How do you treat the insufficient amenities and housing notifications to the right?

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

It has become one of the most tedious parts of the game for me to click the respective notification icons each time and check the housing and amenities numbers in those cities.
Regarding amenities I just look at the number and only am worried if it is really low (like -5).
Regarding housing, I focus the city on production beginning with a housing level causing 50% growth (e.g. 4/5 housing). But then sometimes the city starts starving. So I switch back to neutral. And this is a bit annoying.
Does anybody make a production focus in this situation too?
How do you treat the insufficient amenities and housing notification icons in general? Do you just ignore and right-click them?
Thanks for sharing your way of playing.

 

[Turrdy]

mostly i ignore the notifications and right-click them. There are also icons next to every city's name if there is an amenity and/or housing problem, so i try to counteract them the next time i have to chose production in that city. if the amenity problem occurs in more than one city I sometimes go for an entertainment district, or build a new city with 2 or more new luxuries...

 

[Victoria]

Most notifications on the right I ignore.
With regard to housing I always have this notification apart from the first 50 turns so to me it is pointless. To me it should not be red because its not even dangerous, it just means your city will grow slower. It should be red if you are going to loose a pop and yellow if growth is hampered.
The happiness I just do from the reports screen, a much better place to keep an eye on.

 

[MrRadar]

I pay them 0 attention, except for the notifications for wonders built, pillaged tiles and destroyed civilizations - those are a bit more important and they stay, so you have to right-click them away, but the others - why bother clicking them at all? Just press 'Next turn'.

 

[Leyrann]

I simply click them away, and if there is an amenity notification while I'm in a war (and therefore might have war weariness) then I check the reports screen after I'm done clicking them away, to check wheter or not any city gets too low on amenities. As for housing, I simply check wheter or not a city has enough housing whenever I'm asked for a new production, and then I take the housing into account when deciding what to build.

 

[agonistes]

Mostly I curse at them and waste time trying to target them. Then I give up and just flick an eyeful of spite at them like the 4th place olympic wrestler might do at the gold medalist when he walks into a pub and sees the victor chatting up a crowd of girls in the corner.

Early game I normally know what turn my cities will level up on, but if I am distracted by war I actually click on them so I can assign the worker, if its a city I know just leveled.

With very few cities, I check assignments every turn because I try to maximize food/production with toggling.

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Most notifications on the right I ignore.
With regard to housing I always have this notification apart from the first 50 turns so to me it is pointless. To me it should not be red because its not even dangerous, it just means your city will grow slower. It should be red if you are going to loose a pop and yellow if growth is hampered.
The happiness I just do from the reports screen, a much better place to keep an eye on.

Thanks for the reply. And do you set the focus of cities to production at all? In what cases? If the city has a -75% or even -100% growth, do you focus that city on production?

 

[MisterBoomBoom]

I welcome the notices and clicking them take you directly to the city in question. However, I agree with @Victoria in that the RED alerts for a city that will simply meet its max population and may quit growing in the next x turns may be a bit too much. I like that I get the alert, and can adjust timing my approach to building a needed granary or neighborhood, but the RED alerts seem over kill and you know what they say about crying wolf. I would rather have something rather than see it cut for sure.

 

[Sherlock]

If you ignore the 'need more amenities' button long enough your citizens revolt and that's a real mess.

 

[Victoria]

Thanks for the reply. And do you set the focus of cities to production at all? In what cases? If the city has a -75% or even -100% growth, do you focus that city on production?

The question is a bit smaller than the answer and an answer can bring more questions so will try and be as broad with my approach as possible.

