more confused than before

[joyceanblue]

hi folks, i know to many of you this post might sound another newbie post asking how to play the game. but i cant help it. ive read quite alot in this forum and someother places and i am even more confused than before . there are few answers i am looking for but i dont seem to find them atall. so here it goes.
the most confusing thing to me in civilization is city screen. what manipulation can be done there to improve the situation. i see those white circles there which means the tile a citizen is working on and it can be changed, but when should i change it or should i change it atall? i can assign the no. of specialist on the right side of screen but i dont get it atall, how does it work? there are few buttones at the bottom like avoid growth or production automation or something like that. what do these buttons do? another thing is that those white circles represent the tiles citizen is working upon, so does it mean that the rest of the tiles arent producing anything? or does it mean they are producing but the improvement built on those tiles isnt contributing anything? if so should we be careful abould building improvement and we should only build as many improvement as many citizens we have to work on them? another question is about population, does it only depend on the size of the city or does it also depend on the no.of improvements build in that city? if so how much population each improvement contributes? i have more question but ill ask them later when i get answers of these questions.
thanks in advance for answering all these annoying questions.

 

[JimT]

hi folks, i know to many of you this post might sound another newbie post asking how to play the game.

- No problem I do that all the time, along with incorrect posts which make me seem like a muppet.

what manipulation can be done there to improve the situation

- if you haven't tried the War Academy in the forum then go there meanwhile I will briefly summarise. You can always work one tile for the city and an extra tile for each population (so 2 at the beginning), others are ignored. All tiles worth working can be improved once the desired tech.
- The tiles you work depend on the cities specialisation but it generally pays to work resource tiles first. each tile gives a combination of food, hammers and commerce. Food and hammers have equal worth, commerce probably not (as you can get one food from a farm but 5-8 commerce from a town). You get the total of all within the white circles (the tiles you working).
- For a production city work a couple of high food tiles (farmed grassland/floodplains or food resources) and then put extra population to high hammer sites (metal resources, certain pastures and mines/woodland). Add the food to production (FP) for each tile and if it is over three you almost definitely want to work it. Use the highest FP tiles first.
- Commerce cities need one/two food resources (pref. seafood) and then work cottages or coast. Its useful to have a couple of production tiles to swap to for builds or a couple of food tiles so you can whip.
- Specialist cities you want lots of food to get growth and whip for improvements. Then to feed the specialists once your near your happiness cap

there are few buttones at the bottom like avoid growth or production automation or something like that. what do these buttons do?

- DON'T USE THEM. IMO they assault dismember and destroy your game while creating heightened levels of anxiety. They tell your computer how to asign new citizens but I find it really irritating and will often assign new citizens stupidly. Your better off learning how to do it yourself and checking yourself. On low levels after each build (more often for wonders) is fine on high levels many people check for cities about to jump in pop and some check all cities every turn.

does it mean that the rest of the tiles arent producing anything?

- Yes so don't bother wasting time improving tiles your not going to use for a while.

population, does it only depend on the size of the city or does it also depend on the no.of improvements build in that city? if so how much population each improvement contributes

- population depends on your food, your food bar goes up each turn by (total food- 2 food per pop - unhealthiness modifier). For example a 1 pop city working a farmed floodplain will produce 6 food (4 from floodplain+ 2 from city) but 2 is eaten by the pop so the surplus is 4 (pretty good for this size and will grow by 1 pop in about 5 turn). Pop goes down when a city starves, whipped or drafted.

- Some improvements (farm, workboats, pasture etc.) increase the food a tile produces. If your working that tile the improvement will boost your food surplus and speed your growth

- Most buildings do not have a direct effect on pop. Some do help you increase your pop. Particularily
GRANARY: Lets you keep half your food when you grow (effectively means growth in half the time)
Aqueduct and other health modifiers: In the midgame they reduce unhealthiness and limit its affect on your surplus.

- As your pop goes up the length of the bar goes up so it takes longer to grow. When building a worker or settler you surplus is used for production and your cities growth is stagnant. Early on you want to grow your pop. If you are at your happiness cap you want to stagnate and rely less on food intensive tiles (when not whipping or running specialists).

i have more question but ill ask them later when i get answers of these

- NP

thanks in advance for answering all these annoying questions.

- Again No Problem

- Hope I helped

 

[InFlux5]

This game can be confusing because you can't just go to one spot in the game and see all the "stuff" that your empire has going on. All that "stuff" gets spread out to a lot of different places, and you have to keep an eye on each one to know what's going on.

