why does puppet do nothing?

[Walter R]

In my current game I have a puppet city captured eons ago. It is of strategic position value, otherwise I'd have ditched it long ago (it controls the entry to a strait). It is on a two snow-tile island, the other tile is a mine. It has extremely low pop growth (as you'd imagine) and only few hammers; but the thing is it has built nothing at all and is never working on anything. Total inactivity. I've not seen this before as far as I can remember, but I normally burn rubbish like this.
Anyone shed any light?

 

[FeiLing]

did you get the city in a trade from another civ (in a peace deal or paying for it) rather than capturing it?

there is a bug in that case that sometimes makes a city gained in that manner have no base tile yield, thus it often won't grow and also not have any hammers to build anything.

Nothing you can do to fix that. And Firaxis apparently can't fix it either as they've tried to announced that is has been fixed quite a few times by now... but it's still here.

 

[Walter R]

No, pretty sure I captured it for it's strategic value. It does have hammers (only 2 I think), but it has never done anything at all. It took me until I could get a garrison unit to it before I realised that it was totally unproductive - and has remained so. At this point in the game it's no longer significant but it bugged me why.

 

[phillipwyllie]

You have 2 options:
1.)Annex the city and rush buy food/production buildings
2.)Send(if possible) rood/production caravans/cargo ships.

 

[Hpuk]

Post a save or at least some screenshots if you could. Is it really not even converting the hammers to gold? Sounds bizarre.

 

[EK834]

That's almost certainly a bug.

Usually the puppets more or less make sense, in that they'll produce harbors early to connect themselves to your capital, will prioritize defense buildings too, will produce all economic buildings, science ones and cultural ones and growth ones. The real annoyance is that they produce too many costly buildings that are useless (seaports, or broadcast towers when they have ridiculous culture) and that they won't interrupt what they are producing when they detect a need for gold or science, or hammers for a project - no, they'll spent the next 50 turns producing that damn Opera House first before finally switching to World Fair, or will switch to gold only 17 turns after all your TR have been pillaged. As Venice you can control that a little, but by buying them the useless building they're producing so they'll switch to something more useful right away.

 

[Hpuk]

Can you normally even be in a situation where you don't build anything? I think the game forces you to choose something, even if it's turning the production to gold or science. You'd think puppets followed the same rules after the unrest period.

 

[El Caballerion]

Is the name of your city Detroit?

BOOOM! I'm here all night ladies and gentlemen...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Can you normally even be in a situation where you don't build anything? I think the game forces you to choose something, even if it's turning the production to gold or science. You'd think puppets followed the same rules after the unrest period.

It's hard to follow any rules when you're bugged to 0 yield, which is normally impossible.

 

[Hpuk]

It's hard to follow any rules when you're bugged to 0 yield, which is normally impossible.

According to the OP it does have hammers. Still hoping to get a save or a screenshot.

 

[reddishrecue]

That's odd. Did you put it on raze city? Puppets usually start to build after awhile.

 

[Walter R]

Yeah it's got to be a bug. In the end I annexed it and Bingo!, ready to build. Annoying though, as I didn't want the SP cost (but I certainly didn't want it going to another civ). I've read about similar bugs on the Forum, but first time I've experienced it. Another thing I've noted is that it never has a WLTKD requirement, so that city is just all-out bugged man!