Starvation!!!!

[Eberon]

Starvation! Who cares. So I am running ICS and I have about 30 cities and BAM! Someone takes out my maritime. For the next 10 turns until I get em back I get 25 starvation spams per turn. At first this really bothered me and I thought I had to fix it fast. Then I realized that it doesnt matter. The cities werent going to lose a pop in those 10 turns so I just dealt with the spam.

Having all of your citizens starving doesnt hurt your production, science, gold, or even your happiness. As long as you dont let them starve long enough to lose a citizen there is NO negative to starvation. I am not saying that I would deliberatly starve my citizens or that there is some kind of strategy where starvation opens up the path to an easy I win button. It just doesnt make sense to me that all these 'people' will starve to death while still working their jobs, thinking up new innovations, and being extremely happy about it.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Why should they be unhappy? They know you're a talented and benevolent leader, and that you are working to solve the problem.

 

[Sonereal]

Why should they be unhappy? They know you're a talented and benevolent leader, and that you are working to solve the problem.

That's why the Weimer Republic lasted until the Soviet Union invaded in 1942, right?

 

[AllyK]

Tbh as long as there is food in the stores I doubt the population would mind too much, maybe get a bit anxious if it was running low.

I have always thought it was strange how when there is one or two cities with starvation problems why doesn't another city within your empire that is over producing just send some of it's stores along (similar to the caravan unit in Civ 2) OR why doesn't the 1 population that is about to starve move to the next city along were there is plentiful supplies?

 

[slowjames]

Starvation! Who cares. So I am running ICS and I have about 30 cities and BAM! Someone takes out my maritime. For the next 10 turns until I get em back I get 25 starvation spams per turn. At first this really bothered me and I thought I had to fix it fast. Then I realized that it doesnt matter. The cities werent going to lose a pop in those 10 turns so I just dealt with the spam.

Having all of your citizens starving doesnt hurt your production, science, gold, or even your happiness. As long as you dont let them starve long enough to lose a citizen there is NO negative to starvation. I am not saying that I would deliberatly starve my citizens or that there is some kind of strategy where starvation opens up the path to an easy I win button. It just doesnt make sense to me that all these 'people' will starve to death while still working their jobs, thinking up new innovations, and being extremely happy about it.

This is one of the few major UI blunders I can point out with CiV. When you have many notifications of the same variety, they should collapse into one, which can be clicked to expand.

 

[Stoney the I]

This is one of the few major UI blunders I can point out with CiV. When you have many notifications of the same variety, they should collapse into one, which can be clicked to expand.

I am sure this must be VERY hard to implement or some other game has patented it so Civ5 cannot have that feature. right?

 

[slowjames]

I am sure this must be VERY hard to implement or some other game has patented it so Civ5 cannot have that feature. right?

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or not, but the answer is probably no to both of these questions. However, it may not have been high enough on the priority list to make the cut for the first release. Or perhaps the designers tried it and realized there was some flaw with the idea that I have not been able to spot in my imagining of it.

 

[SuperJay]

It just doesnt make sense to me that all these 'people' will starve to death while still working their jobs, thinking up new innovations, and being extremely happy about it.

It makes as much sense as those same citizens being ecstatic when you get thousands of their children killed in a losing war that accomplishes nothing, but getting angry as hell when their children return alive and victorious from war!

 

[zonk]

I can't tell whether you're being sarcastic or not, but the answer is probably no to both of these questions. However, it may not have been high enough on the priority list to make the cut for the first release. Or perhaps the designers tried it and realized there was some flaw with the idea that I have not been able to spot in my imagining of it.

But how can you reasonably fix it?

Happiness is now a global empire value and health is gone completely -- under a system like this, I just don't see how you CAN penalize starvation in any reasonable sense...

Model a hit to global happiness? Ummmm... no -- you certainly cannot remove a smiley coin based on one city starving. Model it like population where it's a deeper value? Well, OK -- but then I can still starve individual cities as I see fit.

As much as I just absolutely HATE the globalization of everything -- the answer is pretty obvious...

They should globalize FOOD, just like everything else. Make it an empire-wide value and let the player "spend" it on individual cites to work more tiles as they see fit.

Keep the city-side food beakers as the mechanism to add to your global food kitty, if you want -- but ultimately, the only answer is just to go whole hog with globalization.

Will this inevitably lead to exploits? You bet it will... but no worse an exploit than the idea that you can buy 3/4/5 smiley coins by simply buying a happy building in ANY city.

Face it -- city management is a casualty of V.... Let's stop trying to pretend it isn't and simply go with the system.

I'm skeptical it can ever make for a satisfying entry in the Civilization series -- cities have ALWAYS mattered (and I think they always should) -- but the choice has already been made so we might as well see if global empiring of "things" can be made to work and be interesting.

 

[slowjames]

Happiness is now a global empire value and health is gone completely -- under a system like this, I just don't see how you CAN penalize starvation in any reasonable sense...

Oh, I thought we were talking about how to fix the UI issue. My bad.

Fix starvation? Make it hurt more? I can think of a few ways:

- Disable 1.5x as many citizens as are unfed, but don't decrease population ("subsistence farming"). These citizens still cost global happiness.

- Impose a global growth penalty ("food aid").

- Impose a commerce penalty in the city ("buying foreign food").

This is just off the top of my head.

 

[Tamman]

Food riots might be one answer. The city could have a greater chance of entering an anarchy state a (+/% per turn cumaltive chance) like when its just been conqured the longer the city is starving. Perhaps the rioters could even have a chance to destroy a building or two depending on how long its been going and how many people have starved. A city thats been starved for to long and been ignored in anarch might even seceed and declare independance or offer to join another empire.

 

[Eberon]

Food riots might be one answer. The city could have a greater chance of entering an anarchy state a (+/% per turn cumaltive chance) like when its just been conqured the longer the city is starving. Perhaps the rioters could even have a chance to destroy a building or two depending on how long its been going and how many people have starved. A city thats been starved for to long and been ignored in anarch might even seceed and declare independance or offer to join another empire.

I like the food riot idea. I was thinking maybe all happiness buildings in the city would not function while the city was in starvation. That would make some sense to me as well as have the potential to cause a civ wide issue if you dont deal with it.

 

[hthu]

The MOO2 (Master of Orion 2) model for food management is great. Food is collected and consumed on the planet (ie, city), but can be distributed empire-wide by using the completely automated freighter units which cost gold to maintain. Newly colonized planets or starving poor planets get the benefit of the surplus food found elsewhere in the empire, while the game forces / encourges each planet to be self-sufficient at some point because the flow of empirial food supply via freighters gets disrupted if the system is under enemy blockade or the number of freighters is inadequate (one food unit transported per freighter unit). Civ2's caravan system works too. What I don't like is the 2-food-per-citizen system that gets tricky when the city gets close to max size, where the odd-even thing become tedious.

 

[Eberon]

What I don't like is the 2-food-per-citizen system that gets tricky when the city gets close to max size, where the odd-even thing become tedious.

The patch due out this week is supposed to make it so the avoid growth button works. I think this will deal with the max size city going in and out of starvation all the time.