do you halt city growth due to lack of health

[Nicol.Bolas]

do you stop city from growing if it would become unhealthy? (similar to blocking growth if it became unhappy)

I have been thinking about this for some time (early to mid game)

any thoughts?

 

[Farm Boy]

Aside from possibly getting free maintenance every now and then for no / post-nationalism I can think of no concrete reason to stop growth if I have the food and happy cap to spare. Maybe if there are no decent tiles/spec slots to grow into, but I rarely have that problem.

 

[s.bernbaum]

The worst thing that can happen due to growth increasing unhealthiness is that the food goes negative and the population shrinks back into health. In the meantime, you get to use the extra population. So, I see no reason to limit growth to avoid unhealthiness, since it is self limiting. The only consideration would be with regard to buildings that increase unhealthiness, such as a coal plant. Assuming that you have no way to increase health at that point, you have to weigh the pop production that you have against the loss and the building benefits and decide which is more beneficial.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

No, I will grow into Unhealthiness in a Food-rich location, since all that it means is that each population point costs 3 Food to feed instead of 2 Food to feed. If Food is high but production is low (like a Coastal seafood location), then you'll want to 2-pop-whip or 3-pop-whip a lot of items, so growing into Unhealthiness can often become a great way of increasing your production without killing your Happiness due to too many 1-pop-whipping actions.


Generally, though, for an average City, then it depends what I am doing:
If I am growing the City using Grassland Farms, then yes, I will switch a Grassland Farm to a Mine or a Cottage or a Workshop or whatever other improvement that I have, since a Grassland Farm only provides 3 Food... and if a population point is going to eat all 3 of those Food, then it's probably better to do something else with that population point.

Another opposite example would be Flood Plains Cottages... while it sucks that all 3 Food get eaten, you are still working yet another Cottage, so in that case, I would still intentionally happily grow the population point, as I'd still be working an additional Cottage... think of it like working 1 additional Grassland Cottage when your City is not unhealthy--the cases are equivalent, except that when you obtain more Health Resources, the Flood Plains square will essentially net you +1 Food later, whereas having surplus Health will not net you any additional Food in the Grassland Cottage case.


Another thought is that I do not use the "Halt City growth" icon. I think that it's personally just there to trap newbies... but maybe there are cases where it is useful that I just do not know about. However, it's too easy to forget to turn off this option and have your City stay small for centuries that I'd rather just grow into Unhealthiness or even Unhappiness.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Another thought is that I do not use the "Halt City growth" icon. I think that it's personally just there to trap newbies... but maybe there are cases where it is useful that I just do not know about. However, it's too easy to forget to turn off this option and have your City stay small for centuries that I'd rather just grow into Unhealthiness or even Unhappiness.

If for some reason, perhaps incipient unhappiness, you want to stop growth for a while, don't use the "Halt City growth" icon, switch a citizen or more from tile work to a specialist. You can slow down growth or stop it for the moment while gaining benefits. Just don't forget to micromanage the city, so you switch the citizen back to tile work when the happiness permits.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

short answer:
commerce city, no

specialist/production: yes (since growing into health limits the number of specialists/mines u can run - provided that u are working your best food tiles already)

 

[Ataxerxes]

In general, no I grow into unhealth. I do take it as a sign that I should seriously consider whipping something. If a city still has positive growth after growing into unhealthiness it'll grow back fast. If the city has negative growth that means you may as well whip to get the use of the excess city size.

Turning off city growth is usually a poor idea. At least for me, I'm prone to forget I did that. Then as the game goes on and I acquire and trade for more resources the city stays at size 5. Not good.

 

[Bloodstone]

In general, no I grow into unhealth. I do take it as a sign that I should seriously consider whipping something. If a city still has positive growth after growing into unhealthiness it'll grow back fast. If the city has negative growth that means you may as well whip to get the use of the excess city size.

Turning off city growth is usually a poor idea. At least for me, I'm prone to forget I did that. Then as the game goes on and I acquire and trade for more resources the city stays at size 5. Not good.

I have found that it's a trigger to check whipping, but I also have found that many times it will happen in cities that I had never really considering whipping in before. For my play style at this time it helps me to look at bigger picture Empire Management, and helps me better understand where I should have been using the whip before.

In my limited experience turning on or off the enhanced/off toggle(s) switch is a bad idea, not only because I will certainly forget about it, but the AI doesn't share my same goals and ideas about what I do or don't want.

 

[Mec AntiKythera]

For me it is often a trigger to go resource shopping.

Mostly I don't worry about health too much, anyone looking sickly just gets sent into battle or assigned to build the Pyramids. Crack that whip.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The only time you might consider halting growth is those weird situations where you can't get more health soon and growing would put you into unhealth AND doing so would cause the city to starve instantly (draining the granary the turn after growth).

If you are using the city to run specialists and have open slots, now might be a good time to max out on specs unless you can get more health soon or you have some more MASSIVE tile yield tiles (unlikely before bio).