Newbie citizen management questions

[dunvi]

I'm a newbie to Civ5 and to strategy games in general, so I'm not very good yet but I'm trying to improve. I've started looking at some opening strategies, and threads including the conversations and detailed breakdowns in the Game of the Month threads to try and learn what I should be doing. However, I'm finding that I usually fall behind by turn 50, and really I'm probably behind earlier than that. I always seem to be slow on production, low on gold, not enough culture, and no faith.

I get that some of this (gold?) may be because of playing on too low difficulties, but I think I am really losing a lot in citizen management. I rarely use default management, but I also rarely lock a tile (usually I pick one of the focus defaults). I know that these are inadequate both from reading on here and from the mere fact that picking a focus often seems to lower that yield. So I know I need to be managing my own citizens but I'm not sure how.

Should I aim for food production early on? I have a habit of tending towards production, and later gold.

What's the value of specialists over another food or production tile? Are unemployed citizens good? bad?

Is there a time when I should limit growth and try and remain at a certain population level? What's the best way to do this?

I have other questions (like omfg WTH is going on with culture with BNW) but I'm so overwhelmed with things to learn that I have to pick just one to start.

ETA: Changed the title since it turns out citizen management is the least of my problems.

 

[ravenmagus]

You want to focus food as much as possible, because bigger is better. (More citizens = more tiles/specialists = more hammers and gold and especially science)

Specialists give certain yields, some that are not typically found on tiles (culture, science). Most importantly they give points towards generating a Great Person. Specialist slots don't provide any food so they can only really be run by a bigger city that has a good source of food.

The only time you really want to limit your population growth is when you are almost out of happiness and have no way to get any more at all. Even then you want to limit your satellite cities more than your capital. There is an option to halt population growth in the citizen management section of a city.

 

[dunvi]

The only time you really want to limit your population growth is when you are almost out of happiness and have no way to get any more at all. Even then you want to limit your satellite cities more than your capital. There is an option to halt population growth in the citizen management section of a city.

So unchecked growth would be why I have so much trouble with happiness on higher difficulties? Well, that and captured cities I don't know what to do with...

 

[ravenmagus]

So unchecked growth would be why I have so much trouble with happiness on higher difficulties? Well, that and captured cities I don't know what to do with...

Yes and no. Happiness can be an issue until the Industrial/Modern era. Once you have an ideology the only potential happiness issues should come from ideological pressure, and even then ideology generally gives more happiness than you lose.

Unchecked growth is good, you should try to find ways to get more happiness (trade for lux from the AI) rather than trying to stop your growth. The only time you should really plan on stopping growth is when you are doing an ICS strat, where you can't afford to grow cities.

If you have captured cities, leave them puppeted until you're ready to build or rush buy a courthouse.

 

[dunvi]

I can't seem to consistently get the AI to trade with me (assuming they even have enough of anything to trade with, this is because of lower difficulties, maybe?). I wasn't going to ask yet, but how do I make trading, well, work?

 

[ravenmagus]

Them not having any gold to trade is a symptom of lower difficulty. They'll usually still have lux to trade, though.

It's costly to get an AI to trade a lux they only have one copy of. (It's worth it to do so to trigger We Love The King Day, if you have good gold income to trade.) Look for AIs that have more than one copy of a luxury, and try to trade lux for lux. Keeping diplomatic relations good (not going to war, not breaking promises) will help you get an even trade for your luxuries.

If the AI doesn't seem to have anything to trade, try to scout for more AIs to trade with, or check back frequently; the AIs do trade between themselves too and you may need to catch them right after their deal expires.

 

[joncnunn]

Food is important; but it's much better to manually select the tiles for this than to use the government setting due to order of events:

1. Food collected
2. If that is enough, the city grows. Governor places new citizen.
3. Gold and Hammers collected

If you had the governor on food focus, he'd place the new worker on a 3f 0h 0g tile, which would go to waste that turn. While if you had manually selected the tiles for fast growth but had the focus on hammers, the governor would select a tile that gave you hammers.

