What makes my cities go floodplains?

[MarkJohnson]

I've noticed lately that my river cities seem to go floodplains and loose 2health and cause population loss. It doesn;'t happen right away and takes quite a few turns for it to show up.

What triggers the floodplains so I can avoid/prepare for it?

-=Mark=-

 

[Kranden]

If any of your cities are unhealthy early in the game it means your not whipping enough! Keep that pop down and turn it into a soldier farm! As for health higher difficulty level has a healthy/unhappy handicap

 

[TheLastOne36]

Floodplains are on deserts next to rivers. You cant "prevent" them. Floodplains provide more food but they also generate a little unhealthyness. Do waht Kranden says and whip, or try to build a granery or Aquaduct.

 

[King Flevance]

Floodplains work much like jungle. Jungle basically gives +1 for every 3 jungle tiles in the big fat cross. (.33 per jungle) If you chop jungle, the s go away. However, you can't chop Floodplains and I am not sure if they are also 0.33 or something else. However, forests provide 0.5 in the big fat cross or city radius. So 2 forests are automatically worth 1 and can counteract 3 jungles.

This of course works the same way as >

Resources are a good way to counteract this and building proper buildings. Corn is worth 1 just for having it hooked up to the city. Having a granary in that city makes the corn worth 2 instead of just 1. So really the only way to counteract this is to get more which is where the expansive trait tends to come in handy. Expansive gets very handy once you want to start actually having your cities grow instead of expanding out.

 

[Kranden]

Or even better whip out Granaries and aqueducts!

 

[Willem]

Floodplains are actually one of the best terrain forms you can start out with. Put Cottages on them and you still get a food surplus as well as a good cash flow. The bad health is just a small price to pay for being able to make a bunch of gold from those tiles.

 

[King Flevance]

Floodplains make me think back to Civ 1-3 days honestly. Should I mine the cows or farms the cows?
Only with 4 its should I cottage the flood plains or farm the flood plains. Of course someone out there will read this and think "You should watermill the flood plains" But flood plains are great additions to your economy with either a farm (Rice/Corn equivalent) or a cottage (Grassland dye +1 food... usually more commerce than dye)

 

[6K Man]

I've noticed lately that my river cities seem to go floodplains and loose 2health and cause population loss. It doesn;'t happen right away and takes quite a few turns for it to show up.

What triggers the floodplains so I can avoid/prepare for it?

-=Mark=-

Floodplains aren't triggered - they're there when the game starts and don't subsequently appear or vanish (except perhaps via global warming). If you don't like them, don't settle near them.

Anyway, the health minuses are more than offset by the food bonuses floodplains produce.

 

[MarkJohnson]

Floodplains aren't triggered - they're there when the game starts and don't subsequently appear or vanish (except perhaps via global warming). If you don't like them, don't settle near them.

Anyway, the health minuses are more than offset by the food bonuses floodplains produce.

Well, when I started it flood plains didn't seem to give unhealthiness. then after several turns my city went unhealthy from flood plains and dropped from pop:6 to pop:4 . Yes, I had aquaducts and graneries already built, but not enough resources to take advantage of them.

If it wasn't a tech that caused it, then I was thinking maybe clearing the forests around my cities caused the flood plains to go unhealthy. I was wondering if I left 1 or 2 or however many forests/jungle tiles in place that it would keep my flood plains from going unhappy until I was ready?

I know this works with jungles giving -1 unhappiness for every 2 jungles adjacent to my city. I also noticed today I was getting unhealthiness from jungle, but there was no jungle adjacent to my city? It was very late in game and was thinking maybe different eras may have increased the penalty or the age of the city causing it as the game maybe thinks I should have cleared it by then?

