A Few Beginners' Questions

[ZooBooBooZoo]

1) Why does it matter how far away a city is from your capital? and does the distance between a regular city and another matter to?
2)I noticed sometimes a tile is added up to a certain city without me buying it. is it because the city grew(food->improvement of the city) and does the game add a certain tile randomly?
3)Didn't really get the whole resources system". do some tiles "produce production", others food, others gold, and others luxury resources? do the improvement constructed by the workers on each tile simply make the resource related to the tile grow/be generated/collected faster? and I didn't get the whole focusing option. doesn't the "citizens" work all the tiles around the city?
4)How exactly do monuments, rivers, and other stuff I didn't noticed affect a city if it's built next to it?

 

[GlobularFoody]

1. Nope, distance doesn't mean anything
2. Cities produce culture to expand, if you go to the city screen you can see what tiles it's working on acquiring.
3. Hammers are production: a city's production determines how fast you build things. Food is required for the city to grow and maintain it's population. Gold gives...gold. Needed for rush-buying, unit maintenance, and other stuff.
4. Don't understand what you mean, sorry. River tiles have +1 gold however and if you build a city on one you can build a watermill in that city.

 

[ZooBooBooZoo]

1)I've seen one of those "Lets play" videos and the player seemed to be concerened by the distance between two cities. maybe the distance doesn't matter but if you have a better chances of connecting them(not using roads. I mean connecting the tiles) then it would be somehow better? does cities that are connected with the tiles do something better?

2)If a certain city creates a lot of culture
[a. how does a city produce culture?]
it gets free tiles?
3)why do you mean by maintain it's population, how do the population affects things?
also, you didn't answer my question about the focus and how do the "citizens" work the resources around the city?
do they work on all the resources simultaneously?

Thanks for the help, I know I'm new and have what most of you would consider "obviuous" questions.
Hope I'm coherent enough

 

[GlobularFoody]

I suggest playing through the game's tutorials, paying attention to the advisor pop-ups, and reading a little in the civilopedia if you're completely new to Civ games. I think all your questions can be answered in there.

 

[headcase]

1. They were probably using the ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) strategy where they place cities 4 hexes away from each other (which is the minimum distance allowed). It allows more cities to fit in less land.

Distance also sort of matters for roads. The closer you are, the less gold you pay in road maintenance for your trade route. Also, it's harder to keep a civilization defended when the cities are far apart.

2. Culture buildings (e.g. monument) make a city create more culture per turn. When you place a city, the tiles next to it become part of your borders. Then, after so many turns, the city will automatically take another tile. More culture buildings means faster border expansion.

3. Click the button with a scroll on it near the minimap on the bottom of the screen, and check the option for "display yield"

A city will "work" the tile the city is on, plus one more tile can be worked per citizen in the city. If the city has a population of 3, the city's tile will be worked and 3 others.

Working apples increases population. The bigger the population, the more apples you need to work just to keep them from starving. Population is good because it lets you work more tiles, including those apples you need to keep them fed.

Working hammers increases production. Production lets you build units and buildings, which are very important. The more hammers you work, the faster you build stuff.

Working gold increases your treasury at the top-left of the screen. Running out of gold hampers your technological progress (the blue beakers), and having extra gold to spend is crucial for pleasing city states and having lots of it lets you buy units and buildings instantly with gold instead of using hammers.

4. Rivers are always good. Every tile next to a river gives you one more gold than it would away from a river, and, depending on your technological progress, you get another apple for farms built next to rivers too.

Press the R key and look for resources. Rivers and luxury resources (the ones that say "+4 happiness) when you mouse over them are very good for cities. Strategic resources (starting with horses and iron) can't be seen until you get the right technology, but they should be pursued as well. Military units made with horses (mounted units) and iron (swordsmen) take less hammers to build than units made without them.

It's a lot to take in; either consult with the advisers, or play on a low difficulty to get the hang of it. Don't be afraid to build things the advisers don't recommend. They're bad at recommending what to build.