 

[Memoryjar]

Wich difficulty level ? Below Emperor, early money is hard cause AI doesn't have start advantage you can have with caravans.
Happiness in Civ V make you can't have a lot of cities. You luxs and sometimes natural wonders (foutain of youth) teach you the number of cities.
2/3 luxs = 2 city, 4 = 3, 5 =4, if you want large cities. If you're looking for tall capital and small cities (around 6 to 8), you can go for 2 luxs for capital and 1 lux for 2 city with circus and coliseum.

Culture was an issue for me. Without wonder it's hard to have a decent culture. Amphiteaters help. Opera house and Ermitage too but it's expensive in hammers (useful in end of game to grab one or two ideologies and resist to tourism).
Despite this, in BNW, you need less culture than in Vanilla or G & K.

 

[dunvi]

Food is important; but it's much better to manually select the tiles for this than to use the government setting due to order of events:

1. Food collected
2. If that is enough, the city grows. Governor places new citizen.
3. Gold and Hammers collected

If you had the governor on food focus, he'd place the new worker on a 3f 0h 0g tile, which would go to waste that turn. While if you had manually selected the tiles for fast growth but had the focus on hammers, the governor would select a tile that gave you hammers.

I did not know this at all. Thank you.

Memoryjar, the highest level I have played so far is Prince. The AI never has any money to trade with there, as far as I can tell, and I only get a rare offer of a research agreement.

What should I do re: happiness when I conquer a city? Do I factor those into my estimations of how many cities I can afford? Should I be razing more cities?

 

[mice]

What should I do re: happiness when I conquer a city? Do I factor those into my estimations of how many cities I can afford? Should I be razing more cities?

I hope this isn't too obvious to you but, create puppet - don't annex on taking a new city.

The button shouldn't even be there because there is no scenario where it is beneficial to annex right away. You need to wait till the rebellion finishes before considering it.

You can be rolling in cash with just trade routes. Check 'Trade routes Available' in the trade route screen and move your cargo ships or caravans around to get the most coin.

If you're at war its a bit trickier, but that's part of the game I really like.

How many cities is about science, because new cities hit you with a 5% tech cost increase. Happiness not so much because the new city can bring in a new lux, and you can build/buy happiness buildings for local happiness there.

If the city brings no new luxury, if the pop is high , if its a stupid city with no food and production, raze it ( thats unless you need it to leap frog bombers to the front, or if it is along your key war road.

 

[beetle]

I'm finding that I usually fall behind by turn 50, and really I'm probably behind earlier than that.

Anything difficulty setting beyond Warlord will have the player “behind” from the beginning. It is all about slowly catching up, first in science (bpt, not number of technologies, that comes later). The score is helpful for benchmarking the various AIs against each other, but is mostly irrelevant to your progress against them.

I always seem to be slow on production, low on gold, not enough culture, and no faith.

That pretty much describes every game of mine! Have you played on to see if you win games? If so, how far behind are you when an AI wins, and what victories have they achieved?

I get that some of this (gold?) may be because of playing on too low difficulties, but I think I am really losing a lot in citizen management. I rarely use default management, but I also rarely lock a tile (usually I pick one of the focus defaults). I know that these are inadequate both from reading on here and from the mere fact that picking a focus often seems to lower that yield. So I know I need to be managing my own citizens but I'm not sure how.

I have been able to work my way up to Immortal without ever locking tiles. (Plus, I only use Gold focus when in a GA, and Production focus when building wonders.) Prolly this reluctance of mine is part of why I can’t seem to win at deity, but really the citizen management screen is one of the last things you need to worry about! Default focus is actually better for early city growth than the other choices, so you may actually be handicapping yourself. The better way to influence the city governor is by manually managing workers and tile improvements.

Should I aim for food production early on? I have a habit of tending towards production, and later gold.

Yes, as cities need to get big enough to work the high production tiles while not stagnating in growth.

