Growing into mass unhappiness

[DaveMcW]

Scenario:
You are at 0 happiness, with no immediate way to get more. You can afford to add 1 more population before the -75% penalty stops further growth.

Actually, with a bit of micromanaging, you can add 1 more population in every city.

The trick is to hit "avoid growth" every time a city is 1 turn away from growing. When all your food bins are full, turn off "avoid growth" and you'll get growth in every city.

 

[Tabarnak]

Easiest on quick speed. Very useful in multiplayer when you know you will stop adding happiness for a while. Good strategy for an iron working rush and happiness delay.

Workers should work mines for extra pop before unhappiness appears and focus on chopping trees and building roads when population stagnate.

 

[Willburn]

Simple yet effective trick from DaveMcW. Over the years now i learned to appriciate some of his early analysis of civ4. Glad you are also doing tips for civ5..even though its not really up to civ4 standards.. (not Daves tips but the gameplay of civ5)

 

[Nick Carpathia]

You can actually click "Avoid Growth" long before growing, saving a ton of micromanagement. The food bin fills up even under "Avoid Growth" and automatically stop at 1 turn from growing. Once all the cities you want to add population to are at this state, take them off avoid growth, shoot into -8 unhappiness or so, and switch over from farms to hills trading posts.

Avoid Growth is now useful, unlike in Civ4, now there are empire wide penalties for increasing your population and there are no powerful ways to cash in excess population.

Good trick, I noticed it but never thought of using it on an empire wide scale.