| Multiplayer II Manual |
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A city is created when Settlers do the (B)uild city command on a tile. This creates a size 1 city. A city can grow to have many citizens working the tiles around the city. Famine and war kill citizens and reduce population. With the loss of its last citizen a city disappears. On the map each city is labeled with its population, also called its size.
Cities create production, gold, national territory, and technology. Below is shown how city citizens extract natural resources, and how to increase city productivity.
Working land
Example city: Note radius of workable tiles.
Each city works terrain in a 5×5 grid around the city, minus its corners. To extract resources from a tile, you assign a citizen to work that tile from the city window. The example city on the right has all 4 of its citizens working tiles. Each active tile is labeled with an XYZ showing the food/production/trade it generates every turn. By de-selecting a tile, the player can choose another tile to work, or assign the citizen to be one of 3 types of specialists (or 6 with the Adam Smith wonder.)
Review the terrain chart to see the output of each type of terrain tile, special resources on that tile, and improvements like roads, irrigation, or mines.
The tile the city is on - the city center - gets worked for free, without being assigned a citizen. The city's tile always produces at least one food point and at least one production point. It gains whatever advantages the terrain offers when irrigated, because cities come with water systems built-in. This may not be used as a source for irrigating other tiles. City tiles are automatically developed with roads or railroads. If the city has a Supermarket, its center tile additionally gets an instant 50% food bonus but is not convertible to farmland for a 100% bonus.
You cannot begin working a tile which a neighboring city is already working, nor can you work terrain if an enemy unit is standing on it, nor terrain inside another nation's borders. You can siege by stationing your units atop valuable resources of an enemy city. Units can be ordered to pillage, which destroys tile improvements. Workers, Settlers and Engineers could even transform the terrain to make the tile less productive, like the Romans sowing the fields of Carthage with salt.
Buildings and Wonders
Cities may be enhanced with buildings, each with a different effect. Some buildings require others. Most buildings become available when you achieve certain technologies, while technology makes others become obsolete.
It costs production points to construct buildings — often taking several turns. Once completed, many buildings require an upkeep of gold. You may dismantle and sell a building, receiving one gold for each production point used in its construction. If a turn comes where you cannot pay the upkeep on all your buildings, some will be automatically sold. Obviously this should be avoided.
Wonders are unique structures that confer special advantages to your civilization. While buildings affect only their own city, many wonders benefit all your cities. Caravans, Freight, Triremes, and Galleys can contribute their full production cost into the construction of a Wonder.
Specialists
From left to right: Entertainer, Scientist, Tax Collector; Laborer, Merchant, Farmer
A city citizen usually extracts resources from one terrain tile. But citizens may usually assume three specialist roles (or six if you own Adam Smith wonder in any city):
An entertainer produces two luxury points for their city. A tax collector provides three extra gold per turn for your treasury. A scientist adds three points to your research output. If you own the Adam Smith wonder: A merchant provides two extra trade and one extra gold per turn. A farmer provides one extra food per turn. A laborer provides one extra shield (production point) per turn.
When your cities grow and produce new citizens, the game assigns them to work the nearby terrain. You will want to inspect cities that have just grown and adjust the tile or role for which the new citizen has been placed.
City Enhancements
Three buildings allow you to multiply the effects of scientists and total research produced by your city:
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Other buildings multiply the gold, luxury, and effects of your entertainers and tax collectors:
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Civilization and its Malcontents
City growth produces crowding, making it difficult to maintain citizen morale. Each citizen is either happy, content, unhappy, or angry. Only the first four citizens are naturally content; the rest are naturally unhappy. This is quite serious, as even one unhappy citizen can throw a city into disorder. Cities in disorder produce no food or production surplus, science, or taxes; only luxury production remains. They are also more prone to revolt, and prolonged disorder in a democracy can even result in national anarchy.
Only citizens who work tiles can vary in their moods. Entertainers, scientists, and tax collectors enjoy enough privilege to stay content. Thus, one way to manage an unhappy citizen is to assign him to the role of a specialist. However, if cities are ever to work more than four tiles, other means of solving the problem of morale must be used. There are several ways to prevent larger cities from going into disorder.
