Turning city governors off?

[PhilBowles]

I've noticed this much more in G&K than vanilla, and it's really starting to annoy me. The city governors (set to "default focus" by, um, default) are constantly rearranging my population on food-gathering duty, and I often only notice when I see my production time for whatever I'm building goes up by several turns. I don't want any kind of automated city management, but there doesn't appear to be an option in the city screen for "no automation" - I suspect that if I selected "production focus" or whatever the results would be equally annoying in another direction.

So, is there a way of completely disabling this automation, other than manually assigning every population point I have so that they're locked and the AI can't mess them up?

Thanks.

 

[FeiLing]

You don't want to assign and lock down every citizen manually, but you want to turn off the governor, so you naturally have to assign every citizen manually?
I don't seem to get it...

Lock all citizen where you want them. Check manual specialist control. Governor can't be turned off, but all he does now is putting a new born citizen somewhere, depending on which focus you've chosen.

 

[Jabberwockxeno]

You don't want to assign and lock down every citizen manually, but you want to turn off the governor, so you naturally have to assign every citizen manually?
I don't seem to get it...

Lock all citizen where you want them. Check manual specialist control. Governor can't be turned off, but all he does now is putting a new born citizen somewhere, depending on which focus you've chosen.

You'd think so, but sometimes even if you turn off a tile then put it back on, it will still be shown as governor assigned, or another locked tile will switched to be governer assigned.

Really wish there was a simple "Make all tile selections manual" button.

 

[PhilBowles]

You don't want to assign and lock down every citizen manually, but you want to turn off the governor, so you naturally have to assign every citizen manually?
I don't seem to get it...

Usually most tile selections are reasonable, however if I decide to reassign one population point as a specialist, say, or from food to production, the governor will often automatically reassign an unlocked population to work on the vacated tile (either immediately or after I exit the city screen) - if I'd wanted a citizen working that tile, I wouldn't have removed one from it for whatever purpose! That's what I want to be able to control manually.

Lock all citizen where you want them. Check manual specialist control. Governor can't be turned off, but all he does now is putting a new born citizen somewhere, depending on which focus you've chosen.

Which is itself a problem. My city may have a production focus, but that doesn't imply I want every new citizen assigned to a production tile if there's spare food - normally I'll have preferentially assigned my citizens to maximise production already, so may well want the next one to work a food tile, for example, so that I can support workshop specialists. Why on Earth is there no ability to turn the governors off altogether?

 

[FeiLing]

My city may have a production focus, but that doesn't imply I want every new citizen assigned to a production tile if there's spare food - normally I'll have preferentially assigned my citizens to maximise production already, so may well want the next one to work a food tile, for example, so that I can support workshop specialists. Why on Earth is there no ability to turn the governors off altogether?

Then put it on food focus?

What do you want? The new citizen to be not working any tile at all instead? Or the game magically reading your mind on which tile he should send the next citizen on?

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

its kind of frustrating to lock down every citizen when new citizens are assigned. ive noticed that when i have a tile that produces 2 food/1 prod it will prioritize the lake with 2 food/1 gold instead. i would prefer all new citizens remain unassigned so that i just assign it once and be done with it (for the time being).

Also, when I get my first university and i have no other specialist buildings it automatically puts citizens in there then I have to mark the manually box and reassign. before i get any specialist building i dont have the option to check the manual box. also, say, when i get a public school and im already set to manual i want to get a citizen to work it i usually choose it specifically like undo the lux so i can work the school. but when i undo the lux the citizen gets automatically reassigned to another available tile. but then my other choice is to just click on the public school slot and then see which random citizen it decided to take from and see if i want to reassign it. its tedious and assumptive for an already micro-manageable game.

either way this particular aspect of the game isnt at flexible as it should/can be.

 

[warlordtheft]

I've set many cities to production focus. I normally don't have issues with food, and that can be remedied by individually assigning citizens to certain tasks. You can set specialists to manual and the AI govenor will not move them.

