Unhealthy Cities: Oops, I Did It Again

[CharlieM]

I have a nasty habit of making unhealthy cities.

I suspect it is my penchant for building too many farms, and dreaming of the huge metropolis I will have. IOW, I expand too quickly.

And then I end up with cities with -1 or -2 health scores. Like in a game right now, with no Aqueduct available. And no way I can see to increase health (no resource, I pretty much know the list and have read other posts about What Increases Health).

So my question is: When you have screwed up and allowed your city to get unhealthy, and there is really nothing you can build to increase health at the moment, what's the best course of action right then? Tuirn on Avoid Growth? What?

 

[Zombie69]

Turning on avoid growth is stupid. If your city is still growing, let it, all the better. That's more tiles for you to work. -1 food isn't the end of the world when you're at +4.

What you should do is start working some cottages instead of some of your farms. Go back down to +0 food. If you really want to be optimal, go down to -1, drop your population by 1 and then go to +0.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Turning on avoid growth is stupid. If your city is still growing, let it, all the better. That's more tiles for you to work. -1 food isn't the end of the world when you're at +4.

What you should do is start working some cottages instead of some of your farms. Go back down to +0 food. If you really want to be optimal, go down to -1, drop your population by 1 and then go to +0.

Dropping your population by starvation is really really inefficient, because then you have to fill up the entire food bin if you ever want to grow again.

The optimal thing to do is to build up food until the bin is almost full, then reallocate so you have +0 food (so you're prepared when you get extra health). But it's fiddly and easy to make a mistake, so, unless you really want to check all of your cities carefully every turn, it can be reasonable to turn on Avoid Growth, and then check them only every few turns, which at least means you only waste a bit of time at the cap, which is less bad than accidentally going over.

The only real problem with Avoid Growth is remembering to turn it off when you don't want it any more. It would be better to have a setting "Avoid Growth if Unhealthy", as that's usually/often what you want.

 

[BigCMan]

Some other suggestions to get yourself back to a healthy city...

1. Trade - trading makes us all better off. You have to give up something, but it will be good for your civ.

2. Keep in mind those city improvements that give health for certain resources (e.g. harbors, grocers, etc.). These can really help you get back into healthy status.

3. Keep forests around. They give you additional health, and you can make use of them later when you can start building lumbermills. I always try to leave a few forests around my cities now, for the health benefits.

 

[Zanmato]

I have this problem too. I find the Granaries and Grocers are most effective because they give health based on what is available on the trade network. But there is little harm in having a unhealthy city if it means a extra specialist or two.

 

[MrCynical]

Unless your city will starve if it grows again, you shouldn't avoid growth due to unhealthiness. There is no penalty beyond lost food, so if your city can support the penalty there is no problem. I've had cities with -10 from unhealthiness and still been growing thanks to very food rich locations. Since the only penalty for unhealthiness is slowing growth it makes no sense to stop growth in order to avoid it.

 

[CharlieM]

If I make a trade for a resource-that-adds-plus-one-health, does each one of my connected cities get plus-one-health?

And this idea that Zanmato brought up ... that you'll have extra specialists ... please explain further. Then you lose the ability to work a tile, but you gain the benefits of the specialist (GP points, his shield production, etc.). Is this an accurate statement?

 

[Yaype]

If I make a trade for a resource-that-adds-plus-one-health, does each one of my connected cities get plus-one-health?

And this idea that Zanmato brought up ... that you'll have extra specialists ... please explain further. Then you lose the ability to work a tile, but you gain the benefits of the specialist (GP points, his shield production, etc.). Is this an accurate statement?

Each connected city gets the benefit of connected resources and luxuries.

As to your second question, you are correct--a specialist takes away one worked tile, but gives you whatever benefits that type of specialist gives.

 

[WetWarev7]

If I trade a resource can I still use it? say I have 1 cow resource. If I trade it for wheat, will I still get the +1 health that the cow gives? And in the trade screen, does it show total resources, or the extra(above what is being used) resources you have?

 

[jdotmi]

If I trade a resource can I still use it? say I have 1 cow resource. If I trade it for wheat, will I still get the +1 health that the cow gives? And in the trade screen, does it show total resources, or the extra(above what is being used) resources you have?

If you have only one cow and trade it away you lose the health benefit of the resource. The trade screen shows you all the resources you have, not just extra resources. The AI resources listed are only what is excess and therefore available. The AI also won't ask for a trade of one of your resources if you don't actually have any extra.

