Now, a bit of math. Can't help it, gotta convince myself this wonderbread strat is worthwhile.
At face value, 1 pop whip = under 18 food -> 30 hammers -> 60 overflow gold. 1F => 3.5$.
Let's compare a wonderbread farm to a wonderbread town to a commerce economy town (1F vs 4C).
Say we whip a missionary for 2 pop in the capital, cycling from 4-6. At +5 FPT growth, Altars mean it'll regrow in roughly the same time it takes to wipe away the unrest: 30 food total, /2 for granary, x2 for 2-pop whips. 30/5 = 6 turns so I've got some to spare. If we add a farm, it becomes 30/6 = 5: the exact same time as the unrest.
Now that means we produce roughly 10 hammers x5: 50 hammers (10 of which go into a wonder), plus 60 (35 to production, 25 to overflow) for whipping: 75 hammers into production and 35 into a wonder. With modifiers for Org. Rel. (not forge), that's about 80-90 hammers of production and 75-80 hammers of overflow gold.
Optimally, over 30 turns, we repeat the cycle 6 times: 85x6=510 production, 75x6=450$ overflow.
If we work a town for 30 turns instead, we get 4 more GPT and 1 less cycle. 95x5=475 prod, 75x5=375$, Village +120$: 495$ overflow.
That's ... actually lackluster for the farm vs town matchup.
Let's now suppose we do 30 turns of 1 hill mine and 2 towns instead of the wheat and farm. No growth, no whip.
Hammers are at 12, OR makes it 15. Extra gold is 9 for 2 villages and a river grass hill mine.
15x30=450 hammers, 9x30=270$. Even if those were financial towns, 11x30=330$ still falls way short of the 450$ mark.
Damn.
And we don't have to wait 70 turns for towns. And we get whipped infrastructure early all the time.