smittyjr120
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2009
- Messages
- 2
Is there anyway to combat the population problems other than slavery and is slavery even a good solution?
First time civ player
- Thread starter smittyjr120
- Start date
Ambidexter
Edjumacated Idjit
In the City Screen you can turn off population increases. It's in the box in the lower center of the screen, the bottom right button (just run your cursor over the box, you'll see what each button does).
If you are automating your workers then this will be more challenging, but otherwise try to develop your cities so that you have a way to make it so there is no food surplus if you work a specific set of tiles. Also, sometimes you use starvation when the city has a lot of food (just before it expands) to pump out a lot of extra hammers from hammer rich tiles, or pump up the great person points by assigning a lot of specialist. That takes a little more micro management to do however. Starvation is a good method to getting out late wonders or expensive buildings quicker by replacing farms with watermills or workshops. As killing a population 12-16 to half usually not good in the long run. This takes some planning and micro management.
Typically the AI will assign the citizens to work food heavy tiles. You can use the city focus buttons near the slavery button to tell the city to focus on other things besides making babies
Or you can just kill your people with slavery, which is powerful for new and developing cities, or if you need a military fast. But it can be bad as you'll have less citizens to work cottages, which are typically great tiles to work for most cities in your nation.
A great mod that can help you get more out of the game is the BUG and BULL mod. You can find information about the mod here http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=268
One of the things the mod will tell you is the turn before a city grows to the next size. So you can click on the message and go to the city and decide what tile you want to work next, or if you want the city to expand in population. It'll also tell you if the city will become unhappy or unhealthy next turn. As well as a slew of other nice features to help you know more of the nitty gritty going on in the game.
Typically the AI will assign the citizens to work food heavy tiles. You can use the city focus buttons near the slavery button to tell the city to focus on other things besides making babies
Or you can just kill your people with slavery, which is powerful for new and developing cities, or if you need a military fast. But it can be bad as you'll have less citizens to work cottages, which are typically great tiles to work for most cities in your nation.A great mod that can help you get more out of the game is the BUG and BULL mod. You can find information about the mod here http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=268
One of the things the mod will tell you is the turn before a city grows to the next size. So you can click on the message and go to the city and decide what tile you want to work next, or if you want the city to expand in population. It'll also tell you if the city will become unhappy or unhealthy next turn. As well as a slew of other nice features to help you know more of the nitty gritty going on in the game.
smittyjr120
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2009
- Messages
- 2
THANX ALOT!!... ii have just a few more ?'s... will turning off population increase stop my cities from expanding or is there any downside to switching off population increase if so how big should ii let them grow before ii do?
I've always felt that slavery is probably the best civic to run until emancipation actually, as it allows you to control unhappiness and unhealthiness just by whipping things out. The negative effect is negligible (1 unhappiness for 10 turns). I feel like it's best to grow your cities to whopping proportions as long as you're running slavery, as you're able to whip out everything including wonders. There's not much of a downside to slavery except for the occasional revolt, honestly.
And honestly I wouldn't really be too concerned about nurturing a cottage economy so early in the game, as the towns don't die, only your citizens. And generally any city you have to whip to keep in line will grow back within a really short time period. I tend to grind my economy into the ground in the early game, because every city you have can be improved eventually and tech progression isn't really so important, because most AI civs tend to not be too smart (caveat: I play on Noble, and anything beyond that may cause trouble.) You can always wheel and deal for techs you don't have. Adopting the religion of your neighbors works wonders, and you can often just simply beg a tech off an AI for nothing at all if they like you enough.
And honestly I wouldn't really be too concerned about nurturing a cottage economy so early in the game, as the towns don't die, only your citizens. And generally any city you have to whip to keep in line will grow back within a really short time period. I tend to grind my economy into the ground in the early game, because every city you have can be improved eventually and tech progression isn't really so important, because most AI civs tend to not be too smart (caveat: I play on Noble, and anything beyond that may cause trouble.) You can always wheel and deal for techs you don't have. Adopting the religion of your neighbors works wonders, and you can often just simply beg a tech off an AI for nothing at all if they like you enough.
JujuLautre
Deity
If you are a little bit sloppy in your play and have a tendency to forget that you toggled said button, then yes, there is a big downside
Thain Esh Kelch
Chieftain
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2003
- Messages
- 76
Slavery is always one of the first things I go for. The advantages are enormeous IMHO.
I'd suggest that you use Slavery if its working wonders for you. The other micromanagement stuff suggested in this thread could be a bit much to chew for a beginner. You will need to know how to micromanage eventually though, so you probably should try to take notes anyway.
As you're just starting to come to grips with the game, you could probably just let things self adjust with time. I mean, the only thing all those unhappy citizens do is eat up
and thus halt city growth. You don't actually need to get rid of them - and if you manage to get more happy citizens in, all the better. (Back to work with those Teamsters! Strike is over!) And if you end up with starvation - that will just cut back on city size and get rid of unhappy citizens - that aren't doing anything for you in the first place. It doesn't have to be that much of a problem, really.
Also, you might wanna start looking into optimizing you cities when those red faces turn up. This practically means that you don't need that much anymore, and can safely switch production to other tiles instead. Since you have a unhappiness "problem" you don't need to worry about a little starvation either.
Experiment and you will eventually get the hang of it. (You do know how to change what tiles a city is working, right? If you don't, you should have played the tutorial...)
edit: It is good to know about the Avoid Growth button, but that is a bit dangerous to actually use, because you will just forget to disable it later!
As you're just starting to come to grips with the game, you could probably just let things self adjust with time. I mean, the only thing all those unhappy citizens do is eat up
and thus halt city growth. You don't actually need to get rid of them - and if you manage to get more happy citizens in, all the better. (Back to work with those Teamsters! Strike is over!) And if you end up with starvation - that will just cut back on city size and get rid of unhappy citizens - that aren't doing anything for you in the first place. It doesn't have to be that much of a problem, really.Also, you might wanna start looking into optimizing you cities when those red faces turn up. This practically means that you don't need that much
anymore, and can safely switch production to other tiles instead. Since you have a unhappiness "problem" you don't need to worry about a little starvation either.Experiment and you will eventually get the hang of it. (You do know how to change what tiles a city is working, right? If you don't, you should have played the tutorial...)
edit: It is good to know about the Avoid Growth button, but that is a bit dangerous to actually use, because you will just forget to disable it later!
