food limits

[clif9710]

My difficulty is running out of food. It seems to me that there is only a certain amount of food to be had for a given city, so it is pointless to keep increasing city size when you end up with starvation. The question then is - how big to make a given city? My games almost always end up with flat food production where I can't do anything to get more. AI opponents may also have flat-lined for food but they are at a level way above me. I play at warlord level.

I know that things crops are important and building a harbor to increase sea(food) production but no matter what I do I hit the food wall to soon.

There are improvements, like farms, that will increase food production but even there you get to the point where your cities are bounded by others and cannot expand to gain more food tiles.

Any thoughts on this?

[kossin]

Don't build too many cities with overlap, every city should have its own food resource.
Make sure you don't have too much unhealthiness/unhappiness or that will slow growth.

I promise better answers if you post screenshots/savegame.

[banson]

farming plains and grasslands will give you more food then you think. and once biology come online all farms give one more. just plan your food a bit more carefully and you should be doing good.

[edstamos]

always settle near food resources unless your making a desperate grab for a strategic resource. improve these food tiles (and make sure the city works them) first to grow your cities quickly.

[z0wb13]

The question then is - how big to make a given city?

as big as possible. sometimes it might be worthwhile to starve a city for extra production, (like by working a plains/hill mine instead of a tile). but unless you are doing this for a specific reason, go ahead and work the highest food tiles that you can.

i mean there are a lot of reasons to work production, but workboat first stuff is the only reason that springs to mind. or maybe if you are running extra specialists for

and then you got to think about and considerations.


anyways, except in certain circumstances were you can otherwise gain a long term advantage, work tiles until you max a city pop. as long as there are +2 tiles available, you've got nothing to lose.

[clif9710]

Thanks for the answers...one other one regarding food...

In the city manager panel, you can emphasize growth and/or production. As I understand the game, this will only determine where your population (white circles that appear on the city map) is placed.

Are the workers that run around making improvements influenced by the city manager selections? In other words, if I emphasize growth, will the workers rush to build a farm rather than a mine? My impression is that the workers are run by the AI independently, going on their way regardless of any actions that I take other than commanding them to work on a specific tile or for a specific city.

[v8_mark]

Originally Posted by clif9710

Are the workers that run around making improvements influenced by the city manager selections? In other words, if I emphasize growth, will the workers rush to build a farm rather than a mine?

They are influenced by the city manager selections - in fact, TheMeInTeam, who's quite a high level player, has used this to good effect on quite high difficulty levels with automated workers.

However, in order to fully understand the game mechanics, I strongly recommend you take your workers off automated.

In response to your original question, there are lots of ways you can influence the amount of growing your city can do. Firstly, and most importantly, you need to place your cities in order to get as much food as you can. This means making sure there is at least one food resource (pig, cow, sheep, corn, wheat, rice, or any seafood tile) in the fat cross of your city. If there is one of these, you shouldn't have any problems growing to whatever size you want to up to 15 or so (for most cities - for some you can reach 20-25 or even higher, especially later in the game).

The mechanics of this are very simple (I don't know how much you've worked out of this, but I'll spell it out anyway). Each citizen eats 2 per turn. So, for a size 1 city, you need 2; for a size 4 city, you need 8, and so on. This food is gathered from your citizens working tiles in your fat cross.

Obviously, to grow, you need more food than this; how quickly you grow depends on how much surplus food you have. So, settle your cities so they incorporate as many food resources and as many grassland tiles as possible; if you want or need bigger cities subsequently, farm some tiles too.

An important thing to note, however, is that big cities don't actually *do* anything by themselves. You need to make sure you have production and/or commerce in your cities as well, to ensure things get built and technologies get researched. Also, you will (very) often have 'happy cap' restrictions, meaning that you can't grow any more without making your people unhappy. Always avoid growing into unhappiness, as your unhappy citizens don't do anything at all except eat food and increase city maintenance.

[dalamb]

After the Corporation and (I think) Medicine techs, you may be able to found Sid's Sushi, which can significantly increase the amount of food in cities with a branch (depending on the number of seafood resource you can access).

