Cities starving themselves

[Soronery]

Okay this just pisses me off. Size 3 city Lock 2 tiles on a city set it to production focus buying. Focusing on my early rush. Start improving a resource. When I wasn't looking production focus set the city to work the improved resource tile. Look back. I have a size 2 city. God damn it fix this ******ed already.
/rage

EDIT: Did a reload. OH WOW.
EVEN BETTER.
In between turns:
3 tiles locked
barb steps on one tile city starves in between turns? Jesus christ. City reassigns tile to starve itself inbetween turns.

 

[NotSure]

I always lock down production tiles and stay on default because of this. Well, that and I don't understand the whole "2 free hammers" trick when a city grows. Did a patch bring this problem back?

 

[Vorlath]

The problem is that you think you're locking a tile, but it doesn't. The lock icon doesn't mean a thing. I've also had a city with 12 people in it and every turn one of the tiles would switch to starve itself. The very last tile simply would not lock no matter what setting I used or what sequence of tiles I used. This happens in all my games at some point.

But even better, get this... I reloaded my game one time because I had to leave earlier. After two turns, my worst city decided that all buildings except for 3 of them would magically be built. Did I go back? Hellz no. This was sweet. But it's still a stupid bug where a half dozen buildings show up out of nowhere. All the upgraded buildings too.

 

[snarzberry]

I agree, it's stupid, we've been over this many times before and it would be better if production focus equaled max hammers while at least food neutral. To get around this in the meantime you just have to, whenever your food bucket is very low and you'd lose a pop if you went into starvation for one turn, lock the tiles to the hammer rich ones that you want to work and enable normal or food focus. Then when the governor makes a switch for whatever reason, like a barb on your quarry tile, it will switch to a food rich tile during turns. You only want production focus locked if you're going to grow between turns.

 

[joncnunn]

If there's a chance that barbs might step onto a food producing tile that turn you need to have it either set to food or default.

Better yet, place a military unit in that key tile so that barbs can't step on it to begin with.

 

[Brigg]

It happens. Sometimes you have bad timing, but the food focus might stop it if you had another tile with sufficient food..

 

[peddroelm]

I always lock down production tiles and stay on default because of this. Well, that and I don't understand the whole "2 free hammers" trick when a city grows. Did a patch bring this problem back?

Its very simple actually :

Order of operations at the end of the turn for each city ...

....
calculate food
.....
if food bucket is full add a new citizen on a free tile (assuming the city has free tiles - otherwise the new citizen will become an unemployed specialist)
if food bucket is negative remove a citizen
....
calculate production
.....
calculate gold
....

At the end of the turn food gets calculated for every city ... if food bucket is filled you gain a new citizen ... That citizen will get distributed on a tile according with the "focus" you have that particular city ...

Now - if this new citizen goes to work a food tile - the food calculation has already been performed for this turn ...the food produced by the tile worked by this citizen will be ignored this turn.. The gold and production calculations are performed AFTER the growth ... Whatever gold or production the tile worked by the new citizen generates will affect gold and production totals for the current turn...

===============

Food produced by new citizens in the turn that are born is ignored while hammers and gold are added to production and gold totals ...

===============

so its not always 2 free hammers -> its whatever hammers and gold the tile the new citizen goes to work is worth ... {it would be exactly 2 hammers if the city was set on production focus and the best production tile available would be an unimproved non-river sided hill - a common case during the early stages of the game }

========

*not sure about the order between production and gold calculation - but the important thing is that both occur AFTER food (and potential growth) calculation

 

[peddroelm]

Okay this just pisses me off. Size 3 city Lock 2 tiles on a city set it to production focus buying. Focusing on my early rush. Start improving a resource. When I wasn't looking production focus set the city to work the improved resource tile. Look back. I have a size 2 city. God damn it fix this ******ed already.
/rage

EDIT: Did a reload. OH WOW.
EVEN BETTER.
In between turns:
3 tiles locked
barb steps on one tile city starves in between turns? Jesus christ. City reassigns tile to starve itself inbetween turns.

Generally computers NEVER(rarely) do what you want them to do ....They ALWAYS do EXACTLY what you tell them to do ...

In this particular case - production focus tells the city to assign the citizen on the highest production available tile (starvation be damned) ...Workaround as already suggested - lock down all used tiles and set city on food focus (if/when hostiles step in - citizens go over free food tiles - city won't starve.. )

 

[NotSure]

That is simple. Thanks for the explanation! If I understand it right then, you don't have to worry about starvation until the turn after your new citizen is born, and only if your city was at +1 food or less before the new citizen was born?

 

[peddroelm]

That is simple. Thanks for the explanation! If I understand it right then, you don't have to worry about starvation until the turn after your new citizen is born, and only if your city was at +1 food or less before the new citizen was born?

Again is down to the order of operations ...

Hit end turn

........
workers potentially finish improving tiles
.......
governors reassign unlocked citizens to tiles according to city "focus" // locking all worked tiles helps prevent painful "surprises"
........
hostiles move potentially occupying multiple tiles causing citizens to redistribute according to city "focus" and available tiles (some could end up as unemployed specialists)
..........
food calculation
..........
if food bucket is negative you lose a citizen
.....


You are of course most vulnerable the turns after a new citizen is born when the food bucket is reset ....A city with an aqueduct will be much safer against random starvation accidents because the bucket will never be truly reset ...

How much food you need in the bucket to be safe from starvation depends on how many working citizens and specialists(could get discount from freedom policy) are in the city [food_eaten_per_turn ] and how much food they are able to generate from tiles[after potential hostile forced redistribution], buildings, maritime allies , tradition policies, floating gardens bonus[Aztec UB] & temple of Artemis[Wonder] bonus ....

=======
If hostiles occupy too many food tiles and you cannot remove them {or you get extra citizens from ruins but lack the food to feed them} (starvation imminent at the end of the turn) - you can still save the citizens by setting the city on settler building [food bucket freeze effect] until you manage to remove the hostiles//provide enough food ...

 

[NotSure]

Never thought of the settler trick. A lot of great information. Thanks again.

 

[Tabarnak]

Right after the free hammers trick(when you jump a ), it's preferable to let it on default if you stay at max production. If a barb or ennemy unit step on a food tile, the default option will put the citizen on another food tile. But if you work a 3f tile and have no more tile around with no growth you must protect that tile because even at default your city will lose a pop if you don't have any spare food. Excepted when you build settlers(no penalty).

Easy to counter when you play offline, but sometimes in multiplayer it's possible to miss something before the turn timer ends.

 

[Vorlath]

That's all nice, but I hate that there's still a bug where this happens when no enemies are around. It's not just about allocation. It's a real bug.

 

[NotSure]

That's all nice, but I hate that there's still a bug where this happens when no enemies are around. It's not just about allocation. It's a real bug.

I've actually wanted to know how to get the free hammers on growth for a long time. It's a decent amount of extra production in a wide empire. I'm glad they took the time to explain it.

As far as the city governor goes, I don't think they're ever going to get it to work well. It's pretty frustrating to take a puppet with mining luxuries early in the game and see it sit on one of the luxuries all game, never growing beyond 1 or 2 pop. I've never seen it fail outside of gold or production focus or an enemy unit on one of my tiles. I've also never seen buildings appear for no reason either, so I don't know what's up with your game.