If you are brand new to the game, then you may just want to start a new game that won't be as hard for you to learn the basics. In this one, you would have to research map making in order to build triremes to get off the island, but be careful, they can sink if they don't end their turn adjacent to land.
Basically, grasslands (plain green squares) provide good amounts of food and may have a shield as well. Plains (yellowish squares) provide ok food and 1 shield. water (open water sqaures) provide one food and good trade. Forest (tree sqaures) provide 1 food and 2 shields. Hills (green bumby sqaure) only give one food, but you can mine it to add 3 shields to it. Mountains (big silver colored bumby sqaures) give on shield and can be mined for more shields also.
Basically 'special' resource sqaures are those that have some picture in them (examples are pheasant, silk, buffalo, whales, fish, coal, gold, wheat, oil, etc...)
These provide that same as the regular sqaures they are on, but give an added bonus depending on the type.
I don't know if the PSX version has the 'civlopedia' on it, but that can show you what all the terrain looks like and what they supply. It also has info about the wonders, governments, and things like railroads and trade.
The main thing is, you need to have enough food in your city to let the population grow, once it gets enough extra food, it will add a person to the city and that means another citizen to be working the fields. Once you get far enough in the game, you can add city improvements that improve the cities production.
Whew, that was a mouthful.
