How does empire sprawl unhappiness work?

[magicalsushi]

An earlier thread on this forum (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=126416) mentioned how building extra cities can cause citizens in existing cities to become unhappy (or even very unhappy). Banach gives quite a thorough explanation of how the numbers work, but misses out one detail that still confuses me...


"After the fifth city is added, some of the cities will have the first citizen unhappy (all remaining ones unhappy)."


That's certainly correct, but is there any way to predict *which* cities will be affected? I don't get to play Civ II much anymore as it aggravates my RSI, but I can't stop wondering about this aspect of the game. I did a quick test last night (very naughty, I really shouldn't touch this game) and I couldn't really see much method to it.

I'd love to carry out a more careful experiment, but I ought to avoid mouse-intensive games (you can move units with the keyboard, but there's lots of stuff for which the mouse is essential). I guess Civ I can be controlled with a keyboard, so I ought to start playing that again - I much prefer Civ II, but beggars can't be choosers. Presumably the "empire sprawl" unhappiness mechanic is similar in both games, so maybe it will be possible for me to try a more thorough experiment (although it'll be tougher to test this stuff without the cheat mode or map editor, and no Deity level). Till I get round to doing that, would anyone else like to experiment and find out what determines which cities experience the effects of extra unhappiness? I think it's something to do with the order in which they're built, but what I saw in my rather non-methodical experiment last night indicated that it wasn't very straightforward. Thank you to anyone who can shed some light on this for me.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

There was a thread (at apolyton, I think) about this but I don't have a link right now. I am pretty sure the order in which the cities see the extra unhappiness is deterministic, but I seem to recall that it's almost impossible to figure out on your own that early in the game. This is because it is based on the number of the city assigned as it is built (i.e., the first city built is 1, the second city built is 2) but that number considers ALL cities built. So unless you know all the AI cities as well (and the order in which they were built), you don't definitively know the Number assigned to each of your cities so even if you know the unhappiness pattern, you don't know for sure which cities will get it.

BTW - I am pretty sure you can do just about everthing in the game using the keyboard if you're patient enough. I had a laptop with a touchpad for a while and couldn't control a thing until I started using the keyboard. Having a numberpad helps immensely, but even if you don't, you can use the arrow keys for N,S,E,W movement and I think it is the Home, End, PgUp, PgDown keys for the "diagonal" movements.

 

[magicalsushi]

Thanks for the reply; that information's helpful. It hadn't crossed my mind that the AI cities might affect the way extra unhappiness gets allocated. That said, in the test I performed, I was using a custom map with only two opponants, each of whom could only build a city on their starting square, and had no other useable land.

On the keyboard front, I've always used the numpad to move units, even back when I was able to use the mouse, but it's pretty much everything else in the game that causes problems. Selecting stuff in the City window, scrolling down dialog boxes (such as the Attitude window), that kind of thing...my manual's at my Dad's house; next time I'm there I'll check to see if the game has keyboard shortcuts for navigating windows with multiple frames - tab doesn't always seem to do the job.

I'm looking into using a mouse emulator. What I've found so far isn't perfect, but it's enough of an improvement that I'm letting myself play the game again, at last (any excuse will do). Armed with that, and the point about the effect of AI city construction, I'll have a proper go at working out how empire sprawl works in detail.

 

[SlowThinker]

Look in my signature for the thread mentioned by Tim.

Once you build Marco Polo you know ACN (city number) of all new cities.
Concerning old cities - Civ2 classic shows list of all cities (Find a City) ordered by ACN.
In Civ2 MGE the list is in alphabetical order, but Supply&Demand lists may help.