In all my civ games until now I've automated all my workers. But now I've tried reading about how to manage them without automating. So here's my first try at playing with no automated workers...
Could someone give me some advice about how I've worked the tiles, what is there to be done, etc.?
The thing is that I've got to this point where I don't know what to improve anymore, how to micromanage well the cities and so on. And is there a necesity for building cottages from the beginning of the game?
I had a look at the save, and you're not doing too bad so far.
However, it's clear that you're prioritising production over growth. Mines are a strong improvement to build and work early on, but the most important thing is to keep your cities growing towards their happy caps.
You need to build granaries in every city as a matter of urgency, and get those workers building grassland improvements (see below) to speed growth. Then, once your cities begin to reach their maximum sizes (for the moment), you can start working mines again (and/or use the whip).
On a related note, Rostov will never have enough food to work the mines you've built. You'll need Civil Service for chain irrigation before that city will be much use at all, and even then you'll need to change several of the mines to windmills.
As for the grassland improvements I mentioned above, well, this is where you have to decide on how you want to run your economy. As you may be aware, the two basic choices are the Cottage Economy (CE) and the Specialist Economy (SE). These are not mutually exclusive, but while learning the game it's probably best to run a relatively pure version of one or the other.
A very basic guide to setting up the two economies:
Spoiler:
For a CE, you'll want to get cottages down around all but two of your cities. Other than the food tiles (inc. a grassland farm or two if there aren't enough food bonuses to give a sufficient rate of growth), and a mine or two for production when necessary, you should have these cities work grassland cottages at all times. If you run out of grassland tiles, then run plains cottages.
The two exceptions are a military city and a Great Person farm.
The military city should aim for the highest possible hammer output from its tiles (so it needs enough food to work lots of mines/workshops/etc), and should build nothing but troops - and buildings which help it build more troops (inc. happy/healthy buildings to allow growth).
The GP farm should be a city with lots of food (both actual and potential), which will be used to run as many specialists as possible. In terms of buildings, it will only need those which allow it to run more specialists (inc. by allowing growth). For improvements, it needs as many farms as it can work, up to its happy cap.
Once you've researched Literature, you should build the Heroic Epic in your military city, and the National Epic in your GP farm. to maximise their respective outputs.
For an SE, cities like the GP farm will replace the cottage cities. You will put farms everywhere instead of cottages, grow towards your happy cap, then turn as many citizens into specialists as possible. It's still a good idea to have a military city, but you can use the whip more readily in specialist cities than cottage ones (so many people use it as a warmongering economy).
Finally, it can be very helpful to have at least one cottage city to pay the bills in an SE. Because your capital can get a large commerce bonus from Bureaucracy, this is often the best place to cottage up - Scientists or Merchants give beakers or gold respectively, while cottages produce raw commerce (which is then turned into beakers, gold, culture or espionage depending on the sliders).
In your situation, having built the Pyramids (and so having enabled Representation) you're in a good position to try out an SE. This will also help you learn how to build GP farms for your more 'cottagey' games in future.
Other sundry remarks:
*You need to explore a lot more early on. Knowledge is power.
*Why so many Spearmen? A few are useful for defending against mounted units, but, unless your enemy has a horse-heavy army, you're better off with Axes/Chariots/Swords/Horse Archers.
*Prepare for war. The land available to the south is utter cack, so you'll want to conquer some cities from one of your neighbours in the not-too-distant future. Unfortunately, each of them has a significant defensive advantage (Mao is Protective, Hammy has Bowmen), so you'll need to think carefully about the composition of your forces.
*Researching Construction would be a smart move - Catapults will make war much easier.
I had a look at the save, and you're not doing too bad so far.
However, it's clear that you're prioritising production over growth. Mines are a strong improvement to build and work early on, but the most important thing is to keep your cities growing towards their happy caps.
You need to build granaries in every city as a matter of urgency, and get those workers building grassland improvements (see below) to speed growth. Then, once your cities begin to reach their maximum sizes (for the moment), you can start working mines again (and/or use the whip).
On a related note, Rostov will never have enough food to work the mines you've built. You'll need Civil Service for chain irrigation before that city will be much use at all, and even then you'll need to change several of the mines to windmills.
