Questions from a neophyte

[Saketh]

First of all, as an indication of my skill, I can win consistently on Warlord level, but I have never won a Noble game.

I have many questions...

1. When you trade goods with another civ, (say that you get Deer), to which city does the benefit (in this case ) go?
2. When do cottages actually start to produce gold?
3. If you have a bunch of Farms that aren't near a city in your empire, where does the food go? (Same for mines, etc.)
4. What's a fat cross? How does it affect what a city can or cannot do?
5. What do happiness and health actually do?
6. When you turn up the culture slider, what specifically happens?
7. Why would you want a Vassal State when you could eliminate the civ altogether?
8. What are Trade Routes, and how can you use them?
9. How can you figure out how many total flasks you are making per turn?
10. What contributes to the production of Great Generals (as in what specialist)? Do they just randomly happen?

Thanks for your help!

 

[Elrohir]

1 When you trade goods with another civ, (say that you get Deer), to which city does the benefit (in this case ) go?

All the cities connected to your capital. One resource is enough for your entire civilization.

2When do cottages actually start to produce gold?

Each produces 1 commerce right away. Over time they grow and produce more. The amount of commerce you can get from each level depends on what civics you're running and what leader you are. (Financial civs get 1 extra commerce for each worked square where you are already getting at least 2 commerce)

This is not gold, however. Commerce is turned into gold, or research, or culture depending on what level the science slider is at.

3If you have a bunch of Farms that aren't near a city in your empire, where does the food go? (Same for mines, etc.)

It's just not being gathered, basically. It just sits there. Just like an unworked farm or mine, there really is no negative or positive at all - they're just there. You can pillage them, though, and if they are outside of your territory you get money from it.

4What's a fat cross? How does it affect what a city can or cannot do?

The fat cross is what squares a city can work, which can be up to the surrounding 20 squares. When you double click on a city, you can see the squares that can be worked - the "fat cross".

5What do happiness and health actually do?

When you exceed your happiness level, each new citizen is unhappy and refuses to work. They just sit there and eat food without contributing. And you know what the Bible says about that - if thou shalt not work, thou shalt not eat! So either get some happy faces in there to get them working, or whip them away! The green faces, unhealthiness, eat your food. Each one unhealthiness point takes away one food from your city. This isn't as serious as unhappiness, but shouldn't be allowed to build up.

6When you turn up the culture slider, what specifically happens?

You take the commerce from your cities and turn it into culture. This also can make people in your cities happy, with theaters you can make them even happier.

7Why would you want a Vassal State when you could eliminate the civ altogether?

Sometimes you don't have time to finish them off. Or maybe you're lazy. But you don't have to, this is optional.

8What are Trade Routes, and how can you use them?

Trade routes are connections between cities. They give you commerce, just like a worked square. You need roads or rivers connecting your cities, and the cities of others. Or coast revealed coast with Sailing, or ocean with Astronomy.

9How can you figure out how many total flasks you are making per turn?

You probably have to just add it up. Hit the button on the top right hand side of the screen that looks like a house, and you can see how many beakers each city is producing.

10What contributes to the production of Great Generals (as in what specialist)? Do they just randomly happen?

Great Generals are different from other specialists. You get them from combat experience. When your troops fight and gain experience, those points are added up, and you get a free great general when you reach a certain amount. (100, 200, etc...)

I hope that helps and was clear enough. And be sure to check out Sisiutil's Guide for Beginners, that will probably help some.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

More about health and more about happiness, to answer Q5.

Also, a thread about trade routes, although you might want to skip the number-crunching.

 

[mice]

[*]How can you figure out how many total flasks you are making per turn?

Hit F2. you can see 'research' . This is flasks per turn for the whole empire.

It's a good thing to keep track of, even writing them down at key checkpoints like 1000 AD , and comparing with other games/strats.

Re. question 8 ,trade routes. The tech, Currency means you get a trade route for each city. It is an important tech for expanding, because it means that the new city gets at least 1 commerce/turn (from the trade route) to help cover costs. It's a good idea to keep an eye on how much you're making from trade routes. You lose this when you attack the civ that you'er trading with.

 

[DigitalBoy]

1) A single resource is enough to benefit your whole nation, as long as roads are connecting the cities to each other. I think goods you trade for end up in your capital, so the city would have to be connected to your capital to get it. I'm not sure though. By the way, deer produce health, not happiness.

