Very new player seeking answers please :)

[Akkari]

Hello!! I'm new here and a complete newbie to civ4!! i see alot of potential in this game and really want to get into it but there are some areas which i am getting stuck in. I have read several guides and read through sulla's walk-through guide but i am still confuzzled!! i made this post in hope someone would be kind enough to explain a couple of things, so i apologize in advance if its a little lengthy and too many questions , but it's the only way I think I can understand enough to start understanding why I'm doing things, rather than guessing

I'm slowly starting to understand the city management screen but I'm finding some parts confusing. They are the food bar and production bar and the white circles (which I think means which tiles are being worked on).

Firstly, I don't understand what it means by 15 -13 for instance?? I can see that I'm getting 15 from the tiles that are circled but what does -13 mean?? and what does it mean when i have an increased portion on the actual bar (the section with lesser opacity).
It's pretty much the same deal for the production bar aswell. I notice that it is used to build things but am not quite sure whether it means I have 4 physical to spend as such or I am earning 4 a turn, Im guessing its the latter, which would mean that every turn I'm producing 4 . So, if I'm building say; something that is 100, @ 4 a turn it would take 25 turns?? ..i think i may of just answered my own question there lol but am not sure. again what would 4 -2 mean with the production bar?? and yet again what does it mean when I get an extra portion on the bar (in the lesser opacity).

Next is the white circles, im guessing these are which tiles the city citizens are working on???? how come i can choose more circles in some cities?? what do i need to be able to work on more individual tiles and what effect does this have?? also if a tile isnt circled but i have built say a farm or mine on it, am i getting the food/production from that tile??

Lastly (and the long bit, hehe) from reading these guides I see that I need to specialize my cities. One for production, one for commerce and one for Great people/specialists. I understand this is the best way to go but should every city have at least some of all 3?? Do i need lots of cottage tiles in each city to accomodate more citizens?? The more food I am harvesting from tiles the more people I have in a city? Or do they need cottages to live in (lol I think that is a silly question!)

The great people city...this should harvest lots of food I have read, and with that I can 'buy' specialists which generate great people points right?? Should I build all my wonders in this city aswell??? Or would it be better in the production city where it would build faster??

well, thanks for reading this far if you did and a big thanks in advance to any help given. !

 

[Willem]

Firstly, I don't understand what it means by 15 -13 for instance?? I can see that I'm getting 15 from the tiles that are circled but what does -13 mean??

It means you're producing 15 food and 13 of that is being used by your citizens or being wasted because of unhealthiness. Leaving you with a 2 food surplus in that city.

and what does it mean when i have an increased portion on the actual bar (the section with lesser opacity).

I'm not sure what you mean here, a screen shot might help.

...or I am earning 4 a turn, Im guessing its the latter, which would mean that every turn I'm producing 4 . So, if I'm building say; something that is 100, @ 4 a turn it would take 25 turns??

That's right.

Next is the white circles, im guessing these are which tiles the city citizens are working on????

Correct.

how come i can choose more circles in some cities??

You have more people in that city.

what do i need to be able to work on more individual tiles and what effect does this have??

Increase your population and it depends on the tile. If it's Grassland you'll get more Food, if it's a Hill you'll get more Hammers.

also if a tile isnt circled but i have built say a farm or mine on it, am i getting the food/production from that tile??

No a tile has to be actively worked in order to get the food/production from it.

One for production, one for commerce and one for Great people/specialists.

Or more. Just one city for production probably isn't going to be enough. Those are the cities that will be producing your military units and you're going to need alot of those. And having more than one commerce city definitely helps too. GP farms you can usually do with just one of. But you also want a science city as well, preferably two.

I understand this is the best way to go but should every city have at least some of all 3??

Not necessarily. It depends alot on the terrain. If you have a city with a river but also lots of Hills, it might be a good idea to have a mix of buildings. But if it's nothing but Hills and not generating very much commerce, don't bother with Markets, Libraries etc. Vise versa with a city that has very little in the way of Hammers but lots of commerce.

Do i need lots of cottage tiles in each city to accomodate more citizens?? The more food I am harvesting from tiles the more people I have in a city? Or do they need cottages to live in (lol I think that is a silly question!)

