Do you starve your people?

[InFlux5]

So how often do you starve your people? I find myself doing it quite a bit - my cities reach their happiness cap, and slavery would just make things worse.

It works well with a granary, because you can starve away the surplus food that was stored, making it sort of like slavery (food = hammers) but without the happiness penalty.

I had a city in my current game where starving looked like the best option:

What do you think?

 

[snoopy369]

I'd just whip away the person. You can always whip TWO people you know I never let them get over the happy cap, though, unless i'm not paying attention or lose a resource. That button in the bottom right corner is "prevent growth", I use it every game

 

[InFlux5]

That button in the bottom right corner is "prevent growth", I use it every game

So do I

Hmm, I guess I shouldn't have made this post - cuz now that I look at it, it's just the same as if the city was at 4 pop. So I guess at 5 pop the only way to make that citizen useful is to whip them to death.

Well hey, at least I've taught myself a lesson about the value of slavery

 

[silver 2039]

I need to do this more often, many of my cities begin to get smoke rising over them once they reach large populations.

 

[InFlux5]

Well essentially this is a size 4 city where I've stopped growth. The extra person that's starving is unhappy anyway, and wouldn't work.

In other words-

I should've stopped the growth at 4, or I should whip away citizens 5 and possibly 4.

Still, I can see situations where this might be useful. For example, if you knew your happy cap was about to raise, this way you are still saving some food for the next population growth.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

So do I

Hmm, I guess I shouldn't have made this post - cuz now that I look at it, it's just the same as if the city was at 4 pop. So I guess at 5 pop the only way to make that citizen useful is to whip them to death.

Well hey, at least I've taught myself a lesson about the value of slavery

I concur .. whip away. Alternating starve-work like this decreases the tile's worth by 50% (so in this case down to 1.5 HPT).

Another thing to look at is your Granary ... what's the point in having one if you're just depleting it all the time like this? The Granary only benefits if you're growing, and you're only growing if you're whipping.

Plus, what else is the angry citizen doing for you? Put him to work at the end of a whip.

A fringe benefit of whipping is lower maintenance costs. At Standard-size/Normal-speed/Noble, every 4 population over 1 = +0.25 distance maintenance. Whipping 2 people at a time not only gives a net -1 effect but also saves you 0.125 for a couple turns.

The final (and best) outcome is that you get your Library NOW! For the 27 turns it would've otherwise taken you to build your Library, you would've lost 70 .

Long live the .

 

[UncleJJ]

I concur .. whip away. Alternating starve-work like this decreases the tile's worth by 50% (so in this case down to 1.5 HPT).

Another thing to look at is your Granary ... what's the point in having one if you're just depleting it all the time like this? The Granary only benefits if you're growing, and you're only growing if you're whipping.

Plus, what else is the angry citizen doing for you? Put him to work at the end of a whip.

A fringe benefit of whipping is lower maintenance costs. At Standard-size/Normal-speed/Noble, every 4 population over 1 = +0.25 distance maintenance. Whipping 2 people at a time not only gives a net -1 effect but also saves you 0.125 for a couple turns.

The final (and best) outcome is that you get your Library NOW! For the 27 turns it would've otherwise taken you to build your Library, you would've lost 70 .

Long live the .

This is all true but it is worse even than this !

The unhappy pop adds to civic costs as well as city maintenance.

The library he's building is the only source of culture in that city. So delaying it delays popping the fat cross. Who knows what resources that might give?

And an unhappy citizen eats 2 food. That 2 food is worth more than 4 hammers at this city size or it could feed a specialist (like a scientist... if he had a library )

It all points to the inevitable, and if that doesn't work harder

 

[azaris]

Unhappy citizens must be shown no mercy. My favorite bit about the old style civil disorder was when the unhappy citizen would starve to death and the remaining happy citizens would go into "We love the King"-mode. They must've hated that troublemaker.

 

[dalessi12]

No reason not to slave this library ASAP.

I never starve off population, but I do often starve cities temporarily (never to the point of losing population, just losing stored food) when I need to/want to speed up the production of something, usually wonders or much needed buildings, and usually when the cities are at max happiness or close to it. I will work the tiles that give me the most hammers/turn, which inevitably means I do not have enough food for the time being (i.e. all mines).

Anyway, slaving is one of the more crucial aspects of an efficiently managed game.

