Worker strategies? and ? on overpopulation

[justinparks]

I've just recently begun to get into strategizing with this game. I've always just warmongered my way through, and its always worked for me. Recently found this site, and the strategies presented opened my eyes for what this game could really mean for me. So I have some questions that I haven't found answers to:


In single player games, I don't mind controlling all my workers manually. I have all the time I want per turn to make them do whatever I choose. However, in multiplayer games, I tend to set them to build automatically, so I'm not always seeing that flashing message "Waiting for YOU to finish your turn".

But how do I tell the computer WHAT I want the workers to focus on? In the past, I've built a bunch of cottages around a newly formed city using about 5 workers. Immediately afterwards, I turned them over to the AI, letting them build automatically. A few turns later I noticed that they'd removed all my cottages in favor of farms.

How do I prevent this?



The next question I have is... are cottages the best way to go? I understand that in certain situations, certain improvements are possibly better. But cottages upgrade themselves to become more worthwhile over time, so I've tended to use them. Seems wrong to me to have a farm that gives +1 to food in a place where I COULD have a village or town that gives +5 gold instead (or whatever they give. Honestly can't remember now).

What are the situational uses for each of the basic land improvements? If my city is growing slowly, or is gray, are farms a good way to improve that?

What if I want a city to be capable of cranking out military units? Are mines and other improvements that add +hammers the best way to go? If a city has all mines surrounding it, therefore has more hammers, but a lesser population (I'm assuming) than a city surrounded with farms, which one produces units faster?




Finally: I've been having issues with my citizens being angry due to overpopulation. I can't find a solution in the civlopedia... Is this a demand for me to build settlers and expand? Or is it an indication that I should be building farms / something else? I've tried just expanding my city count previously, but that doesn't seem to help. And eventually, I run out of territories to expand to. Do they want me to build more cities within my own empire? (I tend to spread my cities out a bit... would maybe building cities closer together help with this? I've been hesitant to do this, for fear of what might happen to the populations / building power of the original cities that the new city would be borrowing tiles from. I've seen the computer civs with cities almost immediately next to each other though... is this a strategy, or poor AI design?)

[Yosho]

Re: Worker strategies? and ? on overpopulation

Originally posted by justinparks
I've just recently begun to get into strategizing with this game. I've always just warmongered my way through, and its always worked for me. Recently found this site, and the strategies presented opened my eyes for what this game could really mean for me. So I have some questions that I haven't found answers to:


In single player games, I don't mind controlling all my workers manually. I have all the time I want per turn to make them do whatever I choose. However, in multiplayer games, I tend to set them to build automatically, so I'm not always seeing that flashing message "Waiting for YOU to finish your turn".

But how do I tell the computer WHAT I want the workers to focus on? In the past, I've built a bunch of cottages around a newly formed city using about 5 workers. Immediately afterwards, I turned them over to the AI, letting them build automatically. A few turns later I noticed that they'd removed all my cottages in favor of farms.

How do I prevent this?

There's a setting in options in the main civ menu that lets you set it so workers on auto never replace existing improvements.

The next question I have is... are cottages the best way to go? I understand that in certain situations, certain improvements are possibly better. But cottages upgrade themselves to become more worthwhile over time, so I've tended to use them. Seems wrong to me to have a farm that gives +1 to food in a place where I COULD have a village or town that gives +5 gold instead (or whatever they give. Honestly can't remember now).

What are the situational uses for each of the basic land improvements? If my city is growing slowly, or is gray, are farms a good way to improve that?

If you have pleanty of happiness and health, I think the best way to get a city paying quickly is to have a mix of farms and cottages; if you have two cities surrounded by grassland, and city A has 2 farms and cottages and city B has all cottages, city A will have double the food surplus (+4 a turn instead of +2), and will grow a lot faster; I find that a city with a few farms actually ends up working more cottages then a city with all cottages, just because the population ends up so much higher.

Also, you probably want to have enough farms or windmills so you can eventually work all of your hill and plains squares in the city radius; a city surrounded by plains needs farms or it can never grow past size 3.

