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It looks like unhappiness itself reduces food production (and other production). In the Berlin city screen shot, the empire's Happiness is at -4 (+4 sad face), and the Food, Production and Gold income are fractional (1.5, 19.2, and 21.25 respectively), suggesting that they're being hit by a penalty. Which is what you'd expect if unhappiness is meant to be a limiter on growth.

I detailed in the article exactly what the effects of unhappiness are:

"An unhappy population’s growth rate is significantly slowed, but there are no other ill effects."

The fractional production and gold in the shot you speak of are most likely caused by other things.
 
I detailed in the article exactly what the effects of unhappiness are:

"An unhappy population’s growth rate is significantly slowed, but there are no other ill effects."

The fractional production and gold in the shot you speak of are most likely caused by other things.
Thanks for the correction, Greg: I misread that passage as "there are other ill effects." :D

But, isn't population growth determined by food surplus?
 
I detailed in the article exactly what the effects of unhappiness are:

"An unhappy population’s growth rate is significantly slowed, but there are no other ill effects."

The fractional production and gold in the shot you speak of are most likely caused by other things.

One teeny little clarification for us spreadhseet nerds. When we say 'growth rate is slowed' do we mean:

1) Absolute penalty to food production (-5 food)
2) Percentage penalty to food prouction (-20% food)
3) Some modification of required food before pop burst (Requires +50% food before growing in size)
4) Other?

I am hoping NOT 2 because it is rather hard to intuit while playing.

EDIT: And does starvation still occur if you have a food problem?
 
The growth penalty is a flat percentage hit to your food surplus, which equates to the same percentage hit to your growth rate. It ends up feeling very intuitive. Therefore happiness by itself won't cause starvation, but it really hurts the growth rate of all of your cities. The first "unhappy" level is far more than a 20% hit. You really want to keep your citizens :)!
 
The growth penalty is a flat percentage hit to your food surplus, which equates to the same percentage hit to your growth rate. It ends up feeling very intuitive. Therefore happiness by itself won't cause starvation, but it really hurts the growth rate of all of your cities. The first "unhappy" level is far more than a 20% hit. You really want to keep your citizens :)!
Got it, thanks.

One wonders whether the :mad: "very unhappy" threshold is a flat number of :( or a percentage of :(. (edit: likely variable, affected by difficulty level)
 
The growth penalty is a flat percentage hit to your food surplus, which equates to the same percentage hit to your growth rate. It ends up feeling very intuitive. Therefore happiness by itself won't cause starvation, but it really hurts the growth rate of all of your cities. The first "unhappy" level is far more than a 20% hit. You really want to keep your citizens :)!

So if your citizens are starving, it doesn't have much effect if you make them unhappy as well? ;) Then again, under the new system I wouldn't be surprised if a city in starvation added additional unhappiness. It kind if feels like a civilization could descent into a death spiral of unhappiness, which would have quite a bit of flavor, but be not very much fun if it happens because an enemy destroys your gold mine.
 
The growth penalty is a flat percentage hit to your food surplus, which equates to the same percentage hit to your growth rate. It ends up feeling very intuitive. Therefore happiness by itself won't cause starvation, but it really hurts the growth rate of all of your cities. The first "unhappy" level is far more than a 20% hit. You really want to keep your citizens :)!

And what about when your cities are already starving? (i.e. losing food) If there's no penalty to them as well then the solution to a happiness problem would be to fix it asap while setting your cities to empty their food bar without letting it go below 0 (for a shrinkage). I hope the devs are being mindful of ways to exploit such a system so they can remove them before we all start using them.
 
I starve my cities all the time (please note that what I mean by starving is only a negative food surplus, not actually sending the foodbar below zero and hence shrinking the city by one population point). When cities reach their natural limits, it's as simple as removing citizens from a tile or two so another city can borrow them for a few turns. I also often let my cities starve for a few turns if for example I want to build a coal plant and a hospital. Build the coal plant first so that the hospital is built faster. If my city needs to starve for a few turns while the hospital is built, so be it.

Even earlier in the game, I run my cities in starvation during times of golden age if it means I can work some more mines or tiles with both commerce and hammers on them. Since food doesn't receive a benefit from the GA, it's beneficial to keep foodbars of cities near max before you start the GA and let them starve during the GA. For similar reasons, you let the GP farm starve during the golden age if it means working more specialists.
 
I starve my cities all the time (please note that what I mean by starving is only a negative food surplus, not actually sending the foodbar below zero and hence shrinking the city by one population point). When cities reach their natural limits, it's as simple as removing citizens from a tile or two so another city can borrow them for a few turns. I also often let my cities starve for a few turns if for example I want to build a coal plant and a hospital. Build the coal plant first so that the hospital is built faster. If my city needs to starve for a few turns while the hospital is built, so be it.

Even earlier in the game, I run my cities in starvation during times of golden age if it means I can work some more mines or tiles with both commerce and hammers on them. Since food doesn't receive a benefit from the GA, it's beneficial to keep foodbars of cities near max before you start the GA and let them starve during the GA. For similar reasons, you let the GP farm starve during the golden age if it means working more specialists.

With gloal happiness and health removed, that scenario doesn't seem that useful anymore. You can still swap tiles to the smaller city if you want it to grow or build faster, but there's no real reason in Civ5 to limit your larger city. Which city you want to work a specific shared tile will come down to which one provides the best marginal benefits. If one city has multipliers, that might be the best city to work the tile. If the other city is smaller, it might grow faster with more food, or it might be able to build a cheap, effective building that the larger city already has faster.
 
Arioch. If you can exploit something, it doesn't mean it's an "exploit". I haven't even played the game yet so I'm not suggesting it's an exploit. Just I hope the devs are thinking through the consequences of how mechanics can be exploited. That is not something they did extremely well with civ4 releases, and it took patches usually to remove things like overflow exploits from whipping and slaving.

I suppose I should just avoid the word "exploit" entirely as it tends to draw more emotional responses (not that yours was) thanks to its meaning to video games, and even there its exact meaning is not usually clear.
 
I have a feature that details how gold works in Civ V (what it's used for, how you get it) which will shed some light on a lot of the things you guys are hypothesizing here.

It will hopefully go up today. :)

Sneak peek: Gold is no longer the "growth limiter" - that responsibility now rests on happiness, as you have learned from this article. In my opinion, gold is a lot more fun and interesting this time around :)

So this isnt coming up before the weekend? :(
 
So this isnt coming up before the weekend? :(

He said it yesterday, but he didn't put it up then. Now the clock is only 8.30 in the morning in California, so he has the entire day to put it up.
 
Yeah, it'll most likely be Monday now. But it'll be early Monday :)
 
Which time zone is that for? :p
 
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