Sorry about the brain dead post, but I need some *very* basic questions answered on city management. I can't find specific answers in the Civilopedia, so I am turning here.

Here is a screenshot from a city of mine :
http://s645.photobucket.com/albums/uu173/dewman29/?action=view&current=Civ4.jpg



Questions :

What exactly do the white circles represent and how do you manage those?
Notice I have 4 angry citizens complaining it is too crowded. How do I fix that?
How do I know what my workers are working on currently and how do I assign them new improvements that will bring me more hammers/commerce/food?


Sorry again about being dumb ... but just some things I haven't fully understood and am trying to totally understand city management.

Thanks.

-DM

Something happened to my image. Why is it not working?


Here is the link for the image :
http://s645.photobucket.com/albums/uu173/dewman29/?action=view&current=Civ4.jpg

the white circles are the squares your citizens are currently working; you can click on the square containing the circle and it will remove the citizen working that tile and make him a specialist worker on your list of specialists to the right; then click a tile you want them to work and the game will remove the specialist worker and assign him to that tile.

every citizen complains about being crowded, for every point of population you get you get one point of unhappiness. if it's early game, use the slavery civic and whip the city to get rid of the unhappy people and gain production from them. later you need to increase happiness by hooking up happy resources, building happy buildings, increasing your culture slider, or adjusting your civics.

if your workers are automated you can see what they're currently doing by hovering over them with the mouse; if you take them off automation you can control exactly what they're doing. you can also control them somewhat on automation by adjusting the governor preferences in the city; if you tell the governor to emphasize production they'll be more likely to build mines, cottages for commerce, farms for food emphasis.

Sorry about the brain dead post, but I need some *very* basic questions answered on city management. I can't find specific answers in the Civilopedia, so I am turning here.


Next step from Civilopedia is The War Academy (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/).

Notice I have 4 angry citizens complaining it is too crowded. How do I fix that?


The specific article you are asking about is called Ways Into Happiness (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/happiness.php), which is in the Empire Management (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/empire_management) section.

Just to clarify the angry citizens question, you'll see you have angry citizens in 2 places on the city screen: top center and lower right. The 4 on lower right represent the 14 up top minus the 10 happy. You must remove that surplus of unhappiness by raising your number of happy citizens...in other words there is no way to reduce the 14, you can only increase the 10. As along as the happy is greater than the unhappy, your city is fine. Same principal applies to health.

There are a few exceptions to this. Like if you're at war then you get more unhappy citizens, and you lower that by getting peace. Also, you can lower the sickness level by chopping down jungles.

*glump* researching code of laws in 1030ab ... thought it was only Tokugawa or a non-FIN and non-ORG AI in sucky isolation which could do that :p

need more workers ordered to do stuff manually (seriusly wonder how the heck you got them to build roads but never mines ... only goes to show how sucky automatic is, unless you specificly know how to tweak it ... by which it still is rather questionable :p)

Thanks everyone for the help. This is making a lot more sense now. I am trying to learn how to manage my own workers rather than automate.

I never automate any unit. Human intelligence can always outmatch the AI, it's one of the advantages you have in this game and you'll need every advantage you can get on the higher levels.

Automating units is generally not good.

I never automate any unit. Human intelligence can always outmatch the AI, it's one of the advantages you have in this game and you'll need every advantage you can get on the higher levels.

Understood. However, there is a lot to learn so automating the workers helps to grasp the other parts of the game. At least for me. I think I am slowly gaining a full understanding of the intricacies of the game, but it is tough trying to understand how to fully gain the competitive advantage over the comp.

You might want to trade for some happiness resources too. If you've got three cows or corn or whatever, you only get the benefit from one of them so you may as well trade the others away for something you need.

In the particular city you posted a picture of, you have far too many farms!
That city would do well if you built cottages on the grass and floodplains instead, the food resource would speed growth and provide excess food to work mines on the hills.

This will help your unhappiness problems too as the city wouldn't get that big, at least that quickly.
You could also slow or stop growth manually by taking your citizens off working farms and turning them into specialists (such as the engineer you have!) or by working mines on those hills.

On your happiness issues, crowding :mad: is equal to population size and can't be reduced, so a size 14 city will have 14 :mad: and it can only be removed by the Globe Theatre wonder, and then only in one city.
Similarly a size 1 city will have 1 :mad: and a size 5 city will have 5 :mad:.
The :mad: is balanced against the :) shown next to the production bar at the top of your screenshot. If your :mad: is larger than your :) then you get angry citizens who will not work, your screenshot shows you have 4.
In this case the only ways to solve the :mad: problem you have is to create more :) OR reduce the population.

:) can be increased by building things like temples or using resources like gold, some buildings will give extra :) from resources If you have them i.e. a forge will give a :) for gold, silver and gems, 1 :) for each type. Another option is placing more units in the city if you are in the Hereditary Rule civic.