Most of the buildings and wonders that affect morale make unhappy citizens content.
A more interesting option is to make citizens happy. This counters the effect of unhappy citizens— a city will not fall into disorder until unhappy citizens outnumber happy ones.
A third option, Martial Law, is available to absolutist governments. Military units stationed within the city impose peace, forcing some citizens to be content. View the chart on Governments to see the effects of Martial Law.
Celebration, Rapture, and City Growth
Cities with three or more citizens celebrate when half or more of their citizens are happy and none is unhappy. Under Despotism and Anarchy, this eliminates the output penalty for tiles generating food, shields, or trade at 3 or higher. Under Monarchy, Communism, and Fundamentalism, this gives a +1 trade bonus to trade tiles around the city. Under Republic and Democracy, a city that was celebrating on the turn before will enter rapture and grow by one citizen each turn that the city has a food surplus. Without rapture, large cities grow very slowly: each 1 in population size increases the granary ceiling by +10, making it take longer to grow, the larger a city is. The ceiling is eventually capped at 70 food, but this can still result in dozens of turns for grain storage to accumulate for city growth.
Foreign Citizens
When a city of another nation is conquered, one third of its citizens will be opportunistic and immediately convert to the conqueror's nationality. In other words, two thirds of the population will affiliate with their original nationality. This changes over time. Each turn, one citizen will assimilate to the conqueror's nationality.
Unhappy Foreign Citizens count as "unhappy about military." Among the foreign citizens present at any point in time, one third will be unhappy if you are at war with their original nation. Unhappy foreigners are not the same as citizens unhappy about overcrowding. These citizens are unhappy about military occupation. Temples and Amphitheaters will have no effect on them. They can only be made content by Martial Law, Police Station, or by a Wonder which appeases citizens who are unhappy about military activity.
Managing Growth and Happiness
Managing morale or happiness and balancing it with taxation rates is the key engine of economic management in the game. Citizens are made happy when you provide them with luxury. For every two luxury points a city produces, one content citizen is made happy (or if there are no content workers left, one unhappy worker becomes content). Besides the luxury points produced by entertainers, cities receive some of the trade points they produce as luxury points, proportional to the nationwide luxury rate you have set.
A thorough analysis of how Freeciv calculates happiness can be found in this article.
Military units can affect city happiness
Under authoritarian regimes this is helpful, as military units stationed in a city can prevent unhappiness through martial law. Under representative governments the only effect is negative — citizens become unhappy when their city is supporting military units which have been deployed into an "aggressive stance." An "aggressive unit" is any unit not inside your borders, not in an allied city, or not inside a fortress within three tiles of a friendly city. Field units (missiles, atom bombs, and most bombers) cause unhappiness regardless of location. See the section on governments for the number of citizens affected by each of these factors.
All of the above discussion assumed that cities can grow to size four without unhappiness, with the fifth citizen being the first unhappy. This limit of 4 citizens decreases as you gain more cities, simulating the difficulty of imposing order upon a large empire. Different governments can support different numbers of cities before encountering this limit for the first time; see the section on government for details.
In very rare cases where empires have grown wildly beyond the number of cities where no citizens are naturally content, angry citizens will appear. Angry citizens must first be converted to unhappy before they can be made content. In all other respects, angry citizens behave as unhappy citizens.
Temples, Courthouses, Amphitheaters, Cathedrals, Marketplaces, Banks, Stock Exchanges, Police Stations, and Super Highways can all influence happiness in different ways.
The Wonders which affect happiness in different ways are the Colossus, Oracle, Mausoleum of Mausolos, Hanging Gardens, Temple of Artemis, Supreme Court, Marco Polo's Embassy, Statue of Zeus, Michelangelo's Chapel, Shakespeare's Theatre, J.S. Bach's Cathedral, Voyage of Darwin, Women's Suffrage, and the Cure for Cancer.
