why not let them unhappy finally ?

[lorn]

I often read that it's advised to limit growth when happiness limit is being reach, as the unhappy citizens won't work..
I understand that limiting growth (even stopping it) implies getting more commerce or productio by working other tiles.
But I was wondering why not let the city grow naturally and don't bother with the red faces.. If you know there will be a solution to these unhappy citizens in the short or medium term (religion, civic, luxuary resource...), you will profit from the growth you had even if some citizens were unhappy during these turns (they will go immediately to work)...
Iwould say : if I need production and / or commerce now, i limit the growth of the town, but if it's not that critical; I don't bother about limiting it,as I will profit from it later when production and / or commerce may be more critical ?
Don't know if my question make sense; if the answer's already documented; but I'd like to have your ideas/comments

 

[TCGTRF]

I often read that it's advised to limit growth when happiness limit is being reach, as the unhappy citizens won't work..
I understand that limiting growth (even stopping it) implies getting more commerce or productio by working other tiles.
But I was wondering why not let the city grow naturally and don't bother with the red faces.. If you know there will be a solution to these unhappy citizens in the short or medium term (religion, civic, luxuary resource...), you will profit from the growth you had even if some citizens were unhappy during these turns (they will go immediately to work)...
Iwould say : if I need production and / or commerce now, i limit the growth of the town, but if it's not that critical; I don't bother about limiting it,as I will profit from it later when production and / or commerce may be more critical ?
Don't know if my question make sense; if the answer's already documented; but I'd like to have your ideas/comments

Everything should be contributing to your overall plan.

While not critical like in earlier Civ games, if you have either green or red faces in your city, it means that you've made mistakes on what you had your workers doing and which tiles you're having your citizens work. They've made too much food lately, rather than coins or hammers.

In addition, the time to switch one additional of your citizens to a specialist is not the turn on which the green/red appears, but instead during the period when the population is even with the max numbers of health and happiness.

It's simply more efficient to plan your improvements, trades and civics so that you have specialized cities in which you have *just enough* population to do what you want. Production cities need enough farms to support those who work the hammer-producing tiles and that's it. Your GP-Farm needs as much food as possible so that it can turn the population that's not needed to farm into specialists. Your commerce cities need enough farms to support the cottages--no more.

This is one of the reasons that the Expansive Trait is not rated as highly as the others in usefulness. Above a certain number, population can be a detriment, rather than a blessing.

Tom

 

[Wreck]

Pop is never a detriment; it's just not that useful beyond working all the city tiles.

To the OP: you can afford to play inefficiently on the lower levels of play especially. After you get more experience and are ready for the higher levels, you'll want to hand-control your city to manage the pop and avoid unhappiness and high unhealthiness. These should be avoided by moving pop to production tiles, or, by burning pop via slavery.

 

[rickb]

Uh yes it is a detriment. Those unhappy guys are still eating food which means two things, #1 you'll build settlers and workers slower since you'll have less excess food to put towards building them, and #2 you won't be able to emphasize production because you'll wind up having to work food rich tiles when you could have been working high production tiles instead.

Having unheathly citizens is slightly less detrimental as they can still work. I will sometimes grow beyond the healthy limit but never the unhappy one. If I inadvertantly happen to do that, sometimes I will starve off that population point depending on the circumstances.

 

[denogginizer]

How do I tell when a city is at its maximum population without unhappiness?

 

[TCGTRF]

How do I tell when a city is at its maximum population without unhappiness?

Open the city screen and look at the upper right of the box that contains the picture of the tiles being worked surrounding the city. You'll see a pair of faces--the number of happy faces vs the number of unhappy ones. Above that, you'll see the population vs the food. When either of these are equal to their counterpart the city cannot grow any more without either unhappiness or health problems.

As far as there being a detriment to too much population--there's isn't much of one on noble, but it sure as hell starts showing up as you go up in difficulty level.

Tom

 

[Andrei_V]

Even better to enter the Domestic Advisor Screen (F1). It displays the list of all cities. So you check which cities have the number of yellow (happy) faces equal to the number of red (unhappy) faces, then stagnate their growth.

Of course, if you see the number of reds already above the number of yellows, the difference is the number of red faces in that city.

