Are tiles w/improvements always worked?

[MBJODET]

Basic question, I know. I'm trying to get a handle on the whole 'managing your cities' thing and I'm not sure I have the basics down.

I go to the city screen and see the FPC on each tile. If I have a white circle on that tile, that means a city person is 'working' that tile and I'm getting resources out of it. Seems pretty straightforward. If there is no white circle, I'm getting NOTHING out of the tile, right?

I then I go to the map screen and have my worker 'improve' a tile, let's say build a little farm on it.

Am I now collecting resources from that tile with the improvement on it all the time? Or if I go to the city screen and don't see a white circle on it, does that mean I get nothing?

Or do improved tiles always give you something, but if you 'work' them (put a white circle on them) you get more?

I need to really understand this 'working the tiles' and 'improving the tiles' before I move onto the topic that really confuses me - specialists. But that's for another post.

So what's the skinny on this getting resources from tiles with workers, with improvements, and with workers and improvements?

All comments, (no matter how basic!) will be appreciated.

-M

 

[Elrohir]

Basically, this is how it works: Each city has 20 squares around it, called the "fat cross" (Less if the fat crosses from two or more cities overlap) plus the city center itself. Unless you found a city on a resource, you get 2 food, one hammer and one commerce from the city center.

To work a tile, you need a person or citizen. For each population point your city grows, you get 1 citizen. (And you get a bonus one if you build the Hanging Garden's, but that's another story.) Each citizen requires two food to feed it, or it starves off, and you no longer get to use it. Having your citizens starve is obviously a bad thing.

Now, you are correct in that when you see a white circle over a tile, it is being worked by the city. But improving tiles not being worked does nothing for the city - it can have those tiles prepared ahead of time, so that when your city grows larger, and has an open citizen to work an additional tile, it can start right away - but the improvement in and of itself does nothing. It must be worked to provide the benefits.

So improve the best tiles first with your workers (And it's best if you do this yourself, don't automate them) that you will work first, then the less important ones, that you won't actually work for a long time. Un-improved tiles aren't very good, so try not to work any of them if you can help it, except in the very beginning.

In case you don't understand the improvements, the basic ones are these: Farms, cottages and workshops can be built on flat land; farms give you extra food, and cottages give you commerce. (They give you more over time, but only if worked. The bolded bit is very important.) Workshops give you additional production (With more production as you discover additional techs) but it takes away 1 food from the tile, unless you have the State Property Civic, in which case it does not take away food. On hills, you can build Mines and Windmills; mines give you additional production, while windmills give you food and commerce. Watermills give you production, and can only be built on rivers; and Lumbermills can only be built in forests. Additionally, there is a specific improvement for some sorts of resources; a Plantation for Bananas, Pasture for Horses, and so on. It's best to build these to get the resource.

Now, about Specialists. Specialists are similar to regular citizens, or people - except they don't work a tile in the cities fat cross. They provide various benefits; Citizens (Big C, because they're specialists) provide one hammer, or production point. This isn't very good, so generally speaking, it's better not to use them unless you have no other option. Engineer's provide two hammers, Scientists three beakers of research, Priests one hammer and some gold (Two coins, I believe) and so on. Each specialist still requires two food to eat, though, so you must maintain a surplus in order to support them. That is very important, or your cities will starve. EDIT: Additionally, using certain civics, such as Representation or building certain wonders, like the Sistine Chapel, can give you more powerful specialists. (Representation gives you three beakers per specialist; Sistine two culture per specialist.) Also, you can get a free specialist (One that doesn't require food!) from the Mercantilism Civic, or building the Statue of Liberty World Wonder. Don't worry about that for now, though.

Those are the basics, check around for more details in other threads. (Sisiutil has a good strategy guide you could read - yes Sisiutil, you now have other people linking to your guide, feel special ) Good luck man, and keep with it, Civ4 is an awesome game once you learn the basics.

I hope that helped.

 

[MBJODET]

Wow. Thank you for that very helpful post. This is very different from how I thought it worked. As I read your description it says to me there is no point in improving a tile outside the fat cross? Because it can't be worked and you only gets benefits from tiles being worked?

It seems to me I'm improving 'special resource' tiles outside the fat-cross, then building roads to the city to get the resource (horses, pigs, etc). Or do 'special resource tiles' have to be worked as well? What about things like windmills, mines, etc? Do they have to be 'worked with a white cross' as well?

This is a fantastic game. I've played 3 times, got clobbered the first, won on easy level (cultural victory) the second, and am in my third game on a much harder setting. I'm doing really well (lucky placement and resources, I think) but really need to understand developing resource better.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Elrohir]

Always happy to help. It's especially a good thing to do when you still need help from others - as we all do.

Building improvements outside of any cities fat cross is not a good idea, unless you are planning on building a city nearby later. Or if your workers have done everything (Sometimes that will happen, including roads on every square) then sometimes I'll amuse myself by building cottages or fots outside of the cities fat crosses, just to make it look cool. Do that, though, does not improve the game at all, it's just for kicks. If your workers can do anything else (Build improvements inside of cities' fat crosses, roads, railroads, anything) then do that first before messing around pointlessly outside.

The exception to this is something you pointed out, but I missed. If a resource is within your borders, but outside of any of your cities fat crosses, then yes, you can, and should hook it up with the appropriate improvement and a road. You don't get the food or production or commerce bonus in a nearby city, so it's kinda wasted, but you still get to use the resource for building better units, or increased health or happiness in your cities. Or, if you have two of the resource, you can sell or trade it to an ally AI for additional happy points.

