Some newbie questions

[TyranusBonehead]

OK, it's been a long time since I've played ANY game, but I've come back and started tackling how to play Civ 4 Colonization.

This game is different then regular Civ4 and hence I am getting confused as to what I can do.

For instance, how do I work the land around my settlements (other than placing people in the static positions located in the city screen)?

I seem to do a pretty reasonable job of growing my settlements, but at a certain point I start seeing folks abandoning them due to starvation (even though I have a worker in every available food generating spot). Can I prevent this, or is it inevitable? Should I take those who leave a given settlement and start a new settlement?

I'll have more questions I'm sure, but this will help. Thanks.

 

[King Flevance]

Well, again each citizen eats 2 food I believe. In order to "work" the tiles (build farms, mines, etc.) you have to make pioneers. This requires a citizen and 50 tools I think. (It requires 150 tools on marathon, and 75 tools on epic) Then they work the land around them much like workers in Civ 4. Like an expert fisherman could leave the city and work as a pioneer and once done, he can go back to the city and continue being an expert farmer. However if you get a "Hardy Pioneer" (basically an expert pioneer) assigned as a pioneer, then he does things twice as fast. (Actually the citizen/pioneer does everything twice as slow.)

Also, you want anyone doing a job to be an expert. Fishing, expert fisherman. Farming same thing. If you do this, you should be able to not only work all 8 of your surrounding tile but with a simple 3-4 food tiles (farms or water -especially food resources) then you could easily have your 3 statesmen, plus like 5-8 other specialists in buildings.