First, please accept my apologies if this is an inappropriate post - or if it is in the wrong forum. I'm very new to this board - and to the game itself.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong! I keep ending up with citizens going on strike because of "overcrowding". What can I do to fix this?

Build some happiness buildings like colloseums, hook up or trade for happiness resources. You can also whip the ungrateful "citizens" and sacrifice them for the good of the Empire.:D

LOL -- will have to figure out how to "whip" them into shape! They already have every "happiness" building I could find and are linked to two cities with gems and some other nice spots.

You can "whip" your citizens, sacrificing population to build things, by switching to the Slavery civic (enabled by Bronze Working). Then there's a button on the city screen you can press to do it.

And for your future reference, this particular subforum "Civ4 Strategy Articles" is for people to post articles they've written on some aspect of the game. Questions are more correctly asked in the "Civ4 - Strategy & Tips" forum.

Every population-point in a city creates 1 unhappiness in your city. :mad: faces appear when your total unhappiness is greater than your total happiness; 1 citizen refuses to work for every point over the limit. Other factors can create unhappiness, such as war-weariness, being at war with their motherland, whipping and drafting.

In order to reduce the number of :mad: in your city, you can either increase the amount of happiness in the city or decrease the amount of unhappiness.

Happiness may be increased by religion, buildings, and luxuries. Your state-religion will give you 1 happiness right off the bat, and every subsequent religion you have allows you another temple. Theaters and collosseums do not require religions. Every luxury you have gives you 1 happiness, and some buildings (markets, forges...) give an additional happiness bonus for having these resources.

Unhappiness may be decresed by: Ending a war with a foreign power (teporarily or finally), simply waiting for time-based effects to go away (whipping or drafting), or through Stalinesque population maneagement. Forced labor or forced famine in a city can decrease its population to more profitable levels. Be warned that since forced-labor also causes unhappiness of it's own, you will merely break even on unhappiness unless you use more than one population.