Some newbie questions with my attached save.

[speciald]

Hi all,

This is my first post here after reading around these boards while playing my first month of Civilization. I have attached the .sav file of my first victory (by score, i was aiming for a space race victory, actually finished about 2072) and had a few questions about various game things that maybe someone can answer. This file is from the original Civilization 3 (had it for a while and never played it).

I apologize if some of these are stupid questions.

1. Workers - I have read here and know not to automate workers. After building roads, irrigation, and mines, what should i be doing with workers after my land is covered? Also once i locked down 99% of the continent i was on i ended up automating my workers because railroads had just become available and i wasn't so worried about workers developing enemy land (they barely had any).

2. I have read around here that Republic was the best government. When it became available my people wanted it so i switched. I immediately went from +15 gold per turn to -130 per turn and it just got worse from there (actually ended around -300 per turn at 2050). I looked into my domestic advisor and saw i was losing a lot of money to corruption. What is the best way to stay in the positive and/or what am i doing wrong that is making me go negative so far? I also noticed that my army support wasn't being covered anymore, which added another -100 per turn. Is there a way to balance this aside from cutting my military?

3. Depending on what type of victory i am aiming for are certain governments better than others?

4. Is there any other tips someone can offer in general to help me grasp to concept of how to build and in what order to put improvements into my cities?

5. Does having money in the bank actually do anything to your city aside from not being able to fund espionage or buy things from other civs?

I know there is something i'm forgetting to ask, i'm sure ill remember it later.

 

[vmxa]

"speciald"

"1. Workers"

If you are in contrill of the land and laying rails, it is not fatal to automate workers, but I do not do it. First I do not want them running around changing lots of tiles on me. Second I hate to have them all park in my cities.

Then when I want to look in the city to get a unit, I have to scroll past all these workers. I just stack them in groups near the capitol or some location that is useful.

Then I can grab a stack to clear pollution or do what ever I need at the time.

"2. I have read around here that Republic was the best government. When it became available my people wanted it so i switched. I immediately went from +15 gold per turn to -130 per turn and it just got worse from there (actually ended around -300 per turn at 2050). I looked into my domestic advisor and saw i was losing a lot of money to corruption. What is the best way to stay in the positive and/or what am i doing wrong that is making me go negative so far? I also noticed that my army support wasn't being covered anymore, which added another -100 per turn. Is there a way to balance this aside from cutting my military?"

Rep was what I used in Civ3, iirc, but it is not as useful in vanilla as it is in Conquest as there is no unit support.

You must have too many units and not enough income. I would bet that you had built lots of defenders through out the game. Remember there is no MP bonus in republic, so only have garrison where they are needed for defense.

Do not be afraid to disband excess units, better yet learn to build the proper amount.

You probably did not have enough workers to keep worked tiles improved. You want to get those roads up asap and then mine/irrigate and later rail all worked tiles.

There is only so much you can do about corruption, that is not the issue really. You are going to have more and more of it as you get bigger and bigger.

You get your FP in a good location and you build courts in place that it will yield a return. If you get those tiles improved and reduce the excess units and not over build structures, you will not have problems.


"3. Depending on what type of victory i am aiming for are certain governments better than others?"

You really only have to decent choices in C3. Republic for most all games, Demo in some case and Monarchy for an Always War type.

"5. Does having money in the bank actually do anything to your city aside from not being able to fund espionage or buy things from other civs?"

It is best to keep money working, at least until you have Wall Street. So having lots of cash on hand is not useful.Well it is if you have plan for it, such as a mass upgrade soon or to go on a steal campaign.

 

[RFHolloway]

Firstly welcome to the forum!

I haven't looked at the save so these comments are based on general principals

1) You can always merge the workers back into the cities -(you move them to the cities and then select Join) - that will also help reduce your military support. Just be ready to rebuild them once Rails arrive!

2) - with republic you often need to adjust the science slider down a bit to fund the higher military cost. That doesn't matter, as there is more commerce being generated (90% of a smaller pot can be less than 60% of a bigger one)

With regards to corruption it would have been worse under any other form of government except democracy! Perhaps not in cash terms, but certainly in percentage.

3. Normally republic is better. Some people prefer Monarchy in heavy combat games, but others still think republic is fine.