 

[WetWarev7]

If you have only one cow and trade it away you lose the health benefit of the resource. The trade screen shows you all the resources you have, not just extra resources. The AI resources listed are only what is excess and therefore available. The AI also won't ask for a trade of one of your resources if you don't actually have any extra.

So THAT'S what I'm doing wrong....

Thanks for the info!

 

[DaviddesJ]

Unless your city will starve if it grows again, you shouldn't avoid growth due to unhealthiness. There is no penalty beyond lost food, so if your city can support the penalty there is no problem. I've had cities with -10 from unhealthiness and still been growing thanks to very food rich locations. Since the only penalty for unhealthiness is slowing growth it makes no sense to stop growth in order to avoid it.

This isn't really right. There's a big difference between whether you can feed all of the people in a city, and whether you should. A city that can just barely manage to feed everyone, can be way more productive if it can generate a couple less food by shifting citizens to mines, and get a bunch more production. Or if it can convert farms to cottages and generate a couple less food but a lot more commerce. You generally want to grow up to the health limit, and then, once you reach the limit, re-allocate citizens and/or re-improve tiles in order to stabilize your food while maximizing production and/or commerce. If you let the city grow past the health limit, then that stable point will be significantly less good for you, in most cases. (Except very late in the game when you have Railroads, Biology, etc., at which point most cities should grow beyond the health limit.)

 

[MrCynical]

It's a fair point, and it probably isn't that advisable to grow that far beyond the health limit. There's still no point in deliberately setting to avoid growth though, unless it will cause starvation. Quite often I won't have alternatives to switch to. (The example above was produced thanks to lots of fish and a fair amount of floodplain).

Very late in the game though I strongly disagree that you should have any cities with unhealthiness at all. At this point your cities should be running at the maximum capacity the terrain allows, and if food is being lost to ill health that is not the case. By this point you have a whole array of health boosting improvements, and should have got just about every health resource by trade or conquest, so you shouldn't really be wasting food like this.

 

[Renata]

The problem with unhealthiness isn't usually critical, but it always hurts in one way or another. That extra food point you're losing might've gone to supporting more citizens on high-production or high-commerce tiles, or to supporting an extra specialist. At best, your growth slows down, so that when the aqueduct or whatever *is* complete, you have more turns left to grow to the next size than you otherwise would. So unhealthiness is good to avoid if at all possible.

 

[Oggums]

You should always let them grow to the happiness limit. As long as you have at least 1 food on the next tile you work, you are gaining a new tile with no loss. If it's more than 1 food, you're gaining a tile and still growing.

Why would you ever want to lock down growth and not work the extra tile?

Don't let the sickly, green face psych you out. They should learn not to super size it, and get some exercise, but they can still go to work.

 

[Oggums]

A city that can just barely manage to feed everyone, can be way more productive if it can generate a couple less food by shifting citizens to mines, and get a bunch more production.

Why shift a citizen to a mine, instead of letting the city grow and working both the farm and the mine (how much food did *you* lose moving the citizen off the farm)? Why not just work a new cottage *and* the farm when your city grows, instead of removing the farm (how much food did you lose changing a farm to cottage)?

 

[MyOtherName]

Why shift a citizen to a mine, instead of letting the city grow and working both the farm and the mine (how much food did *you* lose moving the citizen off the farm)? Why not just work a new cottage *and* the farm when your city grows, instead of removing the farm (how much food did you lose changing a farm to cottage)?

(1) I might have a use now for those 4 hammers/commerce per turn.
(2) Having a bigger city can mean bigger upkeep.
(3) Having a bigger city closer to the happiness limit means more war weariness problems.
(4) I might not have farmable grassland to spare.
(5) Why have citizens who do nothing but feed themselves when I can turn them into hammers via slavery?

 

[DaveMcW]

A new citizen must work a 3-food tile (or the production/commerce equivalent) to be break even in an unhealthy city. So until Biology you don't gain much by going over your health limit.

 

[Oggums]

A new citizen must work a 3-food tile (or the production/commerce equivalent) to be break even in an unhealthy city. So until Biology you don't gain much by going over your health limit.

Correction. A new citizen must work a 3-food tile to break even on the growth your city had prior to gaining another citizen.

A new citizen must work a 1-food tile to break even with the number of tiles you would be working in that city, had you avoided growth. Both times your growth has stopped, but the better case is working another tile, don't you think?

And if I've still got at least 1 extra food and I'm not at the happiness limit, my city is still growing and I'll eventually work yet another tile that yours isn't.

 

[Oggums]

how do delete a post?