Thanks for the replies
-=Mark=-

 

[Joshua368]

You see the big misunderstanding here is that for some crazy reason you call unhealthiness "going floodplains" and it just gets more silly each time you use the phrase. You also call unhealthiness "unhappiness" which just makes things worse.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Floodplains make me think back to Civ 1-3 days honestly. Should I mine the cows or farms the cows?
Only with 4 its should I cottage the flood plains or farm the flood plains. Of course someone out there will read this and think "You should watermill the flood plains" But flood plains are great additions to your economy with either a farm (Rice/Corn equivalent) or a cottage (Grassland dye +1 food... usually more commerce than dye)

FP =/= corn. Irrigated corn is SIX food...one of the best tiles in the game (coastal lighthouse fish and grassland cow are pretty amazing too).

Farming floodplains is USUALLY a bad idea, far from any past what to do with the cow dilemma. Floodplains are only +3 food over the health cap, and if you farm them that's exactly where you'll go. Cottaging them lets you get commerce and retain farm-level food, so you can run specialists and cottages simultaneously in a FP city (or mix cottages and production). Generally farming them is a bad idea because of the health cap though.

 

[King Flevance]

Well, when I started it wasn;t a flood plains. then after several turns my city went unhappy and dropped from pop:6 to pop:4 . Yes, I had aquaducts and graneries already built, but not enough resources to take advantage of them.

A floodplains tile is a flood plains tile at the beginning of a game. Nothing can become a floodplains tile as the game goes on. A floodplains CAN become a desert but not the other way around without using worldbuilder. "Floodplain" is sort of like "desert forest" in a game mechanic perspective. If the enemy founds a city on a floodplains tile and you raze said city, it is now a desert that yields only 1
Same thing if you found a city on a forest and then raze it, the forest is gone.
The difference between forest and floodplains is floodplains cant spread. Once they are on the map at turn 1, thats it for the rest of the game. No more, only less.

If it wasn't a tech that caused it, then I was thinking maybe clearing the forests around my cities caused it to go flood plains. I was wondering if I left 1 or 2 or however many forests/jungle tiles in place that it would keep my cities from going flood plains until I was ready for the -2 unhappiness hit?


I know this works with jungles giving -1 unhappiness for every 2 jungles adjacent to my city.

See my post above 3 jungles = 1 unhealthyness. 2 forests = 1 health.

I also noticed today I was getting unhappiness from jungle, but there was no jungle adjacent to my city? It was very late in game and was thinking maybe different eras may have increased the penalty or the age of the city causing it as the game maybe thinks I should have cleared it by then?

Its not just adjacent tiles, its everything in "the big fat cross". You have a 3 x3 square when you found the city, then each 3 tile side expands out to form a "+" shape.

 

[King Flevance]

FP =/= corn. Irrigated corn is SIX food...one of the best tiles in the game (coastal lighthouse fish and grassland cow are pretty amazing too).

Farming floodplains is USUALLY a bad idea, far from any past what to do with the cow dilemma. Floodplains are only +3 food over the health cap, and if you farm them that's exactly where you'll go. Cottaging them lets you get commerce and retain farm-level food, so you can run specialists and cottages simultaneously in a FP city (or mix cottages and production). Generally farming them is a bad idea because of the health cap though.

Yeah, it tends to be situational.

If I have an abbunadance, I usually go cottages but if I have 1-3 floodplains only, farms go real nice as its the difference between 9 food and 15 food. (1.5 specialists vs. 4.5 specialists) This works great if you are Philisophical or expansive. However if you are financial its not very ideal.

 

[Willem]

Well, when I started it wasn;t a flood plains.

That's impossible. As mentioned already Floodplains are a terrain feature that get placed when the map is created. They don't appear at any other time. It was either a Floodplain when you started or it wasn't, they don't just appear out of nowhere.

then after several turns my city went unhappy and dropped from pop:6 to pop:4 . Yes, I had aquaducts and graneries already built, but not enough resources to take advantage of them.

What does Granaries and Aqueducts have to do with unhappiness? And what do resources have to do with Aqueducts? All they require is that they're built.

I know this works with jungles giving -1 unhappiness for every 2 jungles adjacent to my city.

