Two questions regarding health

[lockstep]

The information given about the new health system so far indicates that negative overall health will diminish a city's food surplus and eventually stop its growth altogether, i.e. health works as a 'soft' cap on population growth. This is somewhat analogical to the hapiness system, where overall 'unhapiness' will cause some citizens to stop working tiles (although not, as in Civ3, cause the entire city to go into disorder). But a city with a majority of happy (not only content) citizens was more productive in Civ3 ('We love the leader'-day), and happiness generally boosted your score. So, regarding health in Civ4, two questions:[list=1][*]Will a big health surplus in a given city have any in-game-effect (e.g. providing a growth bonus)?[*]Is the overall health of your population factored into your game score?[/list=1]

[Solver]

1. Major surplus? No. But you then don't have to worry about health for quite some time.

2. Indirectly, for sure. Better health = more population.

[lockstep]

In Civ3, a luxury ressource (or even two) near your starting location would yield a substantial advantage in the early game (less need to spend gold to keep your population happy). So the same is not true for health resources in Civ4's early game?

[Solver]

Health resources near start are critical because they determine how much you can grow freely without needing to worry about Aqueducts.

[lockstep]

Solver, I don't know if this is still covered by your NDA, but can you reveal the effect of, say, an overall health of -1? Does this translate to -1 surplus food, or is the effect less straightforward?

EDIT: And thanks for answering my other questions.

[Solver]

City with -1 health loses 1 food, so yeah, it's -1 surplus food. Thus, unless you have high food cities, any unhealthiness will really stagnate your growth. -2 health is enough to stagnate or even start to starve most cities.

[sophist]

So it sounds like health isn't so much of a thing unto itself, but rather an anti-food device.

[Huttu]

Health seems to be just more flexible limit to population growth that fixed limits of 6 and 12 in civ3. This is much better system.

At first I expected health to affect to happiness too. Like -1 health = one unhappy people, which would be quite logical on first thought, but it would make food resources much more important that luxuries. Then food would act just like luxury resource, but would also add to population growth.

[lockstep]

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/620/620513/img_3125188.html

I just noticed this IGN screenshot: the city has access to 10 different health resources! Is this typical for the late game, or did the reviewer a lot of lucky deals? (Or is it simply because he played at a low difficulty level?)

[Solver]

The reviewer is playing at a very low difficulty level - no higher than Warlord. Having 10 health resources in the late game is possible, though, if you've either conquered a lot of territory or are on friendly terms with the other civilizations.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by lockstep

http://media.pc.ign.com/media/620/620513/img_3125188.html

I just noticed this IGN screenshot: the city has access to 10 different health resources! Is this typical for the late game, or did the reviewer a lot of lucky deals? (Or is it simply because he played at a low difficulty level?)

Looking at the minimap, it looks like he has conquered half the world... even if he didn't get all different resources, trading for the missing ones should be easy. It looks like he has plenty of other resources.

DeepO