Overpopulation

[Snaeferu]

how do I make that go away? , my cities are suffering from unhappiness due to it being "too crowded"

[Spaced Cowboy]

Whip it, whip it good!

[sovietwaffle]

That would be the fast and easy way! If you don't feel like sacrificing pop you can try using as many modifiers as you can to make your people happy.

The penalty is automatically added for each person in your population in your city (So, even a size one city will have one unhappy face)

[Blake]

Specialists are a good way to keep food down, as is working mines.

You can turn on "Avoid Growth" (the govoner setting), this causes the cities food bar to fill, but once it's filled the city wont grow. It does this by some voodoo other than changing the worker allocation - so even if it shows as having a food surplus, it wont actually grow while avoid growth is on. Remember to turn avoid growth back off when the happiness cap is relieved.

Another alternative is to just starve the city back down to the happy limit, it's quick and easy to do. But it's better to use Avoid Growth because then you have the full food bar.

[Hauptman]

There is also a handy little button labeled "stop city growth" Feel free to use that. =)


Specialists pay off huge. keep an eye on the happy cap and assisgn specialists when they are just below it....


Or pop rush.

[Snaeferu]

thanks

[speerross]

Ok maybe im missing something but none of this seems ideal. I've always assumed it would be good to have a large city for the increased production? So cutting your population hardly seems like a good thing. When you've got population as specilists do they still cause unhappiness?

[Leifmk]

Originally posted by speerross
Ok maybe im missing something but none of this seems ideal. I've always assumed it would be good to have a large city for the increased production? So cutting your population hardly seems like a good thing.

Well, building up your infrastructure and acquiring luxury resources etc. so you get happy bonuses and can have a larger productive population is a pretty large part of the game. Limiting population growth or killing off a surplus is what you do when you can't get more happy bonuses just yet.

When you've got population as specilists do they still cause unhappiness?

Yes.

[Quillan]

Assume that a city can only support a population of 5 before people become unhappy. Assuming you do nothing, the city is just as productive at a population of 5 as it is with a population of 7, because the extra two citizens are angry and do nothing. They still eat food, though, so the growth of the city will stagnate. By controlling where the citizens work, you can stop the growth at 5 and get more productivity out of them, instead of just generating food that is wasted.

Now, there are some times when I see overpopulation as a good thing. Say that city grows to size 8, and has 3 angry citizens. You take a city from an enemy which has 2 luxuries in its radius and complete building a temple in the angry city. Suddenly all 8 citizens are working, and you don't have to wait for it to grow from size 5 to 8. If you are expecting to add a few points of happiness in the near future, then go ahead and crowd people in. If not, then you are better off moving the citizens to mines or specialist positions, so you get more hammers/beakers/commerce/culture from the max population than you would by just leaving them alone.

[joncnunn]

Myself, I've found that unless at war, healthiness is usually much more of an issue than happiness.

Much of the same applies, except the penalty for too unhealthy is much less severe [lost chance of a WLTPD] plus extra food eaten.

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Quillan
Assume that a city can only support a population of 5 before people become unhappy. Assuming you do nothing, the city is just as productive at a population of 5 as it is with a population of 7, because the extra two citizens are angry and do nothing. They still eat food, though, so the growth of the city will stagnate.

Two clarifications

1) If building workers/settlers it is less productive
2) With "rush building" the extra citizens might be more useful although the cost of this is fairly bad

[speerross]

Originally posted by Quillan
Assume that a city can only support a population of 5 before people become unhappy. Assuming you do nothing, the city is just as productive at a population of 5 as it is with a population of 7, because the extra two citizens are angry and do nothing. They still eat food, though, so the growth of the city will stagnate. By controlling where the citizens work, you can stop the growth at 5 and get more productivity out of them, instead of just generating food that is wasted.

Now, there are some times when I see overpopulation as a good thing. Say that city grows to size 8, and has 3 angry citizens. You take a city from an enemy which has 2 luxuries in its radius and complete building a temple in the angry city. Suddenly all 8 citizens are working, and you don't have to wait for it to grow from size 5 to 8. If you are expecting to add a few points of happiness in the near future, then go ahead and crowd people in. If not, then you are better off moving the citizens to mines or specialist positions, so you get more hammers/beakers/commerce/culture from the max population than you would by just leaving them alone.