[Mrriddler]

I want to emphasize kossin's point since it's what I learned the hard way. Make sure your cities DON'T overlap food resources. However, I think you can (should?) overlap production sources. Needs some microing, but I found it to be very effective and adds a lot of flexiblity. I'm only a sluggish prince/monarch player though so I'll defer to more expert opinions.

Like some mentioned, maybe you're building your core cities too close together? How many tile overlaps do they have? When possible, I try and limit them to 5 or less for each city's BFC (count impassable terrain like peaks). Too much overlap and you could be stifling natural city growth. You need enough tiles in a city to generate both food surplus, likely from a resource or two, and tiles for hill mines and plains workshops later. Also try to chain irrigate your farms when possible, that's +1 food per farm. I'm not good at this myself, but I believe you can even "over farm" in the beginning to grow a city up and then replace them with windmills and watermills and workshops when they start getting good returns (i.e. after replacement parts, running caste etc).

As for corp, well, just be careful of Sid Sushi on water heavy maps, continentals, hemispheres, etc. It's fairly easy to get +10 or even +15 to food (20 and 30 food sources respectively), which will allow for +5 and +7.5 pop per city. Just get a courthouse up before spreading it, run free market and DON'T spread it to cities that will already grow to 20 naturally. I remember when I spread Sid to a GP farm the first time: 32 pop + 18 food => stayed in the red for the rest of the game even when I tried to take down my farms.

[naterator]

You can actually use food resourse overlap to your advantage, switching the tile between 2 cities, growing and whipping until both have decent infrastructure; then alternately growing them both with it. Eventually i'll make a decision about which one will own it and assign it there, leaving the other to work what tiles it has left.

It requires more attention than i am generally willing to pay though, so i don't use it much.

[jmas]

Looks like people have posted some good replies so far. What I'm curious about for my current game is whether adding a Forge with its +1 is worth it for a Bureau capital. Each unhealthy citizen () of course costs you 1 food (take note, original poster, if you did not know that). The capital has a supporting city to help it keep towns/cottages worked, so it has the option of whipping (which is augmented with a Forge), though of course it also has the +50% from Bureau even if it works hammer tiles and doesn't whip (it has a grass mine and a plains ivory which have the same yields). I'm guessing it's probably not worth it, since the 1 effectively costs half a citizen via the 1 that gets wasted. I can build a Market first for the happy faces that gives and then I might only build the Forge if happiness is more of an issue than health. I did wonder though, is there a guide anywhere that analyzes the impact of having unhealthy citizens? For example, should you always whip them if you can spare the +1 and you have something halfway reasonable to build in that city? If anyone can point to a thread about that, I would be grateful; or just comment on what you do with those guys. Thank you!

[DaveMcW]

Trading 1 food (or 1 ) for 2 hammers is usually a good deal.

So your capital with only 7 doesn't benefit from a forge, unless you plan to whip a lot.

[jmas]

Originally Posted by DaveMcW

Trading 1 food (or 1 ) for 2 hammers is usually a good deal.

So your capital with only 7 doesn't benefit from a forge, unless you plan to whip a lot.

Thank you for commenting. I'll have to look at the capital again when I'm home; as I recall, it is at health cap (18) now; its floodplains are adding either 2 or 3 unhealthiness so that means the city size is either 15 or 16. I know there is at least one plains forest, possibly two, being worked for lack of better tiles. And--cover your eyes Dave --there is one plains cottage. So that would be 10-12 base . Sorry I don't have more precise information just now.

Also, if I recall correctly from the tables that UncleJJ and OTAKUjbski put together, oftentimes one doesn't get 2 per food with whipping, although I think the tables don't take Forges or Organized Religion into account.

[Mrriddler]

Originally Posted by naterator

You can actually use food resourse overlap to your advantage, switching the tile between 2 cities, growing and whipping until both have decent infrastructure; then alternately growing them both with it. Eventually i'll make a decision about which one will own it and assign it there, leaving the other to work what tiles it has left.

