Suppose you build a city such that when all tiles are fully developed and being worked, the net surplus of food is an odd number. Given that each citizen eats 2 food, you will end up with a situation where you are running a surplus of 1 food.

Now, this surplus will slowly accumulate until the city grows to another size. My question is: what happens then?

I know that in Civ2, your city would go into an annoying oscilation of Growth and Starvation, but you could avoid this by sending a food caravan to or from the city to stabilize the surplus.

In Civ3, there was no such system, but you could just purposefully not build a railroad on an irrigated tile and fix it, but again, you are merely trying to avoid the situation.

In Civ4, there are many ways to stabilize the surplus at an even number, but is that still necessary? Has Civ4 fixed the oscillation annoyance, or do players have to carefully choose GM placement and tile improvements in order to ensure that a city will stabilize at a single final population?

Biology gives farms +1 food. Merchant specialists provide +1 food. etc etc etc... Or just click "Avoid growth" when you reach your ideal city size...

...your city would go into an annoying oscilation of Growth and Starvation
This is exactly what happens.

I would just replace a mine with a windmill (or vice versa) or build a watermill on a farm and run State Property. But you are right, it's annoying to get that even number just right for max growth.

Biology gives farms +1 food. Merchant specialists provide +1 food. etc etc etc... Or just click "Avoid growth" when you reach your ideal city size...
Only great merchants give the food bonus.

balance improvements out to avoid such things happen. sometimes it's resonable to replace an irrigation with a cottage on a +1 food tile, workshops may be of use too, until you get to biology and the city can grow a little bit more.

On the plus side, this usually wont be a problem until your city hits size 20(unless you built near ice or mountains), so you should have plenty of time to plan ahead.

Running State property would help....I think, I could be wrong, which happens alot. :crazyeye:

The city will grow at 1 food per turn. When you reach the next level, it will start decreasing at one food per turn until the granary is depleted, and then you'll go back to your initial pop size. No biggie, except that the extra food is wasted. To put it to good use, try one of the mothods descibed above.

There is also an "Avoid growth" button in the city-governer section.
You can basically have any surplus, it won't grow anymore. Good for happy/healthy issues and the mentioned 1 food surplus thing.

HTH

i don't see any reason why to stop a cities growth per "avoid growth", work the tiles that are best. if your city stops growing by doing so, ok. but don't forget that civics, improvements and luxuries are ahead that will heighten the maximum happiness limit, thus turning those red faces into productive workers immideatly.
unhealthiness isn't of much concern as long as the city grows ;)

There is also an "Avoid growth" button in the city-governer section.
You can basically have any surplus, it won't grow anymore. Good for happy/healthy issues and the mentioned 1 food surplus thing.

HTH

Woah, so more than just minimizing your surplus, it actually negates growth entirely? Awesome! A handy tool indeed.
If you have an unavoidable surplus, does "avoid growth" stop the accumulation of food, or just the increase of thy kine?**

Hmm...it looks like all of these strategies basicly depend on engineering your city to ensure an even surplus, which is what I feared. The oscillation is otherwise unavoidable, unless you decide to use the "avoid growth" option.
But strictly speaking, isn't it better to simply take take those 40 or so turns of +1 population for free? Unless you need a full granary for drafting or something, oscillation is actually the way to go. On average you'll be operating a city with a population of 26.5, with no real extra cost (unless periodic canibalism epidemics are considered).

**Wait, silly me... Kine =/= kind. :crazyeye:
Kine is an archaic plural form of "cow", like ox and oxen, child and children etc. ...Unless of course they meant something other than the syntactic definition with the quote for "Animal Husbandry". :hmm:

Unless all 20 tiles in the city radius are worked, it will arange the citizens to give you the least amount of food possible. If it does have a surplus after that then it just goes to waste and your population stays stagnant.

Sometimes it will cause you're food to go into the negative, but I've only had that happen when I checked Production as well.

As for engineering your city a good rule of thumb is to put cottage on everything green, and if you have flood plains, or resources that give you extra food, put them on your plains too. Farm only Flood Plains, unless the city is full of desert or hills, or tundra. With the way happiness and now growth are based on resources, it's very unlikely you will get most of your city above size 15 until the modern times, so don't worry so much about food. And if you keep Slavery until your people demand Emancipation you can do a good job of limiting growth by whippin' popluation.

Hope that helps.

The city will grow at 1 food per turn. When you reach the next level, it will start decreasing at one food per turn until the granary is depleted, and then you'll go back to your initial pop size. No biggie, except that the extra food is wasted. To put it to good use, try one of the mothods descibed above.

So do you get the extra pop for the whole time it takes the granary to empty? If so then its a free specialist for that time and not wasted at all.

