Food growth says "0"

[I suck at Civ4]

I've played Civ4 on my PC about 5 times now, and I've got all the basics down while playing on Noble. However can someone please tell me why my cities won't grow, even though it says 20 of 15 next to my food meter.
I've looked everywhere in the game to try to figure this out but there is no explanation to why this happens. I have farms, more than enough to grow my population, but my food growth meter still says "0". And no there is no anarchy. Everything else is growing and moving along just fine in the city, but every now and then a city or two will stop growing for no reason for anywhere from 2 to 20 turns.
Obviously this greatly slows down my cities' growth and I fall behind the other civs. This usually happens more in the early stages of the game when population is below 10. Am I discouraging growth to my citizens somehow that isn't explained in the rule book (which I have scoured for this problem)? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Karl Townsend]

Is "Avoid Growth" on?

1 Peice of bread is 1 Food, The larger your city gets the more food it will require if you do not have enough food it will stop growing or starve,

on most of my games , ive never had a city past 18 due to food reasons

 

[BakingTheArt]

You wouldn't happen to be building workers or settlers? Because when you build these, food surplus turns into hammers.

 

[Gooblah]

I've played Civ4 on my PC about 5 times now, and I've got all the basics down while playing on Noble. However can someone please tell me why my cities won't grow, even though it says 20 of 15 next to my food meter.
I've looked everywhere in the game to try to figure this out but there is no explanation to why this happens. I have farms, more than enough to grow my population, but my food growth meter still says "0". And no there is no anarchy. Everything else is growing and moving along just fine in the city, but every now and then a city or two will stop growing for no reason for anywhere from 2 to 20 turns.
Obviously this greatly slows down my cities' growth and I fall behind the other civs. This usually happens more in the early stages of the game when population is below 10. Am I discouraging growth to my citizens somehow that isn't explained in the rule book (which I have scoured for this problem)? Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

This occurs if you're...
...building a Worker/Settler
...in Avoid Growth mode

The former will end with time; to fix the latter, enter the City Manager (double-click on the city), then go to the button box which holds the Draft, whip, and US buttons. One of them should be highlighted and will say 'Avoid Growth'; click on it to remove the highlight.

 

[Supr49er]

Looks like you got good answers to your question.
Be patient with Civ IV, it takes way more than five games to master it.
Most of us (all of us??) still learn things thanks to this forum.

So, welcome to the Forums I suck at Civ4.

 

[I suck at Civ4]

Thanks for the help. I know I haven't had "avoid growth" on so it must be all of the settlers and workers that I'm creating like crazy in the beginning of my civ to grow and expand ASAP. That totally sucks tho that they penalize your city's growth for creating settlers and workers.

Does this happen later in the game when your cities are bigger too? I'm in 1990 AD right now with about 20 cites (some over 20 population) and I still occassionally create a worker or settler and it doesn't seem to stop my growth now that I'm later in the game. I will experiment with this and see if still happens. Thanks for the help! I will check it out and get back with you. Man this game is complex!

 

[Matthew5117]

It still happens in the late game.

However, this feature can be advantageous considering you could use your high-food cities that you can't grow anymore (because its reached its cap) to build these settlers and workers.

 

[Willem]

I know I haven't had "avoid growth" on so it must be all of the settlers and workers that I'm creating like crazy in the beginning of my civ to grow and expand ASAP.

Well that's one reason why might be having some problems with this game, espcially the building Settlers part. You don't really want to expand ASAP. You could very easily bankrupt yourself by doing so.