The Governor is really stupid!

[Willem]

Re: Re: The Governor is really stupid!

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


do you have a save of this?

No sorry. If it happens again I'll be sure to keep it. There's obviously some problems with the governor at the moment. As you can see from the posts here, it makes some strange choices sometimes.

[Enigma_Nova]

This would be why I turn Governors off for the most part and micromanage my cities.
Though I do have them set to 'maximise food' so that if I forget to check up on one, it will still continue developing.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
This would be why I turn Governors off for the most part and micromanage my cities.

I do too, but for some reason it sometimes still does things it's way, and disregards what I tell it to do. I don't purposefully check any options, I'd rather do it myself. The only thing I'll do occasionally is click on the centre square to quickly adjust my workers, then I'll manually rearrange them to my liking. But sometimes the governor will rearrange them again by the next turn. It can be rather annoying sometimes.

[Blake]

It's nessecary to manage the govoner, I usually use Food+Hammers, Food+Commerce, or Food+Hammers+Commerce. These settings will never produce specialists unless they are actually superier, for example it'll prefer an engineer to working an unmined plains hill.
If I want specialists I'll force them myself with the yellow borders.

I thus nearly never have problems with the govoner. But you can't expect them to read your mind.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blake
But you can't expect them to read your mind.

I don't expect that at all, I just expect them to do what they're told. But like I said, sometimes it just does things it's way and there's nothing I can do about it. I like to do things manually, but it kind of defeats the purpose if the governor just turns around and changes things on me, sometimes making stupid decisions while it's at it. I find I have to watch it like a hawk in order to correct it's frequent mistakes.

[GeoModder]

In my experience, the AI changes tiles sometimes when a city grows. Else it's of course when enemies wander around on worked tiles.

[Willem]

Originally posted by GeoModder
In my experience, the AI changes tiles sometimes when a city grows. Else it's of course when enemies wander around on worked tiles.

That's to be expected, but I've had it happen when none of the above occured, and with no management preferences selected.

[Blake]

You really need to post a screenshot or save game of it acting in a blatantly wrong way. I'm inclined to suspect that you're either not using it right, or the governer knows something you don't.

[byrath]

An option to automatically zoom to the city screen when a cities population changes would be most welcome. I find that if a city is growing rather quickly (+4 or more food surplus), the next citizen will usually not work a tile, but will be placed as a specialist.
In my opinion, citizens should never be made to work as specialists unless the city governor is turned on.

[Blake]

One other thing, is calculating the net value of a population point.

Each pop has the default net value of:
-2 food, -1 happy, -1 health.

Working a grassland tile:
-1 happy, -1 health.

Yes, working a tile which only produces 2 food has negative net benefit. Growth in and of itself is not a virtue. Unless you're doing something a bit strange you don't want your cities to grow beyond what is useful. And for this there is "Maximize Food" which works mostly as advertised. The default governor is a little dumb but fiddling with maximize food, hammers and commerce fixes things nicely.

My main complaint with the govoner is there is no "Maximize Commerce - No I Mean It!" option (and one for hammers and prehaps food). By default with max commerce, it'll prefer working a 2-4-0 iron mine to a 1-0-2 coastal tile, but if I REALLY want that next tech next turn I insist on working the far inferior tile. Simialler with hammers, if I REALLY want that unit built, i want the city to starve and neglect working that plantation dye! But since such situations are rare and transient I don't really begrudge having to micro the population. Bear in mind such "I Mean It!" settings would be incredibly self-destructive in the long run. I suspect some of the people in this thread want these "I MEAN IT!" settings all the time, not realising how damaging and self-destructive they would be, even in the fairly short term.

This is why i (and others) need to see screenshots or saved games, it's either an obscure bug or the people with complaints are doing something wrong, or they're doing very strange things but with good reasons, and prehaps some of us so-called experts who don't have governer problems don't realise the value of these very strange things. In any event there's either a bug to be solved or some educating to be done, merely complaining will do nothing for either case.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blake
This is why i (and others) need to see screenshots or saved games, it's either an obscure bug or the people with complaints are doing something wrong, or they're doing very strange things but with good reasons, and prehaps some of us so-called experts who don't have governer problems don't realise the value of these very strange things. In any event there's either a bug to be solved or some educating to be done, merely complaining will do nothing for either case.

I understand there are various reasons why the governor reorganizes tiles on it's own, but that still doesn't explaing why it would put the only citizen of a city on a Hill/Plains for 3 hammers, and completely neglect any growth in the city. It hadn't really occured to me that there might be a bug happening, but now that I do, I'll be sure to save a game when I see something strange going on.

[Blake]

The only case I can think of when it will put the only citizen on plains hill is when training a worker or settler (since food = hammers = food and cities don't grow while training worker/settler) and there is no better tile, in the opening moves the only better tiles (greater than 3 food+hammers) are a special in a forest, a food special on a river, and an oasis, in all cases, the governor will place the worker on the better option.

There ARE some other cases when you want the only worker to work a hill, this is to quickly build a lighthouse and/or granary and/or a defensive unit, however in my experience the govoner will not recognize these situations and will prefer to work a tile with food instead.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Blake
The only case I can think of when it will put the only citizen on plains hill is when training a worker or settler (since food = hammers = food and cities don't grow while training worker/settler) and there is no better tile, in the opening moves the only better tiles (greater than 3 food+hammers) are a special in a forest, a food special on a river, and an oasis, in all cases, the governor will place the worker on the better option.

The city had been building a settler earlier, but it had been awhile since was finished. Normally it would reset to go for tiles that allowed growth, but in this case it didn't. I've also had situations, as I've already mentioned, that the city would be starving even though there was a special food resource not being worked. And no I didn't have Limit Growth selected. There are some cases I've encountered where the governor fails to recognize a proper priority for allocations and does some very stupid things.

[Strategist83]

Yes, the city governor is an idiot. Although it helps enabling the 'focus on food' button. Then, when the city is about as large as happiness/health/whatever will allow, you disable it again.

So, for a newly founded production focused city, click both the 'food' and 'hammers' buttons.

[Strategist83]

Originally posted by Blake
Yes, working a tile which only produces 2 food has negative net benefit. Growth in and of itself is not a virtue. Unless you're doing something a bit strange you don't want your cities to grow beyond what is useful.

This in incorrect. A huge population makes it easier to win a diplomatic victory.