Sounds like the best thing to do is "don't worry be happy"

Don't think of it as starvation; just think of it as the natural ebb and flow of a city's population size, based on birth rate.

But the food bar says STARVATION! :D

Proposal to add a new specialist that can help avoid the 1 food surplus situation when it cannot be avoided by other means (replacing mines by windmills, watermills by farms with the state property civic, etc.)

If a city oscillates between sizes 20 and 21, then it's average size is not 20 1/2 but 20 1/3.

Explanation:
Assume a large city with a granery with a food surplus of 1.

The city needs 40 food to grow at 1 food per turn which means that it takes 40 turns to grow. Then it will have 20 food in storage and shrink with a speed of 1 food per turn, meaning that it takes 20 turns to shrink.

This means that a city that oscillates between sizes 20 and 21 will on average have a city size of 20 1/3. Or to view it differently, that the city has 20 citizens and 1/3th of the time, the city may use an extra scientist/merchant which amounts to an average of 1 extra point of science/gold per turn and one extra great person point per turn.

But most of us would rather have a stable city at size 21 that has the same income than the oscillating city so that we have a completely stable empire. If the game would have a special type of specialist that would give 1 food and 1 commerce and produce one great person point per turn, then this stable condition could be reached.
The city would grow to size 21 and from that point onward, the specialist (could be named farmer) could be used, stabalizing the city at size 21. The great person points should not be of any specific type so that no new great person type is needed (or we could also add a new type of great person).

Note that this specialist cannot be abused to create infinitely large cities or that it is somehow strictly better than other specialists. So it would be a balanced addition as far as I can see.

(details: the new specialist should actually produce something extra above and beyond the above suggestion to make it more interesting than the other specialists in this case. I would suggest 1 extra culture point as that is the least valuable addition. If this is not added, then oscillation is still more interesting because it gives the science/gold points sooner.)

Maybe call it a "Gardener" which would become available after Refrigeration. The Supermarket would allow you to convert one citizen into a Gardener.

A Gardener should, like you said, provide 1 food, 1 commerce, 1 GPP(merchant-type), and perhaps +1Health or Happiness?

That seems to be reasonable. You'll only really ever need 1 of them, and they'll only make sense to have later on in the game when your cities actually do get full. Every city will have access to them, and they can help speed up the final specialist-growth of a city, and then be dropped in favor of a more profitable specialist, or kept on to balance the food-supply.

Having more than 1 per city could be interesting, but might have balancing consequences. "Gardeners" seems like a better name than "Farmers" because if a citizen is a farmer...shouldn't they be out working on that wheat farm?

"Gardener" implies small little commumity gardens sprinkled in the city, which have a modest effect on the overall food supply, they represent modest euntrepeneurial activity, and they provide healthy fresh food for the city.

Refrigeration means that there is more incentive to grow fresh or perishable foods, and it already comes with a food/health related building which is exactly the domain of Gardeners. It is true that in actuality, Gardeners and Supermarkets actually conflict with each other...but we can ignore that for the sake of Civ.

Alternatively, the specialist could be renamed the "Grocer", which can be argued represents the same food/health/economy area as does the "Gardener". Unfortunately however, the name "Grocer" is already taken by a city improvement (the pre-req for S-marts), so perhaps they could be differentiated as "Greengrocers"? Meh, gardener sound cooler and simpler...

Gardener would work for me, but I don't think the naming of the specialist is that important. The main thing for me is game balance. Your suggestion of +1 Health sounds as a good suggestion to me. That would not be unbalanced, I think. Also your suggestion to let them appear late in the game is a good one in my opinion.

Another small issue: the representation civic should give these guys only a + 1 science bonus.

Indeed.

Hmm...how difficult would it be to program in that exception to the Representation bonus?

Perhaps if you defined a Gardnener as producing 3Food/commerce/health and then as a final calculation you divide it by three. Hopefully this would divide the representation bonus by 3 as well.

Or, it could just be an exception "If representation, then bonus = 1" or something.

Well what Might be easier is have say the Supermarket give +1 food per Citizen specialist (which gives no GPP, + no commerce, just the 1 hammer and possibly representation bonus)

So 1 extra food would be worth at just 1 extra production (or 1 production and 3 research under Representation) no extra GPP, but something at least.

So under Representation+Supermarket, 2 food could either give
1 Engineer=2 H + 3 Research + 3 GPP
or
1 Scientist = 6 Research +3 GPP
or
2 Citizens=2 H + 6 Research

Assuming a GPP is equal value to a point of commerce, then the new effect would be balanced. The cost of a Supermarket might need to be increased though.

To balance it further, the Supermarket could turn Citizens into your 'Gardener' specialist but with no GPP. ie 1 food, 1 health, 1 or 2 commerce (so + all those to Citizens and -1 hammer) that means that the starvation cycle would be totally eliminated, even in poor health situations.