It requires more attention than i am generally willing to pay though, so i don't use it much.

Really? I can imagine the micro-ing required must be tough. I assume you made sure you had enough alternative food tiles for the two cities to work when the that food resource is not available? Otherwise I figure it would be nightmare trying to keep both cities from shrinking, which is what happened to me. Maybe I'll try it sometime when I get the chance.

jmas, 10-12 base ? I probably would've forged it awhile ago. 13-15 is a pretty good production site in the early game I think. There's always + buildings but even if you don't build it which you probably shouldn't if it's just for the forge, -1 isn't deal breaker. You can easily trade for a health resource I think. They aren't prioritized all that much I don't think.

[naterator]

Originally Posted by Mrriddler

Really? I can imagine the micro-ing required must be tough. I assume you made sure you had enough alternative food tiles for the two cities to work when the that food resource is not available? Otherwise I figure it would be nightmare trying to keep both cities from shrinking, which is what happened to me. Maybe I'll try it sometime when I get the chance.

Honestly i'm not very good at it either, but i've done it when i needed 2 cities to block an ai and there's only one resource to share. One city keeps the resource in the end, and the other ends up marginal but at least it has a granary/courthouse/culture and maybe a few other things depending on the city. It's nice because one city border pops and unlocks a resource for 2 cities.

Of course i'm probably doing it at least partially wrong as well, it's just a technique i read about here and applied sometime later from memory.

[UncleJJ]

Originally Posted by jmas

Thank you for commenting. I'll have to look at the capital again when I'm home; as I recall, it is at health cap (18) now; its floodplains are adding either 2 or 3 unhealthiness so that means the city size is either 15 or 16. I know there is at least one plains forest, possibly two, being worked for lack of better tiles. And--cover your eyes Dave --there is one plains cottage. So that would be 10-12 base . Sorry I don't have more precise information just now.

A forge is usually a good source of happiness well worth the extra unhealth. With 12 base hammers the forge will add 3 hammers and with Bureaucracy gives a total of 21. An aquaduct will take 5 turns to build or a 2 pop whip (with a big overflow) and that will more than compensate for the unhealth.

Generally at that size 1 or 2 unhealth is not that much of a problem and can be countered by more food if it's available. At size 15, 1 food used for whipping is worth about 1.2 base hammers, so that is one measure of the cost of the forge's unhealth, it costs 1.2 base hammers or 1.8 output hammers with Bureacracy. So a forge will be worthwhile on strictly food-hammer terms if it adds more hammers than that. Remember to add 7 hammers for each pop that is whipped with the forge.

Also, if I recall correctly from the tables that UncleJJ and OTAKUjbski put together, oftentimes one doesn't get 2 per food with whipping, although I think the tables don't take Forges or Organized Religion into account.

The tables worked with base hammers. Forges, Bureacracy and OR would modify production for whipping in the same way as normal hammer production and are easy to apply afterwards. The base hammers per food is also easy to calculate. Each pop that is whipped is worth 30 hammers. With a functioning granary the amount of food to regrow that pop is simply (10 + city size) *. So at size 5 it's 15 food => 30 hammers and therefore 1 food = 2 hammers. At size 10, 20 food => 30 hammers and 1 food = 1.5 hammers and so on. I use a simple spreadsheet to give all intermediate values and also to deal with 2 and 3 pop whips.

* [strictly speaking it is a 1 pop whip from size 6 to size 5 and the amount of food is that to regrow to size 6]

[jmas]

Okay, here is the city:

Spoiler:

So it's 2 plains cottages and 1 plains forest being worked (I was slightly off in my previous post). The unimproved grassland was just chopped and will soon be cottaged. This city recently became the capital. My original capital site didn't have very good commerce potential compared to this site.

Originally Posted by Mrriddler

jmas, 10-12 base ? I probably would've forged it awhile ago.

I just got Metal Casting within the last few turns. Though I could have prioritized it more since I'm Bismarck (Industrious).

