Basic Noob City Finance and Roads questions

Basic Noob City Finance and Roads questions:

1- If a resource (say Ivory from elephants) is near a city (within culture boundaries) and I improve it, will the city benefit? or I need a road to the city?

2- If this same resource is touching a river, and that same river passes by the city (see picture) will this make it connected resource? Or I still need to build road to the city from the resource?

3- What is the math behind city growth?
It says will grow in 7 turns, with 9-6 food. Is this like 6 food to support workers, but 9 food produced by city, so excess is 3 food goes to grow?
How many food needed to grow city? 50 total food for each growth?

4- If a river connects two cities, do I still need to build a road between them? Or it is automatic trade using the river? How about coastal city?

5- What affect how much gold per turn I produce? How to improve that immediately? Build less units?

Still cannot get the detailed picture of the math/concept behind those questions

Thanks a lot in advance.

Gemini1706

1. If you improve the tile, a citizen who works the tile will produce more food/hammers/commerce, but unless you connect it with a road, you will not see the benefit of the resource itself, be it commerce, health or happiness.

2. I don't think rivers connect resources, only cities.

3. 9 total food is produced, and 6 is being consumed by the citizens of the city. Each citizen, be them working a tile, specialists or angry citizens, all eat 2 food per turn. A granary halves the time it takes a city to grow. I don't know the exact number to grow.

4. A river connects 2 cities. Coastal cities will be connected as soon as you research Sailing, I believe. You do not have to build roads to connect these cities.

5. Expenses include general unit maintenance, missionaries (2 gpt), city maintenance, science and culture spending. I think that's all of them. To quickly raise gpt, lower your science spending. You will want to look at ways to generate more commerce, such as more cottages, Open Borders with other civs so that your cities can establish trade routes, or building things such as Banks, Courthouses and the like.

Gemini1706 said:

1- If a resource (say Ivory from elephants) is near a city (within culture boundaries) and I improve it, will the city benefit? or I need a road to the city?

Click to expand...

Needs either a road or river connection.

2- If this same resource is touching a river, and that same river passes by the city (see picture) will this make it connected resource? Or I still need to build road to the city from the resource?

Click to expand...

In my experience, tiles with a river crossing through their side, or corner count as being 'connected' to that river. Though sometimes the graphics make it hard to tell exactly what's what. Just develop the resource and if it doens't connect, you need a road.

3- What is the math behind city growth?
It says will grow in 7 turns, with 9-6 food. Is this like 6 food to support workers, but 9 food produced by city, so excess is 3 food goes to grow?
How many food needed to grow city? 50 total food for each growth?

Click to expand...

You've got it right. Each citizen in your city consumes two food in order to survive, with surplus food going towards growth. If your city's 'unhealth' is greater than its 'health' (The red cross and sick-face to the right of the food bar) you loose one food for each point over. Ie, if I have a 4 food surplus in a city with 5 Health/7Unhealth, my surplus is reduced to 2.

4- If a river connects two cities, do I still need to build a road between them? Or it is automatic trade using the river? How about coastal city?

Click to expand...

Auto trade on river cities, and auto-trade over oceans once you've discovered certain technologies. (Sailing for coastal, and either Optics or compass for ocean IIRC)

5- What affect how much gold per turn I produce? How to improve that immediately? Build less units?

Click to expand...

Building fewer units helps, but the main factor is how much commerce your cities produce. Comerce comes in off tiles being worked (As shown wich cold coins and money bags) and is then devided up into three areas: Science, Tax, and Culture (must research Drama before you can invest in Culture) How much Comm Goes into each is determined by he little % dealies in the top right corner of the screen, which you can adjust at any time. Any Comm. which doesn't go into science of Culture gets filtered into your treasury as Gold per turn. As your empire expands and you build more units & buildings, you will need more money to support your nation, and have to focus more Comerce into taxes, or find ways get more raw commerce and increase gold outputs of cities (Can be done with markets, banks, grocers, ect.)

BlackMage said:

2. I don't think rivers connect resources, only cities.

Click to expand...

Yuri2356 said:

Needs either a road or river connection.

Click to expand...

Which one is true? River connects resources or still need roads?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Gemini1706 said:

Which one is true? River connects resources or still need roads?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Click to expand...

It's quite possible that I'm wrong. To check, have a worker build a camp on the ivory, and see if the ivory appears on the Resources box on the right hand side of the City Display. If it does, then resources do travel down river. If it does not, you need a road.

Usually rivers are enough to connect resources. Although, at the tip of a river like that I seem to recall needing to road a little bit to "connect" the resource to the river, as if being at the end of the river doesn't do it. It's good to know that you can mix roads and rivers; if you've got something one square off a river, just road it to the river. (You need to road the resource square and the connecting square.)

