How to make early cities happy with no resources?

[salty mud]

Greetings

I hate seeing my city growth stifled by unhappy citizens. I do enjoy playing as charismatic leaders for this reason. Their trait plus a monument means you can get an extra two city sizes. However, on a map with no luxury resources and you're not playing a charismatic leader, it can be difficult to make your cities happy until you get to monarchy or representation with the pyramids. Combine this with slavery whipping and you can get some very unruly cities. How do you manage this more effectively?

Regards

 

[lymond]

It's all relative really. Without getting into detail on mechanics, I think the main issue you have early is being so concerned about small cities.

Early on you are either whipping, building settlers/workers, or running scientists. There's nothing wrong with 4 to 6 pop cities or less.

Ideally your Cap, if a good Bureau setup, after some initial whippage, will start to max out to work cottages and run those first scientists. However, if you are settling compactly with overlap, you can keep cottages working via multiple cities without the need to grow 1 city large early.

Really, it is about adjusting both your perspective and your playstyle. The great players here are accustomed to working with small cities early on and getting the most out of it.

And don't be afraid to grow into unhappiness temporarily to use that pop to whip settlers.

(with that said, CHAR happiness is nice. It's a nice trait with the potential for +2 early happies)

But usually if you can get 1 or 2 early happy resources from land or trades, that is more than enough, but you can certainly get by without it for some time.

 

[Lexicus]

Exactly what lymond said. With overlap, whipping, and so forth bigger's often not better. And don't be afraid to grow unhappy citizens for the purpose of whipping them away.

 

[MegaLurker]

Don't forget to start exploiting the AIs for resource trades as soon as you have open borders and trade routes.

 

[DrCron]

What other people said is the main rule: early game it's fine if your cities are small, just whip unhappy citizens and build workers/settlers to avoid growth.

Apart from that, if you have stone and/or and IND leader you might want to go for the pyramids and switch to an early representation. This will give you more than enough happiness in your first 5 cities (plus extra beakers if you have specialists, which you should have the moment you get writing and the 1st library).

 

[Tristan_C]

Unhappy citizens don't eat while the city is producing a settler or worker. The more you know...

 

[MyOtherName]

At the risk of saying something obvious, if you see the problem coming in advance you can plan to rush for Monarchy. It's even conveniently available as an oracle target if need be!

 

[Izuul]

I city that is never allowed to grow past size 4 or 5 (at least in the early game) can easily be more productive than a city several sizes bigger that isn't whipping.