alpert@snowcres said:
1. When I get a worker, should the worker immediately start irrigating, start mining, or do a little of both?
A decent general rule has been stated to mine green and irrigate brown at the beginning of the game, but it is important to understand why.
Brown tiles are plains. These tiles produce 1 food and 1 shield when being worked by a citizen in a city. Irrigation increases the food output of a square by 1, so an irrigated plains square produces 2 food and 1 shield. Mining increases the shield output of a plains square by 1, but food (population growth) is generally more important than shields (production) in the early game.
Flat green tiles are grassland. Grassland produces 2 food and either 0 or 1 shields. The shield-producing grassland is indicated by a small shield or dot on the tile. You can also tell by right-clicking the tile. Because irrigation increases the tile's food output by 1, an irrigated grassland should produce 3 food, right? Unfortunately, at the beginning of the game, your government is despotism. Under this government, any tile that should produce three or more of anything (food, shields, commerce), produces 1 less. So, that irrigated grassland produces 2+1-1=2 food, just like it did when it wasn't irrigated. This is very important and gives you a big advantage over the AI early in the game because the AI will always irrigate most of its grassland if it can.
An important exception to that rule is when a tile can produce more than 3 food - in this case, you should irrigate green, because you will be able to increase the food output. For example, a grassland with a wheat icon (which gives a +2 food bonus to any tile) produces 2+2-1=3 food under despotism. If it is irrigated, it will produce 2+2+1-1=4 food under despotism.
I believe that all of this info is in the civilopedia, so you can figure it out on your own for each situation.
alpert@snowcres said:
2. Should I irrigate the entire city block (bounderies), or just 1 or 2 blocks?
A very important point is that you should try to improve every single tile that is being worked by one of your citizens for the whole game. To this end, you need to make sure that you have enough workers to do this as your empire grows.
You can tell which tiles are being worked by double-clicking on the city to get to the city screen. In this screen, you can click on a tile to assign a worker to it, and the amount of food, shields, and gold that that tile currently produces.
alpert@snowcres said:
3. Should I build roads throughout the city block (bouderies), or just from one city to the next?
Roads increase the amount of commerce produced by a tile by 1, so you should always road all tiles that are being worked by a citizen. When you send a worker to irrigate or mine a tile, never have the worker leave the square without building a road, or else you will waste a lot of worker turns just moving around.
Also, "strategic resources" like iron and "luxury resources" like dyes need to be within your borders and connected to your empire by road to recieve the benefits (note that these are different from "bonus resources" like wheat and cattle - all of this info is in the civilopedia). Every city that is connected to the resource by road recieves its benefits. Connecting cities on different landmasses is a little more tricky - basically you need a harbor on each landmass and you need to have the technology to safely cross the water that seperates them.
You can also use roads and colonies to connect resources that are outside of your borders, but don't worry about them - you're better off just building a city near the resource instead of a colony.
alpert@snowcres said:
And one bonus question....How do I increase population?
A city collects food (and everything else) by having one of its citizens work a tile within its radius. Each citizen eats two food, and the rest is put in the food box in the city screen. Population increases and the box empties when the food box in the overflows. Building a granary effecively doubles city growth by only emptying the food box by half when it overflows.
Here's a bonus tip:
A town can grow very efficiently early in the game if it produces +5 fpt (food per turn more than your population is eating) with a granary because a town with a granary only needs 10 food to grow. This town will grow every 2 turns. Since a settler costs 30 shields and 2 population points, if such a town can also produce 30 shields within 4 turns (7.5 shields per turn), then it can produce a settler in 4 turns and repeat forever. Towns like this aren't very common, and you shold take advantage by setting it up properly and building settlers out of it until all available land is taken up. This probably isn't too clear at this point - if you have any more questions then you can just ask. Posting a screenshot or save of your game could help us help you.
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