Reducing the population can be done by starving (quite pointless in itself) or slavery, slavery however creates temperory :mad: itself so care needs to be used with this option. If you want to try 'whipping' the unhappiness away with slavery, put 1 turn of production into something (something big in your case) then using rush production and try gettng rid of at least 3 population.

Civ 4 is a very complicated game, so don't worry if it takes a while to get used to how everything works.

Questions :

What exactly do the white circles represent and how do you manage those?
Notice I have 4 angry citizens complaining it is too crowded. How do I fix that?
How do I know what my workers are working on currently and how do I assign them new improvements that will bring me more hammers/commerce/food?

I'm just going to try and add to and clarify what others have said:

The white circles (except the one in the middle of the screen) are your citizens. Each citizen consumes 2:food: per turn and can either work 1 tile, or be a specialist. (You can see, then, how a citizen that works a 2:food: tile is essentially feeding itself.) Generally speaking, you want to decide on a goal for your city (:commerce:, :hammers:, or both?) and then select tiles (or specialists) to work that will maximise that, while still growing at a steady pace. (Of course, if your city is dying of sickness or the people are just pissed off at you, growing isn't always a great idea. If you look at the icons to the right of the brown bar at the top of the screen, you can see you currently have exactly enough :health: to balance out the :yuck: your city gets from population, the flood plains nearby, and the Forge you built - but if you grow another point, that :yuck: will start exceeding :health:, eating into your :food: supply.) To change the tiles worked, just click on the ones you want to remove (or click the minus signs next to the specialists - you can see you are currently running an Engineer, the topmost guy), then click the ones you want to add (or click on the plus signs next to the specialists).

You will always have 1 :mad: per population point (except in the city you build the Globe Theatre in). The solution here is to either not grow so much (you're currently working a bunch of Farms and pretty much nothing else, which is utterly pointless if you don't put the population to use getting commerce or production), or to acquire extra :) (from resources, religions, or buildings, usually). What you can do now, retroactively, to get rid of the unhappy folk is to revolt to the Slavery civic (press F3) and then use slavery ("whipping") to sacrifice a bunch of population points to instantly build something.

To see what a Worker is building, go find him on the map and point the mouse at him - you'll see something like "build road (3)", meaning he's currently building a road on the tile where he is standing, and it will be done in 3 turns' time. Right now I would advise you to go find a Worker or three, send them to Karakorum, and have them build Mines on those beautiful virgin plains hills.
Understood. However, there is a lot to learn so automating the workers helps to grasp the other parts of the game. At least for me. I think I am slowly gaining a full understanding of the intricacies of the game, but it is tough trying to understand how to fully gain the competitive advantage over the comp.
It helped me too, at first. But try now to manually control at least one Worker. (I still use the Trade Network option in most of my games, when I run out of crucial improvements for the Workers to build. It means they'll just run around building roads and hooking up new resources that come under my cultural dominance. Handy.)

To the OP never automate units especially workers, or they will quite happily build a road in the middle of nowhere just to be doing something totally worthless.

For workers you can group them together, select 2, 3, 4 our whatever and then press CTRL + a number (0-9) and then these workers will be a Civ version of a chain gang.

That is when I will use them to build a trade network which will ensure they go from tile to tile and build buildable improvement on food, resources, luxuries etc.

They are also good for build a route from point A to B which is normally roads and then RR at a later period.

Last thing you can easily find a worker not assigned a job by simply pressing the forward slash key, cannot remember if it work for workers in Cities but late in the game this function is great for all the forgotten workers.

To the OP never automate units especially workers, or they will quite happily build a road in the middle of nowhere just to be doing something totally worthless.

For workers you can group them together, select 2, 3, 4 our whatever and then press CTRL + a number (0-9) and then these workers will be a Civ version of a chain gang.

That is when I will use them to build a trade network which will ensure they go from tile to tile and build buildable improvement on food, resources, luxuries etc.

They are also good for build a route from point A to B which is normally roads and then RR at a later period.

Last thing you can easily find a worker not assigned a job by simply pressing the forward slash key, cannot remember if it work for workers in Cities but late in the game this function is great for all the forgotten workers.
The problem with grouping Workers like this is you lose Worker turns. Say a Plantation would take 10 turns to build. You group 3 Workers together and they arrive there on the same turn; you order them as a group to build the Plantation. For three turns, each of them works a full turn on the Plantation. However, on the final turn, only one of them is needed to finish the Plantation; but despite the fact that the improvement is finished and the other two Workers can still move and/or work this turn, they will stand there polishing their pickaxes because they are grouped together with the other Worker.

I used to do this myself (usually little 2-Worker squads) until I realised how many turns I was losing. Now I rather automate some to Trade Network (with Leave Existing Improvements and Leave Forests turned on in Options) and micro the rest.

I'm just going to try and add to and clarify what others have said:


Henrebotha & All -


Thanks so much. I truly appreciate the help.

I am currently on Warlord and trying like heck to improve. Lots to learn. This helps. Thanks for taking the time to put responses together. Will keep you posted when I get my first Warlord victory...

:D

-DM