did BTS make it nearly impossible to keep cities healthy? from monarch up, i can't seem to keep my cities healthy. even w/ environmentalism its hard. do we just need to accept that we cannot keep all our cities clean?

also what's annoying is that i'm so dependent on foreign trades to keep my civ healthy and out of the blue some idiot civ that i'm trading 5-6 health resources decides to declare war on me for no reason and enters my waters with a frigate in modern era and does nothing. eventually we sign peace treaty, but he just screws me and himself out of resources that we really needed for 10 or so turns.

I thought that now the health bonus was the same on all diffilculties? If it is, I never have a problem with health.

Sorry my answer was kind of abrupt. Anyway, just make sure to try and secure any resource that you find that helps with health and build lots of buildings like aqueducts and such. Also I believe it is expansive that starts you off with better health in the beginning. Try that too if you need additional help with it.

Just use the Stop Growth button - that's what it's there for and it's a lot better to stop it at a pop number you can stabilise than to fluctuate between growth and starvation.

did BTS make it nearly impossible to keep cities healthy? from monarch up, i can't seem to keep my cities healthy. even w/ environmentalism its hard. do we just need to accept that we cannot keep all our cities clean?

also what's annoying is that i'm so dependent on foreign trades to keep my civ healthy and out of the blue some idiot civ that i'm trading 5-6 health resources decides to declare war on me for no reason and enters my waters with a frigate in modern era and does nothing. eventually we sign peace treaty, but he just screws me and himself out of resources that we really needed for 10 or so turns.

It's harder but not impossible.

Freshwater bonus (river or lake)
Harbor, Grocer, Supermarket
Aqueduct
Resources
Recycling Center
Public Transit
Leader trait (Expansive I think?)
UB (Apocathery etc.)
Genetics tech
Future Tech

Hanging Gardens
3GD and avoiding coal plants
Natl Park

And.. not building Industrial Parks until you are just shy of Ecology, since IP's throw off much unhealthiness for relatively little gain.

Forests are vital for early health too. If you start in an area with lots of trees and mouse over the health icon at the top you will see significant bonuses from forests. In original Civ 4 it was something like one health per four forest squares or fraction thereof within your fat cross. It looks to be slightly different in BtS though because I see some of my cities getting as much as one health per two forest squares in the fat cross. I also had one city get no bonus out of the one forest square in it's fat cross (so naturally I chopped it down and developed the land :mischief: )

Its .5:health: per forest.
The biggest change is thats factories give up to 5:sickness: instead of 1 along with coal plants 4 instead of 2 so you have to plan ahead if you don't want your cities starving.

Just use the Stop Growth button - that's what it's there for and it's a lot better to stop it at a pop number you can stabilise than to fluctuate between growth and starvation.

No, do not use the Stop Growth button, use the whip button instead.

Seriously, if health is the issue, to let a city grow more than its health the main problem is 1 less food, so growth to the next pop is 1 fpt slower. Surely that is better than not having the pop at all?

No, do not use the Stop Growth button, use the whip button instead.

Seriously, if health is the issue, to let a city grow more than its health the main problem is 1 less food, so growth to the next pop is 1 fpt slower. Surely that is better than not having the pop at all?


You're totaly right.... up to about size 10 or slightly higher - after that I stop using slavery as it's less effective than running caste system and controlling growth manually.

A little unhealthiness never hurt anyone. Plus if you're having that much of a problem with it, play as an expansive leader.

Yes UnHappiness=Wasted pop

UnHealthiness just means you need more food... so don't worry about it.

Make sure you have health resources and health buildings [Medicine is now important]

I was put off by the change, too, at first, but after some thought, I like it. From a gameplay standpoint it makes Industrial Era health a significant factor, where in previous versions it was at most a slight concern in your marginal (from a health standpoint) cities. The sick faces from a factory was no deterrent to spamming them everywhere they could be built, and securing a double-bonus resource like cows, banana, wheat, etc. fixed the problem. Now, health is a big part of the decision whether a particular city needs a factory.

From a mirroring history standpoint, it does a decent job as an abstraction of the pollution and other environmental problems associated with the early industrial period and its attendant urbanization. When you hit the modern era, your options to combat sickness expand. Medicine, recycling centers, public transportation, etc. help to gradually clean up your industrial cesspool, and with the supermarket now giving +1 food, its effect is the same as +1 health if you're over the limit.

Unhealthiness I can keep under control until my cities grow to size 18 or so, which usually happens before I can build Hospitals etc. When those are built, all's well until about size 23, when growth slows. But of course a city where there are already more green faces than yellow ones is particularly vulnerable to poisoned water and thus needs good protection against dastardly infiltrators.
Unhappiness is far more damaging: angry citizens are a horrible waste both of workable tiles and food. Nor do there seem to be as many happy-making buildings as health-giving ones, though there are plenty of luxury resources if you have access to them. Again, a city with angry citizens is a prime spy target, for the fomenting of unhappiness in this case.
I favour a massive spy raid before invading, to destroy the foe's luxury improvements and foment like mad until all his good cities show red spots like a bad attack of measles. This usually provokes a spate of worker production, to restore the improvements; then when I invade there are lots of workers for me to capture.

BTS does make unhealthiness more prevalent.

Power is unhealthy now, so even Three Gorges Dam or Nuclear Power are going to cause a little. Certain other buildings (Factory? Definitely Industrial Park) now grant an unhealthiness penalty to oil and coal, separate from the building. This means that Recycling Plants will eliminate the unhealthiness from the building, but not from the resource.



