Sickness is broken in this game

[NintendoTogepi]

It's ridiculous that during the late mid-game/late game, all of your cities get overwhelmed with sickness. It's like the plague spreads through out your cities. You're pretty much forced to rush-tech Medicine you can spread hospitals and environmentalism.

Anyone think that sickness is broken?

 

[futurehermit]

Medicine, Refrigeration takes care of most problems. Recycling centers take care of the rest generally speaking. You have to be careful a bit when you industrialize. I wouldn't call it broken. It's a slight aid to be expansive, which is good because it's not an overwhelming trait.

 

[Dier]

It would be nice to have some new resources pop up later on, perhaps in a wonder or two. I hate green faces...

 

[Leventis]

I usually avoid this problem by not rushing into building coal plants everywhere. I try for the 3GD and get clean power on my whole continent that way. Aside from this though, there are plenty of ways to eliminate pollution like building public transportation, recycling centres etc. Also, since is usually more of a late game issue than it might be wise to renegotiate some trade deals to secure some +2 resources instead of happy resources. Getting the Mass Media wonders will give you hit musicals and movies ( resources) that you can trade around too.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

It's realistic. When countries industrialize pollution gets nuts. It's happening right now in China and India. It happened a hundred years ago in the US and Britain.

There's ways around it. Keeping a few forests around, switching to environmentalism, beelining health techs, making sure every new city has fresh water.

There's civs that can minimize it. Expansive civs, and civs whose UB gives extra health.

it's not broken. it's fine. It's not any more broken than complaining about getting dowed when you have 1 warrior defending each city.

 

[Pe Ell]

I have to admit it is annoying, but I wouldn't call it broken. It's actually annoying in a good way, I like being forced to worry about keeping my citizen healthy and not just being all about the happy cap. It actually makes enviromentalism a worthwhile civic to consider in some circumstances.

 

[The Rook]

It's ridiculous that during the late mid-game/late game, all of your cities get overwhelmed with sickness. It's like the plague spreads through out your cities. You're pretty much forced to rush-tech Medicine you can spread hospitals and environmentalism.

Anyone think that sickness is broken?

You don't need to build every unhealthy building in every city. If you just turn a workshop into a farm in a production city, that would cover 3 out of 4 unhealthiness from a Coal Plant, and would more than justify the improvement. It might be best to keep commerce cities healthy, you don't want to disrupt their ability to work cottages and specialists, and the hammer return would often be quite poor anyway.

 

[Breunor]

It's ridiculous that during the late mid-game/late game, all of your cities get overwhelmed with sickness. It's like the plague spreads through out your cities. You're pretty much forced to rush-tech Medicine you can spread hospitals and environmentalism.

Anyone think that sickness is broken?

Here is my view:

Rather than viewing the issue as broken, from a game play standpoint, it deals with a central issue of Civ IV, which is balancing. You become stronger as you grow and you build the buildings that help you get stronger, especially things like factories and coal plants. However, health forces you to build buildings like the Aqueduct which have little value otherwise.

Similarly, chopping all of your forest early gives you a lot of hammers and often good terrain for growth, but again has a health consequence that is supposed to be a balancer.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Polobo]

I think it would be nice to be able to turn off the visual effects of an unhealthy city, since it is entirely feasible that you would want to have some unhealthy and take care of it via extra food. The same goes for the blue-ish glow of a unit, only have the visual effect when those units/cities are selected. Just my preference but I would prefer that kind of visual highlighting to indicate a problem, not a condition that I have intentionally left alone.

 

[CivDude86]

+100% production for 3 was a no brainer. Now its up to 9 so I have to plan ahead and make "interesting descisions". It gives enviro/expansive a much needed buff also.

 

[SnowlyWhite]

- wheat, corn, rice - always have them. Trade, whatever, but it's no reason to not have them; building a granary in each city... well, you do that 1st thing anyway.
- the 3 fishing ones are also usually easy to obtain and should help your shipyard city via harbour.
- if you don't have a river, there's little reason to settle. What the ai indicates as a good placement doesn't take in account levee since at the time you settle the levee is so far away. Always remember you'll have levees later and settle accordingly.
- if you pursuit domination, after assembly line, you should go combustion line anyway, to open up oil for industrialism/tanks. When you hook up oil, in 9 outta 10 cases I remove access to coal by building windmills on it and razing whatever city the ai settled right ontop of coal. Except if you have mining inc. and then you won't sit in state property.
This will cut coal plants, however, in most of the games I found I couldn't afford those anyway, pollution wise; plus, while your main production cities would benefit from coal plants, the others, which are the majority anyway, and which at that time should also build only units, won't(I mean, would, but the time wasted with building the additional infrastructure to support +2 pol. from coal via factories ain't worth the investment).
- there's little reason not to have aqueduct/grocer/public trans. Especially in prod. cities, which can lift those fast anyway.

This way, I'd say 50% of the domination wins I got I didn't have medicine nor hospitals. Obviously, trade for medicine if you have the opportunity, but be careful not to give away key techs for it. Your cities won't be healthiest lot around, but... as long as you can crank out units fast enough, who cares.

P.S - Always remember your goals; as long as you try to beat your previous perfomances, the goal is to achieve victory fast, not to have unpolluted cities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There are a lot of things in this game that suggest the importance of city specialization, and this is yet another. Building unhealthy buildings only in production centers so that your commerce isn't crushed by it in the early late-game can cut down on many of the drawbacks of unhealthiness. After that, just use traits, techs, buildings, or resources. I've gotten through many games on prince now, and health is usually not the factor I'm worried about...it's usually WW or balancing tech and production.

 

[InFlux5]

1. Better green faces than red.

2. It's already pretty easy, overall, to have an empire full of very large cities. I support anything that keeps a lid on most your cities, as I think it's more realistic. Every city shouldn't be a metropolis.

 

[druidravi]

Sid's suishi and +1 for farms both come with biology all that extra food can make you ignore unhealthiness .

 

[Ibian]

Of course it cant. Only in production cities up until the point where all workshops are being worked, but not anywhere else.

 

[Iranon]

Hardly a problem if all sickliness does is impose a soft cap on growth. I actually like how the game reflects the problems of vast economic and social changes... the transition from scholarly tradition towards modern science (after Scientific Method, research will take a dive for a while) and the health problems associated with Industrialisation are implemented quite well imo.

Most real-life countries struggled heavily with pollution if they tried to build up their industrial base quickly.

 

[mystyfly]

I really 'like' the late game pollution caused by the industrialization. It's realistic and makes the late game more interesting. If you could build Factories, Coal Plants, Industrial parks evereywhere without worrying about anything, it would be pretty boring.