Help My Civ 5 Won t Continue Next Turn Stuck on Choose Production

Introduction [ ]

Surplus food was the single most important factor determining the rise of human civilization. Once humans adopted a sedentary existence raising crops and livestock that created a surplus, specialization and stratification in society began to occur. The farmers supported the craftsmen, bureaucracy, aristocracy and chiefs, and the religious clergy. So has it been throughout the Civilization iterations. Once surplus food is available, then all else is possible.

In the context of Civilization V, Food means a combination of all the factors contributing to your Citizens' survival and proliferation, which means that it is of paramount importance for your empire. Your Population is also the workforce of your empire. Without Food, there are no Citizens. Without Citizens, your land potential isn't fulfilled. Without that, your various stats production is very low. Without good stat production, your empire will quickly get outpaced by your rivals.

The Food stat is applicable to every single city of your empire individually, although empire-wide bonuses may also apply.

Producing food [ ]

A city needs to constantly feed its Citizens (another term for "population"). Every Citizen requires 2 Food per turn to feed himself/herself.

Food basket [ ]

Any Food production which exceeds a particular city's total Food requirements is added each turn to a "food basket" towards the birth of the next Citizen. The exact "size" of the basket (i.e., the required amount of Food) changes according to how many Citizens there are already in the city. When the basket is full, a new Citizen is born and a new basket starts filling - now with a new, higher Food goal.

On the other hand, if your city produces less Food than needed to feed all its Citizens, the city will experience starvation, indicated by negative Food. When a city is starving, it will start losing Citizens instead of growing until it can support its population. There's no grace period after a Citizen dies; if on the next turn the starvation continues and the city again eats more than it produces, another Citizen will die immediately, until the tendency is reversed. Some unpleasant situations may lead to catastrophic loss in the space of just a few turns.

With city growth, the amount of stored Food in the food basket needed to birth each successive Citizen becomes larger and larger. Cities with a Population higher than 10-15 will need quite a lot of extra Food gathered to grow further! For the exact amounts, see below.

Terrain and Resources [ ]

The main source of Food for any city is the land. Most terrain types have inherent Food potential, which can be further improved with the very first tile improvement available in the game: the Farm. Here's a list of terrain types and how much Food they provide:

Terrain	Potential
Grassland	2
Flood Plains	2
Plains	1
Tundra	1
Forest*	1
Jungle*	2
Marsh*	1
Coast	1
Ocean	1

* If you clear these, terrain properties will change to the base terrain underneath.

Most terrain features also provide good Food yield:

Next, a number of resources - both Bonus and Luxury - provide +1 Food on their tile (regardless of terrain type):

The Farm can be constructed on most terrain types, excluding Tundra, Hills, and Snow. (You need access to Fresh Water to construct Farms on the first two tiles, but the third can never support Farms.) It initially adds +1 Food to the tile, but the bonus increases to +2 for tiles with access to Fresh Water (next to Rivers, Lakes, and Oases) after researching Civil Service, and for all other tiles after researching Fertilizer.

There are two more improvements that affect Food:

Buildings [ ]

The following buildings enhance Food production:

The Aqueduct and the Medical Lab help Population growth indirectly. Although they don't produce Food on their own, they transfer a certain percentage of the food basket from the last Citizen to the next one. This way they provide a "jump start" for the next citizen, allowing him/her to be born sooner. Of course, if you don't produce enough extra Food, those buildings won't help you at all.

Other sources [ ]

Other sources that may increase Food production include:

Settlers and Food [ ]

Settlers can only be trained in cities with a Population of 2 or larger. During construction, Settlers consume a city's Production and all of the city's excess Food. As long as the Settler is in production, the city will not grow or add Food to its food basket. Note that Settlers don't subtract Food from the basket; they consume excess Food being produced, stopping more Food from going into that basket.

Happiness and Population growth [ ]

Happiness of your empire is essential for Population growth. If your empire is unhappy, all your cities will suffer a -75% growth penalty (regardless of the amount of excess Food), essentially stopping growth in its tracks. If Unhappiness reaches -10 ("Very Unhappy" level), growth stops completely (even if you're producing more than enough surplus Food), and you cannot train Settlers at all! You'll need to take immediate steps to bring your Happiness back into the positive range.

Strategy [ ]

As with Production, Food is best managed city-by-city. The automatic Worker assignment manager will always allocate your Citizens so that your city is growing if possible. You can also assign a special emphasis on Food for it to achieve the maximum growth rate possible. Or, you can choose to manually control Citizen assignment. But because of the great importance of City growth, It is recommended you familiarize yourself with all the above info before venturing to control Citizen assignment manually; otherwise, you risk your entire empire's growth.

The first important factor when considering Food is where to settle your cities. Much like Production, you can't depend much on buildings or empire-wide bonuses to feed each city. That means you must make sure the terrain you're settling can support human life. Be sure to provide access to at least some fertile land in each city, or that city won't grow and will be near-useless.

Settling a city near a River is always good, especially for feeding. All tiles next to it have Fresh Water, and will thus produce extra Food from Farms early in the game. Also, you can construct a Water Mill for even more Food.

Consider carefully when trying to settle a city on Desert, as this terrain has no Food potential at all! Even though you can still build Farms there, most of the time it's useless to settle cities in deserts. But if there are some resources you want access to, then look to place the city in such a position as to have access to some Food-producing terrain or features. Luckily, there always seems to be some Wheat resource stuck in the middle of the desert, and Sheep may also be found on nearby Hills - include them in your city's potential territory at any cost! Also, look for an Oasis, as this terrain feature provides a great source of Food without any improvement. And of course, a River flowing through deserts changes every adjacent Desert tile to Flood Plains, which are some of the most fertile types of land.

Snow territories are situated at the extreme upper and lower edges of the map (which would be near the North and South Poles on Earth), and usually have no useful resources whatsoever nearby. What's more, like Desert, Snow has no Food potential, but unlike Desert, Farms cannot be built on Snow. For these reasons, you should avoid settling cities on Snow whenever possible.

Tundra is also notoriously difficult to settle. It doesn't support Farms (unless they have access to fresh water), so you're usually left with at most 1 Food per tile, which is far from enough to feed a city. Look for the precious Deer resources to provide food, and also try to settle near a river or a Lake, OR on a coast.

Finally, cities founded on islands may also have some difficulty growing. Ocean tiles without any resource on them don't support any improvement, and provide only 1 Food. Fortunately, there's a sea building, the Lighthouse, which increases all Ocean tiles' Food potential by 1, including Atolls! So look to build this building in an island city ASAP. At any rate, try to place the city so as to have access to as many resources and Atolls as possible.

Amount of food to grow to size $n+1$ [ ]

see Mathematics of Civilization V

Population size $n$	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34	35	36	37	38	39	40
Food	15	22	30	40	51	63	76	90	105	121	138	155	174	194	214	235	258	280	304	329	354	380	407	435	464	493	523	554	585	617	650	684	719	754	790	826	863	901	940	979

Help My Civ 5 Won t Continue Next Turn Stuck on Choose Production

Introduction [ ]