Also, here's the manual: http://www.civilization5.com/#/community/feature_manual

 

[Optional]

1)I've seen one of those "Lets play" videos and the player seemed to be concerened by the distance between two cities. maybe the distance doesn't matter but if you have a better chances of connecting them(not using roads. I mean connecting the tiles) then it would be somehow better? does cities that are connected with the tiles do something better?

Possibly this player didn't want tiles inbetween cities to be 'wasted' because no city could work them. Each city has a radius of 3 tiles in which its citizens can work the tiles.

2)If a certain city creates a lot of culture
[a. how does a city produce culture?]
it gets free tiles?

Yes. Most culture comes from buidings. The Monument gives 2 each turn, later there are lost more buildings available that give culture. Some policies also give culture.

3)why do you mean by maintain it's population, how do the population affects things?
also, you didn't answer my question about the focus and how do the "citizens" work the resources around the city?
do they work on all the resources simultaneously?

One citizen can only work one tile. More citizens means more tiles can be worked. Clicking on the city name will take you to the city screen, there, in the right top corner is a tab called 'citizen management'. There you can see which tiles are being worked, and you can alter which tiles are being worked.
Bit of a crosspost, sorry, but maybe what I'm putting here still adds something.

 

[ZooBooBooZoo]

Thanks a lot guys.

@headcase: 3I understand gold is for purchasing units/buildings and upgrades, and also for diplomatic needs. I didn't really get what you meant by technological progrss.
isn't technological progrss determeind by the resarch?


also about resources:

I've been playing and also reading your kind asnwers and I think I got the whole resources system,

I wanted to ask: if I have a tile with 4 oil in it. I build a well for it with my workers, and then wait for the oil to be produced right?(how much time is this suppose to take?) after the oil has been produced, should I override the well with a farm to gain something else out of the tile? is the well not needed anymore?

 

[Optional]

There's no link between your amount of gold and your research rate as far as I know.
Of course gold can buy you research agreements and you can rushbuy scientific buildings, but that goes without saying.
As soon as the well is ready the oil is available to you.
You cannot have multiple improvements on the same tile, the previous improvement would get replaced.
EDIT: If you've built units with a resource, and then lose the resource, you will still have your units but they're suffering a hefty penalty to their strength.

 

[Rpger29]

A short tutorial on gold:

Gold is the cause of and the solution to many problems in CiV.

You can do the following with gold:
1. Pay unit, building, and road maintenance.
2. Rush buy buildings and units.
3. Upgrade units, assuming their upgrade tech path has been researched.
4. Pay for research agreements, a powerful way of gaining new tech.
5. Gain a City State ally.
6. Bribe other civs into performing actions you desire. A common one is to bribe an AI into fighting a war it really wants to fight anyway. The price is usually low, and sometimes the war will come 10-20 turns earlier than it naturally would.

I'm sure I've left out a ton of things, but those are the first few I could think of.

 

[ZooBooBooZoo]

There's no link between your amount of gold and your research rate as far as I know.
Of course gold can buy you research agreements and you can rushbuy scientific buildings, but that goes without saying.
As soon as the well is ready the oil is available to you.
You cannot have multiple improvements on the same tile, the previous improvement would get replaced.
EDIT: If you've built units with a resource, and then lose the resource, you will still have your units but they're suffering a hefty penalty to their strength.

1)Just want to make sure what you mean.

If I have, oil for example, and I build a well on it, I immediately have, let's say 4 oil units.
now, does that mean I acquired them or does that mean they are available for use and I can get rid of the well or does it mean that as long as I have the well I can use the oil(until these 4 oil units runs out of course).?

this way or the other: whenever I finish up oil, iron, uranium etc. on a certain tile I should destroy the related improvement and build a farm instead right? cause the resource is gone, and one can always use more food.

2)Can someone please explain to me what is ICS(Infinite City Sprawl)?

 

[carbontaxes]

No. Do NOT delete that well. ever.