They don't cause unhappiness, they cause unhealthiness. You need to get your game mechanics straight, you're obviously confused between those two very different things.

 

[Scaramanga]

Floodplains are God's gift to your civ, especially with gold nearby!

 

[Joshua368]

Dangit guys floodplains doesn't mean actual floodplains its just his way of saying "unhealthy" so let's move on.

 

[dragon.jade]

I love floodplains.

Informatively,
Dragon.Jade

 

[MarkJohnson]

Sorry about my confusing mechanics. I meant all of it related to unhealthiness.

sorry about the Flood Plains. I know it is a flood plains from the start, but the unhealthiness didn't happen for several turns. I was pop:6 for a long time with no issues. Then all of a sudden I see my city is smoking and it says I have 2 unhealthiness for flood plains when I had no unhealthiness at all except from pop. The only thing I did about that time was clear all the forest tiles from the area from rushing troops for fighting. Unless it's a time frame thing and it lets you get away with no unhealthiness for so many turns.

I'm also playing on huge map, marathon, and prince settings if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the help and sorry for the confusion.
-=Mark=-

 

[AmazonQueen]

Sorry about my confusing mechanics. I meant all of it related to unhealthiness.

sorry about the Flood Plains. I know it is a flood plains from the start, but the unhealthiness didn't happen for several turns. I was pop:6 for a long time with no issues. Then all of a sudden I see my city is smoking and it says I have 2 unhealthiness for flood plains when I had no unhealthiness at all except from pop. The only thing I did about that time was clear all the forest tiles from the area from rushing troops for fighting. Unless it's a time frame thing and it lets you get away with no unhealthiness for so many turns.

I'm also playing on huge map, marathon, and prince settings if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the help and sorry for the confusion.
-=Mark=-

It was clearing the forest tiles that did it. Every 2 forest tiles is +1 Health so they were counteracting the unhealthiness from the floodplains.

 

[King Flevance]

EDIT: Crosspost. And thats why she's the Queen

Sorry about my confusing mechanics. I meant all of it related to unhealthiness.

sorry about the Flood Plains. I know it is a flood plains from the start, but the unhealthiness didn't happen for several turns.

It is possible you just didn't realize you had the penalty all along and only recognized it due to hindsight.

I was pop:6 for a long time with no issues. Then all of a sudden I see my city is smoking and it says I have 2 unhealthiness for flood plains when I had no unhealthiness at all except from pop.

This sentence does not make sense because somewhere in it a mechanic is being confused. I am assuming here unhealthiness is substituting for unhappiness. If you see black smoke coming from your city there is also a face above the city title bar. Yellow 'stink fumes' have a green face above the city title bar.

If the city is still a population 6 city, then you lost a happiness resource (Black smoke). If it is yellow 'stink fumes' then you either lost a health resource, a jungle grew somewhere, or your borders expanded for the first time and because of that 12 new tiles were taken into acount. If they were floodplains then yes they could be the cause, just as jungle could be the cause.

Going into the city screen you will see (unhealthiness) < (health) to the right of the food bar.
(unhappiness) < (happiness) next to the production bar.

The only thing I did about that time was clear all the forest tiles from the area from rushing troops for fighting.

This is probably the cause if it was yellow stink. As if you had enough floodplains to count as 2 and chopped 4 forests (2) this could be the culprit. The floodplains just kept doing what they had been doing and as I suspected you just hadn't noticed it. The 2 unhealthiness from the floodplains was there the whole time. But when you lost 1-2 health from chopping forests, you see stink come up and suddenly become interested in tracking your health. That 2 from flood plains wa there before you chopped the forests, you just didn't check it until it was brought to your attention.

Dangit guys floodplains doesn't mean actual floodplains its just his way of saying "unhealthy" so let's move on.

I doubt many if any of us here are blasting away at the misproper use. But now is a good time to explain what to properly call everything by its name so that future threads need not be deciphered.