restriction to go all the way to the end of the tech tree) has developed in me a new-found sympathy for your hatred of Pollution.

I learned to cope with this annoyance by setting my capital to produce a unit every turn, with a healthy Shield surplus to ensure the build would complete despite any surprise Pollution. Since the capital is always first in the city queue, if Pollution hit any of my cities down the line, I could use the F1 trick to micromanage a solution.

I still tore my hair out on numerous occasions (very painful when you're already bald), but at least I felt sort of in control of the situation. Then I got Recycling and all my worries went away!

	19-01-2005 22:26									#21
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Wow, that is serious micromanagement.

So, they answer to my original question is simply what pb2000 pointed out, ie.e, that you can't poprush more than half your citizens, but that you can still get where you want to serially?

So that's what... shortpopping?

	19-01-2005 23:01									#22
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I was refering to just #2 in my short-rushing post and moreover the specallized case of finishing it that turn.

If your shield producion is < 10 SPT, then is generaly is no build you can rush to and switch back and still have what you want to finish the same turn.

	20-01-2005 11:49									#23
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By registration dates I'm newer than many of the contributors here, but I recall the term 'whip-switch-whip' used to describe your 'shortpopping', T.

Do we have anyone keeping a glossary?

	20-01-2005 14:16									#24
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Theseus , a summary follows:

When pop-rushing, the first citizen you kill will provide up to 20 shields, any additional citizens within the same transaction will only give 10 shields each.

The exploit is that you can split the build into multiple transactions. Killing only one pop at a time, getting the full 20 shields from each.

40-shield item:
Standard method: 20+10+10 = 3 pop
Switching method: 20+20 = 2 pop.

100-shield item:
standard method: 20+10+10+10+10+10+10+10+10 = 9 pop
Switching method: 20+20+20+20+20 = 5 pop

So to build a library(80s) you start with rushing a spear (20s), switch build to barracks(40s), kill another pop, switch to temple(60s), kill pop #3, switch to library(80s) and kill pop #4


I'm not 100% sure how pop-rushing works when there are no shields in the build-box though. But I suspect the price goes up when the box is empty.

	20-01-2005 18:24									#25
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Uh, that's incorrect. They always give 20 shields. The exploit here is abusing the fact that you can get around the rule that disallows pop-rushing more than half a city's population. BTW, when the box is empty it costs twice as many citizens as normal, just like cash-rushing.

Here's an example. I have 24 shields in Tenochtitlan (it's actually building a Settler). I switch it to a Temple, which requires 36 more shields. It only costs 2 pop.

Attachment: poprushdemo.sav
This has been downloaded 0 time(s).

	20-01-2005 19:05									#26
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You sure? I did this in a very recent game, c3c 1.22.

Have to give it a closer look, if I can find my old saves that is...

	20-01-2005 19:37									#27
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Yep, 20 shields per citizen always. Popping that temple in a newly conquered city always costs 3 citizens for non-religious.

There are several quirks wrt poprushing. For example in Theseus' size 10 city, you could pop a library followed by a temple 10 -> 6 -> 3 but you could not pop the temple first followed by the library 10 -> 7 X 3.

	21-01-2005 06:13									#28
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Thanks for the clarifications, all...

With my better understanding, I just went on a poprushing madfest, due to an imminent non-REL revolt from Feudalism to Communism... WOW. The population decrease was worse than that of Fascism, but, daaaang, I got me a bunch of shiny new stuff.

	21-01-2005 23:28									#29
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Poprushing Settlers in conquered cities is great fun. It's just a shame I so soldem use Commieness.