4. First priority is to grow (food). Therefore think about food, which tiles you are improving how fast you can build settlers and workers and whether you need a granary. Second priority is military (shields)- which cities will produce mainly units, they need a barracks. Next is science (commerce) - which cities are generating it how much would a library etc help. Finally happiness, a marketplace with luxuries should sort out most of your problems for most cities.

Once you have got as much territory as possible, think for each build "does it support how I want to win the game?" e.g. if you are aiming for space you need fast science, so libraries and Uni's are more important.

5. Not unless you have one of the wonders which adds interest to your cash (Wall street)

 

[gmaharriet]

Welcome to the board, speciald!!!

You've been given some good answers. I just wanted to add that you're asking some very good questions, and they're the questions you'll be continuing to ask and refine as you gain experience.

I think maybe the hardest to answer is how to handle that drop in income which comes with the switch to Republic. As someone already said, it's a bit better in C3C than in vanilla C3, but it always takes careful management. Maybe I'm just trying to reassure you that it's something we all struggle with, and you'll find many discussions of how to do that on this board. Still, Republic is generally the best choice.

Corruption is another issue we all deal with and you'll find endless discussions on the best way(s) to manage it. Don't build a lot of improvements in your corrupt cities, because they won't pay for themselves. Most improvements will be in the core around your capital and (in vanilla) the second core around your forbidden palace.

Good luck.

 

[MAS]

2. I have read around here that Republic was the best government. When it became available my people wanted it so i switched. I immediately went from +15 gold per turn to -130 per turn and it just got worse from there (actually ended around -300 per turn at 2050).

What is the best way to stay in the positive and/or what am i doing wrong that is making me go negative so far?

Bad empire management, read the answers to your other questions for a solution. The main answer is below Q4

I looked into my domestic advisor and saw i was losing a lot of money to corruption.

Please ignore corruption. The wasted (red) shields and the corrupted (red) commerce are just shields and commerce that you don't get.
But what you don't get isn't important, what you should look at is what you do get. Then work with that!

I also noticed that my army support wasn't being covered anymore, which added another -100 per turn. Is there a way to balance this aside from cutting my military?

In monarchy, you can get 2 units per town (size 1-6) 4 units per city (size 7-12) and 8 units per metropolis (size 13+) without paying gpt upkeep.
Under republic, you get 0 units free of upkeep. But a commerce bonus of +1 per tile. (if it already has at least one commerce to start with)
The way I look at it is this:

Under monarchy, you get a government bonus of 4 gpt per city, but you can only spend this on unit upkeep. If you don't have 4 units per city, the bonus will get lost.
Under Republic, assuming you have size 12 cities, you get 12 commerce per turn bonus, you could use this to pay for 12 units, and even 18 units with a marketplace. But if you have less units, you can also put it into other things, such as science.
The upside to the monarchy bonus is that it is never lost to corruption.
The republic bonus is less than 12 per city, because some is lost to corruption.

In either case, if you have too much military, you end up going bankrupt. You can live with negative income in chieftain difficulty, in higher levels, the game will start selling city improvements and disbanding units if you have 0 gold in stash and negative income.

Read the last part of my answer to Q4.

3. Depending on what type of victory i am aiming for are certain governments better than others?

communism to pop-rush culture in a 100K game. monarchy if you are playing the "always war" variant, Republic for anything else.

4. Is there any other tips someone can offer in general to help me grasp to concept of how to build and in what order to put improvements into my cities?

Build only what you need, where you need it, when you need it.
Return of investment is the keyword!

Build a granary in a city that you use to pump settlers or workers from, because these cities will constantly need to regrow, it is worth building a granary here.
Build barracks in cities that will be constructing military units for a while. artillery type units (catapults/cannon/artillery) do not need barracks, so if you specialize cities for building each of these type of units, you'll have to build only half the amount of barracks.
Build courthouse in cities where the courthouse will add 4 blue shields and 4 gold commerce. So, don't build one in your capital, and don't build one in cities that are hopelessly corrupt.
Build a marketplace if you have at least 4 different type of lux resources. Or if the city is producing at least 10 gold. This may depend on your slider settings in the F1 screen, because I usually have science very hight, the only reason I build markets is for the happiness from the lux resources.
Build a library if the city is producing at least 10 science beakers (again, this depends on your slider settings in the F1 screen)

Do not build temples, cathedrals, and absolutely do not build colloseums unless you are going for the 100K culture victory. And then only pop-rush them at the end, when you are done conquering enough land.