Finally: I've been having issues with my citizens being angry due to overpopulation. I can't find a solution in the civlopedia... Is this a demand for me to build settlers and expand? Or is it an indication that I should be building farms / something else? I've tried just expanding my city count previously, but that doesn't seem to help. And eventually, I run out of territories to expand to. Do they want me to build more cities within my own empire? (I tend to spread my cities out a bit... would maybe building cities closer together help with this? I've been hesitant to do this, for fear of what might happen to the populations / building power of the original cities that the new city would be borrowing tiles from. I've seen the computer civs with cities almost immediately next to each other though... is this a strategy, or poor AI design?)

Building settlers isn't really a long-term solution to overpopulation, the way it could be in older civ games. If you're having trouble with happiness, then first, get a religion (you don't necessarally have to found it) and built temples; later, you can switch to the Hereditary Rule civic, which gives you happiness for the units in your cities. Also, try to get as many resources as you can.

[SandMonkey]

Farms: I tend to place them on grassland if I can, just because if i'm going to devote a square to food production you might as well try and max out the food per square. That said, for flood plain i usually split cottages/farms. Farms become a lot more productive late in the game after biology when they all get +1 food. Having a few farms is also helpful if you like to try and produce a Great Person.

Overpopulation: One trick I've seen people mention is to run the Slavery civic, and if you have say +3 unhappy you can just pop rush the 3 extra citizens and stay just as productive as you were before.

[zabrak]

The next question I have is... are cottages the best way to go? I understand that in certain situations, certain improvements are possibly better. But cottages upgrade themselves to become more worthwhile over time, so I've tended to use them. Seems wrong to me to have a farm that gives +1 to food in a place where I COULD have a village or town that gives +5 gold instead (or whatever they give. Honestly can't remember now).

It's tough to compare the value of food versus production and commerce. Food is what supports (and with a surplus, grows) a city's population; that population in turn works the surrounding tiles (or acts as specialists), generating production and commerce. Figuring out the optimal city population size and growth rate, and how to use each citizen over time, is the central question of the game. In other words, the answer to your question isn't paragraph-length, it's book-length.

What are the situational uses for each of the basic land improvements? If my city is growing slowly, or is gray, are farms a good way to improve that?

The only way, actually. Well, certain resources have a food bonus with the relevant worker improvement, plantations/pastures/fishing boats. Oh, and settling a Great Merchant gets a city a +1 food.

What if I want a city to be capable of cranking out military units? Are mines and other improvements that add +hammers the best way to go? If a city has all mines surrounding it, therefore has more hammers, but a lesser population (I'm assuming) than a city surrounded with farms, which one produces units faster?

Again, this is the central question of the game, at least as it regards domestic management. The short answer is: it depends. Fortunately, the processes of the game are all fairly transparent. Here's a fairly common situation: let's say you've got an extra citizen, and you're looking at two tiles to employ her -- one is a flat grassland with forest (2 food, 1 hammer), the other is a grassland hill with a mine (1 food, 3 hammers). A short-sighted player might just work the forested tile, since you'd break even on food and pick up a hammer. But the clever player would chop down that forest and build a farm there -- now a citizen working that tile generates 3 food (but no hammers), creating a surplus that will eventually create a new citizen who can work the mined hill. So now you're still breaking even on food (2 citizens require 4 food, 3 from the farm and 1 from the hill), but instead of getting 1 hammer, you're getting 3.

Now, there are a bunch of other considerations, like commerce, the production bonus from clearing the forest, the health bonus from not clearing it, etc. But my point is that it ain't a mystery; it's all stuff you can predict exactly how it'll work out.

Finally: I've been having issues with my citizens being angry due to overpopulation. I can't find a solution in the civlopedia... Is this a demand for me to build settlers and expand? Or is it an indication that I should be building farms / something else? I've tried just expanding my city count previously, but that doesn't seem to help. And eventually, I run out of territories to expand to. Do they want me to build more cities within my own empire? (I tend to spread my cities out a bit... would maybe building cities closer together help with this? I've been hesitant to do this, for fear of what might happen to the populations / building power of the original cities that the new city would be borrowing tiles from. I've seen the computer civs with cities almost immediately next to each other though... is this a strategy, or poor AI design?)

