Pirates in my city?

[Generalissimo]

Well I started to play Civ II again after several years of not playing it. I had previously played it for a good four years straight and then off and on for a while.

Anyway, I seem to remember seeing pirates in my cities and was wondering what they were. I seem to remember them beeing black clothed instead of the normal blue and red. Very strange and I'm not sure what caused it? I really hate pirates and want to never encounter them in any of my new games.

Any ideas on what caused the pirates?

 

[ElephantU]

You might be describing "very unhappy" citizens, which is one step worse than the regular "unhappy" ones. Unhappiness is a compound effect, and too many unhappiness factors can make your citizens "very unhappy". If you play at higher levels like Emperor or Deity this can add up quickly. One of the more common mistakes is building too many cities early in the game before you have enough happiness improvements and wonders in place. There is a trick, however, that exploits a mistake in the code for the effects of Hanging Gardens. If you have no martial law units in your cities, the HG effect turns black citizens directly into into content blue ones, bypassing the red state. People who play ICS (Infinite City Sprawl/Sleaze) exploit this and often aim for 50-100 cities by AD1. Check out some threads here or at Apolyton.Net (look in the Strategy Forum for the Great Library) on ICS, Black Faces, or HG effect.

Welcome back to Civ!

 

[Generalissimo]

Oh ok. Thank you very much. I usualy just played on warlord and I do do a lot of ICS, I think. Do you mean ICS where you make about a city about two squares apart? I like to do that. One time I had all of africa and europe and most of asia covered in cities and it was great.

 

[funxus]

ElephantU, HG actually turns a black unhappy guy into a light blue happy guy. The thing with HG is that it has the same effect as 2 luxuries would have had if they were added at the same time as the wonder is. This means that:
red + HG -> content
content + HG -> Happy
black + HG -> Happy

This is why a size 2 city can go into disorder when it gets a martial unit.