Zero Growth cities? and a few other questions

[Antha]

I got the game for Christmas and cant for the life of me figure out how some of my cities have zero growth. Ex: set my capital city by either a river, on the shore or by a resource, get it up and running, make a settler. Take a settler and warrior to scout a new city location. Find a likely spot, click on the tiles to see what kind of food/shield/gold output will come from it. All 9 tiles show at least 1 food, 1 shield and 1 gold, cool.......or so I thought. Build the city, get a few warriors, etc going, build temple and look and see my population is stuck at 2! City screen will show zero growth. My example was on a combo of plains, jungle tiles. So I decided to try a few things, had a worker clear the jungles, build roads, but not put any mines on the tiles and he irrigated the plains tiles...zero growth still. How in the world do I fix that?

Also, Im getting my butt handed to me royally. For some reason I have a big "Kick Me" sign on my capital building and the other civs are taking me out. I try to initiate trades, sometimes they work. Other times the other civs want me to hand them tech stuff for "tribute", when I tell 'em to shove it....they declare war. Any hints on how to balance tech with army growth? I did manage to win 1 game, a Domination victory. I pumped up my science and built nukes.

 

[Angmar]

You will want to check out your city screen. There you will see what tiles your workers are currently working on. On the bottom right you will see the current status of the food for your city. Once you reach a certain point your city grows. If you do not have enough "surplus" food beyond what your people need to not starve then you city will not grow.

First you will want to irrigate your grasslands. Irrigation is a key to growth. Irrigate those cows and that wheat and your city is destined to grow very quickly. ( Watch out for the bonus shield grasslands though, unless you MUST irrigate these, mine them instead )

If you have lots of irrigated tiles but your city has stopped growing at what you feel is a premature level it might have to do with the happiness of your empire / city. When you have a citizen as an entertainer, he is not working a tile, and hence, not bringing in food.

Aside from these, if you city stops growing at 6, ensure it has an aquaduct, if it stops growing at size 12 you need a hospital.

Good luck with your cities.

( ps. if you dont want to be the AI's chew toy, build a large army. Two units per city minimum! )

 

[farting bob]

ifyou put in defenders in every city then the A.I will think twice before attacking. ifyou have a single regular spearmen defending your larger cities, against knights etc. then yourright: you do have a big 'kick me' sign on you.

 

[zagnut]

One thing that most new players do is try to build up their infrastructure at the expense of their military. Especially in the early game it is necessary to have a strong military. I used to build and build, with only a spearman to protect each city. I got my ass kicked. Now I spend a lot more time building my military. I find that if you have a strong military you may be behind in score at first but then you start catching up and eventually pull ahead.

So go for Horseman instead of Currency. Search for iron deposits and build a city so that the deposit is within your city radius. Then build that road to connect it. Pump out those Horsemen and Swordsman and the world will give you the respect you deserve. When you fight and win your units will become elite. Then use those units in fights where you know you will win and hope to get a Great Leader (1 chance in 16). Getting Great Leaders is one of the keys to the early game because, hopefully, you can use them to build the Great Library and get every tech that 2 other civs have discovered.

Having a strong military also enables you to take the enemy cities and then negotiate for peace from a position of strength. Never agree to a peace treaty without getting something from them, usually their techs.

Along the way you can build your infrastructure, but don't concentrate exclusively on it at the beginning. Good Luck.

 

[The President]

Key point: Every citizen requires TWO food, not one. So if every square produces "at least one" food, you can still get a shortage.

 

[Antha]

Well I played around in the city display in my last game and got a few zero growth cities to grow. I just figured out you can change which tile the worker works. So I went to all my cities, messed around with them, got growth and ended up with a higher gold output from each city in the process. Still lost the game with a humilating defeat, but I learned something new

One question: How you keep these people happy? Kept having civil disorders and ended up with people starving and no production. I built temples and cathedrals, had 4 luxuries in my area and was trading for 1 more. What else is there to do?


AI 10....Me 1

 

[satchel]

Antha - you should check out the newbie thread in the general civ III discussions forum.

To add some more info to what's been said here: in order for your cities to grow you need to have excess food - that is, two foods per population point, and then some. A city with surplus food will grow faster with a granary, because the "food bin" will only empty halfway when the population grows.

When your cities without rivers grow to size 6 they will not grow further without an aqueduct. None of your cities will grow past size 12 without a hospital.

Jungles, forests, hills, mountains, etc. don't produce enough food to sustain even the population point working that square. Only grassland or irrigated plains produces enough food to sustain a population point. If you want surplus food, you will need sqaures producing at least two foods. But take the "irrigate grassland" suggestion with a grain of salt - many players (myself included) almost never do this. Certainly it is a waste of time to do so in the early game, because in despotism the food production of any square is capped at 2.

For happiness, you must have your luxuries connected to your trade network by roads. Make sure that the road network extends to each of your cities so that every city can benefit from the luxury. Marketplaces enhance the effects of your luxuries, as well as increasing your gold income, so build them. The more luxuries you have, the more benefit of luxuries you get from your marketplaces.

Other ways to increase happiness are: (1) in nonrepresentative governments, martial law quells unhappiness. Garrison two units in each city. (2) use the luxury slider in the domestic advisor screen to divert some of your income to luxuries. In the transition to representative governments this is often essential, because you lose the benefit of martial law.

 

[MTheil3508]

If you city is bordering the coast line, build a harbor to increase food production.

Also, go into the city advisor screen, click on (to take off) a tile that is not producing enough food and move it (click on the tile) that is producing a lot of food. You may have to do this a few times in the game, but the most with coastal cities. You can also do this to increase shield production.

 

[civ_steve]

To clarify Satchel's statement: under Despotism, a tile generating 3 or more food, shields or commerce has that specific accumulation reduced by 1. Food is not capped at 2: a Grassland with Cows produces 3 food under Despotism; irrigating it increases the food production to 4.

Make sure you haven't removed workers from the fields. If the city display is open (double-click on the city) you can remove a worker (creating a Specialist) by clicking on the tile being worked. You should have 1 tile being worked for each population point within the city. (The center tile is a freebie.) If you have Specialists, you can move them back into the fields by picking the tile you want them to work.

The city display also shows how much each tile produces, when it is worked. In general, grassland produces 2 food. Your city center also produces 2 food (for free), so as long as you're workers are in grassland tiles, you should always be accumulating 2 food per turn.

Get your worker out building roads. If you have a source of fresh water (river or inland lake), you can irrigate; irrigating grassland doesn't help you under Despotism (unless there's a Wheat, Game or Cow special resource in the space). Irrigating plains is good (increases the food production from 1 to 2.) Avoid working desert or jungle spaces to start. Woods are good shield sources, but only produce 1 food initially. Hills are good shield sources after being mined, but only produce 1 food. Mountains produce no food. Deserts adjacent to rivers are actually FloodPlains and produce 3 food (2 in Despotism); Irrigating them is helpful.

As stated earlier, a good road network connects Luxury resources which all your cities can share, speeds military units around, and generates much needed commerce which becomes Taxes, Luxuries and Science Research (see the F1 key to set these.) In addition to generating Luxuries from Commerce and garrisoning military units in the city, you can click on a worker and make a Entertainer (one of the Specialists). And certain Wonders will make your people happier, also. Good Luck!!