n00bzor Dictator needs help!

[Belfran]

Hello fellow Emperors, Queens, Consulates, Presidents and Prime ministers:

Back History
I am a RTS fan. I've been playing Rome: Total War obsesivley (what an amazing game) and I started to realize that I enjoyed the turn-based part as much (sometimes more) than the real-time 3D battles. So I went out and got Civ IV.

I am completely new to the Civilization series, but even so my first game lasted 13 hours straight, even though I didn't exactly know what I was doing. Before you ask: I did the tutorials and I've read the manual twice! Once before my first game and once after. I've also read Sulla's great walkthrough, and though he makes it sound so easy, my second game collapsed completely. So here go a few questions:

Question 1.-) On this forum I've read some advice from the community and sometimes someon suggest something like "Change production to culture" How do I do that? Is it by making more culture oriented buildings? I guess I could also change it to economics, are there more options?

Question 2.- When a city finishes constructing a building or a unit I get a message prompting me to build something next. Do I always have to have something being built? Can't I decide not to build anything on the city for a couple of turns, and if so, how? When I have four or five cities I start getting a lot of those "What to build next" windows, so I start to panic and build a lot of military units like crazy (hey I used to play Rome, remember ?)

Question C.- Nah just kidding

Question 3.- Sulla speaks in his (amazing) walkthtough about "sheilds" as a measure of production. I'm guessing he means the little hammers? If not could someone enlighten me? If he is speaking about the little hammers, he also mentions changing "sheilds" to produce something else? I dunno the whole "shield" thingie is really confusing.

Anyways, thanks in advance to you guys and gals!

 

[joethreeblah]

Hello fellow Emperors, Queens, Consulates, Presidents and Prime ministers:

Back History
I am a RTS fan. I've been playing Rome: Total War obsesivley (what an amazing game) and I started to realize that I enjoyed the turn-based part as much (sometimes more) than the real-time 3D battles. So I went out and got Civ IV.

I am completely new to the Civilization series, but even so my first game lasted 13 hours straight, even though I didn't exactly know what I was doing. Before you ask: I did the tutorials and I've read the manual twice! Once before my first game and once after. I've also read Sulla's great walkthrough, and though he makes it sound so easy, my second game collapsed completely. So here go a few questions:

Question 1.-) On this forum I've read some advice from the community and sometimes someon suggest something like "Change production to culture" How do I do that? Is it by making more culture oriented buildings? I guess I could also change it to economics, are there more options?

Question 2.- When a city finishes constructing a building or a unit I get a message prompting me to build something next. Do I always have to have something being built? Can't I decide not to build anything on the city for a couple of turns, and if so, how? When I have four or five cities I start getting a lot of those "What to build next" windows, so I start to panic and build a lot of military units like crazy (hey I used to play Rome, remember ?)

Question C.- Nah just kidding

Question 3.- Sulla speaks in his (amazing) walkthtough about "sheilds" as a measure of production. I'm guessing he means the little hammers? If not could someone enlighten me? If he is speaking about the little hammers, he also mentions changing "sheilds" to produce something else? I dunno the whole "shield" thingie is really confusing.

Anyways, thanks in advance to you guys and gals!

Welcome to CIV.

Someone much smarter can answer #1.

#2 - yes, you're always building something. remember the game is paused, so no need to panic. you have your whole turn to think about it and go back and change it if you want to before you go to the next turn.

#3 - Shields = hammers. In civilization 1-3 they were shields, and then in civilization IV they changed it to hammers because it makes more sense, since you use them to build things. a lot of the old timers still accidentally call them shields

 

[Old Jubilee]

Hi!

In earlier versions of the game, units of production were depicted as 'shields' instead of the current 'hammers'.

Hope that at least clears THAT up.

Have fun!

 

[Old Jubilee]

Blah! You posted a minute before me. Sorry for redundancy.

 

[Bevertje]

Question 1.-) On this forum I've read some advice from the community and sometimes someon suggest something like "Change production to culture" How do I do that? Is it by making more culture oriented buildings? I guess I could also change it to economics, are there more options?

After you research Music, you can build culture, just like you would build a unit or building. Then you are not making something but you produce culture

 

[Gufnork]

And if you don't want to build anything useful in a city, just build research, wealth or culture. Wealth is available when you get Currency, Research when you get Alphabet and Culture when you get Music.