Health and Food - a paradox

[T-hawk]

Perhaps this is better suited for CivFanatics, but I rather think we have the better deep analytical minds here.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around an apparent paradox involving the health cap and food. When a city is over the health cap, each extra population point costs 1 extra food to support. So if you raise the health cap by 1, you essentially add (recover) 1 extra food. This seems to mean that, to add one citizen to an unhealthy city, you need 3 health factors to provide the 3 food needed to support him.

But logically, there should be a 1-to-1 correlation between health factors and city size. If you add 1 health factor, the entire city can be 1 size larger before you run into any health problems.

So what am I missing here? Is the true correlation between health and city size 3-to-1, or 1-to-1?

[blid]

T-HAWK posting puzzles
You can see it as each citizen would eat 1 health resource and 2 food until you reach you health cap. Once you have exhausted your health resources, you will replace them with food so each citizen would eat 3 food. So it is always a 1:3 correlation

[Gogf]

Perhaps this is better suited for CivFanatics, but I rather think we have the better deep analytical minds here.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around an apparent paradox involving the health cap and food. When a city is over the health cap, each extra population point costs 1 extra food to support. So if you raise the health cap by 1, you essentially add (recover) 1 extra food. This seems to mean that, to add one citizen to an unhealthy city, you need 3 health factors to provide the 3 food needed to support him.

But logically, there should be a 1-to-1 correlation between health factors and city size. If you add 1 health factor, the entire city can be 1 size larger before you run into any health problems.

So what am I missing here? Is the true correlation between health and city size 3-to-1, or 1-to-1?

Your example isn't counting the tiles that the citizens are working.

Let's say, as in your example, that you have a city which has reached the health cap, and has at least two unhealthiness points. Let's also say that it's growing at two food per turn.

1.) If you add one citizen who is working a tile with two food, you'll need to add one health point in order to maintain your two food per turn rate of growth. The one health is merely counteracting the effect of the citizen's own added unhealthiness.
2.) If you add one citizen who is not working any tiles, then adding three health will provide the three extra food necessary to maintain your rate of growth. One of the three health is counteracting the citizen's own unhealthiness, while the other two are providing the two food which support the citizen.

Make sense ?

[dathon]

I think the confusion comes when you try to equate health to food. They are separate quantities. Every citizen in a city requires 2 food units and 1 health unit to live. Now, when you're city expands beyond the number of health units available, the game allows you to convert 1 food into 1 health unit. And I think it's this 1-to-1 ratio that makes it tempting to equate the two.

Think of it like the relation between gold and beakers. You need X number of beakers to buy your tech. Some of those beakers come directly from scientists, buildings, wonders, etc. Some beakers can come from a 1-to-1 exchange with gold, BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT BEAKERS AND GOLD ARE THE SAME! For example, you cannot convert a scientist's beakers directly to gold to upgrade a unit. They are separate forms of currency, meant to buy different things, it just so happens that you are allowed to convert one to the other at a 1-to-1 rate. It's the same relationship with health and food. You can convert 1 food to 1 health to meet the health requirement; however, you cannot convert extra health to food.

Did that help?
dathon

[T-hawk]

Your example isn't counting the tiles that the citizens are working.

1.) If you add one citizen who is working a tile with two food

THAT's the missing piece. An added citizen can also add his own food production.

And Dathon is right in that the ratio of (food+health) to citizens is indeed 3:1. It is 1:1 in practice, as long as the added laborer contributes two food himself. If you're adding specialists, or citizens that won't produce food (say by working a plains hill mine), the 3:1 ratio requires 3 health on the left side, since we don't have food available for it.

So that resolves the paradox -- both the 3:1 and 1:1 ratios can happen in practice, depending on how much food the added citizen will contribute himself. Thanks.