Consequences of Abandoning City?

[Lagith Caan-el]

What exactly happens when a city is abandoned?

1. What happens to the citizens? How about the gold, shields and food?

2. If the city had colonies and these colonies are connected by roads to an adjacent viable city, are the rescources still available? What if their only connection was through a harbor?

3. If chronic starvation is a problem, is there a way to reduce a city's demand?

Thanks!

 

[SimpleMonkey]

1. Citizens vanish into the ether, never to be seen again. Unlike the situation when you raze a city, which turns half the citizens into slaves for the glory of your empire. (I love razing a metropolis! ) Likewise any shield or food they've accumulated disappear.

2. The resources are still there if they're connected to another city. But the current city is reduced to rubble, so that if the abandoned city was crucial to the trade network (say for example the city was built on top of the resource), the connection will be broken until roads are rebuilt where the city was.

3. There is no way to reduce demand. All you can do is to increase food production by irrigating or switching your citizens to more food-rich tiles. The starvation/growth see-saw is a problem when you have an odd number of food being produced, and so you'll have that one extra food filling the food basket but then not enough food to support the newly produced citizen. (Remember that each citizen requires two food for support.)

Hope that this helps!

 

[Lagith Caan-el]

..... or switching your citizens to more food-rich tiles....

Hope that this helps!

Yes-- excellent explainations. Thank you.

You mentioned switching a citizen to another tile. How is this done and why are critical things like this not in the manual?

 

[Theoden]

Just to clarify, there is no way cities can be completely abandoned only due to starvation, since the center square always produces enough food for one citizen.

Another important consequence of abandoning, not mentioned in the manual, is that any city-specific unhappiness (forced labor, draft etc.) is transferred to the nearest friendly city when a city is abandoned.

 

[TruePurple]

Does abandoning by turning the last citizen into a worker or the last two into settlers work exactly the same as simply choosing to abandon via the menu option? If its foreign pop, does that anger that nation? Does the unhappiness transfer just the same?

 

[SimpleMonkey]

You mentioned switching a citizen to another tile. How is this done and why are critical things like this not in the manual?

Open the city view (i.e. right click on the city tile from the main map and choose Zoom to [city name]). Click on the worker you want to move, which will turn him or her into an entertainer. Then click on the city square you want to be worked. The citizen will now start to work on this tile.

This is the essence of micromanagement. Changing the tiles that your citizens are working will change the relative output of gold/shields/food. Look at the gold output, shield total (i.e. turns it will take to complete the current project), and the food output (i.e. turns it will take to add a new citizen). These things are all adjustable, depending on your strategy and goals, and are often fine-tuned by advanced players with a knack for such detail work.

For example, say you're building a 10-shield warrior in a city that is producing 4 shields per turn. Without micromanaging, you'll take 3 turns to produce 12 shields and finish your warrior with an over-run of 2 shields. These are wasted shields. But say if you check in on your last turn before completion, you can switch one or two of your workers to more food (or gold) intensive tiles. So now you'll produce only two shields on the third turn, finishing the project in the same amount of time, but with no over-run and a greater amount of food or gold produced than you would have otherwise. Not so important in the early levels, but can be much more important later on when the AI has massive production bonuses compared to the human and every shield/coin/food counts.

Does abandoning by turning the last citizen into a worker or the last two into settlers work exactly the same as simply choosing to abandon via the menu option? If its foreign pop, does that anger that nation? Does the unhappiness transfer just the same?

You can't abandon a city by building a worker. Even if you amass the 10 shields it takes to build the worker but only have one citizen in the city, the worker will sit there incomplete until your city grows to two citizens.

 

[TimBentley]

Does abandoning by turning the last citizen into a worker or the last two into settlers work exactly the same as simply choosing to abandon via the menu option? If its foreign pop, does that anger that nation? Does the unhappiness transfer just the same?

I'm pretty sure the answers are yes (more certain about the anger question).

You can't abandon a city by building a worker. Even if you amass the 10 shields it takes to build the worker but only have one citizen in the city, the worker will sit there incomplete until your city grows to two citizens.

Changing the citizen to a specialist or a tile with 0 food works if you're not agricultural.

 

[Lagith Caan-el]

Very detailed indeed! So much to think about..... Thanks a million for the explainations.

 

[jb1964]

Another important consequence of abandoning, not mentioned in the manual, is that any city-specific unhappiness (forced labor, draft etc.) is transferred to the nearest friendly city when a city is abandoned.

Ah-ha!

Just last night, after years of playing, I get a city all bent out of shape and they're screaming about a draft. What draft? The draft in the city next door that I just flattened.

My quota of new knowledge for the day is now fulfilled.