IF the city is hopelessly corrupt, build no improvements in it. such a city will still produce 1 uncorrupted commerce, and 1 uncorrupted shield, that you can convert in 1 gpt by building wealth. Also, the product of specialist citizens is never lost to corruption, so irrigate the land around these cities, and get as many specialist as possible. The good thing about specialist is that they are always content. So you don't need any happiness in such cities.

Military:
The same applies to military. If you build a military unit, make sure you use it for something. If you don't use it, then you are wasting gpt upkeep cost.
See your military as an investment. If you use an 80 shield unit to conquer an other city, then your gain may be similar to building a library and gain science beakers from it.

If you build a spearman/pikeman/musketman/infantery and put him in your capital, in the middle of your empire, and no enemy units ever reach your capital, they either die on their way to it, or the AI never makes any attempt to conquer it in the first place, then what did you build the defending unit for?
All it would be doing is wasting gpt upkeep cost.

 

[speciald]

Ok i'm gonna reply to these in order with quotes because you guys gave me a lot of info i want to make sure i have right.

If you are in contrill of the land and laying rails, it is not fatal to automate workers, but I do not do it. First I do not want them running around changing lots of tiles on me. Second I hate to have them all park in my cities.

Then when I want to look in the city to get a unit, I have to scroll past all these workers. I just stack them in groups near the capitol or some location that is useful.

Then I can grab a stack to clear pollution or do what ever I need at the time.

OK, so leave workers fortified if i finish land development, until its time for railroads and pollution. After finishing land development, railroads, and pollution is there anything else the workers do? Is there any sort of ratio of workers i should have per city size?

This reminded me of another question i wanted to ask. For land devlelopment does irrigation = food and mines = shields? I read through the sections on here on food production and shields but the numbers are lost on me. Also how much food should a settler factory be getting to be efficient?

Rep was what I used in Civ3, iirc, but it is not as useful in vanilla as it is in Conquest as there is no unit support.

You must have too many units and not enough income. I would bet that you had built lots of defenders through out the game. Remember there is no MP bonus in republic, so only have garrison where they are needed for defense.

I ended up putting one defender in every city early in the game because i had to eliminate Babylon and Zululand to get the continent to myself. Aside from the fact i wanted the resources they had, the main reason i got rid of them was because they each built a GW that i thought would be useful. Zimbabwe built the pyramids and i thought having a granary in every city would help boost population for building things. Is a granary in every city a bad thing when it comes from a GW?

Do not be afraid to disband excess units, better yet learn to build the proper amount.

I wasn't, i disbanded older units when newer ones became available.

There is only so much you can do about corruption, that is not the issue really. You are going to have more and more of it as you get bigger and bigger.

You get your FP in a good location and you build courts in place that it will yield a return. If you get those tiles improved and reduce the excess units and not over build structures, you will not have problems.

So from what i understand the FP should not be built in the capital but should be built towards the center of my civ so as many surrounding cities as possible get the reduction in corruption? Also when people refer to moving your palace does this mean the FP or a regular palace? Also how exactly do you move a palace?

You really only have to decent choices in C3. Republic for most all games, Demo in some case and Monarchy for an Always War type.

So Republic normally asap, then monarchy if i m going for a conquer type victory. What is the exception for Democracy?

Well it is if you have plan for it, such as a mass upgrade soon or to go on a steal campaign.

I don't know what you mean by "mass upgrade" and "steal campaign".

 

[speciald]

2) - with republic you often need to adjust the science slider down a bit to fund the higher military cost. That doesn't matter, as there is more commerce being generated (90% of a smaller pot can be less than 60% of a bigger one)

If i am aiming for a space race victory (which is the first i want to win that isn't a score win) is this a bad idea? Also if i am moving the science slider down should i be applying anything to the happiness slider?

4. First priority is to grow (food). Therefore think about food, which tiles you are improving how fast you can build settlers and workers and whether you need a granary. Second priority is military (shields)- which cities will produce mainly units, they need a barracks. Next is science (commerce) - which cities are generating it how much would a library etc help. Finally happiness, a marketplace with luxuries should sort out most of your problems for most cities.

See these are the things i haven't learned yet. I don't understand how to see while tiles are producing enough food to warrant a granary, and to see how much commerce is being produced to need a marketplace and a library.

