Puppet switching to Default Focus

As far as I know, puppets are always focused on Gold. However, just playing with Portugal I had conquered America and made a puppet of Washington. Obviously it was having a Gold focus, which was fine .. two hills with gems nearby. However, since that caused the city to be stuck on 2 pops, I send a caravan with food stamps for +4 food, which started to grow the city.

Now, two things just happened: (1) I entered into a Golden Age and (2) the 30 turns on the caravan expired and I re-assigned it to a different trade route. Obviously the city would starve if it didn't re-assign someone to the flood plains the city also has.

However, I also noticed that Washington now has the Default Focus and is generating a whopping +7 food without the food stamps and only +5 gold. Sadly, I'm unable to convince Congress to look more closely at the budget and work those gem mines.

Two questions:
- is this a known effect that puppets switch to default focus at some point?
- is there a way to make them re-focus on gold?

I thought I was the only one getting this. I have whoward's mod that shows in the city panel what the city focus is and sometimes I find puppets with default focus.
I'm not sure if that's intented.

As far as I know, puppets are always focused on Gold

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Didn't they always adjust their focus according to the improvements you build around them?

As far as I know Puppets are by default Gold focus.

I saw that happen once too, then I checked the next turn and it was back to gold focus.

What I see is that the very turn I get a city, it's still running whatever focus the previous owner had it on (usually default), and only in the next turn that the puppet governor fully takes over and applies gold focus.

Its possible the puppet will go default focus if it is starving.... and then switch back to gold focus the next turn.

joncnunn said:

What I see is that the very turn I get a city, it's still running whatever focus the previous owner had it on (usually default), and only in the next turn that the puppet governor fully takes over and applies gold focus.

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It happened several turns after I took over the city.

KrikkitTwo said:

Its possible the puppet will go default focus if it is starving.... and then switch back to gold focus the next turn.

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This is probably it. A little later when I looked again, it had shifted back to gold focus. So at any rate my trick of getting from stagnant at 2 pop to grow and prosper by sending a caravan of food worked.

I had a puppet on production focus in my Venice game. I suspect it's a bug (though a welcome one).

There's one more possibility.

In G&K puppets never switched their focus even if they were starving, however, despite the focus, they sometimes did rearrange their plots when they faced starvation.

BNW has changed mechanics of the game a little. It's impossible to change production or plot usage during turn change. The same thing causes lags on city screen whenever it's displayed during turn change or right after it happens. It means that on the game screen the information displayed is mixed. You may get your desired city, its production queue and used plots, but at the same time you'll see finished buildings/wonders and governor's focus that belongs to the city previously viewed.
I thought about it because afaik the production buttons should be grayed out in puppet's screen.