Well what Might be easier is have say the Supermarket give +1 food per Citizen specialist (which gives no GPP, + no commerce, just the 1 hammer and possibly representation bonus)

So 1 extra food would be worth at just 1 extra production (or 1 production and 3 research under Representation) no extra GPP, but something at least.

So under Representation+Supermarket, 2 food could either give
1 Engineer=2 H + 3 Research + 3 GPP
or
1 Scientist = 6 Research +3 GPP
or
2 Citizens=2 H + 6 Research

Assuming a GPP is equal value to a point of commerce, then the new effect would be balanced. The cost of a Supermarket might need to be increased though.

To balance it further, the Supermarket could turn Citizens into your 'Gardener' specialist but with no GPP. ie 1 food, 1 health, 1 or 2 commerce (so + all those to Citizens and -1 hammer) that means that the starvation cycle would be totally eliminated, even in poor health situations.

This would also be a reasonably balanced alternative. It just comes down to a +1 food specialist with a little bit of extra production/gold/science.

However, I must disagree with your assessment of the value of a GPP. In most games played by capable players, you'll see at the end of a game that all the Great Persons were born in 2, 3 or maybe 4 cities (there is an article about this in the strategy articles forum). This doesn't mean that the other cities didn't produce any GPP, but they were always trailing behind the ever increasing amount needed to produce another Great Person. So in every city but those few that produce your Great Persons, the GPP are without any value. And that means that in those cities, the new and improved citizen combined with the representation bonus is more powerful than any of the other specialists, something that I would like to avoid.
It's not something that is hugely overpowered or something like that. Especially since the supermarket is a late game improvement and it is only true when representation is used.

I think that the representation bonus should be limited for specialists that produce food because otherwise the combination between such a specialist and the representation bonus is a little bit overpowered.

All the gardener really needs to do is provide 1 food and be about as effective as 1/3 of a citizen. Where that effectiveness lies is debateable, but I think a small amount of commerce would be fine.

Another debate would be whether or not the gardener should actually be better than 1/3citizen, like Roland said, so as to provide an incentive for gardening insted of riding the rollercoaster.

Another option would be that a supermarket would turn Production or Gold into Food (So that a city with a Supermarket will Always grow)

If Food output was less than 1 excess per turn, then enough production or gold would be turned into food to get to 1 excess per turn (until all production was used up)*

the conversion rate would probably have to be
1 hammers to 1 food [if base hammers are considered] or 2 hammers to 1 food if output hammers are used
OR
something like 5-10 gold per food in 'food aid' from the general budget.

keeping farms preferable to cottages for feeding people.

I like the 'food aid' idea since then poor areas could be developed with Refrigeration, local food would no longer be required.

* If stagnate population was turned on then excess food could be turned into gold. (and food aid would merely be enough to stop the city from starving)

Requires a larger programming change than just saying +food, but I think it works better. essentially allowing your cities to be any size you want... its just how much they will cost.


A slightly different option would have all cities with Supermarkets contribute their excess food to an imperial food pool, which would then divide the excess among all cities with supermarkets and NOT halt growth. (with modification for rounding) so cities with supermarkets would not starve unless you had a Total odd amount of food.

I like the food aid idea, but it is quite difficult to balance. You have to understand the game mechanics very well to balance it correctly. And difficulty levels play a role in the balance too.

When playing the game, I always use the rule of thumb that 1 base food is worth about 3 base commerce and 1 base hammer is worth about 2 base gold. This works reasonably well in the endgame (it's not that accurate in the ancient age). If this valuation is somewhat correct, then 6 gold (bank + grocer + market = + 100% bonus gold of 3 gold) would be the approximate value of 1 food. However, for financial civs, gold is even worth less because it is so easily obtained. So to buy one unit of food should be more expensive than 6 gold, say 8-10 gold.

However, when you buy a lot of food, then your cities will grow larger and larger cities have a bigger civics upkeep (civfanatics member colony and I wrote a strategy article about this). And while I didn't really research it, larger cities also seem to have a bigger city upkeep, but I have no idea of the formula. On the other hand, larger cities gain a bigger free unit upkeep (another strategy article). And these effects are all influenced by the difficulty level of the game. So there are some financial advantages and disadvantages in getting larger cities by buying food. This has to be analysed pretty well to get an accurate value of one unit of food.

Another question is if you may buy food to speed the growth of otherwise slow growing cities. Or is it only allowed to buy food to obtain a +2 food surplus.
And finally, the poor AI, how will it be able to handle these difficulties?

But I do like the idea. It just needs a lot of work.

(I may sound a bit too critical in the above post and the previous one. It's not meant in a negative way. In general, I like your ideas. Sometimes I point out the negatives a bit too much. Sorry for that.)