Population growth question

[haag]

Hey guys,
I've started playing on immortal lately, and I've been experimenting with population growth to try and understand how the system really works. These two screenshots shows the turn before and the turn after a city grows.




The mountain adjacent to the city is Mt. Kailash, wich yields 10 faith per turn to me (6 base + 4 from natural wonder pantheon). Although I am not working this tile the first turn, my faith increases by 11 when i click next turn. Does this mean that the city actually starts working a new tile at the same time as it grows?

This is strange to me in several ways. Usually you are able to manually select which tiles to work, but you cant control which tile the city will start working when it grows, right?

Also, my original plan on the first screenshot was to work sheep and mt. kailash (because i get lots of food from my trade route). However my experiments also show that if a city starts working a tile with food when it grows, the city will not gain the food from that tile when it grows, only the other resources. So if i did work mt. kailash and the sheep, the city would start working the fish when it grew, but this would not yield me anything this turn. So I should be locking the fish and the sheep, and then the city would start working mt. kailash when it grows, and then I would get all the resources from all the tiles.

So is working mt. kaliash and the sheep is completely pointless? Do you have to manually select wich tiles to work before a city grows to get the best yield?

 

[The Pilgrim]

The mountain adjacent to the city is Mt. Kailash, wich yields 10 faith per turn to me (6 base + 4 from natural wonder pantheon). Although I am not working this tile the first turn, my faith increases by 11 when i click next turn. Does this mean that the city actually starts working a new tile at the same time as it grows?

That's right. The food is calculated first (dunno whether tourism gets higher priority, but I assume it does not ), when there is enough food for the next citizen, the city grows and starts working a new tile. Then the rest of the yields are calculated.

This is strange to me in several ways. Usually you are able to manually select which tiles to work, but you cant control which tile the city will start working when it grows, right?

That's wrong. Somewhat. You can select the tile your next citizen will be working by setting focus. For example, production focus will force the new citizen to work the highest production tile, faith focus will force it to work mt Kailash and so on. When it's set on default, only civ gods know how the governor picks which tiles to work. Or someone who actually looked into game tiles. But from my experience it 'tries' to consider happiness situation and work non pure food tiles when you are unhappy and prioritizes food over everything else when you have happiness surplus. Faith and gp improvements also highly rated by it. But you really can't trust the game to make an adequate decision for you. City governor is horrendous. If you really really hate MM (you don't strike me as one), then so be it. Otherwise the common practise is to set all cities on production focus, manually lock food and other good tiles and re-check after each growth step.

 

[Uzael36]

When set to default, it adds up the total units given by a tile, and uses which has the highest when adding up growth, production, faith, science, and gold. What ever tiles comes up the highest when you add up everything is what is chosen. I do not know which has highest priority if there is a tie.

 

[Tabarnak]

This is why we all do the hammer trick. When a new citizen is born you want to put on production focus ar any tiles you want excepted food tile.

Hammer trick

to summarize:

growth happens before production
by selecting a production focus a newly born citizen will work a useful tile the turn it is born and add to production, whereas on default focus it'll work a food tile and add nothing.

 

[haag]

Thanks for replies guys. Will start selecting production focus from now on.

If you really really hate MM (you don't strike me as one), then so be it.

MM is fine, I just think about all the games where I didn't know about this and all the yield I've lost just because I didn't manually select new tiles every time before a city grew

 

[The Pilgrim]

When set to default, it adds up the total units given by a tile, and uses which has the highest when adding up growth, production, faith, science, and gold. What ever tiles comes up the highest when you add up everything is what is chosen. I do not know which has highest priority if there is a tie.

I think you might be correct. Thanks for reminder.

And by the way, 'production' trick doesn't have to be production only. Sometimes faith trick is more worthy and especially since BNW, I find myself using 'gold' trick more and more, not to lose beakers in early game.

 

[The Pilgrim]

MM is fine, I just think about all the games where I didn't know about this and all the yield I've lost just because I didn't manually select new tiles every time before a city grew

You don't need to reassign tiles before each growth, just lock whatever you want to work and set a focus. And anyway, it can save you a few hammers here and there, but this is far from being game breaking.

 

[Ryika]

Just make sure to play slowly if you want to use the hammer-trick. If you forget to lock down useful tiles after your cities have grown, it'll hurt you more than it helps.

 

[Aaron90495]

Just make sure to play slowly if you want to use the hammer-trick. If you forget to lock down useful tiles after your cities have grown, it'll hurt you more than it helps.

So much this. I've fallen behind in countless games due to negligence and the fact that the game doesn't notify you of growth past 6 Population. And as others said, the hammer trick is definitely helpful, but it's far from necessary. It's quite useful in the early game (when 2-3 hammers/another yield is like a third of a turn) but its effectiveness tapers off as the game continues.

 

[danaphanous]

Doesn't the game notify me of all growth, even past 6-pop? I always click on the growth icons to see if it is a "locked" city so I don't lose growth by forgetting to reselect. I thought even my 23-pop capital was telling me...

This fact is ******ed anyway, and I view it as a bug. If they would add the citizen after all yields are added like is intuitive this wouldn't matter. As it is, you have to waste time locking things all the time to get the most out of things, which means I "have" to pay attention to it because I'm OCD like that. It won't make or break any game, even immortal, I actually learned about the odd mechanic after playing on immortal, but I noticed it can make small differences that add up to significance on some games--I wouldn't ignore it, for instance, if I was playing Deity.

 

[Gamewizard]

There are mods that will notify you of all growth no matter the city size.

 

[reddishrecue]

WHenever your food storage fills up with food you get an extra citizen. A citizen is equal to ~1000 citizens... The menu on the left already tells you how much food you are gaining or losing..

 

[Ryika]

There are mods that will notify you of all growth no matter the city size.

Right, it's a feature of Enhanced User Interface for example - a mod that many people use these days. Not only does it keep notifying beyond 6 pop, it also does a lot of other useful stuff - like adding notifications when a city claims a new tile... wouldn't want to play without that EVER again.