Cottages don't actually provide places for your people to live. All they do is give you a way to generate commerce within the city. Your city will just grow on it's own and the only way to influence that growth is by having a larger food surplus.

The great people city...this should harvest lots of food I have read, and with that I can 'buy' specialists which generate great people points right??

You don't "buy" specialists, you just pull a citizen off the land and assign it as one.

Should I build all my wonders in this city aswell??? Or would it be better in the production city where it would build faster??

Since the focus in GP Farms is food to maintain as many specialists as possible, it's probably not going to be a great producer and so not a great place to build Wonders. You're better off building those in cities that have a fairly high Hammer count. But you also need to consider what the Wonder does. You don't really want to build one that gives you Great Merchant points in a city that's only producing units. Put it in a city that has alot of commerce instead to get the most out of it. That way you can supplement the points the Wonder gives with a specialist or two when you build a Market there. Wonders that provide Engineer points would fit better in a production city as you'll end up with a Forge there eventually and so can increase the number of Engineer points you get.

 

[Incan Emperor]

Hello!! I'm new here and a complete newbie to civ4!! i see alot of potential in this game and really want to get into it but there are some areas which i am getting stuck in. I have read several guides and read through sulla's walk-through guide but i am still confuzzled!! i made this post in hope someone would be kind enough to explain a couple of things, so i apologize in advance if its a little lengthy and too many questions , but it's the only way I think I can understand enough to start understanding why I'm doing things, rather than guessing

Welcome.

I'm slowly starting to understand the city management screen but I'm finding some parts confusing. They are the food bar and production bar and the white circles (which I think means which tiles are being worked on).

The food bar means how long it will take until the city grows, the bar is a graphical representation and the numbers are how much food you have stored and the number you need to store in order for it to grow.

The production bar works the same way, how many hammers you have invested on something and how many you need in order to complete it.

The white circles are the tiles being worked on, unless you have certain wonders the sum of your specialists and the white circles will be equal to the size of the city which is the number inside the white circle next to the name of the city in the general view map.

if a tile isnt circled but i have built say a farm or mine on it, am i getting the food/production from that tile??

You only get the benefit if of the resource you have hooked up if there is any, in order to get the production/food/commerce you need to work the tile by assigning a white circle to it.

Lastly (and the long bit, hehe) from reading these guides I see that I need to specialize my cities. One for production, one for commerce and one for Great people/specialists. I understand this is the best way to go but should every city have at least some of all 3?? Do i need lots of cottage tiles in each city to accomodate more citizens?? The more food I am harvesting from tiles the more people I have in a city? Or do they need cottages to live in (lol I think that is a silly question!)

On specializing your cities, well it depends on the map layout, you leader traits and Unique Building, you would need to provide more detail in order to tell you which city belongs where.

The great people city...this should harvest lots of food I have read, and with that I can 'buy' specialists which generate great people points right?? Should I build all my wonders in this city aswell??? Or would it be better in the production city where it would build faster??

You would be better off building your wonders in your capital and perhaps one or two other high production cities, with some exceptions for example the Great light house or colossus have to be built in a coastal city, the 3 gorges dam has to be on a river city etc. Use common sense to find out where a wonder will have the most impact/benefit and where it is realistic to achieve its completion.

National wonders are a diferent story, National wonders are better off where they will have the better effects depending on the city and what that city is specialized for IE Oxford in the science city, Iron works in production Wall street on a holy city etc.

 

[Akkari]

ahhh you have cleared a few things up for me already!

more food suprlus means a growing city, which means more people to work on tiles so food is important in every city???

and a wonder city isnt really the best idea? its better to build wonders in cities that they are beneficial too.

what would a science city contain and its purpose??

also the increased portion on the bar i mean is this

 

[Bhruic]

Those are predictions for next turn based on your current food/hammers production. Much like the research bar at the top (the green one).

Bh

 

[Incan Emperor]

ahhh you have cleared a few things up for me already!

more food suprlus means a growing city, which means more people to work on tiles so food is important in every city???

and a wonder city isnt really the best idea? its better to build wonders in cities that they are beneficial too.

what would a science city contain and its purpose??

also the increased portion on the bar i mean is this

Thats the progress it will make within the next turn.