Once you have got as much territory as possible, think for each build "does it support how I want to win the game?" e.g. if you are aiming for space you need fast science, so libraries and Uni's are more important.

Yes, this part i understand.

5. Not unless you have one of the wonders which adds interest to your cash (Wall street)

I ended up getting Wall Street in this game. Should i be putting wall street in my capitol for maximum science?

 

[speciald]

Welcome to the board, speciald!!!

You've been given some good answers. I just wanted to add that you're asking some very good questions, and they're the questions you'll be continuing to ask and refine as you gain experience.

I think maybe the hardest to answer is how to handle that drop in income which comes with the switch to Republic. As someone already said, it's a bit better in C3C than in vanilla C3, but it always takes careful management. Maybe I'm just trying to reassure you that it's something we all struggle with, and you'll find many discussions of how to do that on this board. Still, Republic is generally the best choice.

Corruption is another issue we all deal with and you'll find endless discussions on the best way(s) to manage it. Don't build a lot of improvements in your corrupt cities, because they won't pay for themselves. Most improvements will be in the core around your capital and (in vanilla) the second core around your forbidden palace.

Good luck.

Ok so if i'm building the forbidden palace i should keep it away from my capitol for the benefits of reduced corruption? Does this mean i should try to get it built in territory far away from my capitol to balance?

 

[speciald]

Bad empire management, read the answers to your other questions for a solution. The main answer is below Q4

Please ignore corruption. The wasted (red) shields and the corrupted (red) commerce are just shields and commerce that you don't get.
But what you don't get isn't important, what you should look at is what you do get. Then work with that!

In monarchy, you can get 2 units per town (size 1-6) 4 units per city (size 7-12) and 8 units per metropolis (size 13+) without paying gpt upkeep.
Under republic, you get 0 units free of upkeep. But a commerce bonus of +1 per tile. (if it already has at least one commerce to start with)
The way I look at it is this:

Under monarchy, you get a government bonus of 4 gpt per city, but you can only spend this on unit upkeep. If you don't have 4 units per city, the bonus will get lost.
Under Republic, assuming you have size 12 cities, you get 12 commerce per turn bonus, you could use this to pay for 12 units, and even 18 units with a marketplace. But if you have less units, you can also put it into other things, such as science.
The upside to the monarchy bonus is that it is never lost to corruption.
The republic bonus is less than 12 per city, because some is lost to corruption.

In either case, if you have too much military, you end up going bankrupt. You can live with negative income in chieftain difficulty, in higher levels, the game will start selling city improvements and disbanding units if you have 0 gold in stash and negative income.

Read the last part of my answer to Q4.

communism to pop-rush culture in a 100K game. monarchy if you are playing the "always war" variant, Republic for anything else.

Build only what you need, where you need it, when you need it.
Return of investment is the keyword!

Build a granary in a city that you use to pump settlers or workers from, because these cities will constantly need to regrow, it is worth building a granary here.
Build barracks in cities that will be constructing military units for a while. artillery type units (catapults/cannon/artillery) do not need barracks, so if you specialize cities for building each of these type of units, you'll have to build only half the amount of barracks.
Build courthouse in cities where the courthouse will add 4 blue shields and 4 gold commerce. So, don't build one in your capital, and don't build one in cities that are hopelessly corrupt.
Build a marketplace if you have at least 4 different type of lux resources. Or if the city is producing at least 10 gold. This may depend on your slider settings in the F1 screen, because I usually have science very hight, the only reason I build markets is for the happiness from the lux resources.
Build a library if the city is producing at least 10 science beakers (again, this depends on your slider settings in the F1 screen)

Do not build temples, cathedrals, and absolutely do not build colloseums unless you are going for the 100K culture victory. And then only pop-rush them at the end, when you are done conquering enough land.

IF the city is hopelessly corrupt, build no improvements in it. such a city will still produce 1 uncorrupted commerce, and 1 uncorrupted shield, that you can convert in 1 gpt by building wealth. Also, the product of specialist citizens is never lost to corruption, so irrigate the land around these cities, and get as many specialist as possible. The good thing about specialist is that they are always content. So you don't need any happiness in such cities.

Military:
The same applies to military. If you build a military unit, make sure you use it for something. If you don't use it, then you are wasting gpt upkeep cost.
See your military as an investment. If you use an 80 shield unit to conquer an other city, then your gain may be similar to building a library and gain science beakers from it.