13-15 is a pretty good production site in the early game I think. There's always + buildings but even if you don't build it which you probably shouldn't if it's just for the forge, -1 isn't deal breaker. You can easily trade for a health resource I think. They aren't prioritized all that much I don't think.

There aren't any health resources that AIs are willing to trade right now, but I think you are right: it isn't that big of a deal, I'll get another resource eventually, or Guilds (hopefully in trade from an AI) for a grocer.

Originally Posted by UncleJJ

A forge is usually a good source of happiness well worth the extra unhealth. With 12 base hammers the forge will add 3 hammers and with Bureaucracy gives a total of 21. An aquaduct will take 5 turns to build or a 2 pop whip (with a big overflow) and that will more than compensate for the unhealth.

A forge can give +2 right now, which of course is a good thing, though a Market will give +3 and eventually +4 once I manage to get Optics and a whaling boat produced in another city. There is already an aqueduct, so adding will require resources or a grocer.

This city can add a forge (it can build it in 1 turn right now), whip a market and courthouse with help from its supporting city to keep cottages worked, maybe add a Temple (I'm hoping an Islamic AI will complete the AP) and eventually regrow to size 15 and then grow onto the remaining plains forest and the water tile and then be at stagnation, or it could grow to size 16 and run a specialist and still have +2 for a little while, which could be used for a "part-time" specialist (got that "part-time" phrase from a post of yours in another thread, UncleJJ) until more health is available. Is that what you guys would recommend/do?

One thing I see--not sure it can be called a "problem"--is that once buildings are in place, if population can be whipped for 30 *1.75 (with Bureau and a forge) = 52 apiece, I'll be needing some fancier tech to unlock costly enough units for 2+ pop whips. [EDIT: Just remembered I'm running HR, so could do 1-pop whips; I could consider building the Globe here, though I think I have another city better for that.]

And thank you JJ for the explanation with numbers, that was helpful.

[GinandTonic]

Originally Posted by naterator

Honestly i'm not very good at it either, but i've done it when i needed 2 cities to block an ai and there's only one resource to share. One city keeps the resource in the end, and the other ends up marginal but at least it has a granary/courthouse/culture and maybe a few other things depending on the city. It's nice because one city border pops and unlocks a resource for 2 cities.

Of course i'm probably doing it at least partially wrong as well, it's just a technique i read about here and applied sometime later from memory.

In my experience it's very situational, but can be very useful. The key is to have a clear vision of where the cities are going. For instance a Moai Statues city may not really want lots of seafood once it's got going and a National Epic city may be unable to utilise all it's food bonuses until its got going.

[UncleJJ]

jmas: that's a nice looking city with plenty of commerce and good potential. It has nearly reached its maximum size without farms or a windmill, even if you do pick up more health.

At size 16 whipping away pop that are working plains forests is slightly inefficient. Each food is worth about 1.2 hammers so a plains forest is producing a net (2-1.2 = 0.8 base hammers). If the citizen is unhealthy then a whip is much more attractive and the forge will make the 15th and 16th citizen unhealthy at present. So after building the forge a 2 pop whip (after sinking some hammers) for the market could be a good move. This is especially true since the research slider is so low (40%) and a market in this city will raise a lot of gold

Happiness is not an immediate problem. I would probably build the forge first (to maximise hammer production), then the market, followed by the monastery (another 10% research), courthouse and barracks.

Your garrison looks a bit weak considering you have foriegn culture just outside the BFC . Not sure what military techs you have available but I see iron and ivory, so research Horseback Riding and build a stable here perhaps? Jumbos are always entertaining.

Originally Posted by jmas

I could consider building the Globe here, though I think I have another city better for that

This is a terrible city for the Globe Theatre, far too low food surplus and no need of the happiness. I usually try to place it in a small city with very high food and use it to draft riflemen every turn or whip large units frequently.

Where are you going to put Oxford? This city is a strong candidate if you can get the research slider higher. With 12 cottages it will be a good site even when civics are switched to FS.