So if a resource is adjacent to a river, it doesn't need a road?

In your screenshot, the Ivory would not be connected by the river. The river starts at that point but it only affects the grassland to the north and the forest to the south. The lower wine tile to the left of the city would be connected when you are able to build a winery.

The easiest way to tell, unless it is a resource in a forest, is if it has that extra commerce from the river. Notice that the top wine has one commerce while the bottom one has two.

As far as food goes, it takes two food per citizen and the extra goes toward city growth. The ammount of food required for you city to grow starts at 20 (I think) and increases as your city gets bigger.

The only way to increase your gold production at the start of the game is to reduce your research spending. That early, it is better to keep your effort in research. Founding a religion and building its holy temple will give you 1 gold for each city with that religion. Building the Spiral Minaret (sp?) will give you 1 gold per building that is for your state religion. Markets, Grocers and Banks will increase your gold as well but those don't help unless you have research set to only 90% and leave the other 10% going toward gold.

Things that reduce your gpt are city maintainance, civics upkeep, inflation, number of units (you get some free), unit supply for units outside of your borders (you get some free) and where your research and cultural sliders are set.

Gemini1706 said:

Which one is true? River connects resources or still need roads?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Click to expand...

Here's a cooked up example. The cursor (blue circle) is hovering over the wheat, and the description in the lower left corner announces "requires route", so you know that it needs to be hooked up. Unfortunately, as soon as you put a road on that tile, the message disappears - but the resource isn't hooked up until the road connects to something.

Of the resources on the screen, ALL of those along the river (the wine, the bananas, the pigs, and the spices) are all hooked up - so it doesn't matter which river, as long as it connects to a river bordering the city. A road leading to the river also connects the resource, as illustrated by the iron. The gems, lacking that route, are not hooked up.

Lakes aren't rivers, so neither the wheat nor the aluminum are hooked up.

The clams are hooked up, though. Seafood is just weird, I guess.

Thanks a lot everyone. This is really helpful.

And Yes, the ivory was not connected, as I built a road (very small, in one tile) connecting the ivory to the river, and now it is connected. Thanks Puzzlinon for the tip

Thanks Ranos for the "extra commerce" trick to know if it is connected or no. Other info you provided was also extremely helpful (I am ubber noob, as they say those days).

VoiceOfUnreason, this is an excellent map you provided. It covered most connection combinations I can think of. Greatly appreciated
Weird how the lake connects see-food but nothing else.

I never thought that this game would be THAT complex (in a good way ).

Any other tips for the noobs (specially about city finance) is very helpful.

Now, in fear of starting a new thread, let me ask it quickly hear:
HEALTH: What makes the number of unhealth goes up? I know how to improve health, but how to prevent unhleath from going up?
Is it number of citizens? what is the equation? For every 2 citizens I get 1 unhealth?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Glad I could help Gemini. Here's one more thing for you:

The clams are connected via the coast and the river just like if the city was right on the coast next to the clams. All forms of water form trade routes, not just rivers.

Unhealthiness goes up from multiple things.

+1 per population
+.25 per jungle
+.4 per floodplain
Some buildings, Forge and Factory to name a couple, increase unhealthiness. If you hold the pointer over the helth section in your city, it tells you where the health and unhealthiness come from.

Forests add +.4 health to your city, so keeping them around can be a good thing.

1- If a resource (say Ivory from elephants) is near a city (within culture boundaries) and I improve it, will the city benefit? or I need a road to the city?

Click to expand...

You need to connect it via road to receive the resource bonus (ie ivory, silver etc). Even without a road, you can still work the tile and get food, production and commerce etc

2- If this same resource is touching a river, and that same river passes by the city (see picture) will this make it connected resource? Or I still need to build road to the city from the resource?

Click to expand...

If the square has access to "fresh water", then it is touching the river and will get access to any resources on the square just as if the river were a road.

If a given square doesn't have access to the river, then you don't need to build a road all the way to the city, you just need to connect the road to the river

Except for reducing movement penalties, rivers are in all ways equivalent to roads. You can interchange any combination of roads and rivers to connect your cities for purposes of trade routes, resource connections etc

3- What is the math behind city growth?

Click to expand...

Don't know. It's been mentioned in the forums somewhere before, but without search, I can't find it.

It says will grow in 7 turns, with 9-6 food. Is this like 6 food to support workers, but 9 food produced by city, so excess is 3 food goes to grow?

Click to expand...

That's sort of what it means. Each unit of population eats 2 points of food. Food income is also reduced by unhealthiness in excess of your health rating. Unhealthiness is added by certain buildings and terrain, as is health. you can view a good summary in this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=145249

As for how much excess food is needed to grow? Beats me. It's in here somewhere, but with no search, I can't find the thread. Suffice to say, the more excess food, the faster it grows.

