Newbie with second batch of questions

[Ari]

1. How does the game determine exactly in which of my cities my religion is founded? It seems to be random. Is there some way to control it?

My experience is that if I have two cities and found a religion, the religion is far more likely to be founded in the non-capital city. Which is *sweet* with one of the early religions because it expands your borders without needing to divert for a culture building early on.


With regard to road building, I've also found that the route the computer picks will make longer roads. I think the computer wants to build the roads the fastest, and doesn't take into account that they may then require longer travel (the computer's road path often avoids deserts and forests, since the former increases the time of construction and the latter requires wasting a move to get into).

With respect to barbarians, very early in the game when you're just seeing barbarian warriors, and defending with your own warriors, you might want to let them get right up to the city before meeting them (unless there are improvements in their way or there's a forest/forested hill in their path you can get to). Barbarians get a penalty when attacking a city (20% or so on prince) AND a penalty for being barbarians, whereas warriors get a 25% bonus for defending a city AND up to 25% for fortifying. Even barbarian archers have crummy odds against warriors in those circumstances (2*(25+25%) vs 3*(-25%+-5%).

[padillah]

Originally posted by NFIH


Nope. I really do mean they're spawning in plain view right next to my cities--no fog of war or dim areas anywhere nearby. I actually see them pop up because they keep coming from about the exact same spot. It's quite strange.

I don't mean to argue but that's not supposed to happen. You may have found a bug.

Are you sure the tile is not touched (even in the corners) by any other tile you can not see? They may be spawning in the FOW and just moving to the one tile you can see so it looks like they spawn there.

Maybe save the game and send it to Firaxis. They may be able to fix it or tell you what is going on.

Tom P.

[Harrier UK]

Originally posted by Ari
With regard to road building, I've also found that the route the computer picks will make longer roads. I think the computer wants to build the roads the fastest, and doesn't take into account that they may then require longer travel (the computer's road path often avoids deserts and forests, since the former increases the time of construction and the latter requires wasting a move to get into).

That seems the most logical path to take. In real life, if I was an ancient road builder, what is best - build a track around the forest in X days. Or waste time chopping down trees and build a track in x + y days. No contest.

I am sure (in general), they did not consider the travel times, just the build times. Those that did consider became the great leaders - if any did.

Or maybe the game should have an era option:

Early game build the quickest build route.
Late game (Industrial onwards) build the fastest travel route.

[OssomTossom]

Originally posted by Solver
3. You stop the population increase by turning citizens into specialists. When you see you don't want your city to grow, just make a specialist. Also, the governor has a toggle button for "No Growth" which will automatically manage the citizens in such a way as to not allow growth.

Strangely (but sometimes helpfully), if you turn on the "No Growth" the city won't grow, even if the food keeps accumulating to the point that the city should grow. I've long ago lost count of how many times I've smacked my forehead for forgetting to turn it off again long after the reasons for turning it on were gone (like when unhealthiness has been a problem, but I've later connected a new food resource to my city network). Sometimes, nine or ten turns have passed before I remembered to turn it off - so that's nine or ten turns that I could've had an extra citizen in the city.

[Urban Ranger]

With regards to founding a religion.

If you have only one city, clearly the religion will be founded there. If you have two, the relgion will be founded in the city which is not your capital in all likelihood. If you have three cities, the two cities that are not the capital have an equal chance of being the holy city.

[Jaybe]

Regarding the "no growth" button, you do NOT need the city governor "on" for this to work (which was a misconception I had for several months).

[Vynd]

Re: Newbie with second batch of questions

Originally posted by NFIH

3. I'm having a problem with starvation/stagnation by the mid-game. The issue doesn't seem to be about increasing bonuses for food production or working tiles (because I've pretty much built on all of them), but that the population itself is larger than the potential food production for that city. But there's no way to stop population increase except to build settlers or workers, which I don't need either. How do I manage this?

Everyone else's advice on this good. You might also want to check if the city is unhealthy. Look for a little green icon next to the city. Exceeding the maxmimum health for a city has an effect kind of like getting a penalty to your food production in that city. If you improve the health of the city then it may be able to grow to a larger size before you run into starvation.