 

[tycoonist]

i wouldn't prevent growth: unhappy citizens can be whipped or starved for extra production

 

[ZB2]

i didnt know un happy population cost in civics and maintenence, i thought the unworkable person was bad enough...

now this just begs drafting that ungrateful sucker for cannon fodder

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I've starved cities, particularly when I'm in caste system. It makes an interesting alternative to whipping. You can skip whipping a theatre for a border pop by running 8 artists instead (if you are going to starve you never lose more than one pop, so why not run all population as specialists?). After that you run 100% merchants to get some gold while you drain the population down to your target size.

Its not as good as whipping in the newly conquered cities, but it is viable and you might have good reasons to run caste system elsewhere in your empire.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

I starve cities if i'm trying to build a wonder and growth would make no difference to the build time, e.g. I'm building the Pyramids, completion in 10 growth in 12, move 1 citizen off a farm to a mine, starvation but knocked a turn off the Pyramids. If I'm not in slavery for whatever reason.

 

[bonafide11]

I'm surprised more people aren't saying they do starve their cities. I definitely starve my cities sometimes. It's another good use for a granary, besides the faster growth. The granary saves food up for emergencies, and when you don't have enough food for whatever reason.

Of course, I prefer to whip rather than starve the unhappy citizen, but whipping adds an unhappiness, and these pile up if you do it more than 1 every 15 (I play epic, I guess 10 on normal?) turns. If you only have units to whip (before libraries or something more expensive...), whipping a unit takes away a population while adding an unhappiness, so that's not really effective.

But I don't really starve my population just because they're unhappy. I'd probably rather grow more unhappy people and then starve them. What I do starve for occassionally is for specialists and great people, which other people have mentioned.

 

[Gryman]

IMO there is no reason to ever use the avoid growth button! Sure, it takes the smoke away and makes you feel good inside to not see the angry citizen; but why allow extra food to be wasted away? Slavery converts food into hammers, avoiding growth is wasting hammers.

Growing from population 4 to 5 cost 28 food and only 15 with the granary already having 13. 15 food came at the cost of 3 hammers for 8.5 turns or 25.5 hammers and can be whipped away for 30.

You are currently starving at a rate of -2 food a turn out of your 14 granary surplus. This will only last 7 turns and provide you 21 hammers, Worse Off, when your city does starve back to pop 4 your granary will be EMPTY!

Like it was said before WHIP 2 pop, gain immediate benefits from the library and time to regrow in 10 turns.

As Invisible Stalk stated: Only one pop is lost at any time from starvation, if in caste system starve to 0 or 1 food surplus and assign all specialists (artist, merchant, scientist) for the turn of starvation. This is mainly to benefit as much as possible from the citizen when slavery is not available.

Granary starvation is innefficient unless hammer tiles worked are 5+ production. Otherwise Whip or abuse Caste System!

 

[cabert]

In this situation starving after having grown a unhappy guy is inefficient, because at size 5, you can still only whip 2 people. I would have stopped growth by switching from water tile to mine on the turn before growth, then waited until I could whip the library for 2 pop points.
After the whip, I would have grown back to size 3 on the next turn and I wouldn't have had to pay for the unhappy guy for 10 turns.

Your position is however only slightly less good, since you'll whip for 2 pop and be at size 3 straight away. You bar won't be full though, so no hope of growing back to size 4 soon (which is not necessarily a bad thing in your situation).


I starve my population often (=in every game) but not to get rid of citizens.
I do it in one of the following situations :
- averaging food : size N city, capped at size N. I swap tiles between turns to get the most out of the citizens without growing to the next size, but keeping the bar mostly full. This way, when I raise the happy cap, I can just assign workers to a food tile and be size N+1. Optimal way is seeing you're going to raise the happy cap next turn and assigning citizens so that it grows in between turns and you never lose a population point. This isn't something I do too often, but in fast growing cities, I do it (assigning a specialist over what I can normally feed to put the food bar a bit down).
- competing cities for the next GP. In this situation I starve the city I wish to get a great person from in order to put it in front. I do this very often. I use this starvation time in this city to grow my GP farm (= removing specialists, working tiles instead).
- just captured cities. If you're not running slavery, you often cannot avoid starvation. It's pointless then to even try. So in this situation, I assign citizen to max output, regardless of food (a 2 food, 2 commerce tile is inferior to a 0 F 3 commerce tile in this situation). If can be, I work specialists to get this maximized.
- racing situation : I often starve my production city while building this crucial wonder or spaceship part.

 

[oyzar]

i sometimes starve cities towards the end of a game. Either to put in more artists or just citizens to pop borders/get enough culture/finish a crucial spaceship part etc.