So my people are livid....

[suckycivguy]

I've founded 5 cities... captured 1... and a few turns away from capturing my 2nd....

My people are -15 happy...

I thought if I built cities near luxury resources my people would stay happy... is that not correct? This kindof sucks

 

[King Patrick]

You've improved the luxury tiles with mines, plantations, etc., correct? You don't add the luxuries to your trade network unless they are worked. Also, do you have enough different luxuries? Repeats of the same luxury are good for trading but don't count again toward happiness. I suspect you don't have enough different luxuries to keep 5 cities of population happy, and annexing or puppeting (but esp. annexing) enemy cities gives you a big hit on happiness in any case, so that's just exacerbated the basic problem.

 

[cccv]

Are the resources improved? Are they different resources or all the same ones (you only get +5 for the first, say, silver. All you can do with the 3 other silvers you have is trade for something you don't have)? Did you build coliseums in all size 4 cities? Are you trading for resources you don't have? Did you puppet the captured city at first or annex it outright?

I hate spelling coliseum.

EDIT: ninja'd.

 

[suckycivguy]

ahh.... the multiples issue may explain things...

so what do I do about big gaps in my land between cities? songhai has continuous orange i have a white ring around green land

 

[King Patrick]

ahh.... the multiples issue may explain things...

You can trade extras of a luxury to other civs who don't have it for one of their extra luxuries you don't have. I.e., I give you silver, you give me furs. Click on the Trade button in the diplomacy screen. You can check who has extras of what luxuries in the diplomacy overview (F4 for PCs). If they don't have more than one of that luxury, you normally can't get them to trade for it. Their attitude toward you also affects the price; someone who's guarded or neutral will want a lot more for the same thing than someone who's friendly. If all else fails, sometimes you can sell extra luxuries for gold, then use the gold to buy happiness buildings (coliseums, circuses, etc.). Finally, be careful you don't accidentally trade away ALL of a certain luxury - if you have 3 gold, and trade 3 gold, then you have 0 gold and your happiness drops -5 until the trade deal ends 30 turns from now.

so what do I do about big gaps in my land between cities? songhai has continuous orange i have a white ring around green land

You've seen that your city borders slowly expand. If that's not going to do the job, you could drop a city into the center despite the (presumed) lack of luxury tiles. Once you get your happiness situation straightened out, you might consider doing so, for a couple of reasons. First, even though there are no luxuries (I'm guessing), some strategic resources like iron or coal might pop up later. Second, some of the civs go kind of berserk once land starts running out and dropping down cities literally anywhere they can find an open space. So you don't want a Mongol city smack in the center of your empire.

 

[cccv]

ahh.... the multiples issue may explain things...

so what do I do about big gaps in my land between cities? songhai has continuous orange i have a white ring around green land

I tend to build my cities as close together as I can. Some people spread them out more to get luxuries, then fill in the gaps when they can afford to. Happiness gets easier to manage as you can trade for more luxuries, build happiness buildings, and take happiness SP's, so you really don't need to be building every city on a new luxury. That plus taking culture SP's and building culture buildings so your boarders expand faster is about all you can do.

 

[suckycivguy]

ok so what about money? Because now I am -5 per turn and a few turns ago I was +50 I don't understand how money works in this game

 

[suckycivguy]

heres my sucky continent

 

[cccv]

ok so what about money? Because now I am -5 per turn and a few turns ago I was +50 I don't understand how money works in this game

Buildings, roads, and units cost maintenance. When you look to see what a building does it tells you how much gpt it costs. Don't build anything "just for the hell of it." Don't build more roads than you need for a trade route (this is another reason you'll want to fill in those gaps in your empire, btw. You won't have to have 12 tiles of road just to connect two cities). And build money buildings (mint, market, bank, stock exchange).

I basically just build what I need as I need it. If i'm close to getting into the red on happiness, I build a circus or whatever in a city that will benefit from it. If my gold has dwindled from +18 to +2, I build a market. etc.

And you can choose what tiles your cities work, too. Maybe a city is working food tiles and could afford to work one of those silver mines. Reassign a few tiles so that you're making money if you're really desperate and about to run out of money.

