specialist hijacking

[dagiffy]

I'm having a problem that's driving me nuts. I noticed that many of my cities keep going into starvation mode, so I examined each city and saw that it was automatically placing every citizen it could as a specialist, even to the point that the city would starve. I fixed each city, only to find that the city reverted back to this even in the same turn. I can't find anything to either activate or deactivate to stop this.

How can I stop these cites from doing this and starving themselves to death?

 

[r_rolo1]

Disable the AI governor.

That or change your emphatize preferences

 

[Jerrymander]

It's odd that the governor would make the city starve by making the citizens specialists.

 

[dagiffy]

I have no emphasize preference chosen for any city and, as far as that goes, I have nothing automated for any city. I don't have the AI governor on...or, if it is on, it's something that's in operation that I didn't choose. Perhaps it's an opt-out option? I wouldn't know how to turn AI governor on or off because I never have used it. Then again, I'm new to the game.

 

[r_rolo1]

It's odd that the governor would make the city starve by making the citizens specialists.

If you emphatize GPP or if the city is already starving by itself it does that sometimes.

@dagiffy

See this pic:

Spoiler :

Do you see those buttons to the left on the minimap? Those are for activating the governor and to say to the city to emphatize hammers, food, money or great persons points. if you see any of them with a yelow border ( like you can see one in here, in this case being the AI governor ) , it is because it is active.

 

[dagiffy]

OK then, none of the AI governors are active on any city in my current game. Evidently I am stuck with the game screwing with my settings. But even within the same turn? That strikes me as odd. I can reset a cities specialists, go on the to the next city, and when I come out of the next city I find the city I fixed before is back to what it was. Grrr....

My game screen doesn't look like yours, though. Somewhat similar, but yours is much cooler looking.

 

[r_rolo1]

That is BUG, a User Interface mod , plus Blue marble ( to change the interface color + opacity ), that is primarily a terrains graphs pack

 

[dagiffy]

Well, after looking into this problem on searches through the forum, I see that I am far from the only person dealing with it. It's enough to drive me from the game, and no one seems to be able to counter it. What a drag.

 

[Psyringe]

You could also upload your save and let us have a look.

The only time when I experienced something like the things you described was way back, even before Warlords was released, when the game's AI and automatization were much worse than they are today.

 

[dagiffy]

Perhaps this is the problem. All I have is the original game discs, plus Warlords. Patches are current. Maybe I lack some expansion which would do away with my suffering?

 

[Psyringe]

It's possible, but my memory is a bit fuzzy on that subject, sorry. I do know that the AI has seen significant development post-Warlords (through mods, then the Better AI mod became the basis of the BtS AI, then modders developed a further improved AI on top of that). I think, but can't be sure, that the automatic decisions of the cities (e.g. where to put new citizens) were improved as well, mainly to make the AI work better, but as a side effect the human player's cities benefitted from the change just as well. Perhaps r_rolo1 (who followed the development of the Better AI mods more consistently than I do) can shed some more light?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Depending upon where you click in a City Screen, it is possible to automatically reactivate the City Governor. For example, when you are in a City screen, if you single-click certain parts of the screen near where you assign citizens to individual squares, you will automatically reactivate the City Governor.

That behaviour could explain why you are seeing things being changed within the same turn.


Also, notice in the screenshot that r_rolo1 provided that a bunch of Specialists have been assigned by the currently-enabled City Governor. Why is that behaviour happening, you ask? It's because the City was recently captured from an enemy, and the City Governor will try and run as many Specialists as it can in that case. Could it be that you're talking about recently captured Cities?

If not, could it be that you have one of the Emphasize buttons enabled? I know that you said this fact wasn't the case, but the Emphasize Great People button will tend to hire a lot of Specialists.

See the image copy & pasted from r_rolo1's screenshot to see which buttons I am talking about:

Another possibility is that your City is somehow going to starve anyway, such as by having its squares Culturally stolen, by having a bunch of unhappy people from war or other factors, or by having a bunch of unhealthiness from an AI Poisoning the City's water supply or other factors. Basically, if the game thinks that you're going to lose a population point due to starvation ANYWAY, it might as well generate the maximum output for each of your citizens by intentionally running extra Specialists. However, you're likely only going to see a reassignment of your City's citizens within the same turn if the City Governor got reactivated.

Basically, if you can provide us with a screenshot or a saved game, it will be a lot easier to narrow down the specific problem that you are encountering. Look for the Attachments icon, as found in the following screenshot, and upload whatever you can get us (screenshots, saves, whatever). If you don't see that icon, click on the "Go Advanced" button and you should see it.

 

[TLF]

I've only played 3 games so far and I've seen this also.

Everything is fin with the food and pop balanced, then I finish building something, look at the city to decide what to do next and see that the city is starving.

I even built a Supermarket once or twice and found that the result was that I fell into starvation.
I couldn't figure it out, but after reading this thread I guess the AI decided the 1 extra food was a reason to create a specialist.

 

[s.bernbaum]

FWIW, the default whenever you found a city, is for the governor to be active until you turn it off, either by clicking on the governor button or overriding its "decisions".

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Ohhh, I almost forgot to mention: in my first screenshot, I identified the Emphasize Food button. To potentially solve your problem, trying clicking on that button in any City that you are having this Specialist auto-assignment problem in.

If you are manually assigning citizens, but accidentally turn on the City Governor, then this button should keep your City Governor from assigning a ton of Specailists. There might be the odd exception, such as heavy unhappinessin the City or stolen Cultural borders from an AIs' nearby City causing the City to starve no matter what you do, but otherwise, this button may just be your "one click solution."

Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to enable this button for all Cities at once, so it's a bit of a manual process to click it for each City that you want to affect.

That said, when your City grows, it is more likely to assign the new citizen to a Food-based square than it is to hire a Specialist, with the Emphasize Food button activated. If that's the kind of behaviour that you want to see, give it a shot and see if that button becomes the solution to your problems.