Civ1 Bugs/Anomalies?

[jsoap]

Recently started playing civ1 for the first time. I've played civ2 and 3 many years ago, winning once at emperor level on civ2 (after countless reloads) and several times on same level in 3 (once on gotm here). Anyway, I thought I'd start playing civ again and that playing the original would be a good place to start. I'm playing version 474.05 in dosbox 0.72 on Linux Mint (Gloria).

Anyway, I've noticed a couple of oddities playing the game which may be bugs or just anomalies but which I've not seen documented:

1. Playing on Prince level, the number of contented citizens when a city is first built should be 4. That works ok at the start but after a while this number becomes 2 and occasionally even 1 or 0. Is that right? I seem to remember in the excellent civ2 manual something about city happiness being affected by the number of cities and distance from the capital. Never took much notice then (should have done, of course) but does this apply to civ1 and if so, how?

2. In a previous game on Warlord level (small steps) I had about 40+ cities and over 120 units when a 'Domestic Advisor' starts popping up with a message about having too many units for the population to support. Sure enough, I wasn't allowed to produce any more military units or settlers but I could build caravans and diplomats. Anyone else seen this? Anyone explain it?

Thank, fellow civvies.

 

[Whelkman]

On 474.05, the number of "born contents" decreases as your population expands. I believe someone posted the algorithm, but I don't recall where it would be. You'll get a feel for it after a few playthroughs.

 

[Valen]

I can definitely answer the born-content question for Emperor level.
You begin with 2 born-contents per city. This continues until you have 12 cities.
When you build the 13th city, one of your cities (not necessarily the last one built) will have only 1 born-content. When you have 24 cities, ALL will have only one born-content. As you build cities 26-36, you start getting cities with 0 born-content.
Beyond that, you start getting red shirt citizens. Every additional 12 cities produces one more red shirt per city.
A cathedral makes 2 red shirts content. That's the bad news.
The good news is 2 luxuries makes a red shirt happy. As you continue to add cities, it actually becomes easier to add luxuries and celebrate WLTKD.

Anyway, the pattern of losing born-contents as you add cities holds for all difficulty levels. At Emperor level, the magic number is 12. One lost born-content for every 12 cities. At Prince, the magic number may be 14 or 16. I've forgotten which.

 

[Valen]

Now on to question 2. I think it was due to memory constraints that the developers had to limit you to 128 military units (and a total of 128 cities worldwide).

 

[player1 fanatic]

Anyway, the pattern of losing born-contents as you add cities holds for all difficulty levels. At Emperor level, the magic number is 12. One lost born-content for every 12 cities. At Prince, the magic number may be 14 or 16. I've forgotten which.

That "magic" number also depends from the government you use. Despotism has it worst, other governments have it less.

Same effect is also used in Civ2.

It was not in original release of Civ1, but was added in v474.03. That's also only patch that added balance changes.

From game readme:

----------- NEW in Version 3.0 -------------

23. Cities must have a population base of five or more to support
taxman or scientist specialists.

24. Under a Despotic government, citizen unhappiness will increase with the
number of cities you control. This may lead to 'very unhappy' citizens,
(recognizable by their red shirts) who must first be coverted to
normal unhappy citizens before then can become contented. This effect
occurs to a lesser degree under other government types.

25. A maximum of 3 units per city may be used to impose martial law.
(i.e. Convert unhappy citizens to content citizens.)

26. Cities may be renamed at any time. Click on the RENAME box or press the
'r' key on the city status screen.

27. Transport units no longer count against city unhappiness under
Republic/Democracy.

28. The maintainence cost of Barracks has been changed to 1/2/3 coins at
the Prince and King difficulty levels, and 2/3/4 coins at the Emperor level.

 

[Zenek]

Which one of the civ1 versions had least bugs?

 

[Whelkman]

Versions 3 through 5 are practically identical. While they probably contain less bugs, they also rebalance the game somewhat over v1 in a way that's more challenging overall.