What's the value of specialists over another food or production tile? Are unemployed citizens good? bad?

As I admitted, I don’t micro-manage this aspect of the game, but unemployed citizens are almost always the least useful of your choices. So I would characterize them as bad.

Is there a time when I should limit growth and try and remain at a certain population level? What's the best way to do this?

Happiness below 0 stagnates your growth throughout your empire. Of course, the main effect of small negative happiness is stagnated growth! Still, it feels so much better to be in control of this, rather than it happening on its own. As someone else pointed out, the city management screen has an option to turn city growth off. I find I forget to turn this back on, so use with caution if you are disciplined enough to check every city screen every turn.

I have other questions (like omfg WTH is going on with culture with BNW) but I'm so overwhelmed with things to learn that I have to pick just one to start.

At the start of the game, there is an option to turn features off. I found vanilla to be a little to bland (as compared to Civ IV), but GnK is so good that I have not tried BNW yet. At the lower difficulty levels, I was able to ignore religion and culture and still win easily with no micro-management of the city screens. Paying attention to religion and culture adds depth and makes the game a lot more interesting to play, but I don’t think I would have wanted to start with all those features and options.

 

[Memoryjar]

What should I do re: happiness when I conquer a city? Do I factor those into my estimations of how many cities I can afford? Should I be razing more cities?

Went back in Prince for Minor League. Money is really short before Industrial Era.

Some things I do :
- Do CSquest, specially clearing barbarian camps. It allows you culture, happiness and army.
- Build Caravans (not Cargo ship cause barbarian are still alive in late game, cause AI aren't wipe out camps).
- Bully CS for cash. It's fast 100 to 150 golds.
- If you conquer AI cities, gift them to worst AI. It'll raze for you, and you don't suffer of excess happiness.
- If you keep city, specially capital, count at least one unique lux + courthouse per city.

 

[dunvi]

I hope this isn't too obvious to you but, create puppet - don't annex on taking a new city.

That's what I've mostly been doing, maybe I just take the hit to my happiness more seriously than I need to.

You can be rolling in cash with just trade routes. Check 'Trade routes Available' in the trade route screen and move your cargo ships or caravans around to get the most coin.

I haven't really been sure where to send my caravans. I usually send them to another city to increase growth internally without helping the AI, but that only gets me food. What do you recommend for caravans?

That pretty much describes every game of mine! Have you played on to see if you win games? If so, how far behind are you when an AI wins, and what victories have they achieved?

I haven't continued a lot of those games. Perhaps I'm just jumping the gun.

I find I tend to get fed up and quit when an AI DOWs me and is ahead enough that my troops get overrun, or I don't have enough gold/production to create and support a big enough army. I actually have a prince game saved right now where I managed to survive war after getting DOWed thanks to strategically placed cities. I should see if I can eke out a win on that one. But I feel like I've lost already - my happiness tanked when I conquered an AI early on, and recovering from that lost me a lot of production and growth, so I feel like my army is too behind science-wise to continue to a domination win (plus I don't care for war that much), I feel like I'm barely keeping up for a science victory, and I don't understand the cultural victory at all anymore.

 

[Memoryjar]

AI is a crap in warfare. You can stand an important AI DoW with a city on hill with wall/castle and two CB/XB/Gatling. Just bombard its range unit and if your city health is at 0 shoot close land unit. Sometimes you can survive cause AI have no unit to get your city with only range units.

Be overrun is common, give up if you loose your capital not only a city.

If you can conquer an AI, you can bully CS and have cash. With cash, you can buy building like Coliseum or Zoos. If your still have no warmonger with an AI, you can buy a lux for 9gpt.

 

[pvtjava]

I haven't really been sure where to send my caravans. I usually send them to another city to increase growth internally without helping the AI, but that only gets me food. What do you recommend for caravans?

At Prince and probably lower, I have found the best use for external Caravans are with City-States. They will sometimes offer it up as a quest so that you can gain influence. Not until very late in the game will AI trade routes be profitable, even though you will probably be granting them science.

