Cottage to Hamlet Message

[Alan_Bernardo]

I've looked in the manual for this but couldn't find anything on it.

Here's a screen of a tile that has a cottage. Note the arrow and then message when you roll over the tile:




The message says "City must Work to Become a Hamlet". What do I have to do to "work" this tile? Or is it automatically being worked (I doubt it.)?

Sorry for the rather basic question, but I need to figure these little things out if I'm to get anywhere with this game. I'm running a -1 with food in my largest city and figured I could garner some extra food by getting this tile converted to a Hamlet (or am I wrong in assuming this?).

Thanks for any and all help.


Alanb

[Sadan01]

In the City View screen (double-click on the city itself), you can move the citizens around to works the various tiles. If you move one to that tile, it will be worked and eventually will turn into a hamlet and if left much much longer continually "working" that tile, it will eventually become a town.

So all you have to do is have a citizen in your city placed on that tile to "work" it.

AFAIK (being at work I cannot check and I havent gotten completely used to Civ4 either), Cottages etc only add gold to the cities coffers.

[Zany]

Within your city are citizens (well, in the new city specialist system the names might have changed). They are not like workers, which build improvements, instead they work them. Check inside your citys screen, it will show you which tiles are being worked by citizens. For example, let's say you just founded a new city. It has 1 pop and there is a gem mine nearby you already built. If you check inside the city, you might see a bunch of icons (since in this case it is gems, some coins representing commerce) on top of the gems. That means the tile is being worked. Also, if a tile is being worked you will see a little hut-like-thing in the corner of the tile. That means the city is being worked. As your city grows more citizens will start working and eventually your cottage will be worked.