Overcrowding Problem

[uniquemind]

Hello,

Whilst I admit that I am fairly new to the Civ IV game, I am having a big problem in stopping my Cities from billowing out black smoke from the Center and to make matters worse it then turns a rather nasty yellowy color, I did read somewhere that religion helps to clam the populations down amongst other things but I have gone through a few different religions and no change my Cities do not go back to normal.

Any help appreciated

Sorry for the rather unintelligently put question but I am not too great at getting myself accross.

Thank you

UM : )

 

[brbdc]

You can put your cursor over them "the red people" and they will describe why they are unhappy. Sometimes they say overcrowding, sometimes they say they want emancipation. If its overcrowding then usually you have more people than you have happiness for. You need to start using the city manger and tell it not to grow past certain points. You will see next to the production window the number of healty vs unhealthy and number of happy vs unhappy. If you get too many unhappy then the people will stay stuff like that. Build more happiness buildings or settlers to get them out of the city.

 

[uniquemind]

Thanks I'll try that then, I was just curious as to what else to do as religion just was'nt sorting it out..........many thanks : )

Apologies if this has been addressed before but I think I'd be spending a year going through all the threads here lol

Cheers

UM : )

 

[Marcus_Aurelius]

You don't always need to do anything to the city itself to make people happy. Perhaps just one luxury like silk or gold would be enough to calm them down. As long as the number of happy people exceeds the unhappy, then you won't have a penalty from unhappiness. I don't think you can get rid of the "It's too crowded" comment. Just get lot's of luxury resources. Of course there are happiness buildings too, but resources is an easy way to deal with the people.

 

[Alathan]

Build more happiness buildings or settlers to get them out of the city.

Keep in mind that in Civ4, building settlers doesn't subtract from a city's population, it merely makes the city stop growing during their production, so building settlers and workers is no longer a solution to runaway population growth. All of the other techniques (mainly things that increase happiness) should work though.

Also, take note of which civics may maximize happiness in your cities. For example, Representation gives you +3 in your 6 biggest cities, but does nothing for all other cities... while Hereditary Rule gives you +1 per military unit stationed in each city. If you have 6 or fewer cities and few military units, Representation's a good way to go. If you have more than 6 cities, and can build lots of military units, Hereditary Rule can bring you lots of ...

 

[eewallace]

The default position for the city manager seems to be to emphasize growth. While you can set the city manager to emphasize other things, you can also address this problem by use of specialists. Simply taking a worker off a square that is producing an overabundance of food and turning him into a priest addresses the problem in two ways--you are not producing as much excess food which causes the city to grow, and the priest is contributing to happiness (and culture, as well).

 

[Vizzini]

Get in the habit, especially early game, of regularly examining all of your cities (Use the forward and back arrows at the top of the city screen) and make sure it never gets to the point where Unhappy civs outnumber happy civs. If you hit the = point, click the "Avoid Growth" button. Do the same for healthy vs unhealthy civs.

If unhappy (or unhealthy) outnumber their opposites then your city starts losing food because you have people who refuse to work but still eat. If the problem persists your city will starve itself and eventually start losing population.

Avoid Growth prevents the city from growing further and automatically switches production to maximize hammers. Do this before outnumber so you don't lose that production.

Then of course any time you hook up or build something that adds happiness remember to go back in and turn Avoid Growth back off.

* Get luxury items hooked up. Trade for them if you have none of your own.
* Build + producing buildings in cities that are about to, or already are at the = point.
* If happiness is becoming a problem prioritize your next tech research or two for techs that allow you to build more + buildings.
* If you have 6 or fewer cities, switch to Representation. Consider this even if you have 7 or 8 cities if those extra cities don't already have any population problems.

 

[Volstag]

The "too crowded" message should be read as: "we need more happiness increasing resources/buildings/etc".

 

[uniquemind]

Thanks to all of you, I'm off to put this all to practice and will return no doubt with another query lol : )

Many thanks guy's

UM

 

[RoddyVR]

some cities have no choise but to go into the unhappy populations.
if a city has enough food bonus tiles around it, and you want it to max out production, then (especialy in the early game) you'll have more food being harvested by the city then they can eat.
unless you are building settlers or workers in the city, the unhappy people dont actualy hurt you. they just dont help either. they are eating the extra food you ahve no choise but to produce (if you're working the tiles for thier hammer or coin production and not for the food).
in this case it doesnt realy matter that your city has unahppy citizens, eventualy you'll get another happyness resourse and another of those unhappy workers will start working.

but this is only true, if NONE of the tiles in the city are being worked for the food production alone.

 

[Vizzini]

some cities have no choise but to go into the unhappy populations.

No no no a thousand times no. There is always a choice, it's called Avoid Growth. USE it.

if a city has enough food bonus tiles around it, and you want it to max out production, then (especialy in the early game) you'll have more food being harvested by the city then they can eat.
unless you are building settlers or workers in the city, the unhappy people dont actualy hurt you. they just dont help either. they are eating the extra food you ahve no choise but to produce

Using Avoid Growth has the side effect of automatically maxing out the city hammer production. If you don't use it and instead let the unhappy population grow then you're potentially losing hammers.

There is never any good reason to allow the population to exceed its level - it's completely wasted population and costs you production. I could see doing it for a single turn or two if a new happiness building is almost finished, but otherwise no. The cost is too high and the benefit non-existent.

When you turn off Avoid Growth you'll usually be only 1 turn away from growth anyway, so the argument that the unhappy citizen is immediately productive when you get the happiness problem solved is a red herring. Your choice is to lose one turn of one citizen's tile production, or losing potentially tens of turns of tile production by having unhappy citizens.

