How Often Do You Manage Population?

[lunker]

Ever since I've started playing I've never had any interest in manually delegating pops. I felt that since I didn't really understand the real values of yields that the city AI would be better at it. Nowadays I manage pops in a few situations but still leave it mostly to the AI. Here are some of those situations:

- building the first few settlers
- building wonders
- setting a city aside purely for unit production

As you can see I'm still pretty lazy even with tall empires. I'm curious to know how often others fine tune their cities and if they manage it in any particular way.

 

[YukiN]

The AI is pretty good for city management, but they are tuned for "generally good" rather than aiming at narrow goals that are shifting over time. Basically only managing pop when aiming for great people, religion or wonders is just fine.

 

[CrazyG]

I micro-manage all cities really heavily until about medieval era. A tradition capital should be micro-managed all game.

 

[CppMaster]

I do the same as CrazyG, but maybe until renaissance era.

 

[CrabHelmet]

On Deity, more or less the whole game long. The AI manager is overly keen on food tiles.

This isn't to say I rearrange all my Citizens every turn. Normally each new one gets locked to a tile immediately and left there, with some exceptions. But I do manually do all placement myself.

 

[Owlbebach]

Ever since I've started playing I've never had any interest in manually delegating pops. I felt that since I didn't really understand the real values of yields that the city AI would be better at it. Nowadays I manage pops in a few situations but still leave it mostly to the AI. Here are some of those situations:

- building the first few settlers
- building wonders
- setting a city aside purely for unit production

As you can see I'm still pretty lazy even with tall empires. I'm curious to know how often others fine tune their cities and if they manage it in any particular way.

I micro-manage all cities really heavily until about medieval era. A tradition capital should be micro-managed all game.

I do the same as CrazyG pretty much all game long. However i found a way to do it very effectively, so that it does not bother you. There are 3 steps:
1) First of all you lock all tiles you really need to be worked. Those are usually Great Person tiles, luxuries, couple other resources, and 2-3 best farms.
2) After that you click automatic distribution of the rest of citizens.
3) Then you manually select specialists that you need to be worked.
And here is the trick: every time you click on Specialist - AI will take the worst citizen to become a specialist. That means that it is very easy to compare whether city benefits from this new specialist or not. Once you see that next specialist gives more bad then good - stop.

If doing so - you need to check every city only when it gets +1 population and you have notifications for that. This is very easy to manage!

 

[tu_79]

I do the same as CrazyG pretty much all game long. However i found a way to do it very effectively, so that it does not bother you. There are 3 steps:
1) First of all you lock all tiles you really need to be worked. Those are usually Great Person tiles, luxuries, couple other resources, and 2-3 best farms.
2) After that you click automatic distribution of the rest of citizens.
3) Then you manually select specialists that you need to be worked.
And here is the trick: every time you click on Specialist - AI will take the worst citizen to become a specialist. That means that it is very easy to compare whether city benefits from this new specialist or not. Once you see that next specialist gives more bad then good - stop.

If doing so - you need to check every city only when it gets +1 population and you have notifications for that. This is very easy to manage!

Pretty clever. And noob friendly also.

 

[CrabHelmet]

@Owlbebach's tip also works for locked citizens. If all your Citizens are locked to tiles, and you nevertheless set the automatic distribution to Production, when you select a specialist, it automatically takes away the lowest locked production Citizen.

 

[CrazyG]

The AI manager is overly keen on food tiles.

100% this, especially during the early game when it will try to work a 2 food tile over like a 1 food 3 hammer tile. The city manager will always try to maintain a minimum amount of growth, which isn't a good idea. Its okay to have periods of time where you are stagnating.

Also I switch tiles between cities quite often, especially if one of the cities is doing settlers.

 

[loafery]

I do the same as CrazyG pretty much all game long. However i found a way to do it very effectively, so that it does not bother you. There are 3 steps:
1) First of all you lock all tiles you really need to be worked. Those are usually Great Person tiles, luxuries, couple other resources, and 2-3 best farms.
2) After that you click automatic distribution of the rest of citizens.
3) Then you manually select specialists that you need to be worked.
And here is the trick: every time you click on Specialist - AI will take the worst citizen to become a specialist. That means that it is very easy to compare whether city benefits from this new specialist or not. Once you see that next specialist gives more bad then good - stop.

If doing so - you need to check every city only when it gets +1 population and you have notifications for that. This is very easy to manage!

Yes, pretty much this except I just do this when I'm playing a peaceful tradition game and only manage the capital. Playing tradition only the capital matters.

I've never managed cities when I go progress or authority.

 

[Owlbebach]

Yes, pretty much this except I just do this when I'm playing a peaceful tradition game and only manage the capital. Playing tradition only the capital matters.

I've never managed cities when I go progress or authority.

I guess this is something that makes difference between Deity and Emperor. If you do - you'll be surprised with how much it does matter. By the time you hit Industrial - your cities will be MUCH better (assuming you had right build order).

 

[Questdog]

I manage all cities all the time; though with each era, with all the inflated yields of VP, each individual placement matters less and less....so sad....

 

[Grabbl]

I micro-manage all citizen (more or less - late-game, I sometimes leave some cities and citizens free) and in addition to that, set a focus so if I forget to assign a citizen after growth, it works more or less what I want. Early on, I usually focus more on production / gold / culture than the city manager (and not growth) while mid to late-game, my assignment varies with what I want to do (which is also growth quite often if my cities are too small by Renaissance / Industrial). Citizens are usually assigned on growth and only rarely changed (when tiles get pillaged, I need to prevent a revolt of one of my cities, a guild or important specialist building is finished or other special circumstances)

However, I rarely control more than 12 non-puppet cities, that seems to be different for other people.

 

[FoxOfWar]

I'm mostly on the train of thought that I should manage them more, but also am pretty lazy to do so past first few cities or around Medieval. Pick the high-yield tiles that are important, forget about it afterwards. -.-

 

[Cobra522]

I try and keep as close a watch on it as possible, but I'm not sure what ratios I should have in regards to growth/production. Usually I try and just use tiles with the most yields, but I'm unsure if this is the best course of action. Is there a sweet spot in terms of citizens per city that you get to and then focus on other yields while growth slows down a bit?

 

[andersw]

All pop in all cities until (and if) I runaway with the game and then I will maybe have to reassign again to adjust for happiness from conquer spree so I don't get a bunch of revolts just as I'm about to win.