Some things take preference over production, so for example culture early game can be quite important, less so if I meet an early culture civ.... its all about how much you have, getting you places like mercenaries too soon has less advantage but getting there too late is just poor. Science to a lesser degree, settling on these rather than having to work them can be a better alternative as an early 6 GPT is very nice as is having the ability to trade for a relic (TBH relics are dirt cheap in the ancient age)

Some studies we did in another thread where we compared early food/prod mixes showed that certainly in the early - mid term prod outshone food to some degree if the sum of food and prod from 2 tiles was equal. If the sum of prod/food is greater in 1 tile then that is always worth working (so a five food is of better value initially that a 3 prod/1food ... but a 3p/1f is better than 3f/1p)

The issue is that while the AI gives some weighting to production it does not always get it right and it also can be damn buggy to the point of being clearly wrong at times. Also it may give way too much weight to faith so would put your worker on 1f/1p/1faith rather than 1f/3p which is clearly silly. So... it is always worth checking your placements because you just cannot trust the AI, even if you set city preference to food and production.

When nearing max pop I will often reduce all food extra so the city stops growing instead placing on production or even specialists, especially in a 2 pop science city, after all the city is purely there to give me science, and extra +2 from a specialist rather than +1 production may be well worth it, I would only be producing projects anyway... I have never worked out which is better +2 production or a specialist... anyone any idea?

Locking workers in is a double edged sword so you have to be careful to make sure you check at least every now and then that things are working well.

There are always exceptions like the great wall and way too much to cover here and its just my style of playing but it seems to work well. I must also point out that often I just cannot be bothered and just play fast and ignore all of this side just to have a different feel in the game, more relaxed, immersive... and faster.

 

[MrRadar]

If you ignore the 'need more amenities' button long enough your citizens revolt and that's a real mess.

The third tab in the 'Reports' gives you a nice general overview of the amenities in all cities at a glance, check it regularly and you'll be fine.

 

[Victoria]

The third tab in the 'Reports' gives you a nice general overview

@Sherlock was I suspect being both correct and flippant in one economical and rather comical statement.

 

[bbbt]

I agree in general that the housing one is useless, and the amenities one needs a higher bar at the least (-1 does not need a notification bubble).

Ideally, the solution for me would be to pretty up the 'Reports' tab (so it was sortable, showed what a city was producing, could click to go to a city/change production - ala civ 5) into an actual 'Empire' management button on the left (with great people/great works and all those). Then stick a little notification under/next to said button with the needs housing/needs amenities counts (sort of like CGUI does with the science/culture of the leaders). So I can see how bad it is at a glance, I don't have tons of notifications to click, and the information is next to the actual relevant screen.

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Then stick a little notification under/next to said button with the needs housing/needs amenities counts

You mean total cities needing housing/amenities?

 

[bbbt]

You mean total cities needing housing/amenities?

Yeah exactly. Just like a number and a needs housing symbol and a number and a needs amenities symbol. Something like that.

 

[PendragonWRB]

I wish there was some kind of preference to either completely disable them or set a higher tolerance level. Housing I would just turn off as mostly I don't need those notifications. Amenities I would like alerts when I am nearing riots. I always clear them as some things I do process, but in general I want all of them gone so I can concentrate on moving my units.

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

Yeah exactly. Just like a number and a needs housing symbol and a number and a needs amenities symbol. Something like that.

I guess it would be best to indicate there the number of cities that are close to rebellion (usually it's one though).
But as the design is now, we should just check the reports more often during war for amenities, because a city usually gets close to rebellion during wartime in my games.

 

[KyivanRusCivPlease]

I wish there was some kind of preference to either completely disable them or set a higher tolerance level

That's a great idea!

 

[Captain Pugwash]

I usually just ignore those red notifiers now. I am well aware of my situation with amenities through reports and I have my own policy on how big I want each city to get. So I don't want notifying about either. I used to right-click the notifiers to remove them but sometimes it would take the right-click as an instruction for a unit and move one of my units to somewhere obscure which I never wanted. Pretty annoying when you wonder where your unit went and later notice it loitering up by the north pole.

 

[PendragonWRB]

I wish the amenities notifier showed levels because all I really care about is those near revolt. Having to click through all of them to find the important ones is to painful so I end up right clicking them all away.