 

[King Patrick]

ok so what about money? Because now I am -5 per turn and a few turns ago I was +50 I don't understand how money works in this game

I'll make some guesses, but I can't say for certain not knowing what's going on.

First off, click on the gold counter on the top menu bar. This brings up a menu telling you your per-turn income & expenses (broken down by units, buildings, and tile improvements - roads).

+ Military units. Each unit has a maintenance cost. If you are taking enemy cities, it sounds like you have a good-size military - maybe bigger than you can afford.

+ Do you have markets in all your cities? You have to keep up with the economic improvements or else you'll fall further & further behind as buildings & units get more expensive.

+ Trade routes between cities & your capital are a huge source of income for a large empire. You need roads between each city, or harbors in coastal cities. However, roads cost gold each turn now - 1 gold per tile. So you can't have roads going all over the place or else your road costs will sink your trade income. Build one road between each city as directly as possible, and that's it. I.e., Antium links to Corinth which connects to Rome, so both Antium & Corinth are connected to the capital (you don't need a separate road from Antium to Rome).

Since you mentioned your empire forms a giant ring, I suspect road costs are part of your problem.

+ The cities you just annexed may have a lot of expenses and, if you haven't built courthouses yet, you may not be getting any income from them yet.

+ When you change eras - Medieval to Renaissance, etc., it changes your income & expenses, though I haven't investigated exactly how. So you might have gotten caught on the wrong end of an era change along with other existing economic problems.

Those are the major potential issues off the top of my head.

 

[cccv]

Ninja'd me with that pic. One thing: you do NOT need to connect luxuries with roads. I see you have a gem mine down there with an extra road to it. That road is doing nothing except costing you 1 GPT. You seem to have more roads than you need overall, too. Hamburg and Muich do not need to be connected to Lhasa like that, they only need to be connected to Berlin. Build a 3-tile road between Cologne and Lhasa instead of that long mess you have now and everything will connect to Berlin. that's costing you a ton of gpt.

The city placement looks ok. I mean, you're not leaving big gaps, except to avoid the useless desert. The boarder growth will connect them soon enough.

 

[King Patrick]

heres my sucky continent

Send a work crew up ASAP and tear up that crazy long road across the desert from Lhasa to Munich. That thing's costing you, what, 8-9 gold per turn and you don't need it at all, the cities are already connected down that big loop of cities to the left. You don't need roads to your luxuries, either. Just city to city and eventually the closest cities connect to Berlin to form one long trade route including all your cities.

You've got a big modern (for the era) military attacking Songhai, so that's got to be very expensive.

Wow, you sure have a lot of trading posts. How are you feeding your people? It's possible your people auto-manager for each city is avoiding those trading post tiles for more useful ones, hence you're getting no benefit from them. Either manually reassign some citizens to work the trading posts or set some of your cities on gold production (both through the citizen management panel to the right on the city screen) and see if that helps.

I take back my suggestion earlier about dropping a city into that hole - didn't know it was a desert. Wait to see if any useful strategic resources pop up, anyway.

You've been wiping out city-states, I see. The other civs must all hate you now. (They react to conquering a city-state the same as to eliminating an entire civilization - because you are, kind of). I hope your trading opportunities aren't all dried up.

 

[suckycivguy]

Thanks all...

I actually automated my workers... I know I know... lol

 

[Superluminal]

I want you to open up a trade deal with Siam and give him all your cities.

 

[aatami]

Don't automate the workers, as I recall the worker AI is still bad.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

Once you get rid of the barb galley, you'll come back to positive cash. Your drop from 50 to -5 is more likely the result of an ended golden age.

 

[Randall Turner]

Do the thing Patrick said about putting some micro-management into your cities. I'd bet he's right and your cities aren't working those trading posts.

(Select a city, and in the upper-right-hand corner there'll be a collapsed bar named "Citizen Management". Expand that, it'll let you mess with how your citizens are allocated.)

Also, if you're currently working on "Astronomy" you probably don't have "Economics" yet, that's key, make that a goal. It'll improve trading post output.

One good thing is everyone probably isn't pissed at you yet, doesn't look like you've encountered many other civs. The bad thing == no trading partners for luxuries.