Good info, thanks for the tips.

If you build a spearman/pikeman/musketman/infantery and put him in your capital, in the middle of your empire, and no enemy units ever reach your capital, they either die on their way to it, or the AI never makes any attempt to conquer it in the first place, then what did you build the defending unit for?
All it would be doing is wasting gpt upkeep cost.

The way i looked at it was being prepared. I cant count the number of times i have overlooked placing defender in a city and when i have enemy troops on my territory they beeline straight for the city that has no defense. Are you saying i should place defense in my surrounding cities only?

 

[vmxa]

"This reminded me of another question i wanted to ask. For land devlelopment does irrigation = food and mines = shields? I read through the sections on here on food production and shields but the numbers are lost on me. Also how much food should a settler factory be getting to be efficient?"

Basically yes irrigation is more food and mines are more shields. More food means you can support more citizens and they can mean more shields and commerce, so more food can mean more of everything.

Settler factories need a surplus of food. The more you have the better the rate you grow and
the sooner you can potentially make a settler. You need the shields to increase the rate as well.

So you can have a +3 food factory, but a +5 is better yet.

"I ended up putting one defender in every city early in the game because i had to eliminate Babylon and Zululand to get the continent to myself. Aside from the fact i wanted the resources they had, the main reason i got rid of them was because they each built a GW that i thought would be useful. Zimbabwe built the pyramids and i thought having a granary in every city would help boost population for building things. Is a granary in every city a bad thing when it comes from a GW?"

Elimination is fine, but you will never need a defender in all cities under a form of government that has no MP bonus. This is becasue the unit will not provide any benefit and will not have to defend.

In fact one unit will not be enough to defend in most cases anyway. You defend by protecting towns that can come under attack and of course by beating the other guy down to the point it cannot mount a serious attack.

I find that on level like emperor or less you seldom need much in the way of defenders anyway. Build attackers instead.

"So from what i understand the FP should not be built in the capital but should be built towards the center of my civ so as many surrounding cities as possible get the reduction in corruption? Also when people refer to moving your palace does this mean the FP or a regular palace? Also how exactly do you move a palace?"

In vanilla the FP is pretty strong and should be placed in a location that will provide maximum effect. That is a city that surrounding it that will be productive, once corruption is reduced by the FP.

"What is the exception for Democracy?"

To me none, becasue you have too many tech to research. You will need a situtation that will allow mostly peaceful times and a long period to recover the lost production from the switch.

"I don't know what you mean by "mass upgrade" and "steal campaign"."

Mass upgrades such as when you have lots of knights and are going to have MT soon. Stealing in games like AW or deity. Here you may stop research and just steal techs, so it needs cash.

 

[gmaharriet]

Ok so if i'm building the forbidden palace i should keep it away from my capitol for the benefits of reduced corruption? Does this mean i should try to get it built in territory far away from my capitol to balance?

In a vanilla (or PTW) game, yes. You might mentally picture your civ like a dart board, with the main palace in the center and the most productive rings (highest points?) close to the center. The Forbidden Palace is like having a second "dart board" with a separate center and series of rings. So....

You need to build your Forbidden Palace quite a ways from your regular palace. The problem is that the best area to build it may be terribly corrupt and take forever to build. Many players will use a Great Leader to build their Forbidden Palace in a single turn.

If you should ever upgrade to the Conquests version of the game, everything I just wrote changes completely.

 

[Tone]

I ended up getting Wall Street in this game. Should i be putting wall street in my capitol for maximum science?

It doesn't matter where you put Wall St as it simply adds 5% to your treasury each turn. This means that it can only affect science indirectly in so far as it will enable you to have your science slider set higher knowing that this interest will help offset any overspend due to unit upkeep, building maintenance, etc but this cash does not get included in the money that goes towards science. This is also the case with gpt deals with AI civs.

 

[speciald]

Burn. Played my second winning game after all your tips. Ended 13k gold in the green @ +146 per turn. 77,321 culture with only 2 temples and all but one part of my space shuttle launch because i didnt have any uranium to build the fuel cells. Never killed one soldier. Weak.

I think i am starting to understand the mechanics of the game now. I have 3 more questions..

1. If a towns pop hits the yellow, is it good practice to turn that extra population into a settler, regardless of whether or not i settle it?