A science city is a city with lots of commerce if you are cottaging most of your cities, if you are running mostly specialists in most your citys, it has to be the one that can allow the most specialists, until factories and industrial parks the most important specialist is the scientist.

The point is that there are two types of economies, cottage economy, which relies on commerce provided by the plots, whis is mostly aided by the financial trait and a specialist economy which relies on specialists to produce science and all other resources involved with an economy, if you have a financial leader your science city has to be the one with most commerce preferably your capital, if you have say a philosophical leader your science city has to be the one with the highest food surplus in order to have a lot of scientist specialists.

 

[Akkari]

i seeee!!, im getting what you mean now im just going through the game, trying to apply what you have told me, i seem to be learning slowly

many thanks everyone for your help, it is appreciated

 

[Willem]

more food suprlus means a growing city, which means more people to work on tiles so food is important in every city???

Yes, it's the only way to increase the population of a city. You need to be careful not to have too much food as well though. If you're city grows too fast, you start running into unhappiness problems. With more people in your city, some of them will start saying "It's too crowded." You want to gear your growth so that you can control that unhappiness, with resources, Temples or other buildings, or civs like Hereditary Rule. If you're using Slavery you can also "whip" your citizens. This means that some of your people are sacrificed in order to build something faster. You need to use that wisely howver since the act of whipping will cause unhappiness for 30 turns or so.

and a wonder city isnt really the best idea? its better to build wonders in cities that they are beneficial too.

It's really situational. Sometimes it is best to build Wonders in a single city, other times it pays to place them where they'll compliment the speciality of that city. It's easier to control what type of Great Person you get next if you concentrate certain types in particular cities. If you mix and match, it's all probabability and you can never be sure what will pop up next. So by placing a Great Merchant Wonder in a Merchant city, you can plan better since you know only a Great Merchant will come from there, and you can see how many turns it will take before you get one. Also some Wonders might be more of a benefit to a production city but it produces Great Artist points instead of Engineer. So you need to take that into consideration as well. One disadvantage of having a single Wonder city is that you can only build one of them at a time. Spread them out more and you can be making two or three at once. Just don't go Wonder crazy and neglect the rest of your production needs, you need to strike a balance in this game.

 

[Willem]

what would a science city contain and its purpose??

A Science city is one that specializes in producing beakers for your research. They are very much the same as economy cities really since in both you want to be producing alot of commerce. These means a river and/or economic resources and a bunch of cottages. But instead of focusing on Merchant specialists, you'd be using Scientist ones instead and building things like a Library and University instead of a Market and a Bank.

 

[TriPp]

Food is very important for every city. Without food you have no population. Without population you have nothing. When you reach your health or happy cap change your worked tiles around to maximise production or commerce (depends on city ofcourse) and make your city growth 'stagnant' till you raise your health/happy cap to allow for more population.

 

[Gooblah]

Hey! Welcome to CFC, and hope you're having tons of funs so far!


I've linked a few articles that should help you out in the game...
Sistuil's Guide- Simply amazing. Also read his ALCs. He is one of the best players on the block and is always ready to give advice.
City Specialization- I think you need a little bit of help with it. This builds on the previous guide a bit.
The Early Rush- A rush is basically taking out and opponent with Axes, Spears, Chariots, or their Unique Units (UUs) early on, thus gaining an immediate advantage in the game (unless its poorly managed, in which case it sux.. )

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i seeee!!, im getting what you mean now im just going through the game, trying to apply what you have told me, i seem to be learning slowly

many thanks everyone for your help, it is appreciated

It takes a while. I'm somewhat new to civ4, having just got it over xmas (and having previous civs). It's taking me a long time too. There's a lot of information and things to consider. One of the great things about this game is the amount of impact a minute detail can have on the outcome...and how many minute details there are!

