I received this as a PM, but I prefer to discuss this here so others can see and weigh in.
Hey man I would just like to say that your last reply to my thread impressed me a lot. You seem to really know what you're talking about. I'd love to pick your brain a little if that's cool? If not, no worries.
I noticed you said building road before irrigation is beneficial? Should I always do that? Should I be building road on every square? You talked about my squares having irrigation on them that are size 8 or less and that they won't be able to use all that terrain- I thought that irrigating helps grow the size of the town, no?
As far as market places, banks and stock exchanges went, I just figured they'd always help me generate money? I thought the same goes for libraries, universities and research facilities for science?
How do I know when to and when not to build these things?
I take this to mean that you do not fully understand the city window and the information it provides.
The "resource map" tells you what tiles your citizens are working, and what they are producing on that tile. If you have 5 citizens, they can work 5 tiles. You can change the tile they are working by clicking on a producing tile to create a specialist (a citizen producing luxuries, taxes, or science directly, click on him to change between specialists) and then click on an unworked square to return a specialist to the field.
Each citizen produces some amount of food, shields, and trade arrows, based on the square he is working. Squares that no citizen is working produce nothing. The "City Resources" section gives you a summary of each turn's production. All the food produced in a turn is collected and fed to citizens, 2 per citizen. Any surplus is added to the "Food Storage" box. Your city grows when the box is full. A food deficit deducts from the Food Storage.
The next line tells you how many trade "arrows" your city produces, split into corrupted arrows and arrows that are allocated between Taxes, Science, and Luxuries, depending on your tax rate. Ocean squares produce trade arrows, as do plains, grassland and desert that have roads. Some specials produce arrows too. Caravans also create "trade routes" which give additional arrows each turn.
The line below that tells how much taxes, luxuries, and science "beakers" your city produces in a turn, after applying marketplaces, libraries, temples (under fundamentalism), etc.
For example, Newmarket produces 4 trade arrows, split into 3 taxes and 1 beaker. Additionally, it produces 2 "tithes" because it has a temple. So total tax production is five per turn. A Marketplace in Newmarket will increase Newmarket taxes by 50%, rounded down, therefore giving 2 extra gold. Therefore, the marketplace under construction will give a net benefit of 1 gold per turn after paying its maintenance cost. A marketplace and bank together give +100%, so adding a bank would increase revenues by 3 gold, just enough to pay maintenance. A stock exchange would lose money.
Moving a Newmarket worker from grassland to ocean increases trade in Newmarket from 4 (+ 2 tithes) to 6(+2 tithes), split into 4(+2) taxes and 2 (-1 for fundy penalty) science. A market would then produce 3 extra coins per turn.
The last line tells of shields produced (after factory/power plant bonuses) and how they are divided between support, waste and production. Production is added to the production box each turn.
Generally speaking, you shouldn't be improving tiles that are not already being worked or will be worked very soon. Similarly, don't build structures that you don't need or won't pay for themselves.
Once you have mastered your city window, we will teach you about caravans and freight.