I mean no disrespect to Yosho and SandMonkey, but I think they've misinterpretted your question. Here's how happiness works: the bigger a city gets, the more you've got to do to keep the citizens happy, and thus productive. This is represented by the red frowny faces, which accumulate from a bunch of possible sources, but first and foremost is simply the size of the city. A size 8 city is going to have at least 8 unhappy points (possibly more, from other sources). The game explains this as unhappiness due to overpopulation, but it has nothing to do with how many cities you have or what kind of lebensraum your civ has, which I think is the source of your confusion.

There's nothing you can do to lower the population-based unhappy points (other than starving the city down, I suppose). The only thing you can do is counteract them by adding more yellow happy faces. There are a number of different ways to do that - luxury resources, temples, certain wonders, etc. As long as a city has equal or greater happy points than unhappy points, you won't have any useless angry citizens.

[CerberusIV]

There are three solutions to overpopulation giving unhappy/unhealthy citizens.

First is the Slavery civic which allows you to use up the excess population to rush things.

Second is to acquire more happy/health resources or change to a different civic that can cope with the situation (I often research medicine right after assembly line so that I can build hospitals or switch to environmentalism civic to cancel out the 3 unhealthy faces a factory and coal plant give).

Third way is to keep a close eye on the city growth and turn growth off just before the city goes over the limit on health/happiness. You do then need to remember to turn growth back on if you switch civics or gain resources that can support more citizens (one of the buttons in the governor box on the city screen does this).

[Ijuin]

Windmills also grow more powerful as the game progresses, although this is due to technology bonuses instead of age of the improvement. When you can first build Windmills, they give +1 food and +1 commerce. After getting Replacable Parts, they also give you +1 hammers. It is at this point that I replace most of my Mines with Windmills (except for tiles that have mineral resources on them that need to have Mines)--I think that +1/+1/+1 from Windmills is worth more to me than +0/+2/+0 from Mines. When you get Electricity, you get an additional +1 commerce from Windmills, resulting in a +1/+2/+2 improvement. Generally I put these on most of my hills, while Cottages go on the flat lands, with the occasional Workshop for the few cities that are surrounded by mostly unforested grassland. Forest tiles get Lumbermills for the extra hammer.

[kittenOFchaos]

Originally posted by Ijuin
Windmills also grow more powerful as the game progresses, although this is due to technology bonuses instead of age of the improvement. When you can first build Windmills, they give +1 food and +1 commerce. After getting Replacable Parts, they also give you +1 hammers. It is at this point that I replace most of my Mines with Windmills (except for tiles that have mineral resources on them that need to have Mines)--I think that +1/+1/+1 from Windmills is worth more to me than +0/+2/+0 from Mines. When you get Electricity, you get an additional +1 commerce from Windmills, resulting in a +1/+2/+2 improvement. Generally I put these on most of my hills, while Cottages go on the flat lands, with the occasional Workshop for the few cities that are surrounded by mostly unforested grassland. Forest tiles get Lumbermills for the extra hammer.

Agreed, with the exception of extracting key resources windmills should replace your mines later on in the game. Whilst cottages on hills are the best ultimately, I don't think I could put up with the low production of hammers throughout the game that would bring.

[guermantes]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
There are three solutions to overpopulation giving unhappy/unhealthy citizens.

/snip/

Third way is to keep a close eye on the city growth and turn growth off just before the city goes over the limit on health/happiness. You do then need to remember to turn growth back on if you switch civics or gain resources that can support more citizens (one of the buttons in the governor box on the city screen does this).

I am probably daft but I do not understand this at all.
-what's the benefit from turning growth off like you say?
-is this strategy dependent on having a certain civics?
-I presume that this is dependent on already emphasizing growth as opposed to food or production, but do I need to be emphasizing growth for a long time before turning it off before 'growing', or are there dynamic effects?

Go Offaly!

[zabrak]

-what's the benefit from turning growth off like you say?

