"avoid growth" not avoiding growth

[terrycrist3]

Has anyone else noticed that your city will increase in pop, even when you have checked the "avoid growth" box. In Civ IV, no matter how much food surplus you had, the city would not grow if the box was checked. Now, it just seems to reassign citizens to minimize food. Unless this is a bug, it seems like we're back to the old days where you have to turn citizens into specialists to (hopefully) get to 0 food.

 

[Lyoncet]

Avoid growth is probably one of the most broken features right now, and that's saying a lot. A third of the time, it will work; a third, nothing happens at all (I've had a city with avoid growth on produce 18 food per turn surplus); a third, it will have a hard time getting low enough surplus food and put half your citizens into "unemployed." Even if you have specialist buildings/0-food tiles unworked.

So yeah. Best way to avoid growth is to put yourself into 10 unhappiness.

 

[S.K. Ren]

I once selected Gold and it had like 6 gold and when I selected Food I had like 18 gold. WTH?! The entire plot priority system is screwed up. IMHO, players should be able to customize and write how the AI prioritizes tiles for each option to suit personal style of play. Granted these would be only applicable to controlled cities. Puppets would be default AI to maintain balance.

 

[filorux]

I once selected Gold and it had like 6 gold and when I selected Food I had like 18 gold. WTH?! The entire plot priority system is screwed up. IMHO, players should be able to customize and write how the AI prioritizes tiles for each option to suit personal style of play. Granted these would be only applicable to controlled cities. Puppets would be default AI to maintain balance.

I can't remember what I was switching between, but I saw something funny like this, too. Then I figured out that it was changing my specialists around to sometimes better places, sometimes worse. Not sure if that what happened to you, but it can happen.

 

[Airey]

I once selected Gold and it had like 6 gold and when I selected Food I had like 18 gold. WTH?! The entire plot priority system is screwed up. IMHO, players should be able to customize and write how the AI prioritizes tiles for each option to suit personal style of play. Granted these would be only applicable to controlled cities. Puppets would be default AI to maintain balance.

not sure if you guys know this already, but if you double click the green penny head circle, it'll change to a green lock, thus locking that tile, so when you select "other priorities" from the list on the right, it'll always keep the tile you locked.

n.b. since the only thing that overflows in Civ V is food, it might be worthwhile to take some time learning the city screen and manually control your tiles, because hammers don't over flow to the next build (neither does science). Personally, I think Civ V involves more micromanagement right from turn 1, whether you use specialist or not.

 

[Punchline]

I always assumed the 'avoid growth' just told the AI to redistribute workers to get as close to stagnation as possible, not authoritatively prevent growth. That would be nice, but I thought that was sort of the point - if you want a city to be size 11 and stop, you have to put in the work and figure out what you should build to make that happen ('City Planning 101').

It might be broken and not even do that, or do that but really badly - I don't let the AI do anything.

-P

 

[KrikkitTwo]

not sure if you guys know this already, but if you double click the green penny head circle, it'll change to a green lock, thus locking that tile, so when you select "other priorities" from the list on the right, it'll always keep the tile you locked.

n.b. since the only thing that overflows in Civ V is food, it might be worthwhile to take some time learning the city screen and manually control your tiles, because hammers don't over flow to the next build (neither does science). Personally, I think Civ V involves more micromanagement right from turn 1, whether you use specialist or not.

Hammers do... it just doesn't show until the next turn.

Science doesn't

 

[Airey]

Hammers do... it just doesn't show until the next turn.

Science doesn't

oh..ok..tx!

 

[Lyoncet]

Hammers do... it just doesn't show until the next turn.

Science doesn't

I think someone posted a screenshot proving beaker overflow existed. I don't remember who or what thread, but I do remember that it was of Metallurgy. Not that that helps.

Visual learner? What's that???

 

[skallben]

I think the most annoying thing of all about the governor is that when your empire is unhappy, they still work so you got a food surplus, despite the -75% growth rate. Now that is inefficiency.

 

[terrycrist3]

I always assumed the 'avoid growth' just told the AI to redistribute workers to get as close to stagnation as possible, not authoritatively prevent growth. That would be nice, but I thought that was sort of the point - if you want a city to be size 11 and stop, you have to put in the work and figure out what you should build to make that happen ('City Planning 101').

It might be broken and not even do that, or do that but really badly - I don't let the AI do anything.

-P

See, in Civ IV, the avoid growth button actually prevented you from getting another pop, no matter what your surplus is. It was nice because sometimes you want to work a tile for the hammers/gold but you don't want to trigger unhappiness by growing (reassigning citizens to manually avoid growth is a problem I've had since Civ II).

The governor is pretty screwed up though. Especially after you pick up the policy where specialists only consume 1 food. It has no idea how to actually maximize your food surplus. It would seem like micro is alive and well after all...

 

[Xger]

I think the most annoying thing of all about the governor is that when your empire is unhappy, they still work so you got a food surplus, despite the -75% growth rate. Now that is inefficiency.

That's interesting. When I went unhappy, I picked up a lot of specialists. While it wasn't the most ideal (unemployed is better than 3 food) it did change some for me

 

[nodule]

Yeah, I haven't always been happy with the governor's picks. I tend to spend a lot of time in golden ages, and tiles are often way better than specs in that case.

 

[skallben]

That's interesting. When I went unhappy, I picked up a lot of specialists. While it wasn't the most ideal (unemployed is better than 3 food) it did change some for me

I am sure it does that but I never ever leave automated specialists on and if you don't you will have a food surplus and alot of wasted citizen work hours.