Tip for you obessive-compulsive micro-managers

[Pinstar]

My name is Pinstar, and I'm a micro manager. I never automate my workers... I never leave my cities on auto pilot.


Here is a little tip for getting the most of your attention out of your cities. For each city, look at the difference between your health +es and your sick faces. Then look at the difference between your happy faces and unhappy faces. Every time your city grows, both health and happiness take a step tword their limits.

It makes no sense to have one factor hit, or go over, the limit while the other isn't, you city is suffering needlessly.

My tip to you is to always keep the difference between your health stats and happiness stats the same.

For example:
If I have a city with 10 health, and 8 sickness
Along with 9 happy faces and 8 unhappy faces, I would build something that added at least 1 happy face to the city.
That would allow the city to grow 2 more sizes without health or happiness suffering.

Once a city hits their health and happiness limits, you can key in the "limit growth" mode while you build more happiness and health buildings (in equal proportions).

This gets a little tricky when you have alot of your health and happiness coming in as the result of trade...since that makes the market and grocer give variable amounts.


One last tip: Build Forges on costal cities, after you build a harbor. The harbor gives costal cities a big health boost that isn't available to land locked cities...rather than try to balance that boost out with happines buildings, build a forge and let it eat away a little at all that extra health.

 

[Romanichine]

You have to make a distinction between Health and Happiness. Busting your Health limit is minor and can be tolerated many (many, many, many....) turns if you have more important things to work on in a city. All you lose with Health is 1 food per point over the limit, and I will prefer to build a financial building on a big-cottaged city (exception: I will build the Grocer if I can). Or I will build cultural buildings (cathedral-like, wonders) if I plan a culture win with this city etc..

Depending on the city you might want to stop its growth when you have health problems, but not always.

Happiness however is another beast. Going over the limit is a tragedy! Not only will you lose -2 food per point over but you also get one unhappy citizen that does not work any tile and cannot become specialist. So you lose much more in fact: You lose production, gold, food... again, a real tragedy!

So, you have to micromanage a city Happiness, but not necessarily its Health.

 

[eewallace]

I micromanage alot, too. Particularly in games where I'm geographically limited and have to make each city optimal. I usually control health issues early on by limiting population growth--using alot of specialists in the cities. Priests are particularly useful early on, then scientists later in my high-production cities.

PS. Pinstar--the same as in "Legacy Challenge"?

 

[Geon]

unhappy citizens aren't that bad, unless i'm missing something. If you have a size 8 city with 1 unhappy citizen you are losing only losing 2 food compared to a size 7 city. Production and commerce is exactly the same. It's twice as bad as unhealthiness in a way, but in another way it's better than unhealthiness because as soon as you get more happiness into the city you get productive citizens instantly as opposed to waiting for growth. And if the -2 or -1 food causes you to start starving, oh well, it's no big loss either. Well it kinda is if you have a granary and lose your stored food. It's not something I fret at all.

 

[Shillen]

If you want to be an ultra-micro-manager then you want to stop growth on the city the turn before it hits unhappiness. That way you keep your full health box for when you get a happiness boost and can grow it right away. But you don't waste the 2 food that the unhappy citizens takes. You can hire a specialist instead, which will also use two food but will give you bonuses instead of being dead weight.

 

[DaveMcW]

You can stop a city from growing by checking "avoid growth". It won't grow even if you have surplus food. Just be sure to uncheck it when your happiness situation improves!

 

[Yushal]

Not quite. You lose more than the two food. You lose whatever you would have gained had he been working a tile in addition.

I mean, you cannot gain a specialist INSTEAD of an unhappy citizen. You gain a specialist instead of a productive citizen (thereby PREVENTING the unhappy citizen from being created).

Say my city is size 4, every tile gives 2 food and 1 hammer, max unhappiness. The city now gives +2 food and 5 hammers.

If the city grows, it will be size 5 with one useless unhappy citizen, and zero excess food and 5 hammers.

If I make a specialist before it grows, I will be size 4, zero excess food, 4 hammers and the specialist bonus.

If I make a specialist after it grows, I will be size 5, -2 food, 4 hammers, and specialist bonus, and will revert to the above case as soon as the city starves.

Whether it is worthwhile for you to make a specialist or not is something you must decide for yourself, anyway.

So, in this case, you can probably benefit from a specialist over not having one, but what if we could switch one worker to say, a mine giving 6 hammers?

Then, sans specialist, we would have size 4, zero excess food, and 10 hammers. This might suit you better than making a specialist.

Then again, what if we had some cottages that we wanted to continue to be worked so they grow into towns earlier in the game? In this case we might want neither specialists nor a halt to growth, prefering our cottages be worked and unhappy citizens be damned.