You can reassign a citizen from working a tile that produces extra food to one that produces extra hammers or commerce. Let's say you have a city with 6 citizens, 7 smiley faces, and a surplus of 2 food per turn. Everything's great. Soon, you grow an extra citizen - should she work that flat grassland forest (2 food, 1 hammer) and keep the growth going? No, because growing an eighth citizen is worthless, as she'll be unhappy. So instead, have her work that mined plains hill (0 food, 4 hammers). It'll stop your growth, but that growth won't do you any good right now, whereas the extra hammers will.

-is this strategy dependent on having a certain civics?

Stopping growth is just a temporary means of optimization. Eventually, you'll want to get growing again, since population is power. Attaining and switching to new civics is one way to lift the "happiness cap" -- more smiley faces means more useful citizens. There are, of course, other ways to get more smiley faces - luxuries, religion, etc.

-I presume that this is dependent on already emphasizing growth as opposed to food or production, but do I need to be emphasizing growth for a long time before turning it off before 'growing', or are there dynamic effects?

This is dependent on so many factors -- the surrounding land, your tech position, what units and buildings you need to produce, maintenance calculations, etc. -- that it's impossible to give a blanket answer. But generally it's a good bet to grow fairly quickly till you hit whatever the present happiness limit is, then turn off growth as you search for ways to lift it. Absolutely breakneck growth can leave you short of necessary production/commerce along the way, and too slow growth is bad for obvious reasons.

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by guermantes

I am probably daft but I do not understand this at all.
-what's the benefit from turning growth off like you say?

Quite simple. If the city has reached the point where the next citizen will be unhappy then, unless you will very shortly have a building/resource/civic that will make that citizen happy and therefore productive, it is better for the city not to grow. Turn off city growth and the governor (assuming you use governors) will reassign some citizens to produce more hammers and commerce and less food either from working different tiles or becoming specialists. So you get more hammers/commerce/beakers/GPP rather than an unhappy citizen contributing nothing.

If you don't use governors then you can rearrange the citizens manually (although it is still worth turning growth off if you still have a small food surplus.

Once you can keep more citizens happy turn growth back on.

It isn't so important with unhealthy citizens as they keep working. That depends on how much surplus food the city has as unhealthy citizens cost one extra food but it may be more efficient not to grow an unheealthy citizen.

[Vynd]

Different improvements are best for different cities and/or strategies. Which to build depends on what you want your city to do. Obviously you already understand that cottages are good for gold and gold is ultimately what makes or breaks most empires.

Generally speaking you want all of your cities to grow up to the maximum population they can support in terms of health and/or happiness. For this you need food, which you can get from farms and windmills. Except for city sites that are naturally rich in food, most cities will eventually need some of these in order to keep growing. Cities that are naturally poor in food may need farms early and often.

Excess food (from farms, windmills, or just natural abundance) also opens up the possibility of working tiles that don't produce much food themselves. Like mines and quaries, for instance. Obviously you want to build these on special resources. And once you have the mine or quary working that tile can dramatically boost production in the city. But even cities without mineral resources nearby can benefit from some mines or watermills, because they'll speed up the rate at which it builds things like Libraries, Banks, Wonders of the World, and military units.

[Overcast32]

Don't consider it "stopping the growth" permanently - but just for a time while the rest of the city catches up to the population.

In the early game, I like that fast growth. The further I get into the game the more I slow growth. By then, I'm needing the commerce and industry anyway. I had Japan going real strong this weekend. Into the 18th century running about 10/20% culture and 70% research - all the while, still making 70 gold on the average, per turn.

Try not to let one city take all your bonus resources either - if you have a nice little spot with 5 resources all close - see if you can get one city to use 3 of those and another new city can have the remaining two. I've put cities in the middle of excellent gem+gold resources only to find there's no one to work them because of the lack of farms.

Didn't take me long to bank up the cash to upgrade all the units when I dropped the science to 20 for a few turns.

My typical city consists of about 3 farms, mines as needed, and cottages. Oh - and by the way, forest contributes to good health - jungle to bad health. I'm pretty sure these play a role in happiness as well Pay attention to the stats different things give on the mouse-overs in the game. It will tell you that Cattle give Health, Spices give Happiness, etc...

