In need of a guide to managing cities.

[Milk]

I'm a bit of noob to Civ, if you couldn't tell. I've actually played CivIV (all 3 versions) and CivIII a lot in the past, but somehow I never figured out managing city tiles & specialists. I always played on the easier difficulties, where I could pretty much let that all be controlled by the AI. But now I'm getting back into CivIV (BTS), and I've decided I should at least move up to the easiest of the "real" difficulties, Noble. Annnnywho, basically what I'm trying to ask for here, is a guide for how to manage city tiles and specialists for someone who's never done it before.

 

[mice]

It's pretty hard to go past Sisiutil's beginner's guide

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165632

There is a good section on "cities".

Other than that , looking in "strategy articles" I didn't see threads devoted to cities directly. It'll be case of trawling the articles and walk-throughs. Search "specialist ecomony" in the articles sub-forum. Maybe "city managment"

 

[JujuLautre]

At noble level, I feel you can just use the governor to manage your cities. Just check the appropriates emphasize buttons (food, prod, commerce, science, GPP) and it should be ok.

You can also manually manage your GP farm (to get the appropriate GP with the best chances) and some cities when you have important builds (such as forges everywhere when you get MC), but otherwise it should be ok.

 

[Silver Marmot]

Even on prince, managing cities doesn't really matter all that much (except in the beginning of the game, when it's crucial).

There's a lot more that goes into it, but the simple version is that you should have a great person city to crank out great people, which needs lots of food for specialists and a little production to build things like the national epic, production cities, which need lots of tiles with hammers (like hills) and enough food to work them all, and commerce cities, which need lots of cottages.

It's easier to learn to manage cities when it actually matters. Keep moving up the difficulties until you are having trouble, and then try getting it down. I never got good at it until Monarch, when I realized that I would have to do it in order to win.