So pastures on Horses, or mines on Iron, or that kind of thing, to hook up a resource is good, even outside of any cities fat cross. Mines outside of a cities fat cross, or windmills, or any other of improvement that doesn't have to do with hooking up resources are useless outside of fat crosses. As I said above, don't build them unless your workers literally have nothing better to do.

What difficult level are you playing on? Climbing up on the difficult ladder is great, but don't get carried away too quickly. If you can win a cultural victory easily, yeah, you should probably go up a notch. But I wouldn't advise going above Noble unless you've won at least one of every victory condition on Noble. Just keep playing; it's a truly awesome game, and if you keep at it you'll only get better in time.

 

[MBJODET]

That was another question - can you tell what difficulty level a game is on after you're started it? I think I was maybe three up from 'Settler'.

I've done some micro-managing of the white circles before, but the information you've given me has allowed me to take it to a new level. (Ultra micro-managing?) I realize I've been wasting a LOT of worker time building things that didn't matter. And I haven't been doing a 'ctrl-y' before I tell my workers where to build improvements.

I won my cultural victory 18 turns before the end of the game, so that wasn't so hot! (Dan Quayle). I'm in a really good position this game - I have the SE corner of the map with a large inland sea in the center of the map. It's a very defensible position, now that I've cleared out the Barbs.

I want the closest Egyptian city to the west, I'm trying to decide on war or culture bomb. If you take a city and are very strong does the AI eventually settle for peace? Or once you start a war are you in it forever?

Thanks again for all your help - I've read the manual at least twice, but this 'don't bother to build a windmill out of your fat cross, or that won't be worked' is a concept I just didn't get.

-M

 

[Beamup]

That was another question - can you tell what difficulty level a game is on after you're started it? I think I was maybe three up from 'Settler'.

Yes - hit F8 and go into the "Settings" tab.

If you take a city and are very strong does the AI eventually settle for peace? Or once you start a war are you in it forever?

If you beat the stuffing out of them well enough, they'll sign a peace treaty.

 

[Elrohir]

That was another question - can you tell what difficulty level a game is on after you're started it? I think I was maybe three up from 'Settler'.

As Beamup said, hit the F8 button and look under settings. I wouldn't recommend going above Noble unless you are confident that you've mastered that level; above Noble the AI actually start the game with more units and a research bonus, so it's a lot harder.

I've done some micro-managing of the white circles before, but the information you've given me has allowed me to take it to a new level. (Ultra micro-managing?) I realize I've been wasting a LOT of worker time building things that didn't matter. And I haven't been doing a 'ctrl-y' before I tell my workers where to build improvements.

I won my cultural victory 18 turns before the end of the game, so that wasn't so hot! (Dan Quayle). I'm in a really good position this game - I have the SE corner of the map with a large inland sea in the center of the map. It's a very defensible position, now that I've cleared out the Barbs.

Even so, Cultural victories take a lot of planning and are, for me at least, rather difficult to pull off. Nice job on that. Next time just try to get a few more Great Artists and build great works in the three cities, that should speed it up by quite a bit.

I want the closest Egyptian city to the west, I'm trying to decide on war or culture bomb. If you take a city and are very strong does the AI eventually settle for peace? Or once you start a war are you in it forever?

Thanks again for all your help - I've read the manual at least twice, but this 'don't bother to build a windmill out of your fat cross, or that won't be worked' is a concept I just didn't get.

-M

Waiting for a city to flip generally isn't a good idea, unless you have a good reason for not taking it militarily. Do you want the Egyptians for your friends, permanently? Then try cultural. If you want to conquer all of their lands eventually anyway, there's no reason you should hold off - go take it by force!

The AI will eventually sue for peace, but you have to hurt them if you want them to give you something for it. (Instead of forcing you to give them stuff - who really gives the AI one of their best cities for peace? Seriously....) Generally speaking, if they have, say, 10 cities, and you take three of them, they will be amenable to peace. Sometimes you can get a favorable peace deal just taking one city, it depends upon how large their empire is, how large their army is after it's taken a beating, and who the AI is. (Montezuma doesn't like signing peace deals, while Louis may be more amenable and peaceful.)

The manual is good for some things, but as far as a lot of the nitty-gritty game basics, it doesn't give you much. It's better to ask questions of the people who have been playing awhile, or figure it out for yourself.

Good luck!

 

[svv]

Would I be right in saying that it helps to build cottages, even if you're not working them yet, because they'll be growing into towns for you to work them later? Or, do they need to be worked in order to grow into towns?

Seems like, if they'll grow without being worked, it'd be good strategy to sprinkle some cottages, and work the farms so the city will grow faster, letting you start working the towns when you have more po[ulation.

 

[Zophos]

Would I be right in saying that it helps to build cottages, even if you're not working them yet, because they'll be growing into towns for you to work them later? Or, do they need to be worked in order to grow into towns?

Seems like, if they'll grow without being worked, it'd be good strategy to sprinkle some cottages, and work the farms so the city will grow faster, letting you start working the towns when you have more po[ulation.

Cottages only grow while being worked. So there's no particular advantage to building one if you won't be able to work it.

That being said, there is a school of thought that argues that over-improving cities has the advantage of flexibility. In other words, if you have a size 4 city with six or eight improved tiles, you can only work four of them, but you have the flexibility to choose WHICH four (mines when you need production but not growth, cottages when you'd rather have commerce, etc.)

 

[Elrohir]

Oh, I keep forgetting - Specialists also provide Great Person points. Great People are an invaluable aspect of the game; I'd advise you to get into the Civilopedia to read all about them. For that the Civilopedia should be alright. Great People are a very interesting and powerful tool, if used properly.