2. When i look closer at a specific tile and it says say 1 gold, 2 shields, 1 food, should i put a mine there because it has more shields? And vice versa for tiles that show more food should be irrigated?

3. What is the difference in difficulty levels? What changes are there for each one?

 

[Aceman101]

Burn. Played my second winning game after all your tips. Ended 13k gold in the green @ +146 per turn. 77,321 culture with only 2 temples and all but one part of my space shuttle launch because i didnt have any uranium to build the fuel cells. Never killed one soldier. Weak.

I think i am starting to understand the mechanics of the game now. I have 3 more questions..

1. If a towns pop hits the yellow, is it good practice to turn that extra population into a settler, regardless of whether or not i settle it?

2. When i look closer at a specific tile and it says say 1 gold, 2 shields, 1 food, should i put a mine there because it has more shields? And vice versa for tiles that show more food should be irrigated?

3. What is the difference in difficulty levels? What changes are there for each one?

Well I'm not the one to talk but i'll give you some basic answers...

1) When it hits yellow it means you produce enough food just to feed everyone, but you wont get any surpluses. So it is generally a good idea to build a settler if its over size 3. But you could irrigate the tiles and make the city a bit bigger but I would build a settler if theres nothing too important to build. But if you are building something important don't switch to settler straight away. My advice might not be right because I'm new myself.

2) Yes - you can build mines on the tiles that have more shields than others but don't make every tile mines. Make sure to manage your cities with just enough irrigation and mines. When a city reaches size 12 it isn't important to keep growing up from there so you can replace some irrigation with more mines but make sure the city doesn't starve.

3) There are lots of differences in higher difficulty levels. I asume you are playing chieftain but once you go higher you will see that the AI builds lots more military, Wonders, Improvements, Culture structures etc. When I switched from chieftain to warlord I noticed the AI building battleships and carriers and bombers and much more of everything. It will also be harder to catch up with techs. And more citizens will be born unhappy. But don't be scared to move up to at least warlord. Once you learned the basic mechanics of the game. I am currently playing warlord (Yes I am new) and at the start of the game I noticed the expansion of the AI was much faster. I also noticed they had much more gold, my military was weak compared to theirs and I was behind by a few techs. I got scared but after I while I got better. And now I'm on top of the histograph .

I hope this was a bit of a help to your questions. But like I said I'm new myself and my advice might not be good.

 

[MAS]

Burn. Played my second winning game after all your tips.

Congratulations on your success!

Ended 13k gold in the green @ +146 per turn.

what is the 13K for? gold in your treasury does nothing, even if you have the wall street small wonder only the first 1000 gives you interest. Its capped at 50 gpt.

1. If a towns pop hits the yellow, is it good practice to turn that extra population into a settler, regardless of whether or not i settle it?

It may be useful to have some settlers ready in case an open space suddenly pops up. But this is only really useful at higher levels, where the AI have more units and could end up raising each others cities.
Besides that, the rule is to not build units without a clear purpose.

(By the way: having military around to defend yourself, even if you play peaceful and don't start wars yourself is useful though though it may be difficult to find the exact value of units when you don't plan to use them)

When the city hits the size 6 food cap, you could opt to build workers until you get around building an aquaduct. The workers can help improve the land
and then join with the city gain after the aquaduct is build.
Ideally, you want to plan the construction of the aquaduct so that the city doesn't have to sit at the size 6 cap waiting for one to be build, but the aqaduct isn't completed to long before it grows size 7, otherwise you'd be paying upkeep for it for nothing. But thats just the ideal.

When the city hits the size 12 food cap, the usual thing to do is to balance mines and irrigation so that the city doesn't lose food, but maximizes shield output. Ideally, it would be producing exactly 24 food.

2. When i look closer at a specific tile and it says say 1 gold, 2 shields, 1 food, should i put a mine there because it has more shields? And vice versa for tiles that show more food should be irrigated?

A mine ads +1 shield, an irrigation ads +1 food. It normally doesn't matter where you mine or irrigate, as long as the tile is worked by citizens from the nearby city. And as long as the city gets the food and shields you want it ti get. (if you want the city to grow, you'll need more food, otherwise you'll want enough food for the city to be stable and max shields)

There are 2 special situations:
Under despotism, a penalty is applied to all that is more than 2. So irrigating a grassland under despotism does nothing, as a grassland gives 2 food. irrigation makes it 3 and despotism turns it into 2 again.
If the tile already gives more than 2 food (eg, flood plains, or a tile with a food bonus resource or whines.) the despo-penalty is already applied so irrigating these tiles is your best option to increase growth.
Once you switch away from despotism, you can irrigate any flat tile for food.

