Solving overpopulation?

[Mooseus]

Hey everyone,

I have been playing Civ IV for a while and I have noticed that my cities will get annoyed (it will have an angry red face on the world map near the city) because there are too many people. Is the only solution to cure their unhappiness is to create buildings that boost happiness? Or is there some other way of making them happy if they feel there are too many people around?

Thanks,
Mooseus

 

[SnowyFox]

I also ran into the same problem earlier on. Yes, there are several happiness and health-improving buildings for your cities. But it is also extremely useful to manage which tiles are worked, so that the city can remain 'stagnant' in growth. Also, if your cities get to large, simply take some citizens off of food tiles and starve the city down a bit.

 

[jedimogg]

there is no way to get rid of overpopulation. you should watch your unhappiness meter and try to prevent your cities from growing when it will cause unhappiness. instead change the tiles worked or create a specialist, until you bring in more buildings, resources, that cause happiness.

 

[lonestar007]

My question is - why is overpopulation a problem? As far as I can tell, having a worker not working due to a large population is no big deal, eventually you will hit stagnation anyway. Then , when you build the happiness building or connect a resource the population is already there. What am I missing, there must be something?

 

[emsbronco]

I've noticed this too, so I've been using my larger cities with overpopulation problems to build settlers and workers as needed. At least that slows the cities growth.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

You can always stop the grow by allocating your use of tiles appropriately.

Shakespeares Theater seems really worth the effort IMHO as the London in my game is growing like the real thing

 

[AER]

There is also a button in the city interface that lets you freeze population growth automatically....

 

[jedimogg]

My question is - why is overpopulation a problem? As far as I can tell, having a worker not working due to a large population is no big deal, eventually you will hit stagnation anyway. Then , when you build the happiness building or connect a resource the population is already there. What am I missing, there must be something?

the unhappy worker still consumes food resources, but you get nothing out of it.