 

[James T]

If a citizen remains unassigned, you will lose 1 turn of productivity... Calculation of yield between turns goes Food, Pop, The rest of tile yields. So, you do not want your newly generated citizen working a high-food, low-other tile in the turn he spawns because he will produce no food for that turn (food has already been calced). Because hammers/gold have not been calced, if you have all tiles locked manually and have the governor focus on production or gold, the new citizen will generate the hammers/gold from that tile in that turn. Then you can manually assign him based on your priorities in your next turn.

 

[Grendeldef]

The governors are still occasionally acting like morons but atm I'd be happy just to be able to lock every tile I want to.
So far I haven't been interested enough to find out a logic, if any, behind the problem but there are cases when

a) one specific tile can't be locked no matter what
b) one random tile can't be locked - by switching the order of locking the least important tile is unlocked but selected
c) more than one tile will be unlocked when selected

It's one of those highly annoying things while not a gamebreaker makes vanilla look quite ok after all.

G

 

[PhilBowles]

Then put it on food focus?

What do you want? The new citizen to be not working any tile at all instead? Or the game magically reading your mind on which tile he should send the next citizen on?

No, quite simply - don't reassign citizens at all. It's nothing to do with adding new citizens. For instance, in my current game Sukothai was producing in excess of 10 food, so I removed a citizen from a 2 food 1 production tile to put in my newly-built wat. The governor promptly reassigned one of my production-tile-working citizens to work the tile I'd just vacated, forcing me to move it back again.

The problem is precisely that the AI is trying to read my mind, and failing; regardless of focus, it simply shouldn't be set to change decisions I've made. If I'd wanted the production tile unworked, I'd have put that citizen in my wat instead of the one I did. No previous Civ game had this issue that I recall, and I don't recall it being significant in Civ V vanilla - but now I'm encountering it all the time, whether it's costing me production in favour of giving me 12 rather than 10 food for a size 15 city, or causing my income per turn to fall because it decides 3 food + 1 gold is better than 2 food + 3 gold (since "default focus" is effectively food focus, it obviously never makes decisions that give me worse-than-desired food production).

 

[FeiLing]

If you remove a citizen from a worked tile and then add the now unemployed guy to the specialist slot (by just clicking the slot) nothing will be moved or replaced by the governor.

There is a bug which is described by Grendeldef, not sure what causes it though. In that case you need to reset everything (click the city tile) and re-lock everyone

But random reassigning does never occur to me. Of course if you don't get the worker off a tile before making him a specialist the governor will take a pretty much random one off the fields.

 

[Kwami]

No, quite simply - don't reassign citizens at all.

It's nothing to do with adding new citizens. For instance, in my current game Sukothai was producing in excess of 10 food, so I removed a citizen from a 2 food 1 production tile to put in my newly-built wat. The governor promptly reassigned one of my production-tile-working citizens to work the tile I'd just vacated, forcing me to move it back again.

The problem is precisely that the AI is trying to read my mind, and failing; regardless of focus, it simply shouldn't be set to change decisions I've made. If I'd wanted the production tile unworked, I'd have put that citizen in my wat instead of the one I did. No previous Civ game had this issue that I recall, and I don't recall it being significant in Civ V vanilla - but now I'm encountering it all the time, whether it's costing me production in favour of giving me 12 rather than 10 food for a size 15 city, or causing my income per turn to fall because it decides 3 food + 1 gold is better than 2 food + 3 gold (since "default focus" is effectively food focus, it obviously never makes decisions that give me worse-than-desired food production).

I think what you're asking for is a system in which the governor makes initial assignments when a new citizen is added (based on selected focus), but then never again moves a citizen for any reason. Is that right?

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i dont know if that's what Phil is asking for but Id like to see every new citizen be unassigned. For one I think it might force people into better management habits (though I fully understand many might hate that too) but I want to place every citizen initially, not the game.

i used to just get rid of the new citizen green icon without thinking. now i have to make sure the game didnt put it somewhere i didnt want. that's frustrating.

and Grendeldef's mention of how some tiles are completely unlockable happens to me in 50% of my games now and im not sure why. that i think is a bug, too.

