Beating starvation?

O

oPunchDrunko

Prince
Joined
Feb 23, 2010
Messages
325
What can I do when my empire goes unhappy and some of my cities start to starve? I already have farms/buildings to provide food. But what can I do to keep my cities from starving while the empire is unhappy?

Is it even possible?
 
err, unless they are VERY unhappy, the cities do not starve. They just grow way slower than normal.
 
The unhappiness modifier takes affect at -1 unhappiness. It's 75% reduced growth, which is after feeding the citizens. So it doesn't cause starving (negative food growth) at all, instead it causes stagnation (a very long time before the city would grow).

To eliminate stagnation, cash buy or build happiness buildings.

Edit: Always lock in city titles to the ones you want to work, since if you don't the governor doesn't value food at all when your empire is unhappy.
 
joncnunn said:
The unhappiness modifier takes affect at -1 unhappiness. It's 75% reduced growth, which is after feeding the citizens. So it doesn't cause starving (negative food growth) at all, instead it causes stagnation (a very long time before the city would grow).

To eliminate stagnation, cash buy or build happiness buildings.
Click to expand...

That's weird. My city went into starvation and then a few turns later, after I went into positive happiness again, it started growing again.

Any idea why that happened?
 
The city mayor is likely switching from working food tiles to hammer tiles and causing starvation that way.

One interesting trick I found is that if your city is starving no matter what tiles you are working (i.e. after you lose allied status with a maritime city-state or after a food caravan or cargo ship is plundered) you can start building a settler and your city will magically stop starving even though there shouldn't be enough food to go around.
 
Dr. D said:
The city mayor is likely switching from working food tiles to hammer tiles and causing starvation that way.
Click to expand...

This. The city governors are all criminal idiots intent on bringing your government down :p
 
Be happy. . Ally with city states that are too happy and already want to spread the happiness. Trade resources that you have so that you can get happiness. Make culture, some culture social policies have happiness to them. Get faith, religious buildings can bring some happiness from different buildings.
 
reddishrecue said:
Be happy. . Ally with city states that are too happy and already want to spread the happiness. Trade resources that you have so that you can get happiness. Make culture, some culture social policies have happiness to them. Get faith, religious buildings can bring some happiness from different buildings.
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to sound like an ass, but I know all that lol. I was just confused why my city started starving when I was barely unhappy. I guess I should pay more attention to the files being worked in my cities.
 
If a city has got to the point where it's actually losing pop, change your build to a settler, which forces stagnation; but most of the time it tells you that a city is 'starving' when it isn't really in any danger of losing pop, so just monitor it.
 
Yeah, I had that too several times. It's the cities governor that thinks food tiles aren't worth working anymore because they give 75% less food. In some cases the city will work too few food tiles and start starving.
Manually set the worked tiles or set the governor to growth.
 
oPunchDrunko said:
I'm not trying to sound like an ass, but I know all that lol. I was just confused why my city started starving when I was barely unhappy. I guess I should pay more attention to the files being worked in my cities.
Click to expand...

I don't think that happiness has much to do with it. I've played around with the tile combinations, and I've noticed that it all has to do with your food production. You know where it has food, production, gold, research, etc. and there are positive or negative numbers next to it? If the food result is a 0 or less, on your next turn your city will be "starving" and anything over that it will not be starving. Having excess food speeds up the creation of another citizen.
 
Citizen focus might have been changed, barbarians blocking tiles, at war with someone and their units are on your food supply, new specialist assignment, new citizen added but somehow not enough food to go to the next one. Idk what else is there
 
oPunchDrunko said:
I'm not trying to sound like an ass, but I know all that lol. I was just confused why my city started starving when I was barely unhappy. I guess I should pay more attention to the files being worked in my cities.
Click to expand...

I thought that guy was just trying to help. If you aren't savvy enough to recognize that you have to micromanage your starving cities due to governor changes in unhappiness then it's not unreasonable for somebody to assume that you also lack knowledge in other areas of the game.
 
Cities starve during unhappiness because citizens don't want to be unhappy so the game will already start to limit the population growth by starting starvation. In civilization 4 you could have unhappiness and grow all the unhappy citizens you want and then sacrifice them later with slavery but in civilization 5 you can't really do that. The only way you can do that is by starving your citizens which isn't recommended but by getting more luxuries instead. If you don't want starvation during an unhappy period, you will get more citizens and more unhappiness. Starvation happens because growth causes unhappiness so in order to not have more unhappiness the starvation mechanism begins to keep the unhappiness rating under control as possible.
 
Always have to plan ahead anticipating your population, when you will get access to various happiness sources and such. That's the fun of civ.
 
Dr. D said:
The city mayor is likely switching from working food tiles to hammer tiles and causing starvation that way.

One interesting trick I found is that if your city is starving no matter what tiles you are working (i.e. after you lose allied status with a maritime city-state or after a food caravan or cargo ship is plundered) you can start building a settler and your city will magically stop starving even though there shouldn't be enough food to go around.
Click to expand...

That is a great idea (Switching to Settler), I can't tell you how many times I have found a population ruin only to have the citizen taken on the very next turn because that I haven't grown to my high grossing food tiles yet...Thanks Bro, I a don't know why I didn't think of that earlier.
 
City Governer reassigns citizens to lower food tiles because surplus food is nearly worthless when you're unhappy. Sometimes they come up a bit short.

Solutions:
1) Ideally, get Happiness out of the negatives: Governers go back to growth normally. Ideal long-term solution.
2) Open city screen, forcibly lock in enough food tiles to feed everyone. This is a short-term solution.
 
GoStu said:
City Governer reassigns citizens to lower food tiles because surplus food is nearly worthless when you're unhappy. Sometimes they come up a bit short.

Solutions:
1) Ideally, get Happiness out of the negatives: Governers go back to growth normally. Ideal long-term solution.
2) Open city screen, forcibly lock in enough food tiles to feed everyone. This is a short-term solution.
Click to expand...

Ideal is to always lock all the tiles you want to work and also not have become unhappy in the first place.
 
If you keep all your citizens locked in tiles, they won't move around and automatically place themselves in tiles that you don't want them in.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

mastrude
[BNW] Another late game question:
Replies
1
Views
264
martindo
M
K
Capital location in mass Jungle terrain bad or good
Replies
6
Views
747
ghost toast
G
foreverlost
Granary any use building?
Replies
2
Views
311
Klaus Hergersheimer
Klaus Hergersheimer
M
Loss of infrastructure when city is conquered
Replies
9
Views
546
martindo
M
J
Please help, I can't ever get past the industrial era on immortal.
Replies
6
Views
1K
martindo
M
Top Bottom