Why would one ever want to 'avoid growth'?

[Strategist83]

All an unhappy citizen does is eat two food AKA slow growth. If the city starves because of the unhappy citizen... so what? He will starve to death and the population is happy again. Thus, a larger population is *always* preferable to a smaller one - even if it is made up in part by unhappy citizens.

[couerdelion]

It seems aa small effect

There are some small effects that unhappiness might have thought others may wish to confirm/deny these rumours

1) No parties for the King
2) Unless you get happiness up, the food will deplete your granary so that when the citizen dies of starvation, you have no food left.

But I think your “so what if they are unhappy” statement is a fair comment if the unhappiness is not your fault (eg pop-chopping or sending the little dears off to war). It seems to be more psychological on the player than anything else that happiness is important in this game.

Even less important seems to be health. In fact, the restricted diet ought to be healthier for some

[Blake]

It makes sense to use avoid growth in cities which don't have much food surplus for growing, set it to avoid growth as it hits the happy limit, so it's ready to grow when more happy is available.

For cities which grow like weeds, it's okay to let them overpopulate the city, as "preemptive growth" or for whipping.

[johnmcd]

-
- That unhappy person is emptying your granary
- No parties for the despot
- Maybe you could have rearranged tiles to get similar production, commerce and a specialist by rejigging your food focus squares.

+
+ The person is there, ready to work when you get your next shipment of silk
+ A Great Engineer will produce more hammers there towards a wonder (I think unhappy people count)

[Calvin Vu]

I don't interpret "avoid growth" as "avoid growth no matter what" but rather like "avoid growth which simply leads to unhappiness if there's a better alternative". A better alternative can come in the form of working on a cottaged squared or a mine instead of a farmed square; using specialists; or even using idle workers (an idle worker can provide 1 hammer and 3 beakers under Representation).

So comparing an angy citizen with nothing then the angry citizen is better. However, if you compare the angry citizen with something else which you might have got if you had avoided the excessive growth then most likely the "something else" will be better.

Lifting the happiness cap isn't easy, BTW. That is probably the biggest reason why playing at Emperor level and above is much harder.

[nbarclay]

Early in the game, angry citizens slow settler or worker production because they eat food without contributing anything and excess food is as good as shields for producing settlers and workers. That can make avoiding angry citizens in cities with a lot of excess food potential a very good thing. And using such cities to build settlers and workers can be an excellent way to keep them from outgrowing their happiness.

Later on, angry citizens aren't so clearly harmful, but it's still rare that I'd rather grow into a situation where I'll have an angry citizen than use one or more specialists to curb growth - and, in the process, accumulate great person points (assuming I can use any type of specialist other than the default). Or I might shift laborers around to focus less on food and more on something else, depending on what options are available.

Note that diverting income to the culture slider for happiness purposes can be a wonderful thing if it affects several cities, but may be extremely wasteful if only one or two cities need the happiness boost. So if the plan is to outgrow current happiness potential and use the culture slider to keep people happy, it may be useful to use specialists or labor reallocations to delay the point where the first one or two cities outgrow their happiness until at least another one or two are ready to join them. (The exact numbers would depend on the game settings being used.) Note, however, that if a city can keep growing even after it has an angry citizen, and the city will be able to get more than one happy face from a notch on the culture slider, it may be worthwhile to let it get an angry citizen so it can reach a point where its population takes maximum advantage of the culture slider sooner once other cities get big enough to make using the slider worthwhile.

Nathan

[Strategist83]

Thanks, everyone, for the replies. Good info.

Originally posted by johnmcd A Great Engineer will produce more hammers there
towards a wonder (I think unhappy people count)

They do not.

[Blake]

Lifting the happiness cap isn't easy, BTW. That is probably the biggest reason why playing at Emperor level and above is much harder.

Hmmm. For me culture-slider and monarchy solves all woes.

If I find myself in a position of little happiness, I make drama a priority. Then with 10% culture I get +2 happy in all cities. I either spread my own religion or my neighbours religion (often they'll do it for me), with the temples that's another +2 happy. then a couple garrisons per city is yet another +2 happy. So that's +6 happy before any happy resources, and on top of the 3 base happiness is +9. It's unusual to not (eventually) get 2-3 happy resources and at least one of them boosted, so size 12 is quite doable without any great investment.
And then there is the cathedrals with music, coliseums + another 10% culture... so that's +5, up to size 17. And at any time some more troops can be added.

[Hauptman]

look at it this way... a size 5 happy cap.

assume we have no high food squares, say its surrounded by forests. both on plains (1 food 2 hammer) and grassland (2 food 1 hammer).

At size 5 you need 10 food to not starve. you can substitute 2 grassland forests for 2 plains forests and work a total of 7 hammers and 8 food outside of the center square.

If you let the city grow to size 6, you now require 12 food to not starve, thus you have to keep all worked squares on the grass forests. producing 5 hammer and 10 food to break even. because you can still only work 5 tiles.

In this case a size 5 will outproduce the size 6 while not growing.