The Governor is really stupid!

[Blake]

That is included in "something a bit strange". Normal play for me would be having useful cities that pump out a strong military then take a bunch of extra cities.

[Willem]

Originally posted by 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.

But I don't want my cities too grow to fast. I try and keep a surplus of no more than two food, that gives me reasonable growth but also allows me to get more mines and specialist going. I don't trust the governor to keep it to that limit.

[TheHateMale]

I've found the advisors to be far more intelligent than in previous Civs. Now they'll look and - if two arrangements can provide the same output with differing amounts of workers - they'll use the arrangement with less workers and give you a specialist.

I think with the advisors, you need to bear in mind the help they give for recommended actions: They'll optimise as far as they can see, but they don't know your overall plan and thus may not have the bestt arrangement for *you*.

--

Willem: If it's not already possible to do that (likely) the SDK will almost certainly allow that sort of modification.

I'd like to see an automatic limit growth when you hit the happiness/health limit option. Of course, you wouldn't always want it (unhappy pop may not do any work, but you can sure as hell work them to death under slavery).

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by DudewithaWig
Did you have the wonder that gives +1 free specialist in all cities? I've found that when I get this wonder there will be an extra specialist that is created that I cannot get rid of by clicking the minus sign.

If, by turning off the auto-assign feature, you can turn these into workers for your city then there may be a bug.

I was playing around with this in my last game. You can find which one is the free specialist by hovering the mouse pointer over it nd the description of what the specialist is producing will also say that it is the free one.

You can't assign the free one to work a tile but if you add the specialist (the free one seems to default to an engineer) you can remove the free one and the one you assigned becomes free and the citizen goes back to working a tile.

[bonscott]

Why anyone would want to have the governors on in the first place is beyond me but....

One thing to look out for is when you take over an AI city more often then not the governor is turned on for that city so I've made it a habit to check and turn it off if need be. That has bitten me more then once when I forgot to check.

[Hauptman]

How the Gov'na works.

If left alone, and told nothing else, the Gov'na works the first "best" food tile, then after that wichever tile gives the most "units". that is wichever tile gives the most food/comerce/hammers combined. So it will after size 2 pick a gold mine (8 comerce, 1 food, 2 hammer) over a rice patty (5 food). This maximizes getting production into play the fastest.

Now it will continue this trend as it grows to get, what it deams, the most out of a city. And it will automaticly adjust tiles due to outside forces (a barbarian moves over your goldmine) and re-adjust. Now what happenes, is whenever you open you're city, and see it working a mine, when you want food, and you manually move it to the food, you TURN the Gov'na OFF. He is now out to lunch as he gets pissy if you tell him he sucks at his job. Now If a barbarian moves over you're rice patty, it WILL NOT adjust the tiles, it will simply (as in civ3) take that tile out of work, and replace it with a 1 hammer citizen. you can then quickly fall into what would apear to be a crappy AI Gov'na control of the city, when in fact, he blames you because you wouldn't let him do his job.

So how to combat this. Well if you look at the Gov'na box, you will notice all the correct forms he requires you to fill out whenever you would like something changed. Such as "emphasize food". Fill this form out, in triplicate, and submit it through proper channels, and he will make sure he gets the word out and does what you so nicely asked him to do. This however will not emphasize 1 thing to the complete deficit of anything else still. If you have a 2 food, 1 hammer tile or a 1 food, 5hammer tile, he will still choose the most productive tile, but he may think more on that food. maybe he counts it as 2 food, but he still would rather work that iron mine over the forest. And if that is still completely out of the question, the "NO I MEAN IT" type situation has come up, then perhaps your Gov'na needs a short vacation and you can adjust it for him. When you decide you're done with the "no i mean it" then you should call you're Gov'na back by clicking on the center square.

[Willem]

Originally posted by TheHateMale

Willem: If it's not already possible to do that (likely) the SDK will almost certainly allow that sort of modification.

Well someone will have to do it for me then, since I don't think I'll have the skills to do any work with the SDK. As I understand it, I'll have to be something of a programmer to do it, which I'm not.

[Denny]

Re: Re: The Governor is really stupid!

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


do you have a save of this?

Soren,

I've a save a of my city (after it's dropped to a 1) using specialists even if i select a 5 food square.

Please let me know if you would like a copy.

Denny

[Willem]

Just go ahead and post it anyway, I'm sure he'll get around to it.

[player1]

Originally posted by Willem
A lot of times the governor will create a Priest or other specialist and it won't let me remove it. I try to hit the minus button, but nothing happens. The only thing I can do is select another type of specialist. And no I don't have Mercantilism selected.

That's beacuse automation is turned ON, so AI thinks that any specialist is better then extra land tile used.
You can overide it by turning OFF automation, or persuade governor to optimize food + hammers + commerce.

[player1]

By the way to me some times, but rarely is happend for governors to choose tiles that are worse then other available.

And I'm not talking about AI choosing cottage tiles (when it makes
sense since it can grow), but some obvious cases when it uses worse tile then possible.

I guess that's possible bug in AI.

[Soren Johnson]

Re: Re: Re: The Governor is really stupid!

Originally posted by Denny


Soren,

I've a save a of my city (after it's dropped to a 1) using specialists even if i select a 5 food square.

Please let me know if you would like a copy.

Denny

sure, go ahead and post it...

[Willem]

Originally posted by player1


That's beacuse automation is turned ON, so AI thinks that any specialist is better then extra land tile used.
You can overide it by turning OFF automation, or persuade governor to optimize food + hammers + commerce.

There's problems with the citizen automation though. I just had a city in my current game go from size 5 to 3 while it was building a Settler. I didn't realize that citizen automation was turned on there. When I looked, it was farming an irrigated Floodplain with 4 food even though there was a Pig Pasture with 5+ food available, and not being used.

[Rowick Hepan]

Has anyone had trouble with GP factories where the governor keeps disbanding all those speciallists??

I turn the governor off and create lots of specialists so that the city has zero population growth.

Then the next time I turn around all my speciallist have gone and the city has usually grown and has all sorts of unhappiness / health problems.

Anyone know any tricks to stop this?

[Hauptman]

Force them, by clicking the + sign next to them.

However after anarchy they still go away. so changing civs requires going back in to force them.