Starvation.

[kkapalk]

I am doing rather well in a particlar game, but something has happened which has puzled me. Currently on prince, winning my first game on Gods and Kings. At the end of one turn suddenly six of my cities have become starved and I am being informed that citizens will die soon. I understand the city needs surplus food to grow/maintain its numbers of citizens but cannot undestand why such large amount of cities suddenly went into this situation. I have experienced the enemy blockading my tiles before, therefore starving my cities, but I am not at war. I don't know if any social policy choice can affect growth, but I hadn't had a change of policy either. I had to go into the said cities and remove the specialists just to maintain stagnation. Being a mediocre player at best I cannot work out why so many cities suddenly became short of food. I would apreciate any help on this.
Thanks,
Kev

 

[Novalia]

It is likely that your civ has hit unhappiness. Check the bar at the top and there will be an angry looking face with a minus number next to it. That's how much unhappiness you have. Unhappiness affects food. If your city was barely getting by while happy then if your civ becomes unhappy there will not be enough food.

Check this thread for happiness info. Cheers =)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436022

 

[TyBoy]

From what you've said the thing I would look for is losing maritime city state allies.

If you had manually set specialists it's easy to imagine that a city could be stagnant with the city state food so losing it would cause them to start to starve. Even if you had the specialists and tiles worked under control of the AI I could see losing a city state ally causing a turn of starvation and warnings just because of the order the events happen in.

 

[RealHuhn]

It is likely that your civ has hit unhappiness. Check the bar at the top and there will be an angry looking face with a minus number next to it. That's how much unhappiness you have. Unhappiness affects food. If your city was barely getting by while happy then if your civ becomes unhappy there will not be enough food.

Check this thread for happiness info. Cheers =)
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436022

Unhappiness never causes starvation. It only reduces the amount of surplus food or in other words, limits growth.

I think TyBoy is right here. Losing maritime city state allies can be the reason. Or a sudden change in religious beliefs although that's unlikely in a single turn.

 

[Browd]

And/Or he had some population growth with production focus, and has now gone from foos surplus to food deficit.

 

[CrispyCritter]

Unhappiness never causes starvation. It only reduces the amount of surplus food or in other words, limits growth.

I agree theoretically, but in practice I often have cities go into starvation when I go into being unhappy. The problem, as far as I can tell, is not the unhappiness itself, but the fact that the city will move citizens around to different tiles if you are on default focus and suddenly food tiles become less advantageous. There are bugs in the citizen tile allocation strategies, especially if you have manually pinned one or two citizens to high gold or shield tiles. I have to click on the city tile to unpin all my citizens (and get positive food), and then re-pin the tiles again.

 

[kkapalk]

Thanks for the replies. No, I hadn't gone into unhappiness. Tyboy probably has the answer as I have kept gaining and losing city state freindships/alliances through the game. I have not kept a close enough eye on city state situations, so cannot confirm this, but it seems likely that they stopped the food bonus. (I didn't know city states gave food). I really must get more in-depth with them, as I believe they have a bigger impact on the game than I realise?

 

[Browd]

Yes they do. Maritime CSs give food (2 food in capital when friends and 1 food in all cities when allied). Culturals give culture, religious give faith, mercantiles give raw happiness, and militaristic give land units.

 

[Hormagaunt]

Speaking of starvation, is there any way (an option of some sort that I've missed) that will prevent cities from stupidly starving themselves?

For example, I have a city (with 1 surplus food) set to focus on production. I open a new mine. It immediately goes into starvation mode because it switches the citizen on a 2-food hex over to the 4-production hex. Unless I specifically move someone to create a starvation situation, I don't want the city manager to ever drop food production below stagnation, no matter what focus I've given him.

In the same vein, if I lock that citizen back on food production then the city promptly moves another food producer there. This repeats until I've locked down every single food-producing citizen.

I really, really need a flag that says "Don't starve my $#*@$ cities, idiots!".

 

[sufficiency]

It's almost always due to maritime cities.

 

[Novalia]

It will always notify you if a city is starving. Turn off auto end turn so you can respond to messages properly.