UNIVERSAL SUFFERAGE...how does it work??

[jerVL/kg]

Hi, Civ4 newbie here, hope somebody is awake because I'm stuck and can't play until I figure this out.

I switched to Universal Sufferage because I have a bunch of buildings that I needed to "hurry up", which it says you can spend gold to do...however...HOW DO YOU DO IT??? I've searched all over the interface and can't find a button that says "Pay 500 Gold To Finish Library" or something to that affect. Is this civic broken? PLEASE...HELP!!!

 

[Lucius Sulla]

It's not broken... I know because I have used that option extensively. In the city lower bar, between the map and the building options, you will see a button with a red arrow pointing up. Notice the image, the red square.

By the way, the one to the left is the one to hurry through population. They will un-grey when you have the appropiate civic, and enough money (or population) to make it work.

 

[mitsho]

And, to complete the topic, the buton above the two allows you to draft units to defend yourself in a war (it costs population and you can only draft one unit per turn which will have no experience whatsoever). It ungreys with nationhood.

m

 

[jerVL/kg]

It's not broken... I know because I have used that option extensively. In the city lower bar, between the map and the building options, you will see a button with a red arrow pointing up. Notice the image, the red square.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!

Aw crud, don't have enough $$$ to buy all the Theaters I need! Guess I'll have to drop Research down to 10% AGAIN...... (where's a Golden Age when you need it??)

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Aw crud, don't have enough $$$ to buy all the Theaters I need! Guess I'll have to drop Research down to 10% AGAIN...... (where's a Golden Age when you need it??)

You're using gold to buy theatres? I'm intrigued, that sounds a little odd to me, since (a) theatres are pretty low-cost in production anyway, and (b) all they do is improve culture and most of the games I've played there's only a couple of cities that badly need more culture (even if you're going for an outright cultural victory, you only need 3 cities with high culture, the rest don't matter).

Are you sure you wouldn't be better off switching production around or building a few more mines etc. to up your production?

In my experience, paying to rush-build is a good strategy to use *occasionally* - normally either when you've just been attacked unprepared and you need some military units fast, or if you want to make sure you get a key world wonder before anyone else builds it. There's occasional other uses: eg things like building walls/castle in a city you've just captured that's likely to have a liberation attempt, or if you have a sea-bound city with almost no production. But rush-building with gold really hurts your science, and offhand I can't think of any scenario where I'd be doing it to build lots of theatres.

 

[jerVL/kg]

(b) all they do is improve culture and most of the games I've played there's only a couple of cities that badly need more culture ...

That's exactly what I'm doing. I ran a blitzkrieg campaign to wipe out the Persian Empire (Cyrus pissed me off lol) and took over 5 or 6 of his cities, and added a couple new ones to fill the gaps. To my chagrin and horror, it turns out the captured cities LOSE ALL CULTURE when you take them over, so Cyrus' massive empire became a bunch of 3-square blocks where all the people were STARVING because they had too much population for too little space!! (Cottages everywhere don't feed you much in that scenario!) So I had to build up the culture right quick to use the more distant resources and make sure Montezuma and Washington don't take advantage of the situation and fill the gaps themselves!

Plus I'm on Epic Speed, so it takes THIRTY-SIX TURNS for a brand new city to build ANYTHING useful!!! (Crap, where's a culture bomb when you need it??)

Did I bite off more than I can chew for my first non-tutorial game? Probably...but that's just par for the course for me.

 

[Pragmatic]

Switch to Slavery, and hurry production that way. It'll build your buildings quicker, and as an added bonus, it'll reduce your population as well. (With residual unhappiness effects.)

Don't theaters produce happiness with access to dyes?

 

[jerVL/kg]

Switch to Slavery, and hurry production that way. It'll build your buildings quicker, and as an added bonus, it'll reduce your population as well. (With residual unhappiness effects.)

Don't theaters produce happiness with access to dyes?

