What can you do when you have only one city, and its citizen are unhappy

[Kazander]

Hello,

I'm playing with a friend, and she has a slight problem. We are early on in the game, and she let her city grow freely. It did grow quite quickly because it's surrounded with flood plains.
Anyway, she shouldn't have let it happen but there it is, the city has more unhappy citizen than happy ones. Production is of course slowed to...well not much

Given it is her only city, that she doesn't have any religion or buildings yet allowing to increase the number of happy citizen, what's her best option ? I recommended that she takes the people off the fields to let the city starve a bit until it is ok again, then focus on happiness generating research/buildings, and stop the growth of course.

Any better idea at this stage ?

 

[Pie-es-Tasty]

Switch to slavery and whip some stuff til the city is back to normal. Has the same effect as starving, and is much faster, and you get free stuff.

 

[Kazander]

We're too early in the game, she doesn't have slavery yet

 

[Pie-es-Tasty]

Really? Wow, her city must have grown really really fast to be unhappy before bronze working. Well I guess starving is your best solution then.

What difficulty is she on?

 

[Kazander]

Her city is surrounded by flood plains, which could explain the growth. I also think she did not focus on the right technology advances. For instance I got Bouddhism and Hinduism before she did, therefore she does not have any religion to brighten everyone's mind

We're playing on the Noble level. Well I offered to restart the game since we're not very far in yet anyway (too bad, I had a really good start myself, and nice first city location ).

Thanks for your help

 

[Astax]

Tell "your friend" that that's what happens when you build too many farms on flood plains, Shoudl ahev made cottages. A city on floodplains has A LOT going agianst it. The unhealthiness from flood plains really kicks in when the city grows big, it becomes overpowering. Not to mention the unhappines. Slavery YES thats the way out. You could starve them by manually taking the pop and putting it on low food tiles, but that takes too long. Overgroqwing floodplains cities isnt a good thing.

 

[icon41gimp]

There is nothing wrong with letting the city stay unhappy, nothing is penalized just the new citizens won't work until you can add happiness somehow.