You get the 4 units or whatever of oil as long as the well is in place. If you start a farm back on that tile, those X units of oil are immediately gone. do not do it.

Only case that I can you justified in destroying your own oil well is if you have much more than enough oil (like >30 units) and you don't want to trade your excess oil, and oil well in question is in a major city workfield that is starving or something like that. But yeah that's how strategic resources work, you get the resources add to your tally only for as long as the proper tile improvement is in place.

Also, like let's say your civ has 12 Oil and you've built 12 tanks (or whatever units take 1 Oil to build). Okay so your 12 military units are already in existence, but then you just decided to remove your 4-Oil tile, or maybe you just lost that tile to someone else. Your strategic resource tally for that will turn to -4 and be shown in red. This means you will not be able to build another Oil dependent unit or building until you actually lose more than 4 of your current Oil dependent units or buildings to while your Oil tally is back in the positive.

 

[ZooBooBooZoo]

Thanks. Got it.

also:
Can someone please explain to me what is ICS(Infinite City Sprawl)?

 

[carbontaxes]

^TheMeInTeam
channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMelnTeam

Game #1: Oda Nobunaga small continents Emperor (vanilla)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxpWrUgYdog

Here, MeinTeam won the game as Japan by first neutralizing Siam with Horsemen (this was before the Horsemen nerf) and then putting all his cities on Settler spam. And settling everything he could possibly settle on his continent as fast as possible. I watched the entire series and that was pretty much it.

So yeah if you can possibly neutralize/eliminate your rivals on continent, you set all cities to settler spam and then settle and then set those new cities to auto-build. The big problem is happiness and how to overcome that with so many cities.

 

[Cheeseisgood]

Thanks. Got it.

also:
Can someone please explain to me what is ICS(Infinite City Sprawl)?

Okay I'll pick this question up as the rest seems to be getting answered.

The idea of ICS is to get a huge amount of cities up at minimal cost.

You understand the idea of trade routes? That if you have a road between your capital and another city, you get cash income for it every turn, the bigger the cities, the more money. Right? You can check that by hovering over your gold per turn at the top, it'll give a quick breakdown of how much income you get from trade routes per turn.

However, cities on land need road to create a trade route, and for each tile of road, there is a maintenance cost of 1 gold per turn, so the longer your roads, the more money you pay, therefore the further away a city is from the capital (Or another city that connects to the capital) The more money you're paying, for more road. Right?

Next thing to take note of is that the game doesn't let you place cities within 4 tiles of another city, just so everything isn't squashed up.

Putting all that together, the idea of ICS is to squish as many cities in as you can, at the smallest possible cost. You do this by putting cities 4 spaces away from each other, in a kind of grid pattern, so that you use the smallest possible amount of road to connect them (So you save as much money as possible from road costs, while still getting the same income from trade routes because that income is based on city size) It's difficult to get it perfect, very few people play in a dedicated grid of a city every 4 squares. Personally, I ignore this, I prefer to give my early cities good room to grow and settle later ones in important positions (Chokepoints with mountains for example) or next to important resources.

That's the idea behind ICS

 

[ZooBooBooZoo]

So basically, ICS is a way to make more gold but you'll have to spend some focus on happiness since you'll have a lot of cities in your civ...

sound good for diplomacy victory.

 

[ButSam]

Back to the oil thing, let me point out that this raises an interesting war strategy. If you're fighting someone, you can pillage their resource improvements. If they have too many units requiring a certain resource, they fight at a significant disadvantage.

 

[jega001]

ICS also gives you science in addition to gold. Its a way to keep up with high level AI's. There are more efficient ways to get out of the game earlier but ICS will get you a win

 

[ZooBooBooZoo]

@BusSam: Sound interesting, I get the general idea you're talking about.
can you explain exactly how pillage works? cause I'm not sure I totally got all of it

 

[Adjuvant]

Gold relates to research thusly:

If you have 0 gold reserves, the difference every turn if still "in the red" is subtracted from research points, until you're no longer gaining tech completely.