When in a golden age, or when mobilization is activated every tile that gives at least 1 shield, will give 1 more.
If you have decided to irrigate a grass tile, an you can chose between irrigating a bonus-shield-grass or a non bonus grass, irrigate the bonus shield grass and mine the other. This way, each tile will produce 1 shield, instead of one tile produce 2 shields and the other 0. If you activate mobilization, or a golden age, the city working these 2 tiles will get 2 extra shields (one from each tile) instead of just 1.

Note that mountains and hills can not be irrigated. and that a mine adds +2 shields to these terrain types.

3. What is the difference in difficulty levels? What changes are there for each one?

At chieftain, the AI has to collect 2 times `s much food before the city grows, and 2 times as much shields before a construction project is complete.
At warlord they have to pay 20% more than the human.
At regent, they are "equal" to the human.
At monarch, they pay 10% less.
At empire they pay 20% less
At demigod, they pay 20% less and start with an extra settler and some extra units.
At deity they pay 40% less and start with an extra settler and some extra units.
At sid, they pay 60% less and start with 2 extra settlers and a lot of extra units.

At chieftain, having 0 gold on the bank and still negative income will only produce a nagging advisor. At other levels, this will result in random units disbanded and city improvements sold.

At chieftain, your first 4 citizens are born content, the 5th is born unhappy, and has to be balanced with happiness (lux slider, temple, MP in some governments, some wonders, and of course the lux resources, and the effect of the market place.)
At warlord, the 4th citizen is born unhappy
At regent and monarch, the 3th citizen is born unhappy
At empire, and demigod, the 2th citizen is born unhappy
At deity and sid, no citizens are born content.

Tech will also cost less beakers at lower levels and more beakers at higher levels. Unless you play vanilla civ without the last patch (1.29), then tech will cost the same for the human but the AI will pay according to the same rules as shields and food, as described above.

 

[vmxa]

["speciald"

"1. If a towns pop hits the yellow, is it good practice to turn that extra population into a settler, regardless of whether or not i settle it?"

I would not build a settler regardless, I would make one if I needed one and this is not one of my major prodiction centers. IOW I do not want to drop 2 pop in city that is making my units or an important structure.

I would rather do that in a corrupt town o r place that can replace the pop quickly.

"2. When i look closer at a specific tile and it says say 1 gold, 2 shields, 1 food, should i put a mine there because it has more shields? And vice versa for tiles that show more food should be irrigated?"

Not enough information. This could be a forest and then you would ned to chop it and mine ti and may end up with 1 shield.

"3. What is the difference in difficulty levels? What changes are there for each one?"

Look in the editor and you can find this or a post with better depictions, but here is a slammed in short version:

AI Bonuses
Def Land Units - 0 0 0 2 4 6 8 12
Off Land Units - 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 6
Start unit type 1 - 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 2
Start unit type 2 - 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 4
Extra free support 0 0 0 4 8 12 16 24
Bonus for each city 0 0 0 1 2 3 4 8
Max gov transition 0 0 0 4 3 2 2 1
Cost factor 20 12 10 9 8 7 6 4
AI to AI trade 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 200

 

[AutomatedTeller]

At deity and sid, no citizens are born content.

Actually, at deity and Sid, you get 1 content citizen, just like emp and demigod. no content citizens would make the game very close to unwinnable, I think!!

I rarely use cities without food bonuses to produce settlers, and usually only workers when they have maxed out. If I'm low on food bonuses, I might build a worker after I make an improvement, but almost never after pop 6.

As for what tiles to mine/irrigate... I tend to do this:

Under despotism:
Irrigate brown/white, mine green
Irrigate any cow or wheat bonus,irrigate a wine on grass, irrigate deer.
Mine wine on plains.

Under a non-despotic government, I usually try to give a city at least 1 tile wth a 3 food, so it grows faster, so I might irrigate 1 or two grass tiles, or a plains tile with wine on it. Beyond that, I would mine most all other tiles.

I usually ignore mountains unless they have gems, iron, coal or gold in them, or I need to road them for travel purposes, until everything else is taken care of, I have replaceable parts, I am industrious or I am in democracy.