Cities may not grow beyond size 8 without an Aqueduct, and may not grow beyond size 12 without a Sewer System.
The buildings that affect city growth are:
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The buildings that affect citizen happiness are:
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Pollution
Pollution can afflict large cities when your civilization becomes more industrialized. The greatest contributor to pollution is total production output. The chance of pollution appearing around a city increases the more its total production output exceeds 20. The excess over 20 is the percent chance of new pollution appearing each turn.
Your population can also increase the chance of pollution. The technologies Industrialization, Mass Production, Automobile, and Plastics, each add 25% of your total population to the foregoing production figure, when calculating the chance of pollution. Thus, a size-20 city with 18 production would ordinarily not produce pollution. But if it had Industrialization, the sum would arrive at 18+(0.25*20)=23, giving it a 3% chance of generating pollution on any particular turn. (With all four of the above techs, the sum would arrive at 38, giving an 18% chance of generating pollution every turn.)
The percentage chance of generating pollution is shown in the city dialogue of the city window.
Pollution appears as rubbish and gunk on tiles around the city. A polluted tile can only be cleared by sending Workers, Settlers, Proletarians, or Engineers to execute the clean pollution order (which takes 2 worker-turns to complete.) Polluted tiles generate reduced food, production, and trade.
When an unused tile becomes polluted, there is the temptation to avoid the effort of cleaning it; but the spread of pollution can accumulate an ever larger "environmental debt" that is progressively more difficult to clear.
Besides cleaning pollution, there are means you can employ to prevent it from appearing. The Environmentalism technology reduces the pollution sum by 50%, which is often enough to put it under the threshold. Several buildings also reduce pollution:
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Note: The Hoover Dam wonder counts as a Hydro Plant in every city.
City Output Sequence
In all Freeciv rulesets, city output is reckoned in a sequential order. This order may be important for which effects take place first. For example, will a finished Temple affect Happiness on that same turn? This can be an important consideration, especially when population change takes place in a City.
Each City is reckoned one at a time in a random order. (e.g., a new Wonder affects only the cities ordered after the city it was built in.)
The reckoning sequence inside each city is ordered as follows:
- (Current City Size Recorded and Credited)
- Production points (shields) are accumulated in each city.
- Production completes: Buildings, Units, Wonders.
- Trade points are accumulated (from tiles, Trade Routes, etc.)
- Luxury points accumulated = Luxury percentage × Trade points × Buildings/Wonders bonus + Entertainers
- City Happiness calculated and updated.
- If Settlers, Pilgrims, or Proletarians were completed:
- Population reduced.
- City auto-selects new tiles to work.
- Food points accumulated.
- Upkeep from Units subtracted from Food points (including new Settlers, Pilgrims, etc.)
- Grain storage adjusted up or down by Food points.
- Population changes occur:
- City grows by rapture if it qualifies, (using most recent Food and Trade calculations)
- (the City's population prior to making Settlers will be used in qualifying Rapture)
- IF city did not grow from rapture, population change takes place (growth or starvation.)
- IF city grew, (not from rapture):
- Grain storage reset to 0, or higher if city has Granary or nation has Pyramids.
- IF city grew, (not from rapture):
- New tiles auto-selected if City grew or starved. This usually favors food, trade, shields, in that order.
- Trade points re-calculated.
- City grows by rapture if it qualifies, (using most recent Food and Trade calculations)
- Gold accumulated = Buildings & Wonders bonus x {(Tax percentage × Trade points) + (Taxmen + Merchants)}
- Science points accumulated = Buildings & Wonders bonus × {(Science percentage × Trade points) + Scientists}
👉 Tip
Because of the above ordering, one should be attentive. User-selected Scientists, Taxmen, and Merchants may not accumulate on the turn a city grows or starves. This is also true for the trade output from tiles: tiles low in food might not be re-selected (e.g., gold, jewels, etc.) This is because after a population change, tiles and specialists are re-assigned and trade re-calculated in Step 8, before gold and bulbs are accumulated in Steps 9 and 10.
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