Couple of quick newbie questions...

[S Baldrick]

Just got a couple of quick newbie questions...


1. What is gold used for aside from paying maintenance costs and trading with other rulers?

2. I'm not really clear on what Granary's do. Should I holdback (stagnate) my population until I build a Granary? What exactly does the Granary do?

3. Is unhappiness about the city being "too crowded" just something I have to accept as my population continues to grow or is there any actual way to give these people more room?

Thanks much : )

 

[JavalTigar]

1) Pays for upgrades and with the right Civic (Universal Sufarage ?SP?) you can use it to rush build anything.

2)Granarys make your cities grow faster by reducing the amount of food you need to store. NEVER Stagnate your pop unless you are having happiness or health concerns

3) Yes there is no way to give them more room, but you can make them happy in all the normal ways: temples, coloseums, luxries (gold, silver, furs...)

Welcome to CFC

 

[McLMan]

1) Besides paying maintenance costs & trading gold is used for:

• Researching new technologies - The amount of gold you put into researching is controlled by the buttons in the top left corner.
• Upgrading units - When you learn a technology that gives a new, stronger type of unit you can pay to upgrade an existing unit to the new type. For example you can pay to upgrade a swordsman to a maceman. Most players only do this for units that have gained a lot of promotions because it can be expensive.
• Paying for culture - similar to research, but only providing culture to your cities rather than beakers to your research project.

2) You do not need to stagnate your population while you build a Granary. In order for your city to grow, surplus food is accumulated in a "food box" (visible in the top portion of the city screen). When the food box is full, a new citizen enters the city and your food box is emptied. What a granary does is keeps half of the food necessary for the city to grow again, doubling the rate at which your city grows. Besides the fast growth, a granary adds health to a city if you have wheat/corn/rice aviailable to the city. A granary is usually one of the earliest buildings that I build in my cities. Growing a city to it's maximum size as quickly as possible has many production/commerce benefits.

3) There's no way to give your citizens "more room" but you can make them forget about the tight quarters by distracting them with luxury resources (gold, gems, silk, etc.) Certain buildings such as temples, theaters, and coliseums also quell unhappiness.

 

[Wodan]

Additional thoughts to others' comments.

2) I wouldn't stagnate (using the Avoid Growth button), probably ever. It's not like it hurts, and having the extra population (even if unhappy or unhealthy) is nice to instantly have a bigger city when you get more happiness / health bonuses.

On the other hand, it's not a bad idea at all to optimize your population for hammers rather than food. Especially when building a Granary. Even if it means you no longer have food growth (and thus it says "Stagnant" on the city screen).

Wodan

 

[Sisiutil]

Regarding the unhappiness because of crowding--in addition to the above solutions, you can also remove the unproductive citizens by "whipping" them thanks to the Slavery civic. This gets rid of the citizens by sacrificing them for production (hammers--30 per pop on regular speed with no building or civic modifiers). You get 10 turns of one extra unhappy citizen, but if you manage the whipping carefully, that won't be a problem.