Completely new to the game

[ifyjo]

I am completely new and have lost all my games in a heartbeat, i am playing a game with only one other civ, i have some questions

1. is it better to start producing workers before military?

2. how do you increase the speed of production in a town/city?

3. What factors affect the ammount of gold that increase/decreases each turn?

(at the right bottom, it says: x Gold (+ x or -x)
right now i have -96 gold each turn, and i dont know how to change that
i am in the industrial age at the momment playing against Babylon.

any cheats, strategies, hints or anything would be very helpful because i am getting pretty pissed at this game.

 

[peanut35]

I'm sure you will get a lot of people jumping on this post very shortly, but here are some things, and i'm not a pro but i will give you some tips:

1. Depending on your government each unit requires support (gold per turn/gpt)
2. Most buildings require support (gpt)
3. The more cities you have, the more you can support
4. Workers can improve terrain to increase your income (gpt)
5. You can alter your tax rate to bring in more income

Hope this helps, ask more quesitons if you have more, people here are really helpful. This is a great source for help and support.

Welcome to CFC, from someone who is also new.

 

[peanut35]

oh one other thing, what version are you using? Civ Conquests, Original (or vanilla as it is called), or Play the World, knowing that will help people give you advice

 

[ifyjo]

normal version i beleive,

and how do i improve terrain with workers, you mean like building mines? irrigating? roads?

and i have 12 towns/cities

also how do i change tax rate?

 

[peanut35]

1. Yes mines and irrigation. make sure that these improvements are within city limits, which is the terrain that you see when you enter the city view. When mines are worked on by citizens of cities they produce extra shields (the stuff that helps you build things faster) when a citizen works on an irrigated land it produces extra food, helping you grow faster.

2. The tax rate can be changed by talking to your domestic advisor. This is accessed in the top left of the screen where there is a bubble like icon. The three icons up there are Menu for saves and such, Civipedia, which helps you learn about all the different aspects of the game. And then there is an icon for your advisors.

When in the advisor screen, the top advisor on the left gives you access to your rates. with this advisor selected there are three slider bars on the top right of the screen. There is a tax rate, a science rate, and a luxury rate. Increase the tax rate, you get more money. Increase the science rate you learn techs faster. increase the luxury rate and your people will be happier. When you get luxury resources your people will also be happy. Also, marketplaces, banks, and stock exchanges will increase the amount of money that a city produces.

ask away. oh did you pick up civ complete? or civ gold edition?

 

[ifyjo]

not gold

and thanks for the help, now what if your worker can do anything else on the irrigated spot?

say he already built a road and irrigated land so he cant build anything else, is it still classified as working the square?

 

[ifyjo]

your talking about domestic advisor, i can only see a slide bar for happy face and chemistry bottle, theres no money thing or anything

 

[RandomInsanity]

you bring those down and your gold per turn will go up

 

[peanut35]

Oh i'm sorry, i forgot, you just have to have less science and luxury, because these are percentages that are taken out of your income. So the less science you have and the less luxury you have the more tax you will have. The total percentage is 100%, where if you have 0% science and 0% luxury, you will have 100% tax, and therefore the most income that you can have possible.

 

[peanut35]

The goal is to try to balance the 3 elements, so that you will have new techs, have income, and have happy people. I personally almost never use the luxury slider, i leave it at 0, this is because i try to get as many luxury resources as possible, which means having them within my cultural borders and having a road built on them connecting them to my cities. Without a marketplace each resource will produce one happy face, but if you have a mrketplace the number of happy people increases with the number of luxuries, so the second luxury will produce a single happy face, but the 3rd will produce i think 2 or 3 happy faces. so it is a balance usually between science and tax

 

[ifyjo]

k but what else did you say i could do to decrease the -gpt?

its at like -147 and increases each turn so im trying to expand

also what do the different colors of # of ppl in ur city mean? like my background color is brown or so and the left number turn white yellow and red sometimes

 

[gmaharriet]

Bear in mind that there's a difference between your "workers" and your "citizens". Workers are the guys who build roads and mines and irrigate. Citizens you can only see in the "city view" screen and they actually work the tiles after they've been improved by the workers. That was the hardest concept for me to figure out when I was new to the game, and it's worth your time eventually to experiment with how to determine what your citizens are doing and where they'll be working.

When the number next to your city name is yellow, it means the city isn't growing new citizens. When it turns red, there is a food shortage and citizens will die.

 

[peanut35]

and when its white your city is growing

 

[peanut35]

for how to decrease the negative income, read what i wrote before, another way to increase your income is to set up diplomatic agreements with other nations that you can make trades for gold per turn from them. That requires you giving the other nation something in return for their gold.

 

[peanut35]

one other thing is the type of government you have. Different governments provide different bonuses. First thing is, you want to get away from Despotism, as that is the worst and starting government. In the first era you can research both republic and monarchy. Both are much better than despotism, and your civipedia will give you details about each government. If you are more of a warring nation (or player) monarchy is the btter way to go. If you are peaceful, want to maximize your research and income, republic is the way to go.

 

[ifyjo]

im in democracy right now

also is there a shortcut to move all your unites (if you have more than one on a tile) to all move to the same place?

like shift + g to goto? or something?

 

[peanut35]

by pressing 'j' you will be able to move an entire stack to a single point. also, if your turns are taking too long, due to troop movements, you can turn off troop movements in preferences, or you can hold down 'shift' or press 'caps locks' which will enable you to watch all movements, it will be just faster than normal

 

[shumble]

You can use 'J' to move a stack of similar units from one square to another.

Use 'F1' to bring up the Advisor Screen.

If you are playing Monarch and below, you probably won't need to adjust the luxury slider to play the game.

Try to move your science down from 100% and just keep moving it down 10% until your money per turn changes to +

Once your grassland is irrigated and has a road, the next good thing to do is build a railroad(requires Steam Power and the resource coal) on the square. This will increase the output of the square.

Workers are a very important unit in the game, but you also need some military units at the beginning of the game for exploration (if you don't have a scout) and for some token defense against barbarians.

In the War Academy, there is a Tutorial: Babylon's Deity Settlers that is very, very helpful for better strategies in playing the game. Since I did that tutorial, I have been able to go from struggling on the Emperor level to having fun on that level.

Another thing that might be helpful for you is to get a list of the key short-cuts. I have added a link to the key-shortcuts here: http://www.civfanatics.net/downloads/civ3/reference/Civ3Keys.pdf

The game can be difficult at first, but once you understand the basics, it begins to get really fun.

 

[peanut35]

as a note, i realized last night, and this is after years of playing all the civs, and most recently conquests, since it came out, but in addition to coal you also need iron before you can build railroads, i guess at that point most everyone has secured an iron resource, but in this one game, i had to make a mad dash for some free iron, cause i didn't have any, and i was going to SS, so i needed to produciton boost from the rails.

 

[shumble]

Yep, forgot to mention iron. In most of my games, iron is not a problem by this stage of the game, but I have played a couple where I had to trade for iron to build my railroads. Usually when I'm going for a Cultural Victory and I just dig in with 5-10 cities.