New Guy With Questions!!!!

[Helltex]

Okay, so I'm new to Civ, but not to strategy games in general. I love Axis & Allies, Risk (those two, the board games), and I played the hell out of some Starcraft and Age of Empires back in the day. Civ IV, beyond any shadow of a doubt, kicks enormous amounts of ass.

I bought IV about a week ago and have been figuring out some stuff, but questions are always popping up (of course). I'm the type of guy who likes to figure things out on his own, but some questions I just want answered.

Here are a couple silly ones:
1) Is it better to put granaries on land where there is already enough food, or should I go ahead and put a farm in there?
2) How do I get all the pop-ups (recommended stuff) to disappear?

I'm very happy I found this site and I'm looking forward to posting in the near future. I cannot until Friday (payday), so I can go out and buy Warlords and Beyond, eat some friggin' sushi and go see The Simpsons Movie.

Later later,
Helltex

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Welcome to the boards. You'll find this forum to be a great place to look for advice and to talk amongst friends who enjoy the same game.

A quick place you may want to look is into the War Academy, accessed by a link on the left side of the main page. This will get you started with a compilation of the more important threads in terms of strategy.

As for your few questions, graneries are a building and not an improvement, so i'm not quite sure I understand question number one. As for question 2, if you hit CTL+O you can access the options menu. You can turn off the advisor's tips (which I usually do) and also select the No Unit Recommendations if you find the blue circles on the map to indicate where to have your worker improve are annoying. Oh yes, Sid's Tips can be turned off as well (the extra descriptions on the build menu). You can never turn off the recommended build and tech choices.

Enjoy the game!

 

[MangleMeElmo]

Granaries are the first thing you should build in every city. If you're mistaking granaries for cottages, I can tell you that depends on what type of economy you inted on running: Cottage Economy or Specialist Economy (or even a mix of both). As a general rule, you should cottage-spam your capital city because the benefit will be huge with the Bureaucracy civic.

 

[Corn]

Hello,

1) Granaries are not placed on specific plots of land, but rather within the city. Whether to build a farm or another improvement on adjacent land largely depends on what you intend for the city, and what the rest of the surrounding tiles can generate. Since each citizen consumes two food, if you want to grow your city to its maximum size, you'll need to do a bit of simple figuring to determine how many farms you'll need inside your Big Fat Cross.

2) To remove pop-ups and tips, go to the advanced menu from the main menu. Then to options, and uncheck the boxes for advisor pop-ups and Sid's Tips (if you don't want those either).

(I guess I should have reloaded the thread before answering and looking so redundant after answering my phone. . .)

 

[Helltex]

Yea, mistaked graneries for cottages...

Thanks for the tips! Right now I like to play with anyone who has the financial trait. Sometimes, my citizens get unhappy very quickly though.

 

[madscientist]

Yea, mistaked graneries for cottages...

Thanks for the tips! Right now I like to play with anyone who has the financial trait. Sometimes, my citizens get unhappy very quickly though.

That's because there are too many in that city. limit the city growth. To correct an already crowded city
1) Find something to make them happy like entertaining them with luxury resources (gold, silver, fur, ivory), frightening them with military might (heritary rule), or dull there senses by adjusting the culture meter.
2) Kill them the whiners. Use slavery to rush a building/unit to remove excess population. You can also starve the city, that generally works too.

 

[mdinard]

I used to feel bad about starving a city, until I realized it was so damn easy and effective.

 

[cabert]

First, welcome aboard.
Second, I wouldn't rush buying warlords. BtS includes most of it anyway, so save a few bucks there.
Third, there are no fixed rules to win in cIV and that's why it's such a great game. (disclaimer : I have the feeling that the higher you go in the levels, the less options you have, but I guess you're not playing immortal or deity yet). Some rules of thumb :
- in the early game, happiness (and health sometimes) hinder you a lot. Check my signature on how to deal with that. But the fact is that there is no point in growing much beyond your happiness cap. So if you're near to your happiness cap, you greatly benefit from working cottages over farms. Sometimes you will even benefit from working a mine instead of a corn farm for 1 or 2 turns, to avoid an unwanted growth.
- Growing fast is great. More so if you're using slavery wisely (= whipping rarely large buildings or often "happy" buildings). However, there is no point in extreme growth, because of the happiness cap. Each turn, your city harvests food. This food can be just what it takes to feed your population, or show a slight surplus or you can temporarily starve your city. A rather common rule of thumb is that you need to be able to generate a +3 food surplus at least to insure a reasonable growth. +5 is better. More is overkill.

I used to feel bad about starving a city, until I realized it was so damn easy and effective.

I do starve my cities before they grow over their happiness cap.
If I forget and they are unhappy, I whip.
OK, I sometimes whip even happy citizens, but I certainly don't starve unhappy citizens, it would be like wasting the food it took to get the growth.