8 or 9?

Brids17 wrote: You must have misread, I've got negative pop in my cities that are at 17k-18k pop. I can't really afford to suicide any armies either as I'm in a...Let's call it a conflict. I may be able to get the money together for more prestige, I shouldn't need that much if I use it wisely...

You didn't mention the pop on the cities in neg food prod just that there were three.  If you build all cities to 15K instead you end up pretty close to the requirement without food issues and then you can save up the resources and grab the remaining pop needed relatively quickly to hit the 9th city w/o food issues for too long.

Brids17 wrote: Hmm...That's actually a really good idea. >.> I can probably manage to go a little higher than 15 because of sov spots too, so maybe I can get within 5k or so of the requirement before going negative. Thanks for the advice. =D

np - I did the same a few weeks back (after debating city 9 with myself for a long time).