 

[Akkari]

well having taken on the advice here my current civ seems to be thriving. i have just taken out all cities of my neighbours and managed to get someone else to help aswell (he was annoying muhahaha) .doing much better on the cities, have 2 production, 2 commerce and one GP one which are 'kinda' specialised (my first production city seems to give me more GP than the GP city lol), still havent experimented with the science one yet.

one question though, i seem to be only making great prophets, what do i need to do to get a better probabilty for other GP's?

edit: oo also, i got given a quest (is it a quest? lol) by some great engineer to build castles, is there somewhere that lists this so i can check which ones i have currently going ?

again though,thx for all the help guys

 

[pfo]

one question though, i seem to be only making great prophets, what do i need to do to get a better probabilty for other GP's?

You create GP points using specialists or wonders. Wonders usually provide about 2 points and increase the probability of a certain type of great person. For example, a city with just a great wall, which encourages great engineers, will have a 100% probability of generating an engineer when it pops. Specialists also encourage great people of their type. Running merchant specialists encourages merchants, scientists encourage scientists, etc.... Except for the citizen specialist, which influences nothing over GP. The actual chance for a GP to be generated is the average of the weight of all GP influencing factors over the course of time since the city either started or restarted generating great people. Basic idea is, if for 75% of the time you ran an engineer, and then you later switched to running priests for the last 25% of the time, you'd have a 75% of an engineer, and a 25% chance of a priest. So, you can't for example stack your specialists to create GP points and then change them at the last minute to guarantee a certain type of GP.

Check the war academy for an article on how all this works.

 

[Diamondeye]

well having taken on the advice here my current civ seems to be thriving. i have just taken out all cities of my neighbours and managed to get someone else to help aswell (he was annoying muhahaha) .doing much better on the cities, have 2 production, 2 commerce and one GP one which are 'kinda' specialised (my first production city seems to give me more GP than the GP city lol), still havent experimented with the science one yet.

This might be because your production city is building wonders, that generate

one question though, i seem to be only making great prophets, what do i need to do to get a better probabilty for other GP's?

comes from
1) Specialists
and 2) Wonders
... in the city. If the city is running mostly Priest specialists, the odds are you will get a great prophet. Scientist -> great scientist, merchant -> great merchant, engineer -> Great engineer and spy -> Great spy.
And wonders each have a + aswell. The sort of generated depends on the wonder, although some of them makes sense, per example the Pyramids is generating Great Engineers, while Temple of Artemis is generating Great Prophets, and The Great Library is generating Great Scientist.

I believe there is a manual on the exact mechanics, or I can try to explain them in detail if you want, although it's complicated.

Also, if you mouse over the bar in a city you can see the odds of what that will spawn when the bar reaches max.

edit: oo also, i got given a quest (is it a quest? lol) by some great engineer to build castles, is there somewhere that lists this so i can check which ones i have currently going ?

again though,thx for all the help guys

There is no list of current quests as far as I know, although I might be wrong.

 

[Willem]

There is no list of current quests as far as I know, although I might be wrong.

Yes there is. In the upper left of your screen you'll see an icon that looks, I think, like a peice of paper with a pen. Click on that and you'll see a tab that shows your curretn quests.

 

[Willem]

one question though, i seem to be only making great prophets, what do i need to do to get a better probabilty for other GP's?

It sounds like you might be letting the computer decide what specialists to run instead of assigning them yourself. On the right hand side of your screen you'll see a +/_ sign beside the specialist types the city is running. Use those to assign the ones you want. When you first pull a citizen off the land, which you do by left clicking on one of the white circles, it will be just a Citizen specialist which doesn't do much. Just use the +/_ to reassign it where you want it.

 

[TriPp]

Also watch for wonders as different ones will generate different GP points.

 

[Akkari]

ahh i get ya now <goes to make his great eng>

 

[Willem]

ahh i get ya now <goes to make his great eng>

Keep in mind that you can only make an Engineer specialist if you have a building that allows for one, like a Forge, Factory or Industrial Park. If you don't have any buildings that allow you to have a specialist, then you won't be able to. Other than just the regular Citizen specialist. If you want Scientists you need Libraries or Observatories, Merchants need Markets or Grocers, an Artist requires a Theatre or Broadcast Tower. Priests need Temples.