2) Cottages actually do provide +1 "gold" (more correctly, it's called commerce like Elrohir said). In order for a cottage to grow, a population point from the city has to work the tile. (I'll explain this concept in a later point.) Once the tile has been worked for 10 turns, a cottage turns into a hamlet (+2 commerce). Once a hamlet has been worked for 20 turns, it turns into a village (+3 commerce). After a village has been worked for a staggering 40 turns, it turns into a town (+4 commerce). You can keep track of how far these improvements are from moving to the next level by moving your mouse over them on the overhead map. Certain civics and technologies affect how these improvements work. For example, the Emancipation civic halves the time they need to be worked to grow to the next level, and the Printing Press technology causes villages and towns to generate extra commerce.

3) Farms and mines, just by virtue of being there, don't produce any food of hammers. A farm or mine, or any improvement for that matter, needs to be "worked" by a city to generate food, hammers, and commerce, which all go to the city whose workers (different from the worker unit) worked the tile. When you double click on a city, it takes you to the city screen. Here you will see the "fat cross," the 20 tiles around the city that the city's population can work to produce food, hammers, and commerce. The circled tiles are the ones that are currently being worked. So when you build a farm, you build it with the intention that a nearby city (the farm HAS to be within the fat cross of a city in order to be worked) will work the tile as a source of extra food. Normally, the city governor will automatically assign the population of a city to the surrounding tiles. He will try to find a good balance of food, production, and commerce, but you can order specific tiles to be worked if you think you can do a better job. HOWEVER, once you start fiddling around with the tiles, the city governor is "turned off." He won't manage the population until you turn him back on again. If you accidentally turn the city governor off and don't properly manage the city in his leave, the city can have some serious problems. You can turn him back on with a button in the lower right part of the city screen. There are even some useful buttons there (emphasize food, emphasize production, emphasize commerce) if you want to focus on a particular one without turning him off. Here you might be asking, "What's the point of building farms, cottages, and mines if they aren't in a city's fat cross?" Well, there aren't any really, EXCEPT to gain access to a resource. A tile with a resource on it doesn't need to be worked by a city to give you that resource (although it's great if a city can work resource tiles because they often generate extra food, hammers, or commerce). It just needs to have the proper improvement over it (like a mine over iron or a plantation over sugar), be connected to your cities with roads, and be within your cultural boundaries).

4) Like I said earlier, the fat cross is the group of tiles around a city that are close enough for the city's population to work for food, hammers, and commerce. A city will be especially productive if you settle it somewhere where a lot of "good" tiles will be in its fat cross. By the way, it's worth noting that a city has to generate 10 culture points before its cultural boundaries extend to the outer 9 tiles of the fat cross. Until then, you can only work the inner square, so to speak.

5) If a city has more unhappiness than happiness, then a certain amount of the population becomes angry and refuses to work (that is, refuses to work any tiles). If a city has 5 points of happiness and 7 points of unhappiness, then two population points refuse to work, meaning two less worked tiles. By the way, all population points, including angry population, consume food. So angry citizens consume food but give back nothing in return. As such, they are a drain on productivity and growth. Happiness is a slightly less severe problem. If a city's unhealthiness exceeds it healthiness, then the difference is deducted by the city's food per turn. So a city with 7 unhealthiness and 5 healthiness produces 2 less food per turn. You don't get angry citizens, but the city's growth can grind to a halt if it gets severe. You can check a city's happiness, unhappiness, healthiness, and unhealthiness, as well as what are contributing to each of these factors, in the city screen. They're in the top middle part of the city screen. Look for the happy face.

 

[DigitalBoy]

6) The culture slider diverts a portion of each city's commerce into culture. If a city produces 50 commerce and you have the culture slider at 10%, then each turn 5 commerce is converted directly into culture. The culture slider also makes your citizens happy. For each 10% you invest into culture, each city gets +1 happiness. In addition, the theatre and colosseum buildings provide even more happiness when using the culture slider. A city with a theatre and colosseum will get +5 happiness from having the culture slider at 20%! This is great for handling war weariness.

7) If you're going for a domination victory and you can just bowl them over, by all means do. If you want to defeat them but want the war to end ASAP, you might consider vassalage. Vassal states also give some extra bonuses to the master, like extra happiness. You can also demand resources from your vassal. Then again, you would have that resource if you just conquered them completely. I don't know really what the advantages are; I don't use vassalage much myself.

