Overcrowding questions..

[Talents]

For the life of me I cannot figure out how to solve overcrowding.

Is it a matter of building cottages and working them?
Are roads required?
Is the (+) medic symbol on the city screen somehow involved?

Thanks for the help.

[VoltronVI]

I was just about to post the exact same question. Cottages were one of my theories too, but hasn't seemed to help much when I have attempted it.

[Tennyson]

(+) is the health of your city. If the town gets unhealthy it will put off noxious green vapours and a green face will appear on the main screen. Build a harbor, granary, aqueduct, grocer or hospital as appropriate to add health.

A red face means you have unhappiness. Add temples, markets, etc to add happiness to the city.

[QuestGAV]

Hooking up additional resources will make the biggest difference for health, most of the health based improvements work off of the resources you have access to.

[Minute Mirage]

Overcrowding simply means that each new citizen adds one of both unhappiness and disease (or whatever they are called). You can't change this, but you can add more happiness and health to the city so that they are in balance.

[Arrian]

You need one or more of the following:

1) more happiness buildings (temple, market (w/ certain resources), forge (w/gold, IIRC), etc.);

2) more culture (only if you've gotten to the tech that allows it and have built theatres and/or colosseums); or

3) to take the proactive step of halting a city's growth before it gets overcrowded (when your city's happiness is balanced - like 9 - 9 in the city screen), pull a citizen off the land and make him a specialist (priest, scientist, whatever) - until you've balanced the food intake so that growth stops or slows enough that you can fit in a happiness build before it gets bigger.

"Overcrowding" is just a factor in unhappiness... it's not related to health (that's another matter).

-Arrian

[meowsqueak]

The key is not to consider the unhappiness due to overcrowding as the final happiness score for a city - it is in fact a constant (related to city size) that needs to be offset by happy things. Your city is only nett unhappy if the intrinsic unhappiness exceeds your happiness points.

Think of it like this: I am $100 in debt (unhappiness), but I hold $150 cash in my hand (happiness). I shouldn't be worried as my nett financial position is good (nett happiness), since I can pay off the debt and still have $50. The difference with Civ4 is the unhappiness debt is unpayable, but as long as you can cover it then it doesn't matter (ignoring interest).

[lokiju]

Hell, just turn on slavery and use those extra lazy bastards!

[DeepO]

Originally posted by lokiju
Hell, just turn on slavery and use those extra lazy bastards!

pop-rushing gives you more unhappiness

DeepO

[snepp]

Originally posted by DeepO



pop-rushing gives you more unhappiness

Unhappiness yes, but you're healthier for it, environmentalists rejoice!

[Dr,ape]

Yeah, there is an idea to solve the world's problem of over population -- SLAVERY!!

We'll have more productivity, less unheathiness (think Medicare), and more food to go around (mmm sheep)

[CiverDan]

If your cities are unhealthy you can either:

1. Hook up more food resources
2. Build Aqueducts, Grocers, etc.
3. stop/slow city growth with cottage spam and/or converting citizens to specialists.

Eviromentalism comes so late why change to it. Once you get Future Tech your heath and happiness problems will quickly be over.