 

[Kwami]

i dont know if that's what Phil is asking for but Id like to see every new citizen be unassigned. For one I think it might force people into better management habits (though I fully understand many might hate that too) but I want to place every citizen initially, not the game.

i used to just get rid of the new citizen green icon without thinking. now i have to make sure the game didnt put it somewhere i didnt want. that's frustrating.

and Grendeldef's mention of how some tiles are completely unlockable happens to me in 50% of my games now and im not sure why. that i think is a bug, too.

I don't agree. By having the governor automatically assign new citizens, you get more production that you otherwise would. Also, even the best of us sometimes forget to assign a new citizen once the number of cities grows fairly large.

Aside from being more tedious, I see absolutely no upside to making new citizens unemployed by default. Even having them work a bad tile is more advantageous than having them unemployed*.

(*I think that the governor is willing to use unemployed citizens when the city is set to production focus, but I haven't test this in a long time and it might not be true. Someone with access to Civ should check for us!)

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

that's fine, but i now never forget to assign citizens, even in my semi-wide (12 cities) game. i would still prefer them unassigned. the upside is eliminating AI assumptions that arent always the right one (combines with a messy inefficient assignment method). since puppets arent controllable they are the only cities where the AI makes that choice, imo.

 

[PhilBowles]

I think what you're asking for is a system in which the governor makes initial assignments when a new citizen is added (based on selected focus), but then never again moves a citizen for any reason. Is that right?

Yes, that's exactly it. And in my game yesterday, even with 'Manual specialist control' ticked, I found the AI governor vacating specialist slots I'd just filled to work an unwanted tile.

 

[Kwami]

that's fine, but i now never forget to assign citizens, even in my semi-wide (12 cities) game. i would still prefer them unassigned. the upside is eliminating AI assumptions that arent always the right one (combines with a messy inefficient assignment method). since puppets arent controllable they are the only cities where the AI makes that choice, imo.

The AI wouldn't be making any assumptions at all if the governor assigned new citizens once and then never again. You have the option to set your city to focus on food, production, gold, etc. The new citizen would be placed in a position to maximize that focus. Then, it would never move unless you moved it. In what way is having everyone unassigned better than this system? (And if you're manually assigning your citizens anyway, then none of this matters because they'll always be exactly where you put them on the first turn that they can affect anything but production.)

Of course, this would be an option. Not everyone wants to micro as much as you do and certainly we shouldn't force them to.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

because i dont want a 100% production/food/gold/etc focus. out of 10 citizens i might want 7 food and 3 production tiles. the focus doesnt know that. it only knows a specific focus which isnt what i want. and there is still a bug that wont let you actually lock down every tile. no matter how many times i click the tile it still isnt locking it down. (that might get patched so its less of a big deal in the short run.)

the governor doesnt assign them once and never again. it is a problem.

i agree with your last sentence 100%. i would love the ability to choose to have my citizens unassigned when they are 'born'. and we dont have that option. options in this game are always better than none.

 

[Kerosene31]

I just always set them to default focus and check the city every time I get a notification that it grew.

The default focus seems the "least bad" option and then you just have to focus yourself.

What I would love an option for is to not automatically place the citizen and open up the city for you when you clicked on the notification, just like it does for a unit needing orders, etc. Just an option of course.

 

[eternaldude]

I'll tell you what I want.

I want to stop my cities from growing.

I'm playing this super large earth map that's bigger than you can normally make with the generator and I believe I have reached the maximum size I can grow to without incurring unhappiness penalties. I am focusing on gold gold gold. 4,500+ unit maintenance and still profiting 1500+ a turn. only 59 cities, but they are all huge

It's June, 2014 and I'm 2153 turns into the game on marathon. Best civ game I've ever played. But I want to stop my cities from growing.

I have over 320,000 gold. The only thing I can think do with it is get all the delegates I can, get nuclear non proliferation repealed, buy nukes, and end the world. I build the spaceship before anybody else, I've been elected world leader like 10 times. The cultural victory is inevitable. I'm not interested in domination victory or conquest - it would just be tedious at this point. I think I just want to save up as much gold as I can until someone declares war on me or I get this thing repealed so I can just blow everything up.

I was bored and finally got into a new layer of the game - manual city management. Goodness. The tweaking, oh my. A lot of fun, but just can't seem to get the zero growth thing down.