8) Trade routes represent trade and generate commerce for each of your cities. Cities can trade only with cities that they are connected to and only with cities either within your nation or within the nation of a rival civ that you have open borders with. Initially, cities can be connected only by roads, but when you research Sailing, cities can trade by coast (really convenient since you don't need to build roads now to establish foreign trade routes). When you research Astronomy, you can trade over the ocean with cities on other continents. You only start with 1 trade route per city, but certain technologies (like Currency), civics, and wonders add extra trade routes. How much commerce a trade route generates is based both on distance between the cities and city size. More distance and larger cities means better trade routes. Also, trade routes with foreign civs are much more lucrative than those within your own empire, so open borders have an important economic application. Also, you can't establish open borders with Russia and then have every city have a trade route with Moscow. If you want lots of foreign trade routes, establish open borders with many civs.

9) No idea, but I estimate by taking the tech's cost in beakers and dividing by the number of turns it takes to research it.

10) Great generals are produced when your soldiers earn a certain amount of experience in combat. You can keep track on how much more experience you need to earn through the military advisor screen (upper right hand corner, the button that looks like a shield and swords). In the miltary advisor screen, check the yellow bar at the bottom. Experience earned from combat with barbarians doesn't count towards producing a great general; you need to be at war with a rival civilization. You need more experience to earn each subsequent great general, just like each great person requires more great people points than the one before it.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Great Generals are different from other specialists. You get them from combat experience. When your troops fight and gain experience, those points are added up, and you get a free great general when you reach a certain amount. (100, 200, etc...)

Actually the amount of experience is 30, 60, 90, etc for most game speeds - except with Marathon, where the experience is 45, 90, 135, etc (since troops are comparatively cheaper with respect to the number of game turns). Imperialistic leaders receive +100% Great General points (but note that this doesn't mean +100% number of Great Generals, due to the increasing amount of experience needed to get new ones).

 

[Saketh]

Thanks for all the responses! Many of my doubts have been cleared up.

I have another question:

What is the difference between commerce and gold?

I was under the impression that all cities generate a certain amount of gold every turn, and the gold can be channeled into research or culture. But this new concept of commerce confuses me.

 

[Zionel]

All your cities produce commerce, these are the yellow money icons you see inside your city screen. Cottages produce commerce, as do river tiles and special resources and some improvments. The amount of commerce produced by a city is then converted to both science and gold. Science multipliers include buildings such as; Libraries, monastaries, wonders, universities and so on. Buildings that multiply the amount of gold converted from commerce include; banks, markets, grocers and wonders. In the end you can decide how much of the total commerce a city produces that will go to science or gold by using the science/gold/ culture slider. There are also buildings that multiply your culture, such as temples, theaters, broadcasting towers, wonders and then some.

I did my best at explaining, but you will find lots of great articles on the forum that explain everything in much more detail. I'm sure someone have a link for you.

 

[Elrohir]

Actually the amount of experience is 30, 60, 90, etc for most game speeds - except with Marathon, where the experience is 45, 90, 135, etc (since troops are comparatively cheaper with respect to the number of game turns). Imperialistic leaders receive +100% Great General points (but note that this doesn't mean +100% number of Great Generals, due to the increasing amount of experience needed to get new ones).

My mistake, I wasn't sure of the exact number, or I just grabbed some out of thin air. I knew they doubled each time, I just wasn't sure how many for the initial GG on each speed. Thanks.

 

[DigitalBoy]

What is the difference between commerce and gold?

I was under the impression that all cities generate a certain amount of gold every turn, and the gold can be channeled into research or culture. But this new concept of commerce confuses me.

What you think of now as gold is actually commerce. Cities get commerce from their tiles and trade routes. Commerce is divided between research, the treasury, and culture. Gold refers specifically to the portion of commerce that goes into the treasury.

There are also some ways to generate gold other than commerce. For example, priest and merchant specialists provide gold even though they don't generate commerce.

 

[Solver]

Religious shrines are another important source of direct gold that do not generate commerce. The in-game icon for commerce is one round coin. The in-game icon for gold is a couple of stacks of coins (what you see in the upper corner near your treasury number).