 

[beetle]

I haven't continued a lot of those games. Perhaps I'm just jumping the gun.

I would guess so.

I find I tend to get fed up and quit when an AI DOWs me and is ahead enough that my troops get overrun, or I don't have enough gold/production to create and support a big enough army.

You don’t need a big army, and you don’t want a big army (not just the maintenance and upgrades, but mostly the lost opportunity cost).

I actually have a prince game saved right now where I managed to survive war after getting DOWed thanks to strategically placed cities. I should see if I can eke out a win on that one.

I bet you can!

But I feel like I've lost already - my happiness tanked when I conquered an AI early on, and recovering from that lost me a lot of production and growth

An early AI conquest implies to me that you have the long-run game in the bag! Your only real competition for a science victory is if there is an AI civ that has conquered another civ.

Since you are not annexing, you happiness problems should not resolved as the conquered cities came out of revolt. Since this was early, the cities should not have been too large, and thus the happiness problems should not have gone on for too many turns.

I feel like my army is too behind science-wise to continue to a domination win (plus I don't care for war that much), I feel like I'm barely keeping up for a science victory, and I don't understand the cultural victory at all anymore.

I am bad at domination myself (plus I also don’t care for war that much). If you are barely keeping up mid-game with science victory, then you are actually in good shape to catch up and win as the game progresses.

 

[dunvi]

I bet you can!

I pulled the game out and now an hour later, I can't see it not being a lost cause - all of the AI hate me and nothing I can do will appease them, let alone get them to trade. They're still ahead on science, I somehow dropped back to -19 happiness and I don't know how, and I've got two armies on my borders again. Back to the drawing board I guess.

ETA I checked happiness and I see "-24 from Public Opinion" - aka yet another culture change that I haven't yet figured out. They really should have included a new tutorial with such sweeping changes.

ETA2 The Celts are close to a culture victory, I suspect Sweden is going for a diplomatic victory, and I'm still a tier+ behind on science. I have no clue what I did wrong, everyone is just desperate to go to war with me >.<

ETA3 Oh the Celts just finished Apollo project while I'm still 2 techs out from it. Why am I still trying to salvage this game <.<

ETA4 Is it possible for some games to just be flat out lost causes due to things outside of your control (overly warmongering AIs, no aluminum in borders)?

 

[Memoryjar]

Upload a save files. Ideally, an autosave around your happiness fall to -19.

For warfare, bribe AI to war themselves. Diplo view -> make war with -> click «what do you want for this?».
Aggressive AI, if at peace when you ask, for few gold (5 to 20 gpt) will go for war with your neighbor.
Ask to all AI.

 

[dunvi]

I attached two saves, one from after I conquered the first nation, and the other after surviving a DOW from Sweden. I would have to open up the game to find an autosave closer to where my happiness tanked, but I know that was because of the ideology clash -24 happiness thing (which I don't understand but I at least know where it came from).

I don't think I did anything glaringly wrong within the first save, but somehow the game got seemingly unwinnable by the second.

 

[Memoryjar]

There's many things to say. I loaded T296 save game.
Kyoto with 9 pop T296 is a problem. You open liberty for domination. Ok, but build aqueduct as soon as possible, ideally reach Engineering for before Education. Or just after.
Improve your happiness in conquest by razing non-capital cities, specially if you have 3 or 4 national cities. I sold Samoa and Tongo to Dido, earned 10 gpt and get 10 happinness. AI razes cities for you, so sell or gift them.
Manage your worked tiles, focus on food and locked some for production.
You have too many units. With around 10 you can conquer the map. 3 Samurais are enough if you want to roleplay. But, for fast game, archer to machinery bowman are enough with warrior or horseman, sometimes scout make it.

If I have time after GOTM 78, I'll try T147 save game to see, and try to win. T296 needs over 100 to 150 turns I think to win. Artillery miss a lot.