Unhappy first citizen.

[DrSpike]

Does anybody know how to determine the number of cities you can have before the first person is unhappy (on deity)? How is this affected by (a) difficulty level, (b) map size and (c) govt. I looked in the GL, but there doesn't seem to be a definitive list. I know in SMAC there is a formula as a function of map size and difficulty level, is there something similar for civ2?

[La Fayette]

Yes, the first red face depends upon difficulty level, map size and government.
At deity level, small map, the max number of cities you can build without any red face is:
Despotism: 4
Monarchy: 6
Republic: 8
(I almost never build more)

(La Fayette, sorry not to have the complete table in mind)

(La Fayette, quite sure that the complete table can be found in the GL and someone will give you the right address)

[La Fayette]

Re: Unhappy first citizen.

Originally posted by DrSpike
Does anybody know how to determine the number of cities you can have before the first person is unhappy (on deity)?

How to determine?
You save your game. You build one more city. If you get a red face and you don't want it, you restart from your save.
(IMO this is testing, not at all cheating).

[Smash]

despo-deity
medium-5
large-6

I think total pop and/or total distance of all cities from capitol may be a factor also.Often I have gotten 1 after city growth rather than a new city being built.The riot factor does some funny things.It gets even more wonky if you have The Gardens.

iirc
Monarchy deity
medium 8
large 10

[La Fayette]

unhappiness

Dr Spike
I just reread the GL for you.
The thread is named 'unhappiness...' (as might have been expected ).
It is not completely conclusive. Therefore, if you feel like it, you can open your lab and test.
Good civing Dr.

[DrSpike]

Cheers La Fayette, I checked out the table and it confirms my general experience, though the reason I asked is that there seems to be some randomness in exactly which cities go into revolt. Guess this isn't quantifiable.

Of course the interesting question is how to deal with the problem. One way would be to expand up to the limit, build some happiness reducing infrastructure, go to monarchy and expand some more. This only leaves you with 6 cities on a normal map before republic, which isn't enough. What I usually find myself doing is escorting settlers to where I want the new city with a military unit, which briefly stops the new city going into revolt. With small size cities martial law and the occasional entertainer can keep your original cities under control, even if the first citizen decides he's unhappy all of a sudden (I can't find the prozac option, that would help )

This method means you can usually expand to 8 cities under despotism (ie just before the second multiple of the 4 cities allowed - I think this is how it works, feel free to shoot me down though) and 12 under monarchy, which is more acceptable. Of course, hanging gardens is a great wonder if you want to expand more.

[La Fayette]

Dr Spike
Some people on this forum love building one city (OCC) and, among those who play OCC, some people (particularly the wonderful trio Ribannah, samson, solo) have developped a method where the big city (often called SSC) is surrounded by a few 'helper' cities, and they have obtained fantastic results in the field of early landing (you may have a look in the GL: amazing!).
Adam Smith and I, and certainly quite a few others, used to play the same way, but not with the same degree of precision in micromanaging (at least as far as I am concerned: for example samson counts all beakers one by one from the start to the end of the game, and I confess I have been too lazy to do that up to now).
In short, I almost never build much more than 8 or 10 cities, and I am not the only one to do that.
Other people on this forum (particularly the wonderful trio DaveV and the Gits) build dozens of cities (ICS), and they also get quite nice results.
So you can bet there is no general rule (read the thread 'Come, laugh at the SGs' and study some of the maps that you can download there; it might give you new ideas about how to play this game).

[DrSpike]

Even if you stop at 10 (I prefer 12-16) I assume you expand through the early game restrictions of 4 and 6 in despotism and monarchy respectively.

[Blaupanzer]

Recommend blowing through the limits to get a good base of cities early. One offset to this, escorting settlers as you suggested, is not a bad idea in any case, especially on deity at "Raging Hordes" or higher. Note that, at least on a large map, the first citizen will change from unhappy to "double unhappy" (black rather than red) at some point. As with the the earlier unhappies, each double will then produce a matching miserable citizen in one of your current cities. As near as I can tell that second citizen, ostensibly affected by the founding of a distant city, IS randomly produced. So any city in the empire can go bad at any point when founding new cities. Temples are a useful early improvement, no matter your long-term deity strategy.

[SlowThinker]

I tried to concentrate my understanding of happiness in happiness quirk... , posted 31-10-2001 01:09
and because I know many people reads Civ2: strategy only, I advertise also in this thread.