Tip for veterans: City Governor

Having played Civilization of all brands for the last 10 years i didn't think i would have to read the manual all that much. Here's what i saw Yesterday:

The City Governor is actually really usefull.
He can be set to distribute your workers in the city screen to focus on food, production or gold.

For exampel: If you had one of your city squares polluted, you no longer have to go back to the city screen and re-populate that square after it has been cleaned, the governor does that for you.
Also, the governor adjust the workers according to all the improvements you make to the squares around the city. If you build a mine and have told the governor to focus on production he will make sure that by next turn a worker will be at that mine.

He can also be set to watch over the city happines.

The governor settings can be set for each city, the cities for a continent or for all your cities.

Just bring up a city screen and press "G" and let go of all that micro manegement

I agree with you that governers are a good but underused feature of the game.

In civ 3 they are much better than in SMAC as in Civ 3 you can be much more specific as to the types of things they can build.

In my current game before my homeland cities had Mass Trans and Recycling Centers I was constantly battling pollution. The Worker units were pretty good about automatically cleaning it up with Shift P.

But, I tried and tried to set the city governors to reshuffle the pop to those cleaned up squares and couldn't manage to find the right combination required for it. Everytime I had to go to the city, double click the center then reset my specialist citizens.

What settings should I use if I want all my specialists to be scientists

I use my governors to pretty much do everything except decide what to produce. (That's the only thing they are really lousy at.)

I am completely spoiled now. I don't miss managing happiness one bit.

I am completely spoiled now. I don't miss managing happiness one bit.

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I don't think I could agree with anyone more than I can with you.

I am going to start using the Governors right away! I had always just passed over it...but by the middle of the middle ages, I always get bogged down in checking to make sure everyone is all happy and productive! It's one of those thinking things...sometimes you think ahead, other times you don't. Putting governors into the scheme takes more thought, and therefore helps make this a better game. I like games that require thought, as I've mentioned in another post somehwere else.





Alsan the Lion

I like the "city governor" very much.

Also THREE CHEERS to Firaxis for not including the ponderous "unit design" feature of Alpha Centauri! It was a nice idea, but the interface was a bear to work with.

I'm glad I don't have to design units in Civ3!

Yes since my first game I've always used the govenor. I just laugh when I see people wanting to be alerted about cities in disorder, just let the govenor do it and you'll save tons of time, especially late in the game it takes long enough just to move units and issue buil;ding commands running the cities gets way too tedious without govenors.

I'm just getting used to this myself.

I've always been one to micromanage for fear the stupid AI would do something, well, stupid. Which it would have in civ2.

Everyone seems happy with the governors now, though, so I've been giving them a free(er) reign and I can't say I'm unhappy with their performance.

They can keep their heads another day.

So using the City Governor sounds like a good idea! Now what is a good base setting for the City Governor to start with based on your experience?

Many thanks!

Personally, I use "manage citizen moods" and "never build wonders" as the default setting for all my cities. It used to drive me nuts whenever the goveror would constantly be giving the order to build a wonder in some god-awful distant and wasteful city.

I'll turn it off for a while in captured cities only to starve the local population before handing it back to the gov.

In my experience, you can't really go wrong with the governor. The only thing that I wish you could set it to do is ALWAYS alert you when the current build queu is over, and NEVER build a unit that you didn't tell it to do. Other than that, my cities are always happy and completely productive. It's one of the best features in the game.

:jump: YAY!!! This will really be helpful for pollution, I hate having to go back to the cities and selecting on the once polluted squares!! sometimes i even forget!!

Originally posted by Cyrai
The only thing that I wish you could set it to do is ALWAYS alert you when the current build queu is over, and NEVER build a unit that you didn't tell it to do.

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If you have installed the patch there are two new options on the Preferences menu that I think will help you out.

Ask for Build Orders after Unit Construction

Always Start Building Previously Built Unit

After I turned on these two most of my frustrations with the city governors were solved.

Now if only there were options for how to manage happiness. Sometimes I want the city to be in WLTKD but the governor makes the extra citizens scientists instead of entertainers.

I used the governor options in my last game ov CivIII and...WOW! Happiness levels were at an all time high for me, who used to just micromanage!

Looks like this is going to be a staple of my CivIII diet!





Aslan the Lion