OK makes a bit more sense now, but I've been getting level 20+ cities late game with nothing else to make them happy which is annoying. Also, unhappy citizens dont work, and if your getting 1 unhappy face per population over a certain cap or whatever it is you've still got a lot of unproductive citizens (say 10 happy faces 9 unhappy the city will register as happy but you;'ve got 9 unproductive citizens)

[Yosh]

Early game unhappiness really gives Slavery an opportunity to shine.

As a rule (one of the few rules in this game that is even somewhat consistent!), you should avoid unhappy faces like the plague...


Unless you are running slavery that is

In that case, you can gain *significant* turn advantages by whipping them!

Here is an example:

I have a city that is currently size 5, and has fish and wheat in its' radius. This city is a PERFECT candidate for the whip! Say the happiness cap is currently at 5; when the city grows to size 6, whip it for *2* pop!

No matter how many pop points you whip at one time, it only costs 1 unhappy face

By whipping for 2 pop, you a) increase your production by ~60 hammers (on normal speed), b) eliminate the unhappy face in your city, and c) complete a unit or building x turns faster than you otherwise would.

This example city will regain its' lost pop points very quickly, due to the nice food supply. Until you increase your happy cap, just keep whipping every 10 turns (or 15 on epic)! This is a great way to produce an initial early military force if you have nothing else to build

[Dominae]

Originally posted by speerross
OK makes a bit more sense now, but I've been getting level 20+ cities late game with nothing else to make them happy which is annoying. Also, unhappy citizens dont work, and if your getting 1 unhappy face per population over a certain cap or whatever it is you've still got a lot of unproductive citizens (say 10 happy faces 9 unhappy the city will register as happy but you;'ve got 9 unproductive citizens)

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but from what I understand that's not the way it works. In CIV, individual citizens are neither happy or unhappy, but they can be angry. Let me explain.

A city has two number values: Happiness and Unhappiness.

If Happiness >= Unhappiness, you do not suffer unhappiness problems: all your citizens can be assigned to work the land or become Specialists.

If Happiness < Unhappiness, for every point of difference one citizen is "Angry" and will refuse to work.

When we say a city is "unhappy", we are referring to this second case. This is obvious from the main map because the city will have a red face next to its name. In the city screen, you will see something like:

7 (Happy) < 8 (Unhappy) = 1 (Angry)

As your city grows, its Unhappiness number will grow naturally, there's nothing you can do about it. The reason will be "It's way too crowded", but it's just a game mechanic to ensure your city does not grow arbitrarily large without you having to take care of it somehow (like building Temples, etc.).

Therefore, if a city's Unhappiness number is, say, 9, this does not mean there are 9 unproductive citizens there. It just means you have to counterbalance the 9 Unhappy with at least 9 Happy.

When you build Temples, Colosseums, etc., you are not reducing the city's your Unhappy number (or threshold), you are increasing its Happy threshold. It amounts to the same.

If you keep getting Angry citizens in the late-game (or whenever), consider halting growth in your cities. As long as your city grows, its Unhappy threshold grows too; eventually you will run out of happiness-inducing stuff to take care of it. Just make sure those cities do not have a Food surplus anymore (by, say, assigning Specialists) - problem solved.

[guermantes]

Are the workers who build roads and improvements etc involved when the happy/unhappy faces are 'calculated'.

Or is the happy/unhappy ratio only decided by the figurative citizens who work the white circles on the city screen? (because workers and citizens are different things aren't they?)

I just don't understand why in my games the main problem always becomes fighting the red faces and to a lesser extent the unhealthy ones.

???

PS. Is there an obvious thing to do in the screenshot below to get rid of the unhappy face. (I pushed a market to the front of the build queue but I want to learn how to counter unhappiness and unhealthiness by other means then building buildings that yield coins and culture.)

Thanks!