The choice should, of course, be obvious.

 

[uniquemind]

Good Heavens!!! Thank goodness I posted here as I am only now beginning to appreciate how complex (pleasantly so) this game truly is! as up until now I have been playing my games like this:

I pick my spot as suggested by the game (only as I am relatively new to it) to build my first City, then I usually build one worker, and then I just find myself pressing the end turn button multiple times without doing anything else and I was not really finding that I could get into the game, as I was just waiting to start something else, so all I seem to keep doing is building farms, pastures, and mines (although not all the mines actually worked).

Then I usually build a scout, and explore a bit, but 9 times out of ten barbarians get them lol : (

A few military units follow, but after that and simply researching anything and everything in no particular order, I find myself at a loss as to what to do......BUT as I have just read alot of your posts I now realise that there is much much more to this game than just playing it in and with a careless manner as I am more than happy to admit, shame on me I know! lol nearly 40 and still acting like a village idiot lol

Thing is that as this game has just got so much depth I was and am afraid to play on for long as I like to take my time in the various ages and not see everything in the game within a few days of intense playing.

I have got a couple of the mods people have created which do slow the game alot, but not being able to fight for long with the units before they become obselete is not a plus point for me, I would have liked it more if you could play for as long as you want in a certain era, and then choose when you want to move on, and then the AI could follow you as you go kind of thing, still I am no modder and never likely to be, and I am going off topic so I'll shut up now : )

Cheers

UM

 

[KAuss]

There is never any good reason to allow the population to exceed its level - it's completely wasted population and costs you production. I could see doing it for a single turn or two if a new happiness building is almost finished, but otherwise no. The cost is too high and the benefit non-existent.

Slavery... Kill the unhappy...

 

[mharmless]

I second that! The icon is just a nice little flag that lets me know I can have annother free millitary unit. Great feature!

 

[Sim-Liver]

I will add my Two-Cents here because noone has stated it before and it seems to work for me.

I start every city with the emphsize production button turned on and leave it that way. Through the whole game! I never have any faces that can't be managed by itself and I do not worry about it. Plus I get the added bonus of every city building as fast as it can!
Hope this helps someone in need.
S

 

[KAuss]

I will add my Two-Cents here because noone has stated it before and it seems to work for me.

I start every city with the emphsize production button turned on and leave it that way. Through the whole game! I never have any faces that can't be managed by itself and I do not worry about it. Plus I get the added bonus of every city building as fast as it can!
Hope this helps someone in need.
S

When you learn how to build a specialist city you'll wonder why you never did to begin with...

Thats what happened to me last night with a city creating great artists at a 135 GPP...

You'll have to manage the faces more with that kind of build...

Still, I have no idea why this game don't have an "avoid growth before problem" button vs a stupid "stop growth button"...

I waste so much time going through each city trying to figure out if the stupid button is on or not... I mean seriously, is there ever a reason why you would not grow a city if both happy / health allows it? STUPID button...

 

[uniquemind]

Well I'm still struggling to get my head round all this but last night I played a Custom Game against just 1 AI opponent "Napoleon" and of course he got a victory by Conquest as I only really enjoy the Military side the best, I lasted a while into AD somewhere around 368 AD.

And I managed in that time to stop the black smoke appearing in my 3 Cities, yes only three lol

I am slow as you can probably tell lol but I hate rushing through games when I don't have to.

Going slightly off the beaten track here, but when you have say for example your first City built, and you build a worker, do you or should you work every square? I tend to do that but not sure if it is neccessary.

Cheers

UM

 

[KAuss]

Work the most important ones first... If you only have one city, obviously plan out what to make... It'll be wasted turns to build all mines because you won't have enough food to work every tile...

Then it'll be wasted to build all farms because you'll have no hammers...

Still, your 1st city should always have a bit of resources around for you to play with especially on a duel map... So if you can, work those first, if not, then work a farm... Then a cottage if you can... The farm will allow you to grow when you build your army, then after it grows enough, make sure there is a mine for someone to switch to when you want to stop the city from growing, or kill off someone with slavery if you plan on going over the limit...

 

[uniquemind]

Thanks KAuss,

I'll try it that way as no wonder I found in my last loss that out of the three mines I had built only one was working, plus when I clicked on a worker there were no blue circles indicating that there was something I could get them to build.

I am amazed that alot of you guy's can play against several AI's!!! I take my hat off to you for your skill.........I can't ever see me doing that as I crumble so easy against just one!

Btw can some-one tell me why in a Custom game setup I have no option of setting the AI to an easier difficulty level than Noble? I know I can play as Settler and the other one before Noble, but the AI's are automatically set to Noble, and that it seems is far to tough for me at this stage........I prefer to play Custom games as I have alot more options to choose from than just playing a Single game.

Cheers

UM

 

[Critt3r]

Thanks KAuss,

I'll try it that way as no wonder I found in my last loss that out of the three mines I had built only one was working, plus when I clicked on a worker there were no blue circles indicating that there was something I could get them to build.

I am amazed that alot of you guy's can play against several AI's!!! I take my hat off to you for your skill.........I can't ever see me doing that as I crumble so easy against just one!

Btw can some-one tell me why in a Custom game setup I have no option of setting the AI to an easier difficulty level than Noble? I know I can play as Settler and the other one before Noble, but the AI's are automatically set to Noble, and that it seems is far to tough for me at this stage........I prefer to play Custom games as I have alot more options to choose from than just playing a Single game.

Cheers

UM

The AI should match the skill level you choose.

In the drop down box next to your name select "Warlord" or whatever you like. That should put every civ at your level.

At least I assume so because that's what I have been doing.