Basic game concepts for noob- use of crawlers, happiness, satellites

[splunge the 2nd]

Sorry to get basic. I've won prettyt easily with good starting positions at the first 3 difficulty levels, so have a clue as to combat, terraforming, and unit design.

Can someone offer me advice on how to best use supply crawlers?
Can anyone set me straight on drone control and what determines happiness? I'm contending with riots nearly every turn and rely on happiness specialists which is poor strategy in Civ 3.
On the easy levels, I've won milatary victory or diplo victory before satellites came into play and in my current game working to ascendance, I'm so far ahead there's no point. can someone offer guidance on this aspect of play?

Please feel free to link me to tutorials rather than retread if it's been discussed to death and thanks from a latecomer to this great game.

edit-found an article on crawler use on civ gaming network, but feel free to put in your own pearls

 

[civac]

Early game, it is easiest to put crawlers on forests and let them harvest minerals. Forests provide two minerals, the maximum you can get at that point, are cheap to build and spread on their own. Later on, crawlers should go on condensor farms, mines on rocky squares and squares which yield lots of energy (collectors on mountains, tidal harnesses). Cash in some crawlers for a Secret project if you want it but do not forget to rebuid the crawlers.

Happiness is a bit tricky. There are essentally three way to suppress drones: Buildings, Police and Psych. There are some buildings which turn a specified number of drones into workers (e.g. Recreation Commons). Military units will suppress some drones. The number of units that can be used as Police depends on you Police rating. Psych can be generated by adjusting the slider or using specialists (Doctors, Empaths, ...). Psych spending is then multiplied by certain facilities (Holo Theater, Tree Farm, ...). Essentially, two units of psych will pacify one drone. (Actually, psych spending will cause Talents to appear first. But since there won't be riots if the number of Talents is equal to or exceeds the numbe of drones it comes to the same thing.)

Under certain circumstances, you can have super drones which cannot be supressed by two units of Psych. This mainly happens when you have very many bases. If you are interested, i can expand on that some other time. Too tired now.

 

[splunge the 2nd]

Thanks civac. When you're rested, I'd be interested. What causes unhappiness in the first place- crowding and what else?

 

[Kilkakon]

People are naturally unhappy. They require police to keep them entertained with talks about tazers and so on. Having lots of bases doesn't help either as the bereauracy starts to kick in.

 

[Strategist83]

There's an exact explanation in the game civilopedia (centauropedia?) that gives you the formula for number of drones and all. Take a look.

Basically, what creates drones is number of cities. Each city can by default support a certain number of workers before they become drones (depending on difficulty level) but if you exceed a certain number of cities you'll start receiving additional drones in a random city with each new city founded. Your efficiency rating is what helps keep the drone count low. So, if you're playing as Aki-Zeta 5 and running a green cybernetic democracy you can have a *lot* of cities whereas somebody like Yang will have an untold number of drones in the same situation unless he suppresses them with police.