Best way to manage your Cities?

[tokyosexwhale]

I'm completely new to Civ. And I'm addicted

Let me start by saying that I've read the manual a couple of times!

My cities at the moment are 'unhealthy' I know that this is because of a lack of food or where the city is built. I've gone into the city management map and I've clicked the button that allows the governor control over the city.

Is this wise? I've also told the governor to concentrate on food and commerce.

Is it best to create a worker specifically for my city and just have him improve the city and surrounding tiles and clearing forests?

Basically what I want to know is what is your best management strategy for your cities. How do you keep yours happy and healthy?

 

[Cabay Jet]

Welcome!

I use the "Halt growth" button quite a bit when a city is about to reach its happiness cap or health cap. I keep it like this until I've hooked up a health/happiness resource or have built a building that increases health or happiness. Then I allow the city to grow some more until it hits its health cap or happiness cap.

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Unhealthiness isn't due to a lack of food, it's just that you can combat it by having excess food (each unhealthy citizen consumes 1 more food than normal). So if the city isn't starving it's not too bad.

Goood early ways to combat unhealthiness - forests in the fat cross of the cities (+0.5 health each, rounded down), granaries (+1 health from rice/corn/wheat), aqueducts (+2 health, requires maths), grocers (+1 health for certain resources, if you have them or you can trade for them) and harbours (+1 health for seafood, coast only).

Unhealthiness is caused by jungles (-0.4 health each in fat cross, so chop them down), and buildings (forges in the early game).

Make sure you get your health resources connected up or trade for them too (trade excess happy resources for them).

I never use the governor but some people do. They tend to allocate annoying artists and priests when that's not my plan for the city.

Workers per city - (at least) 1 each is good to aim for but it is probably better to have them go round in groups of 2 or more so that improvements get done quicker. It's better to use the farm ASAP than have 2 farms in twice the time. Prioritise your fast growing or large cities for improvements first.

Hope that helps, and welcome to the forum.

 

[Cabay Jet]

Don't forget, flood plains (they from next to rivers running through deserts) also contribute to . I think the exact amount they contribute is +0.3 . Fallout also contributes contributes +0.33 . So, if you have fallout within your city radius clean it up ASAP!

 

[ParadigmShifter]

Yup, forgot about floodplains. Nothing worse than plonking your capital down on Monarch difficulty next to lots of lovely floodplains to find it is at its health max already. I think Emperor is even worse as well.

 

[Cam_H]

TSW,

Hi!

Welcome to Civ4 and CivFanatics! ... and well done on reading the manual! More reading: Sisiutil's Strategy Guide for Beginners is well worth the time if you've yet to see it.

Avoid Growth

CabayJet's suggestion to use the avoid growth button is right most of the time. You can grow to excess and then use the whip (Slavery converts citizens into ) or draft (Nationhood allows you to draft citizens into military units) your unhappy citizens, while ParadigmShifter also notes that running unhealthy citizens is tolerable provided you have adequate food available to feed them; unhealthy citizens consume 3 rather than the normal 2.

Health

ParadigmShifter has done a really excellent job at answering your questions, but I thought that for more detail on the > issue; Ways into Health by cabert might be an interesting read.

City Governor

As for the City Governor, I find it useful to turn it on just to 're-set' your citizens to a decent range of tiles, but then manually pick them up and shift them around. You'll undoubtedly read more about city specialisation, and while + might be the right emphasis for some cities, + might be better for others (e.g. your 'unit pumps'). This is well covered in Sisiutil's Guide.

Enjoy!

 

[tokyosexwhale]

Thanks all for the help. All taken onboard!

This is such a complex game! I'm sure I'll have more questions to come.

 

[Carnage04]

Is avoiding growth really necessary? Let's say you are pretty much leaving a high food/low production GP farm type city alone while it is working on some type of building or wonder. It hits it's happiness cap and you start starving out the excess angry population. Besides the possible benefit in hammers or commerce from working a different tile or assigning a specialist, is there any other reason that growing/starving is bad?

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I never use avoid growth. The only downside I see to having an angry citizen is a light maintenance increase due to population, and they look angry I suppose (plus you can't have "We love the king" day or whatever). Whip them when you get the chance, or better still avoid the problem by running specialists or even run a citizen if desperate (2 food consumed 1 hammer gained) instead. The HOF mod warns you when your cities are about to become unhealthy or unhappy too and I always play with that mod on.

I forgot the health bonus for fresh water (+2, next to a river or lake tile) too. The most healthy cities are coastal ones next to a river so you can build a harbour there.

 

[Cam_H]

Provided you can re-grow your population in one turn if 'say' a new happiness resource becomes available, then there's not a big downside (it's this 'grow population next turn' reason that I often use the 'avoid growth' option - but you should check cities regularly to identify when a city is in a position to comfortably grow {e.g. whip weariness wears off} or else you could inadvertantly / accidently end up with 'stagnant' cities that could grow and accommodate productive citizens). As I understand it from reading Perugia's comments towards the end of The Inner Mechanics of Food, Growth, Granary and Whipping the Granary reserve is not adversely affected by yo-yo growth<>starvation.

As ParadigmShifter notes there's a small extra maintenance cost from a larger city. The suggestion of running 'citizen specialists' is a neat way of curtailing unwanted growth.

(Slavery and Nationhood were noted earlier).

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I realised the other day that you can tell exactly when whip wearinesss is going to wear off too! Hover over the "pop rush" button and it will say something like "+1 unhappiness for 14 turns". I play normal speed, which means that there are 10 turns of unhappiness per whip, so there are 4 (14 - 10) turns left before one of the happy faces comes back. I use this now to make sure I grow back on the same turn as the happiness comes back, if possible. Magic Darts!