Please help

[kevin2350]

many games I will build a city and it takes forever to get citizens.
sometimes I will have 4 or 5 wonders and still only 1 citizen, the original settler.
What is the solution?
I would say it happens about every fourth game.

 

[ElephantU]

Citizens come from the growth of your cities. You need surplus food to make your cities grow. When the surplus food box fills completely, one citizen is added to the city. When a settler is completed, one citizen is subtracted.

The other way to add citizens is to create the conditions for "We Love The Consul/President Day" celebration in a Republic or Democracy. Combined with surplus food this can lead to significant growth, as long as you maintain the celebration.

Choice of location for your first city is crucial to early growth, as well as quick technical progress toward getting out of Despotism, which restricts surplus food and trade benefits. Try to plant your first city on grass with one or more special terrains nearby. Rivers add extra trade, which can double your research rate.

You may be focusing on Wonder production too much and neglecting the creation of additional cities. Try to build a few settlers before starting on producing Wonders, and settle those settlers instead of using them to improve the terrain around your original city (unless you are playing One City Challenge). Keep them close to your capital city, as early on corruption and waste increase drastically the further you are from your capital.

 

[geofelt]

Found your first city on grassland if you can, plains if you must. Otherwise, use the settler to explore and find a good location. A good location will have some trade capability, and some shield capability without needing improvements. Whales are my favorite. Your first objective is to produce a settler so you can start a second city, (possibly two) before you start on a wonder. Developing more cities will let you build more wonders in the long run. later, you can use a settler to irrigate worked squares to increase food production and increase growth. Be aware that irrigating grassland before monarchy will not increase food production.

 

[rrhal]

Also note that when you build a settler it takes one food from the home city to support the settler. So if you have a city that isn't producing much food you don't want to support settlers long term. (Note that the food support ends when the settler starts a new city)

So if you have a city that you want to grow:
a) position the workers on squared where you get at least 2 food/square
b) don't support more settlers than you have food for
c) if you must, do a little irrigating around the city
d) irrigated grasslands ick out 3 food per turn as soon as you get out of despotism