Public Transit is a good means to fight unhealthiness, as it gives +2 with oil (effectively canceling out it's penalty) and if you have 20+ population in the city, there's an event that gives the Public Transit building +5 gold per turn.

Power is unhealthy now, so even Three Gorges Dam or Nuclear Power are going to cause a little.

I've heard this said, before, but never seen it. When I build a coal plant, it do get a "+2 :yuck: from power" modifier when I mouse over the health ratio, but I haven't seen it with hydro or nuclear plants.

I only get power through Three Gorges Dam (And, obviously, the Hydro plant in the city building Three Gorges...) but it's always the same... +2 Unhealthy for Power... I'll make sure with my next game, because now you've got me doubting myself =P

Actually, come to think of it, and this is somewhat of an aside, I've had to build Coal/Hydro plants elsewhere, I forgot Three Gorges is only for that continent. My island posessions need the alternatives.

Yea.. I noticed that health has become more of a problem .. upon building factories/coal plants almost all of my cities become unhealthy slowing their growth considerably, much more so than happiness which I can control at that stage. In Warlords or Vanilla, I can't remember ever having an unhealthy city but I like this change. Kind of makes environmentalism a viable option too in some cases.

You also have health problems because some retarded AI rival who have nothing else to do ... just sends spies into your cities and poison your water supplies, even if you have good counterespionage measures.

Sid's Sushi is the best remedy for poisoned water and unhealthiness.

They have now made Environmentalism a key Civic; without it, its hard to get all of the buildings, maximum growth, and reasonable health unless you have a tremendous number of health resources. Now, you really ahve to decide if you want Environmentalism. Before BTS, for me it used to be a choice only for resource poor maps like Highlands. Its still a 'poor' Civic, but that extra health now is really important.

And it still may be difficult to keep full health.

Breunor

yea but try combining corporations with environmentalism. and corporation isn't spread to your cities by choice sometimes...stupid neighboring civs keep spreading that crap and i have to close borders the first sight of one of them greedy bastard with a briefcase on my soil.

Lurking Liu:

Three Gorges Dam does give the +2:yuck: for power, like coal plants, but individual hydro (and nuclear) plants don't. For this reason, 3GD has come off my list of late-game wonders to build, which is fine with me as they tend to bottleneck around that point anyway (the happiness resource wonders, Pentagon, Eiffel Tower, 3GD and Cristo all close enough in tech to jostle one another for build space, even in a large empire). Nuke plants mean even your non-river cities can avoid the +2:yuck: from power, and with the heightened industrial era health problems, that can be bigger than power in your marginal cities and the few turns it takes to build plants in the cities that need power.

Back to the original topic, here is what I've done to combat the increased unhealthiness:

1. Remember to build grocers. It sounds silly, but often when I check the build queue in response to seeing a :yuck: pop up, I've simply forgotten to put a grocer in that city (not usually a problem with commerce cities, but happens quite a bit with production cities).

2. Found a food corporation and spread it. Sid's Sushi is best for water maps, and Cereal Mills for land maps, simply due to the distribution of resources. Cereal Mills provides more food per resource, but no culture. Sid's Sushi has the added culture bonus, which can be the main focus of spreading the corporation anyway, but won't provide much food on a land map with few seafood resources. Obviously, they both consume rice, so it's an either/or choice.

3. Prioritize Medicine/Ecology/Genetics. Medicine allows hospitals (+3 :health:); ecology allows recycling centers (+0-over 6 :health:, depending on buildings present, and allows those buildings to be built afterward without fear), and genetics gives a flat, across-the-board +3 :health: to every city. In previous versions, these were researched as late as possible, because health wasn't a concern. Now I semi-beeline to medicine, both for hospital's and Sid's Sushi, and pick up the other two as quickly as game circumstances allow.

4. Change focus from unhealthiness to starvation, i.e., recognize that food, not +/- health, is the important thing here. What I mean by this is that I now look to starvation as the situation to be avoided, and treat the green smog appearance as an early warning sign, rather than a signal that immediate action is needed. Unlike unhappines, going over the health cap just means, in effect, that some of your citizens now cost three food. If your city can bear that cost, let them keep growing. The problem is most acute in your largest and most developed cities, so there may be no real need to grow them further, anyway.

5. Trade all your coal away. As others have pointed out, oil also allows railroads to be built, and so acts as an effective replacement for coal. Once you have oil, removing your access to coal can remove 4 :yuck: from each city (2 for factory and 2 for industrial park, I think). The cost is 50% production from Ironworks. The benefit can often outweigh that, but as mentioned above, remember that food is key. If your cities can absorb the food loss from coal access, there's no reason to cut your Ironworks city off just to get more room under the cap. By absorb the food loss, I mean either keep growing at a satisfactory rate or stagnate at full production.

Power is unhealthy now, so even Three Gorges Dam or Nuclear Power are going to cause a little. Certain other buildings (Factory? Definitely Industrial Park) now grant an unhealthiness penalty to oil and coal, separate from the building. This means that Recycling Plants will eliminate the unhealthiness from the building, but not from the resource.

i was looking at the health troubles that in my first BtS game. my game was too easy, i was on too low a level, and i'd never even bothered to make IronWorks (what a heathen!). well, now that you can make railroads with oil, the only things you need coal itself for (if you have oil) are ironclads, ironworks, or some of the corporations.

so, i got rid of my coal. i gave it to the AIs i was getting along with ;). every city with a factory and industrial park gained +3 health! not an ideal situation in most cases, but i know that some people do face enough health issues that they put ironworks in their national park city, where it doesn't get access to coal anyway. so IF you do that, and IF you don't need coal for any of your corps, you just might want to pillage the roads on or give away your coal, just for sanitation purposes ...