I'm not playing a Spiritual civ, so switching civics has deleterious effects...plus I'm morally opposed to slavery, just like I'm opposed to razing any city with an Architectural Wonder in it, or killing Settler units because they have children in 'em.

Dunno about the dye thing...

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Switch to Slavery, and hurry production that way. It'll build your buildings quicker, and as an added bonus, it'll reduce your population as well. (With residual unhappiness effects.)

As a complete tangent, it sometimes occurred to me to wonder why Firaxis didn't put in some penalty for starving your cities - you'd have thought it would have some affect on unhappiness on grounds of realism. But starving cities not only seems to be without penalty, it's actually useful quite often(eg. you might be able to up your production to higher levels to finish a wonder quickly, at a cost of not enough food while you're doing it. And if the city has unhappiness anyway it's the useless unhappy citizen who dies). (And back in Civ III if you starved recently taken cities down to 1 or 2 pop, it meant you could keep the city without having to confine your entire army to barracks there for God knows how many turns to stop it flipping back to its previous owners). Always thought the lack of a starvation penalty was a bit of an oversight by the designers.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm not playing a Spiritual civ, so switching civics has deleterious effects...plus I'm morally opposed to slavery, just like I'm opposed to razing any city with an Architectural Wonder in it, or killing Settler units because they have children in 'em.

Dunno about the dye thing...

On a quick check, the dye thing is right. From the online ref

+3 culture
+1 per 10% culture rate
Can turn 2 citizens into artists
+1 from dye
Required to build Globe Theatre

<cheesy>Of course if you starve your citizens then they dye</cheesy>

Of course, if you're squeamish about the children then you should never send your settler units out into the darkness anyway. You never know when they and their protective warrior might get mauled by a bear or eaten alive limb by limb, by a couple of vicious lions. tee hee!

 

[Alaemon]

I most say I did think the people would get more upset with slavery as you are killing them, it maybe something fix in the next patch, but to what jerVL/kg said why are you against slavery in the game it is a game??

 

[jerVL/kg]

...but to what jerVL/kg said why are you against slavery in the game it is a game??

Ehh...just not familiar with how it works, really. Remember this is my first time *EVER* playing *ANY* Civ game, and the depth of complexity is, uhh, rather overwhelming. I'm learning fast but haven't figured out stuff like population management yet. (I can't even find a list of WHERE all the World Wonders are built! Does anyone know? I know I built Angkor Wat somewhere but I can't find it!!!) Besides, Serfdom rocks soooo much with the 50% worker advancement...and when you can PAY to finish buildings quickly (or chop down trees if you're cheap) why bother with anything else?

As for Wonders...I'm viciously against destroying ancient artifacts in real life, like those Taliban monsters who blew up those ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan because they offended Allah (to say nothing of WTC... ) so it kinda spills over. It's just a game, I know...and really it's more like a challenge I give myself, to collect all the Wonders even if I didn't build them first.

I was kidding about the children, though. I kill children in The Sims all the time! Feel bad about it afterwards, though...

 

[Thalassicus]

And, to complete the topic, the buton above the two allows you to draft units to defend yourself in a war (it costs population and you can only draft one unit per turn which will have no experience whatsoever). It ungreys with nationhood.

m

Actually, it works like this:

- Can draft 3 units per turn nationwide
- Converts 2 units of population (99% sure of this) into one standard unit
- The unit has 50% the experience it would have if built in that city

Drafting is a good way to handle the population that would starve when you take over a city (it requires 10% of the population to be your culture, though). Draft once, 2 less population and a free defensive unit. Plus you're saving them from starving to death, enlisting them instead for defense of the city and giving them food and board.

Nationalism is also Low upkeep, provides +2 happiness for barracks, and is in the second civic column (so can be combined with other war or peacetime civics). The culture requirement is a limiting factor, though.

 

[Reinhard]

In the situation you mentioned you'd probably be better off switching to caste system and employing an artist in each city. It takes mere 3 turns for the cities to start utilizing their full fat cross.