New Civer - Questions!

[MaliceX]

Okay, compeletly new to the Civ series, and I have some questions that I really need answered

1) My big cities always get unhappy and sick. I build temples, granarys and lots of stuff to increase happiness and cleanliness, but all that is ALWAYS not enough to outweigh the "Its to Crowded" thing. I figured if I built more cities it would disperse my pop, but it doesnt.

2) What the heck is my commerce/coin used for. Food gives me growth and happiness, production makes me build faster.

3) what is the research slider used for.

 

[wkndwrrr]

Ok, I just bought the game a week ago too, but this is what I found out.

1.If your cities become to crowded, get the slavery civic (research Bronze working) then create what I would call a 'public works project', something a building that takes maybe a dozen turns to build, then go into city manager, and go to the automation toolbar. click the top left button 'hurry production' and 3-4 population points are automatically sacrificed to create the building. the Population will get mad at you, but not as much as when it was overcrowded, and it will disappear in 10 turns. or, if you don't want to do that, simply go into city manager, and deselect any farm tiles the city is working. the growth bar will go into starvation mode, and steadily decrease until you get to a managable level. of course, people will still be mad that you starved them, I think, but that goes away too. one you do either of these, tweak the tile manager in the city manager so that the growth bar reads stagnate.

2. coin is used to buy buildings, units and upgrades, and to bribe people

3. the research slider, when at 100%, allows you to research techs as fast as possible. However, the higher it is, the less extra coin you receive to do what I mentioned in the above, because it is being spent on research Sometimes, if you don't have enough commerce sources, you can go into debt (Im not quite sure what happens when you go into debt though, as I never have.) I usually leave it at 90%, so that I will still get techs fast, but my coffers won't be depleted

 

[drkodos]

Re: #3

I only ever run my science at 100% or Zero to take advantage of percentage breaks on bonues and the such.

Meaning, if something would take 8 turns to reasearch at 70% I will run 0 science for 3 maybe 4 turns to build treasury to then be able to afford to run science at 100% for 5 turns to get the same tech in the same amount of turns. The diff can often mean an etra 10 to 25 percent more beakers, or coins, depending on what modifiers are at play.

This way any fractional bonuses (which can be more than minimal) go in my favor on all the breaks.

Any setting in between allows either (or both) beakers or cash to be lost into the ether. For example: If you are to get 25% bonus on top of 17 beakers you do not get 4.25 extra beakers, you only get the 4. Over four turns, you lose one beaker. By running at 100 or zero, this lose is elimintaed. Since the game is effectively one of an accumulation of small advantages over long periods of time, I don't want to give anything away! It adds up. Big time.

I believe this has been substantiated to be very effective by some articles (perhaps by Zombie69 in his Micro Management Article -- a great read even if I attributed this incorrectly. And if I did attribute incorrectly, apologies to the person that did flesh this out in such a fashion as to make a moron like me undertsand it. )

 

[direflector]

1) My big cities always get unhappy and sick. I build temples, granarys and lots of stuff to increase happiness and cleanliness, but all that is ALWAYS not enough to outweigh the "Its to Crowded" thing. I figured if I built more cities it would disperse my pop, but it doesnt.

"It's too crowded" is just about population size; the bigger the city, the bigger this value. Likewise, each population point adds unhealthiness.

Unhappiness can be dealt with a number of ways. Each Religion in a city allows you to build a Temple for +1 happiness; there's also your state religion or (later in the game) the Free Religion civic for religion based happiness. Luxury resources will add too, if they have the appropriate 'improvement' built on them (mines for gold, camps for ivory, etc) *and* a route (road, railroad, and/or river) linking them into your cities.

Once you research Drama, you can also adjust the Culture slider to add happiness (the exact amount it adds per city is shown on the city screen in the top-left, by the culture bar).

Some of the civics can help with unhappiness too; Hereditary Rule is a good general purpose one (+1 for every military unit in a city), and there are others for more specific issues. And of course there's always Slavery to cut down on your population... at the cost of more, albeit temporary, unhappiness.

Unhealthiness can be solved by Health resources (eg. Cows, Rice), again with the appropriate improvement and a route. There are a few buildings that increase health (Aqueducts, Granaries, etc), and a few that increase unhealthiness (Forges, Factories, etc). Also, having Forests close to your city (in the city radius seen on the city screen) helps a little.

However, whilst an unhappy citizen produced by excess unhappiness does nothing for you except eat 2 of your food, unhealthiness will only consume one extra food per excess .

Extra cities won't help disperse your population as city growth rates are independent of each other.

2) What the heck is my commerce/coin used for. Food gives me growth and happiness, production makes me build faster.

3) what is the research slider used for.

Commerce is what you obtain from cities working tiles (primarily, cottages and their larger versions). Commerce gets split three ways, depending on the slider settings in the top right.

Research allows you to discover technologies. The more you spend, the faster you'll get to the high-tech stuff... as long as you have the income to cover it. If you're just starting out in the game, a good rule of thumb is to set this at the highest possible percentage where you're still on a positive (or small negative) income. It's not the most efficient way, necessarily, but it'll get you through the game.

Culture , as mentioned above, can make your citizens happier. It will also increase a city's Culture rating, which is useful if you're going for a Cultural victory, or if your neighbours' borders are getting a little too close.

Gold is only explicitly shown in the city screens. Everything left over after research and culture goes into your treasury, to be spent later. You can use gold for upgrading units, for buying production (under the Universal Suffrage civic only), or in diplomacy with the AI leaders (with the Currency technology).

 

[Cam_H]

It is probably worth noting that commerce is also used to run your cities' maintenance and is affected by low cost vs. high cost civics.

 

[MrCynical]

It is probably worth noting that commerce is also used to run your cities' maintenance and is affected by low cost vs. high cost civics.

Nitpick: it's gold, not commerce that is spent on city maintenance. A lot of people confuse the two, but there are important differences.

 

[Khalid]

Food gives me growth and happiness, production makes me build faster.

Food gives you only growth, not hapiness. The more food you have, the more people you have, but they are not more happy.

Important thing is that you have to connect resources to your city using roads and other trade routes (rivers, coast - you have to research sailing to use coast). If you don't have enough resources and buildings to make your people happy, do not let the city grow, or use slavery to hurry production. Some buildings also increase hapiness or health if you have specific resources (marketplace, grocer...).