 

[DaveMcW]

If you don't want unhappy people eating 2 food/turn, you can let them starve to death. The real thing you lose is the ~30 food it took to create them in the first place - you could have had 30 hammers.

 

[ShaLouZa]

As a master tactician, I'll say this : I don't like having someone staring at me like that all along.

 

[Mack the Knife]

you must not be married...

 

[Hans Lemurson]

If you are certain of getting another luxury or other source of hapiness in your cities in the immediate future, it may be beneficial to grow first and deal with a few turns of unhappiness so that you will reap the benefits of the new happiness immedietly. This will only help you if your unhappiness lasts less than the time it would otherwise take to grow to that level.

In general, a size-8 city with 1 unhappiness is worse than a size-7 city at neutral, since the larger city gains no productivity, and at the cost of a diminished food supply. That larger city may then lack the food to sustainably work the gold-mine in its radius, or some other unpleasant consequence. An extra citizen, who is unhappy, hurts your city.

To avoid this situation, you can toggle the "avoid growth" button in your governor options. This not only sets your citizens to work less food-centric tiles, but if there is an unavoidable surplus of food, it will actually prevent any further growth while it is active. Very powerful.

The other option at your disposal, which has been brought up, is .
If you have 1 unhappy citizen in your city, try to engineer it so that you 2 population. You want to always :whiped: 1 more than people you have , since the whipping itself causes 1 By the time your city re-grows to it's previous ideal-size, the whipping penalty should have dissapated, and all is well. This works since due to whipping is independant of the #of victims you slaughter.

 

[Qitai]

IF you are confident it will be use in the short term, then it is okay to have an unhappy citizen. Else, you have just wasted food growing that pop as well as food maintaining that pop.

I do outgrow the happiness sometimes in preparation of whipping and/or during war times where an empire wide increase in culture % do not justify reducing that lone unhappy citizen in one city.

 

[Canadian Bacon]

As a master tactician, I'll say this : I don't like having someone staring at me like that all along.

Exactly. I hate having my cities have the unhappy faces next to them. That in itself is reason to not let my cities grow discontent.

 

[Mad Dog]

/agree Iorn.

I often allow a bit of unhappiness in the early game when I know the situation will be resolved in the short-medium term. As a benign(ish) dictator, I know what's best for my people in the long term

In the early-mid game (just before calendar and before major religion spread) a small production hit is rarely that big of a deal in the larger cities, which will probably have most of the improvements they need (so production loss isn't an issue).

The extra pop point can always be used for whippage if they get too troublesome, but, more importantly, means an extra population working a tile for a couple of thousand years or so. Which is bloody useful, especially if you're trying for a fast finish.

The only way to increase population is food in civ 4, so I always hate to stop cities growing unless I really really have to.

 

[ShaLouZa]

you must not be married...

I am (sort of), but I've builded her a colosseum in the garden.

 

[benjai]

I don't really mind having a couple of unhappy faces if I know I can get rid of them in the nearish future. Obviously this depends on the food supply. If food is limited and the city grows slowly, I'd rather have it growing despite having a few unhappy (lazy bastards!) citizens. If you were to limit its growth before that, it would take longer for it to grow. Sometimes in the early stages (monarch+), you don't have the techs to keep your people happy, but you want your cities to be ready (in terms of size) for when you get the required techs.

 

[thordk]

I am (sort of), but I've builded her a colosseum in the garden.

adjusting the "culture slider" might help also. opera and such.

 

[ShaLouZa]

I usually push another kind of slider, it works well.

 

[SlipperyJim]

To avoid this situation, you can toggle the "avoid growth" button in your governor options. This not only sets your citizens to work less food-centric tiles, but if there is an unavoidable surplus of food, it will actually prevent any further growth while it is active. Very powerful.

One warning: The "avoid growth" setting is permanent until you undo it. I've occasionally forgotten about it and stagnated one of my core cities for years when there was no need to do so.

Just remember to undo "avoid growth" whenever you get a new happiness bonus of some kind (luxury resource, religion, or whatever), and you'll be fine.

 

[rewster1]

I adjust food down if possible without using unimproved squares, and then if there is still a +1 surplus, I may choose that city to be my worker/settler factory for a while. This is like the avoid growth button only the food is actually used for something. Of course, if I don't need workers or settlers, then I'll let it get unhappy and whip it.