WLTBoss one year, Anarchy the next.

[Jim W]

I'm reaching the end of a longish game, one in which I will not likely get the spaceship built in time. Part of the problem is that the the last few centuries, I've been having anarchy with the attendant loss of production. With great fuss and bother, I try to correct this, then suddenly practically every one of my cities is celebrating We Love the Boss Day.

I just get used to running normally then, for no reason that I can see, all the mayors are fleeing in panic again. Last time around, I lost a few units for lack of food before I could correct the situation. And sure enough, shortly thereafter, everybody loved me again.

Now, I know very well that I am nowehre near mastering the game. But somewhere there's got to be a technique for keeping in the middle, and avoiding this see-saw effect.

The manual, extensive as it is, is little help. How, for instance, do I tell when a citizen is happy or unhappy? Am I suposed to peer closely at thos faces and see if they're smiling or not?

Any advice would be appreciated.

JimW

[DaveV]

If you press the F4 key, you can scroll through a list of your cities; any cities in disorder will have their names printed in red. Note that this list becomes "stale" as you move through your turn - it shows the status for each city as of the last time you looked at that city display or the beginning of the turn. If you want to update the F4 display, you can either scroll through all of your city displays, or alter the tax sliders.

Having no red cities on the F4 page at the end of your turn is still not a guarantee that your cities won't riot; if a city grows or an unfriendly unit bumps one of your workers off a high-trade square, you still risk disorder. Switch out of Democracy if you don't want to be plunged into anarchy any more - this "feature" applies only to that government. If you have your heart set on a democratic government, just resign yourself to a lot of maintenance.

[jpk]

Just before you click the end of turn button, go through the production window for each city and count the number of happy citizens and the number of angry citizens. If you have more angry citizens than happy citizens, the city will riot unless you do something. If you have equal numbers of Happy and unhappy citizens and your city will grow in population, there is a good chance the city will riot on the next turn unless you do something.

The thing to do is adjust the individual workers. Take someone off a mine or forest square and put them on an ocean square. You may have to take them off production entirely and create an entertainer.

If a significant number of your cities have entertainers even though there are unworked squares you might want to consider raising your luxury rate.

You do not mention what kind of government you have. With Republic or Democracy you are penalized for having too many military units roaming the country side.

[Jim W]

This here is a vitally important piece of info, which I don't believe I've seein in the Manual anywhere. I should be looking at the colours of the faces!

"One suggestion is on the City Production screen, click on the 'Happy' button. There you can easily see the mood of each citizen: light blue for happy, dark blue for content, red for unhappy and black for really pissed off."

Thanks a lot,

JimW

[Steve Clark]

One suggestion is on the City Production screen, click on the 'Happy' button. There you can easily see the mood of each citizen: light blue for happy, dark blue for content, red for unhappy and black for really pissed off. It also tells you exactly how the units/improvements/wonders are affecting happiness in that city. I'm sure others can tell you better than I how to micromanage the happiness factor. Good question.