City growth

[Ferdi]

What is your "acceptable" growth rate?
500 750 1000? At which moment do you stop building farms? It is an issue for me because high pop level produce a lot of pollution really soon in a game and at this moment there is no city improvements to prevent that. I usualy build farms until I reach a growth rate of 1000 or until overpopulation problems occurs. What is your city growth strategy?

[Jonny]

I don't really have an acceptable growth rate, but just let my cities grow until they can't grow any more. If I had a city with an aqueduct, which allows the city to grow to size 32, I will let the city grow to size 32. I build farms on all plains and grassland tiles around the city, and nets/fisheries/automated fisheries on costal tiles. The pollution effect usually isn't too bad, unless you are using Communism.

Jonny

[Ferdi]

Thanks for your reply Jonny,
You know, I am quickly stressed by pollution issues in 1000 BC!

[Joseph]

Ferdi
In the option screen you can turn off pollution.

------------------

[Ferdi]

But I want to play with pollution activated. In fact I was very surprised to see polution problems so soon.

[Jerk]

If you feel like tinkering with game files you can use a text editor and open up \Call To Power 2\ctp2_data\default\gamedata\DiffDB.txt

Under each difficulty setting you will see lines with:
POLLUTION_START_POPULATION_LEVEL
POLLUTION_POPULATION_RATIO

You can increase the population number where pollution starts counting and the ratio of pollution per population. I think for every difficulty it is the same. Starts at 16, 15 for the population ratio.

in that same directory open up Const.txt. In it you will find:
POPULATION_PRODUCES_POLLUTION_THRESHOLD 16

Edit both files to your liking since I am not sure which one the game uses. Keep in mind that by drastically reducing the effect of population pollution you greatly effect game balance issues by removing the penalty for having super cities. I like to keep the settings the same because larger cities SHOULD pollute more since they consume more.
[This message has been edited by Jerk (edited January 10, 2001).]

[Gwap]

Some might say that early pollution in (relatively) large cities is historically accurate... keep in mind that 15th century London had 60,000 pop, and was considered huge at the time; not to mention Rome in its heyday which is estimated at 1 milion +. And those weren't particularly clean (or healthy) places to live.

Maybe CTP3 should have an "indoor plumbing" improvement

[Dale]

If memory serves me, wasn't it Civ2 that had sewers? Maybe bring them back. They also allowed larger cities too right?

------------------
Rommell to a sub-commander outside Tobruk: "Those Australians are in there somewhere. But where? Let's advance and wait till they shoot, then shoot back."

[Jonny]

quote: Originally posted by Ferdi on 01-08-2001 11:05 AM Thanks for your reply Jonny, You know, I am quickly stressed by pollution issues in 1000 BC!

I didn't know you were getting the large cities so early. When it comes to pollution control, Tyranny, Monarchy, Theocracy, and Republic are just about as bad as Communism. Why? Probably for historical accuracy. Back in 2000 BC in real history, there weren't any big factories with giant smokestacks. The only pollution was garbage piles outside of cites. These governments didn't have to deal with much pollution. Once you get to Democracy, governments start having good pollution control.

Jonny