As for the grassland improvements I mentioned above, well, this is where you have to decide on how you want to run your economy. As you may be aware, the two basic choices are the Cottage Economy (CE) and the Specialist Economy (SE). These are not mutually exclusive, but while learning the game it's probably best to run a relatively pure version of one or the other.
A very basic guide to setting up the two economies:
Spoiler:
For a CE, you'll want to get cottages down around all but two of your cities. Other than the food tiles (inc. a grassland farm or two if there aren't enough food bonuses to give a sufficient rate of growth), and a mine or two for production when necessary, you should have these cities work grassland cottages at all times. If you run out of grassland tiles, then run plains cottages.
The two exceptions are a military city and a Great Person farm.
The military city should aim for the highest possible hammer output from its tiles (so it needs enough food to work lots of mines/workshops/etc), and should build nothing but troops - and buildings which help it build more troops (inc. happy/healthy buildings to allow growth).
The GP farm should be a city with lots of food (both actual and potential), which will be used to run as many specialists as possible. In terms of buildings, it will only need those which allow it to run more specialists (inc. by allowing growth). For improvements, it needs as many farms as it can work, up to its happy cap.
Once you've researched Literature, you should build the Heroic Epic in your military city, and the National Epic in your GP farm. to maximise their respective outputs.
For an SE, cities like the GP farm will replace the cottage cities. You will put farms everywhere instead of cottages, grow towards your happy cap, then turn as many citizens into specialists as possible. It's still a good idea to have a military city, but you can use the whip more readily in specialist cities than cottage ones (so many people use it as a warmongering economy).
Finally, it can be very helpful to have at least one cottage city to pay the bills in an SE. Because your capital can get a large commerce bonus from Bureaucracy, this is often the best place to cottage up - Scientists or Merchants give beakers or gold respectively, while cottages produce raw commerce (which is then turned into beakers, gold, culture or espionage depending on the sliders).
In your situation, having built the Pyramids (and so having enabled Representation) you're in a good position to try out an SE. This will also help you learn how to build GP farms for your more 'cottagey' games in future.
Other sundry remarks:
*You need to explore a lot more early on. Knowledge is power.
*Why so many Spearmen? A few are useful for defending against mounted units, but, unless your enemy has a horse-heavy army, you're better off with Axes/Chariots/Swords/Horse Archers.
*Prepare for war. The land available to the south is utter cack, so you'll want to conquer some cities from one of your neighbours in the not-too-distant future. Unfortunately, each of them has a significant defensive advantage (Mao is Protective, Hammy has Bowmen), so you'll need to think carefully about the composition of your forces.
*Researching Construction would be a smart move - Catapults will make war much easier.
granaries should be built in every city?
on my build advice pop up that you get when the city finishes building something and asks you what to build next, it hardly ever says granaries unless the city is positioned where there are hardly any food tiles.
should i not be listening to the advice that the game gives?
is there away of turning these suggestion pop ups off?
the depth of this game is just frustratingly bewildering to me
You would do well to never, ever listen to the advice the game gives you. If you're just starting out, they're okay, but once you have a few games under your belt the ingame advice is useless at best and detrimental at worst.
Well, this advice was specific to Pyerun's game - his cities were desperately in need of faster growth. But, yes, generally you'll want a Granary in every city asap.
The (very) occasional exceptions are (i) cities which have so much food they'll grow to happy cap at a crazy speed anyway (and these will want Granaries for health and/or whipping soon enough), and (ii) cities which are settled purely to capture a resource, and have no growth potential beyond size 2-3.
That's understandable. I've been playing civ for fifteen-odd years, and I still felt pretty overwhelmed when I first got civ4.
Luckily, by visiting this forum, you've taken a huge step towards figuring the game out. Keep reading and asking questions. You'll soon get the hang of the basics, and that's when the real fun begins.
Yes, Civ4 is quite complex, but that's what the difficulty levels are for, you can learn more and move up, and there's always more to learn.
As for your game, keep in mind that each tile requires 2 food to work to sustain itself, so to work a plains/hill mine you need to be getting 2 excess food from other tiles, such as an irrigated flood plains, 2 irrigated grasslands or a food resource.
Also, in regards to your question about cottages, yes, you want to get cottages up as soon as possible, because to reach their full potential they need time to grow. That's something you're definitely short on at the moment.
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