 

[Geon]

Even by your equation you only lost 2 food. The production that unhappy citizen doesn't make is a moot point since if you are already at max unhappiness you already are at your production maximum. Hence unhappy citizens only cost you 2 food.

Edit: and if you are building a road to a happiness resource and building a temple and have the excess food to have unhappy citizens, why not let them grow and have them be ready and productive as soon as you have happiness coming in?

 

[Gargoyle]

Yes, Happiness is more important than Health.

I find the important thing to do is to try to keep ALL your cities at the SAME Happiness (and to a lesser extent Health). I build buildings in each city to try to achieve this.

Then when all of your cities are at max, the addition of just one resource (such as building that Sugar Plantation you've been holding off on) will provide that boost to ALL your cities. Rinse and repeat as necessary.

Of course you need the trade route link, and you may have to trade or fight for that extra resource, but those are the driving forces in the game anyway.

 

[Shillen]

Not quite. You lose more than the two food. You lose whatever you would have gained had he been working a tile in addition.

I mean, you cannot gain a specialist INSTEAD of an unhappy citizen. You gain a specialist instead of a productive citizen (thereby PREVENTING the unhappy citizen from being created).

Say my city is size 4, every tile gives 2 food and 1 hammer, max unhappiness. The city now gives +2 food and 5 hammers.

If the city grows, it will be size 5 with one useless unhappy citizen, and zero excess food and 5 hammers.

If I make a specialist before it grows, I will be size 4, zero excess food, 4 hammers and the specialist bonus.

If I make a specialist after it grows, I will be size 5, -2 food, 4 hammers, and specialist bonus, and will revert to the above case as soon as the city starves.

Whether it is worthwhile for you to make a specialist or not is something you must decide for yourself, anyway.

So, in this case, you can probably benefit from a specialist over not having one, but what if we could switch one worker to say, a mine giving 6 hammers?

Then, sans specialist, we would have size 4, zero excess food, and 10 hammers. This might suit you better than making a specialist.

Then again, what if we had some cottages that we wanted to continue to be worked so they grow into towns earlier in the game? In this case we might want neither specialists nor a halt to growth, prefering our cottages be worked and unhappy citizens be damned.

This is what I meant. Sorry if I didn't state it perfectly. But there is one situation you definitely want to avoid. And that's having exactly 1 food surplus. You will immediately starve as soon as you grow because you can't support the unhappy citizen. Then you effectively lose an entire food box worth of food.

 

[Renata]

Stupid question, sort of related: how do the health/happiness numbers in the city screen work?

For example, I might see:
10(red cross) < 8(sick face)
9(happy face) < 9(mad face)

or something like that. I can't figure out why there are two sets of numbers and what the "greater-than/less-than" signs are supposed to represent.

 

[eewallace]

Stupid question, sort of related: how do the health/happiness numbers in the city screen work?

For example, I might see:
10(red cross) < 8(sick face)
9(happy face) < 9(mad face)

or something like that. I can't figure out why there are two sets of numbers and what the "greater-than/less-than" signs are supposed to represent.

The "<" actually should go the other way, I think. It means 10 (red cross=health) is > (greater than) 8 (sick face=sickness) so you can have 2 more "sickness" before you have used up all of your "health."

 

[Mujadaddy]

I disagree with microing Health, in a way...I usually go for (and acheive) the LARGEST city in my games...

Unhappy people? time to rush a project!!

Also, there's LOTS of ways, unlike previous versions, to research/trade/build for happiness...so to me, it's a temporary problem, not something to strenuously avoid.

 

[Pinstar]

I micromanage alot, too. Particularly in games where I'm geographically limited and have to make each city optimal. I usually control health issues early on by limiting population growth--using alot of specialists in the cities. Priests are particularly useful early on, then scientists later in my high-production cities.

PS. Pinstar--the same as in "Legacy Challenge"?

Yes I am the "Legacy Challenge" Pinstar from over on the Sims 2 message board. To be quite honest, Civ 4 has totally drained my will to play the Sims 2. I'll go back once the new pack is out.

 

[eewallace]

Yes I am the "Legacy Challenge" Pinstar from over on the Sims 2 message board. To be quite honest, Civ 4 has totally drained my will to play the Sims 2. I'll go back once the new pack is out.

Me too. Sims is my "between Sid Meier games" game. Pirates diverted me for months, and now I expect to get a full year out of Civ IV.

I'm currently micro-managing the English empire under Elizabeth, and finding out that she is an awesome leader for a research-based fairly peaceful win. With city tweaking and huge numbers of great scientists, I'm going to win the space race hands-down!

 

[Pinstar]

If EA makes the Sims 2 any dryer, I may go strait from Civ IV to Spore. But I'm getting off topic


I'm a big fan of the English myself, but with Victoria. With so much money coming in, I can afford to kick my culture slider up a notch or two to keep the happy faces in balance with the medical pluses.