Cities are too large and cramped. What to do?

[Mateo1041]

My wife and I are playing a LAN game and her cities are getting too large and the people are unhappy due to cramped quarters. Some of her cities are around 24 population. She has four cities that are 4-5 tiles apart. Any ideas?

My four cities are doing just fine with the exception of the occasional health issue (green frowns), but I don't think that can really be helped. For some reason my cities are still small enough (18 population or less) to not be much of a problem.

Thanks for any help you nice folks can offer. My wife and I are totally addicted to this game.

[Nikolai]

I presume she builds too many farms and doesn't use specialists?

[Willem]

Unhappiness due to being "Too Crowded" is a normal part of the game. The larger your city, the more unhappy people you're going to get. The way to offset that is to add buildings/resources that will add some happiness. Build things like Temples, Colosseums etc. and hook up or trade for luxuries.

You can also switch to the Hereditary Rule civic which gives 1 happy face for each military unit in the city. Another civic that helps is Free Religion, which gives 1 happy face for each religion in the city. However, you need to have access to more than one religion to work.

Or, if you have Drama, you can adjust your Culture spending. Every 10% increase will make 1 person happy and buildings like Theatre and the Colosseum will increase that by another happy face.

One piece of advice that you should follow is not to allow your cities to grow too quickly. In my games, I only allow a food surplus of 2. If I have anything over that, I'll put someone on a Forest square or a Mine, or I create a Specialist. That way your population doesn't get out of control and you have time to build the infrastructure you need to keep your people happy.

[Nikolai]

BTW, I myself tend to not use specialists, but it does help in holding the growth down. The main problem is probably too many farms.

[LordShiva]

Whip

[Snotty]

I find hereditary rule government the easiest way to deal with unhappiness for most of the game, however your wife may need to build significantly more military units than she otherwise would. In any case she should have at least one unit in each city at all times, regardless of her government type

[Mateo1041]

Originally posted by Nikolai
I presume she builds too many farms and doesn't use specialists?

We both put our workers on autobuild. Makes it easier so as to not micromanage like crazy.

[Mateo1041]

Originally posted by Willem
One piece of advice that you should follow is not to allow your cities to grow too quickly. In my games, I only allow a food surplus of 2. If I have anything over that, I'll put someone on a Forest square or a Mine, or I create a Specialist. That way your population doesn't get out of control and you have time to build the infrastructure you need to keep your people happy.

Can a city be automatically set to not produce a food surplus? You mean put a citizen on a forest square or mine? We're still a bit new to the city screen, so we'll have to look into it.

Thanks for the help so far everyone. Heredetary Rule seems like a great way to go and we both always have units defending our cities just in case.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Mateo1041
Can a city be automatically set to not produce a food surplus?

You can tell the city governor to "stop growth". It's the tiny button below "emphasize commerce" (gold coin) in the lower right corner of the city screen, to the left of the minimap.

[Jaybe]

The stop growth button will disallow growth even if the city governor is turned off. If conditions change & you can take more population, don't forget to turn off the stop growth!

[johnmcd]

There is no harm in growing a city fast, really, you're normally served well by getting your city to its ideal size as quickly as possible and then arresting growth in my opinion.

[Mateo1041]

How do you know when a city is too large, though? People get unhappy?

One last question. How close should cities be? I've always thought 4-5 tiles was minimum so as to not encroach on my other cities' resources. Does that sound about right?

Thanks for all your help so far. My wife and I really appreciate it. It looks like we still have a lot to learn!

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Mateo1041
How do you know when a city is too large, though? People get unhappy?

Yeah, that would probably be close to it... more generally, the city is too large when it would be generating more food/production/commerce/GPP/whatever with less population.

If you are just about to grow over the health cap and all you can work is an unimproved grassland (generating two food), then it's better to not grow, since you will need two food to feed the new population point and get -1 food penalty for the green frown (aka Mr. Ick), while only generating two new food - net loss of 1 food. If you can work a better plot (like a forested grassland), though, then it's a tradeoff: one less food for something extra (1 hammer from the forest). Your choice.

Similarly, growing past the happy cap is almost never a good idea - the only exception would be if it was to be only temporary (say, you have a happiness-increasing building in the works).

As a rule of thumb, you will not want to grow over the happy cap (maximum population that still does not produce anyone anger) and you will want to keep an eye on the healthy cap - there are situations where having some net unhealthiness in a city is ok, especially if you have a lot of food to offset the penalty.

Of course, the best thing to let your cities grow large and powerful is to make sure their happy/healthy caps are high enough - connect the proper resources, build the proper buildings, use the proper civics, learn how to use culture for happiness...

As for the optimal city distance... that's a tough one. It's situational and there are so many factors affecting the answer... If you could post a save, someone would tell you where your cities are too far apart and where they are ok (and why is that). Generally, though, it's impossible to say.

[Snotty]

I place my early cities close together for mutual protection, and because they cannot grow to full size early on as I dont have all the happiness/health techs I need.

Later in the game if I have cleared some space, I will try to place my cities in optimum positions as I can grow them large quickly as they can have all the buildings they want and all the worker turns they need to get their infrastructure down fast

[Mateo1041]

Ok, saved multi-player game is here (one of those links should work at least):

http://apolyton.net/upload/link/26518_MattSaraNetwork2.Civ4SavedGame

http://apolyton.net/upload/view/26518_MattSaraNetwork2.Civ4SavedGame

I'm the Americans and my wife is the English. I just took over the filthy Romans (to the north) last night and really steamrolled them. They're much easier than I thought.

If you could pick a population number that most commonly represents the happy cap, what would it be? That would help me have a point of reference. 20?

I did notice that the computer players place their cities closer than I generally do.