Stopping food famine?

[Re-invented]

:crazyeyes

Hi all,

I always seem to have the following problem:
I'll get pretty successful, and start conquering other civs, but then I get major food famine in my home cities. I try to use irrigation, buy market places, graneries, etc. But it really ends up making me lose people/money. What to do?

Also, I read someplace that if having a lot of cities becomes too much for you, you can "sell them off." Does anyone know how to do this?

Any help would be very much appreciated.

HAVE A BEAAAUUUUUTIFUL DAY!
-Sherry

 

[stormerne]

It could be one or more of several things. You haven't told us enough yet to say.

Firstly irrigation is good, yes. But it won't help you if you haven't got a good government. What's your government type when this happens? For example, if you're still in Despotism then irrigating grassland won't help you - they stay as two food. You need to be in Monarchy to get the improvement to three food.

Do you have too many settlers built but not building new cities? They all consume food.

Did you select good city sites in the first place? Bad terrain will stunt your growth. Are you building your cities too close together? If you overlap their city areas then you'll restrict their growth. Did your cities gone into unrest and you've forgotten to set the entertainers back to work again later? What size are your cities anyway when this happens?

Marketplaces will not help your food supply - their job is to give you more money and help your people be happy.

Granaries will not help food supply. Their job is to half the amount of food that you need to build up before you grow another population point and provide some temporary insulation against famine. They don't change the rate at which food is produced which is the problem you describe.

No you can't sell off cities. And you should never want to. You want as many as possible - more, more, more! You can never have too many, and they are never too much trouble.

 

[Groovin']

What government do u stay on?

Because u produce more food on monarchy and communism but the biggest leap is to a republic and then your cities thrive.

For a long time i never used republic because i didnt like not being able to declare war, but theres plenty of ways around that!
And the advantages are huge (more food, production, money).

Although unhappy citizens because of military units still piss me off and is taxing to keep a hold of in big conflicts.

 

[Re-invented]

Hi all,

I was usually in despotism I don't think I ever had a manual for Civ..I got it as a shareware game from someone long ago. So I just try anything. I've recently tried switching gov'ts but there's so much uproar..you have to make sure you have lots of military in your cities, enough food, etc. But I'm going to try jumping into Republic. It IS frustrating not to be able to declare war.. i love doing sneak attacks. But we'll see if this works. Also, does anyone know why, when conquering a city sometimes it says the city ownerships have been split into 2 different tribes RIGHT before you are about to conquer it? How odd...
-Sherry

Have a beautiful day!!

 

[GenghisK]

Yeah, I can help you with the manual Otherwise, I used to do the same mistake as you did, ie sticking with despotism. Actually it's minus 2 to everything. So that's also why you shouldn't fall into anarchy too often. Especially while being Republic/Democracy and collapsing.

 

[peterval]

If you want some gen on splitting civilizations, read my thread on the subject. Have fun.

 

[mastrorv]

Playing civ I was a learning experience. This is why: government represents the civ. I learned, not too quickly, the best strategy I have in my bag. First, in despot (while climbing the tech ladder to republic) you lay the foundation of irrigation (both terrain and aqueduct!) and economy. Get the foundation down, fix up the fancy tech, and hit it. Then, switch majority of civ level production (I'm so glad that they've made that feature universal throughout the products) by your convenient f1 button to luxery. You'll have we love the king days all over the place, your civ will explode in number, and you'll be making loads of cash, too much to spend, in 10 turns if you've set it up right. After I discovered this strat, even probably an exploit, I scored legendary on the HOM. I'm even considering DOWNLOADING {gasp} CivI (Relax, fellas, I have an original copy but *DO*NOT*WANT* to try and find it after almost 10 years) just to kick this forums behind in GOTM.

Anyone got a problem with that?

 

[Groovin']

I never actually had the manual, but i read everything in the text files that are in the original games directory which was enormously helpful. (At the time i was only in high school and it actually helped my history knowledge almost as much as my gameplaying!).

If u can be bothered reading them they can be really helpful understanding the concepts without having the manual.

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Why would anyone need a manual? Everything is in the civilopedia!