So a little bit of each, leaning on Cottages as the predominant improvement, seem to help the most in the long run. Then you can move workers around to tailor what your city's needs are. Don't forget the usefulness of Specialists too! I can take a citizen from a 4 coin Village (lose 2 gold per turn) and turn him into a merchant and net one more gold per turn. If my science is running at 70% and I get in the red, even by just one gold, I'll scan my cities... Find one that's growing faster than it needs to, and move some workers to commerce. Try to keep the growth in check - you want to grow, just not too fast. Although the first couple cities - in the first part of the game do need to grow fast. Get them grown up, so they can become Industry and Commerce centers.

That commerce is just as important - new techs help Health and Happiness a lot.

Trading or obtaining the luxury resources seems to help a ton. Furs, Gems, Spices, etc... If a civ wants to trade your Cow for their Fur - do it, as long as you aren't having issues with growth. I never trade the last of a resource either - unless I'm way up on what the resource is giving. If a Civ wants to trade Gems for my only Cow, I'll do it - if I need happiness more than health.

Think balance

[justinparks]

Wow, this is FAR more information than I'd have hoped for, thank you!

I actually read this thread yesterday, and tried the changes... I've found that I apparently really suck at guaging what needs improved, where.

I tried manually improving the land with my workers, rather than letting them automatically improve, and ran into issues with my economy. I'm unsure as of yet if it was due to my rapic expansion, or from the improvements I was making with my workers.

But for the first time ever, I couldn't keep my science research over 50%. I'd go bankrupt. I don't understand that, as my cities weren't really SMALL, and I had a bunch of upgraded cottages.

So I put the workers back on auto update, with the ability to replace existing improvements, and now I'm back up to 80% science research.

First time playing marathon though. Maybe that has something to do with it? I'm still far ahead of the other civs in technology, so I can't decide if I did something wrong, or if the game just behaves that way in Marathon. I'm guessing not though, since I haven't heard anyone else mention the issues with economy.

At the start, I was attacked by 4 other civs, in rapid succession. I ended up having to focus entirely on military, in order to stay alive. And I quadrupled my empires size due to constantly taking cities. Due to the military focus for the first several hours of the game, I didn't get to build most of the economic improvements... things like libraries or courthouses. So maybe that's what caused my super low income? Too quick an expansion without the proper economic structures in place to support it?

I ain't complaining though. Due to the massive expansion from the start, I now have the strongest military, I'm number one out of 18 civs, by almost a thousand points... And I managed to catch up with my tech tree by trading with some of the lower civs, upgrading to trading with the higher ranked civs, until now, where I'm a good 6 techs ahead of everyone else.

Too many factors to consider in this game. :P Which I love, don't get me wrong. Its just really weird not understanding WHY I'm winning or losing. heh


Got another question though... Is there a city limit you guys use when manually improving the land?

I have about 30 cities now, and improving everything manually got to be a bit of a chore. Especially when I ended up going back to replace certain improvements later on as I got the technologies to improve even further (such as pastures or access to irrigated farms).

Its probably a non-issue for me at the moment, since the computer seems to know what its doing better than me... but I'd like to know how you guys do it. :P How many workers do you use?

[Ijuin]

I find that having about the same number of workers as cities works out well--by the time I reach Replacable Parts and can build windmills, watermills, and lumber mills, I have already placed most of the farms, cottages, and mines that I want and can begin building mills right away. Then there is a brief lull before railroads become available.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Ijuin
Windmills also grow more powerful as the game progresses, although this is due to technology bonuses instead of age of the improvement. When you can first build Windmills, they give +1 food and +1 commerce. After getting Replacable Parts, they also give you +1 hammers. It is at this point that I replace most of my Mines with Windmills (except for tiles that have mineral resources on them that need to have Mines)--I think that +1/+1/+1 from Windmills is worth more to me than +0/+2/+0 from Mines. When you get Electricity, you get an additional +1 commerce from Windmills, resulting in a +1/+2/+2 improvement. Generally I put these on most of my hills, while Cottages go on the flat lands, with the occasional Workshop for the few cities that are surrounded by mostly unforested grassland. Forest tiles get Lumbermills for the extra hammer.

That's true, but it's worth mentioning that once you get railroads, mines get another +1 hammer, going up to +3 and making it a closer decision again.