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darski

Regent in Training
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Jan 29, 2007
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Ontario, Can.
This may seem very obvious to most of you but it stumps me every time. How do you stop starvation from happening in a city?

If possible I can skim off a worker or settler to stave off one starvation loss but the city will just go back to its old problem state anyway.

I am not good at MM but I have never seen anything that will stop the starvation from happening.

...moving stuff around in the worker squares doesn't help and I refuse to put that ugly irrigation everywhere.

What simple bit am I missing about managing this part of the game?
 
...moving stuff around in the worker squares doesn't help and I refuse to put that ugly irrigation everywhere.

What simple bit am I missing about managing this part of the game?

Irrigating the tiles. :D

In many areas, it's the only way to keep cities growing. There might be a mod with some irrigation graphics that you might prefer using. Might be worthwhile looking into what other forum members have done modding the terrain graphics? That's something I need to do since I made major changes in the terrain specs and most can be irrigated to improve food output. I just changed the specs, but not the graphics, and that stock game irrigation graphic doesn't look good on mountains. :lol:
 
:hmm: How do you start starvation happening in a city? Surely if a city has enough food to grow to a particular size, it has enough food to stay at that size?

Okay, there's a corner case, where the city's net food is an odd number, so it reaches size n and then grows at +1fpt up to size n+1, at which point it has -1fpt and starves down to size n again, and then repeats the process. I find this mainly happens late game, when city size is no longer restricted by lack of a hospital. And it is pretty irritating. I tend to reassign tiles right across my empire, chasing odd and even food numbers from city to city until everyone has an even fpt. This makes me feel much calmer. But if you can't be bothered with that, you can lose 1fpt by pillaging the railroad off an irrigation, or foresting a mined grassland.
 
Irrigate, mine, forest, or pillage a railroad (as PaperBeetle suggests) so you have an *even* number of food.... specifically twice the size of your city. In other words, if you city sits at say size 12, and has 23 food, you'll need to irrigate a mined grassland square, so it has 24 food. In the same breath I'll mention that if you have 25 food in a size 12 city, and have a mined grassland *regular* square, you can plant a forest on that square for more production, and you'll have 24 food so the city won't shrink.

Edit: If anyone else thinks this useful for this question, can they repost it as a quote so Darski can see it?
 
@ spoonwood - you are on ignore. Don't know what you said and don't want to know.

@ Scratch. I have the best of the irrigation mods now but I just happen to really dislike that all water all the time look.

@paper, I'll try your foresting suggestion - I love trees anyway so trees are good to go :D
 
You can run into situations, where it is very hard to get the food to multiple of 2. This is especially true for AG civs (why I do not like to use them). Just change the tiles you need to balance it out as has been suggested.

You can pop in a harbor on a coastal town sometimes to get to the even number. Stop working a hill, after you drop down a pop. That way you do not grow and are back to an even number. Metros, just let them go and starve back down and grow back up, unless it really bothers you.
 
. Metros, just let them go and starve back down and grow back up, unless it really bothers you.

it was my understanding that a 'starvation' event causes unhappiness and that was my only concern.

I am playing an AG Civ today so that could be the problem there. Thanks.
 
Well Spoonwood's answer was good, but I guess Darski can't see that?

Basically you need to get your city to a number of food that is twice the population. All the methods mentioned above, like irrigating one tile, adding a forest somewhere, or changing which tile you are working are all solutions to even out the number of food collected.

That said, the only real downside to city with an odd number of food is that they can't have WLTKD going on when they are in the starvation part of their cycle. If they don't have the happiness to get there anyway, it doesn't matter much.
 
Edit: If anyone else thinks this useful for this question, can they repost it as a quote so Darski can see it?
It's a good answer, but Darski doesn't want to see it.
I don't have to quote you for the others who don't ignore you... so there's that.
 
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