For the most part, the "stuff" comes from your cities. You can see this in the city view. The tiles that your people work produce commerce, hammers, and food. (In addition to each individual city view, start using the F1 screen right away. With this screen you can see, for example, which city has the highest production, or which cities are going to be unhappy soon.)

Food and Production are simple. Each one is local only to the city that generates it. When you end your turn the food is stored and the production contributes to whatever the city is building. When the food fills up the city grows; when the production fills up the item is completed.

Commerce is a little more complicated, because the commerce from all your cities is pooled together, then divided up between science and cultural funding, with any leftover being added to the treasury. You can see how much commerce each city is producing (and where it's going) in the city screen. But to see totals for your whole empire you have to look at some of the screens you access with the F-keys.

For the most part, the game is about maximizing those three resources and finding the right balance between them.

Maximizing basically means growing your cities individually, as well as your empire as a whole. Nearly everything you do is to allow you to grow your empire. For example...

- Increasing commerce allows you to support more cities while keeping your economy going.

- Hooking up happiness and food resources allows your cities to grow larger, which means more commerce/hammers/food.

- Hooking up strategic resources allows you to build a bigger and better military, which allows you to capture and defend cities.

Just continually ask yourself what you need to do to grow your empire.

Balancing is a little more advanced, and I wouldn't worry about it too much at first. But at the very least you should be aware of your ability to go into each individual city screen and tell the citizens which squares to work. You can also use the governor (small buttons in the lower right of the screen) to adjust the balance between food/commerce/hammers. Try to look at each city's terrain and see what it has the most of. Consider focusing one city on production/military and another on food/commerce. (As a rule, your production cities will be lower in population and commerce than the food-heavy ones.)

Once you have the basics down, you can balance things in other ways like through civics and specialists. But I wouldn't concern yourself with those things too much at this stage.

There are essentially two phases of the game. The first is where there is still land available to be taken. During this phase you will usually want to focus on getting Settlers out quickly, and building your economy quickly so you can support more cities and speed up research. Found cities until your research drops to about 60%. Continually build your economy: look at the city screens to see how much commerce each city is producing, and do what you can to increase it (cottages, gold mines, etc.)

Once all the land is taken up, you have to grow your empire in other ways. In most cases this means war. But in any case you should continue to look inward and grow your cities and economy. Don't stop increasing your cities' health and happiness caps until basically all your land is being worked. (Hereditary Rule can really help with happiness.)

Now these are just general guidelines. As your gameplay (and difficulty level) improves, you will find yourself waging early wars (during the "expansion phase") more and more often.

In the meantime just ask yourself periodically what the best way to grow your empire is. Let's say you're an Aggressive civ with little food, but good production, who sort of got shafted on land. Your neighbor has a few nice cities on much better land, and they all have only 2 archers in them. In that type of situation you probably want to capture some cities instead of building Settlers.

But don't put pressure on yourself to wage an early war. At the lower difficulties you have the luxury of expanding peacefully at your own pace for a quite a while. More than anything I would focus on learning how to quickly grow your cities and boost your economy. Happiness and city maintenance aren't a big issue at the lower difficulty levels, but they ultimately will be. See how quickly you can get some cities to size 15-20 and you will start to see how the game works. Then you'll be ready to move up in level.

 

[joyceanblue]

thanks a lot JimT and influx5 for a good explanation. it helped alot, earlier on i was building improvements like crazy without knowing that they arent worked atall by citizens.
i am trying to find ways to increase the no. of citizens working in a city such as increasing happiness and health.
will come with more questions. thanks again

 

[JimT]

thanks a lot JimT and influx5 for a good explanation. it helped alot, earlier on i was building improvements like crazy without knowing that they arent worked atall by citizens.
i am trying to find ways to increase the no. of citizens working in a city such as increasing happiness and health.
will come with more questions. thanks again

Happiness and health,

Start by finding any message by Cabert and checking out his sig.
For me its generally happiness that causes problems. Health is less annoying, has more resources and easier to deal with.

For happiness try the cultural slider and improvements. Spread religions (don't bother about founding them but spread the ones you get).

I tend to have reasonably small cities until I get the cultural slider up and running, mainly due to a lack of resources and not bothering with the religion part of the tech tree until Alphabet opens up trade. Not saying this is a good idea just saying it's what I do.