4- If a river connects two cities, do I still need to build a road between them? Or it is automatic trade using the river? How about coastal city?

Click to expand...

You don't need to build a road, no. It counts as a road for all purposes except movement reduction, so that means the cities are connected.

As for coastal tiles, once you develop Sailing (IIRC) coastal tiles count for trade routes etc. This means that two coastal cities on the same continent will count as connected. More than that, it means that any city connected to a river that is in turn connected to a coastal tile can connect to any other coastal city. More than that, it means that any city connected to a road connected to a river connected to a coastal tile can connect to a coastal city (or another city connected by any combination of the above).

I believe, though am not sure, that a resource sitting on a coastal tile will connect to a coastal city with requiring rivers or roads as well (once you develop sailing?)

Finally, compass (IIRC) lets you use ocean tiles for trade, letting you make connections between continents

5- What affect how much gold per turn I produce? How to improve that immediately? Build less units?

Click to expand...

There are several answers to this. Firstly, the more units you have, the more money it costs. They generally won't be your biggest concern. The bigger concern is generally the amount of cities you have, and their distance from your capital. You can see this figure as your maintenence figure in each city. Building courthouses helps reduce the maintenance cost. Maintenance is a big factor in limiting how fast and how big you can expand in the game. It can literally send you bankrupt if you expand too fast for your treasury to keep up.

There are also buildings that increase the amount of income your city produces. These include banks, markets, grocers etc. The thing to realise is that these buildings increase your commerce by a percentage. So the more money the city was earning, the more benefit you will get from these buildings.

Finally, there are certain tiles and improvements that will increase each cities commerce (which in turn directly alters your overall commerce). Rivers for example produce a point of commerce for any tile adjacent to them being worked (unless it's covered by forest). Gold and Silver add lots of commerce. Coastal tiles add commerce. Finally, generally the biggest factor in increasing your commerce is building cottages. These will produce commerce for you, and as they are used, the will grow, eventually producing even more commerce. It's not unhead of to be getting 8 commerce from a single cottage (that has grown in to a town) in late game. Imagine having 6 or so of them in use around a town

Now, what does all of this mean? It means you want to specialise your cities! Given that the builings increase your commerce by a percentage, to maximise their effect, you want to maximise the commerce a city produces. Of course, a city maximising its commerce is obviously not going to have a high production, so to make up for this, you will want other cities specialising in production. In Civ 4, cities that do a bit of everything aren't the way to go.

Thanks a lot cyron for the clear explanation. Thanks also for the link to the 'health' thread.

I think as you said specialized cities are the way to go. But what if that ONE city is captured? Then your all commerce is GONE. You will go bankrupt??
What if the production city is captured? You are done!!!
What do you people think?

Ranos said:

The clams are connected via the coast and the river just like if the city was right on the coast next to the clams. All forms of water form trade routes, not just rivers.

Click to expand...

Ah, yes. The important difference being that you cannot road to a coastline, only to a river.

I did a bit more experimenting, and color coded some things. In the picture below, grasslands highlight those areas with river commerce, plains the squares without commerce but with fresh water, and tundra when there is no fresh water available at all.

None of the cities are connected. New York has access to the fish in the lake via the river. Boston has access to the southern clams via the lake shore. Washington has access to the western clams via the river emptying into the ocean (note the single food per tile over there, which is why there is no fresh water).

If you drop Philadelphia at the Red Circle (edit: whoops, wrong version of the image. Oh well - on the grassland tile directly south of New York Lake), it is connected to both the river and the lake - which has the effect of connecting Washington and New York as well. At that point, those three cities all get the benefit of fish and ocean clams; Boston is still on it's own.

Direct your attention to the tile immediately north of the western clams, and observe that the tile with the corner touching the mouth of the river does not have fresh water or river commerce. You can see the same thing on the north west corner of the New York River.

Civlopedia.Game Concepts.City Network has the details of what is going on. Cultural borders have a big part to play.

VoiceOfUnreason said:

At that point, those three cities all get the benefit of fish and ocean clams; Boston is still on it's own.

Click to expand...

Build a road on the 3 squares to the west of Boston to connect it to a river square, and it can join in the fun too

A city requires exactly (20+2*population) food to grow. A city with population 1 requires 22 food. A city with population 12 requires 44 food to grow.

Granaries make it so that the food box is half full rather than empty after a city grows.

Not exactly, with the granaries. Half of the food produced is stored. So if your granary finishes shortly before a city is due to grow, it won't have half the box full yet after growth.