Hello!

[AmericanCitizen]

!

[sparkyal]

Well, I'm no expert, but I'll give a couple of these a shot at answering:

1) Specialists are people in a cities population who do not work a tile, but instead specialize on science, art, engineering, etc...they are very, very useful people. some wonders grant you specialists in every city or in the city that the wonder was built. There are certain limits to how many specialists you can have ain a city depending on what ha been built there and what type of goverment you are using. when the computer is managing your cities they will assign people to be specialists. Until you have more experience with the game you may want to take the AI's suggestion, but you don't have to. Yuo may find it interesting to play around with the specialists to see if you can do better. You will find as you learn the game you can certainly do better then the AI.

2) Wonders, yes they take long, if they didn't they wouldn't be wonders . different epople have different opinions about this, but I really like to build wonders, I find them very useful. Depending on which leader you choose certain wonders will be better then others. For example, if you are a leader who has the creative traint, then Stonehenge is pretty much worthless IMHO. but the Pyaramids and the Oracle are pretty critical in my style of play. there are many others as well.

3) Religions: well, I tend to only get one or two. As I take over other civs I'll pick up the rest Some peopel will not agree with me on this. For example, if you want any shot at a cultural victory, you must get many of the religions.

40 How to become better? Play the game more, experiment, read some posts here, and read the civlopedia. Oh, and fight wars. It's really okj, it's just a game. this will teach you much about the AI and it's weaknesses. And, don't be afraid to loose. Build wonders. also, maybe find just one leader who you can master with the traits, special building, and special unit that ytou like. you will find many people here say to play as Rome because you get the way overpowered pratorian (can't spell). Also, I think a Pangea map is one of the easier ones to play on, so you may start there. I think Archipelgo (sp??) is one of the hardest.

I hope that helps

sparky

[Proteus_MST]

Much has already been answered by spakyal.

As fort your question:

What are specialists? Are they the people who sometimes appear in my cities?

If you mean new units that sometimes appear within your cities and have the title "Great artist", "Great merchant" etc.
They are no specialists but great people. People wo really excelled in their professions and therefore are known even today, sometimes centuries after the time they lived, for example Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Moses and many others.
Every city has the ability to produce great people points (GPP), which make these great people appear. One way to do so is build wonders in the city, the other way is to build specialists. Every wonder and specialist produces a certain amount of GPPs and by selecting the wonders or specialists fpor the city you can influence the chances for the type of the great person to appear in the city (for example the Stonehenge increases the chances for an great prophet, and specialists increase the chance for a great person in their profession [with many scientists in the city for example chances are high to get a great scientist])
How many GPPs you need to get the next great person is determined nationwide (and with every great person the number of GPP your cities need for the next great person increases.
As, on the other hand every city collects its GPP separately (i.e. your nation doesn´t pool the GPP from alll of its cities) most players specialize some of their cities as great people factories, which have a lot of farms, so that these cities can suppport a lot of specialists (which, as mentioned before, produce GPPs). This way you have a higher "production rate" of great persons as well as a big influence on the type of the next great person (as you can select the specialists in your great person factories accordingly).

[Willem]

Originally posted by AmericanCitizen
How do I make more of those people appear?

All you need to do is click on one of the people working on the land around your city. You have to be in city view in order to do this. This will create a Citizen, a specialist that doesn't really do much. However, if you have built something like a Library or Temple, both of which allows you to create a specialist, you can change that Citizen into a Scientist or a Priest etc. by clicking on the + button next to the specialist icon that you're able to create. If you don't see a + button, then you can't create that type of Specialist.

Speaking of which, what are the best wonders?

That all depends on your game and what it is you're trying to accomplish at that time. There's really no such thing as a "best" Wonder.

I try to go after them all, but I don't really know if this is something I should do or not.

That's a bit overkill IMO. At higher leevels, you'll be spending so much time spreading your religions to get all the benefits from them that other areas in your game will suffer. I generally go for no more than 2 religions myself.

Really general, but whatever: How do I become better?

Play alot!

[lockstep]

Re: Hello!

Originally posted by AmericanCitizen
Really general, but whatever: How do I become better?

After you are familiar with the basic game concepts, try a difficulty level that is somewhat higher than the one you're comfortable with. Don't quit at once if the AI's get ahead of you and/or attack you (though you need not to play until the bitter end if things really go bad). Think about what went wrong and how you can prevent it. Go down again to your favourite difficulty level, apply your insights and leave the AI's behind you in the dust.

[AmericanCitizen]

Wow, thanks for all the replies! I have a couple follow-up questions.

Specialists don't seem like they'd be all that useful! Wouldn't it always be better to work a tile for food or production or money than to make them a specialist? A specialist still consumes food, right?

Great people....Hmm, maybe I should try out this farm idea.

New question: What improvements are best for what tiles? I usually do farm in grassland, cottages in the plains, and mines on the hills (unless there is something special, like cows or something). Is this good?

What about city placement? I know that if you go too quickly your economy suffers, but in all my games, it tends to be the person with the most or second most number of cities who does really well.

I'm having trouble finding a balance between building lots of stuff and building a military. I'm not very aggressive, but the AI often invades me...it just seems like a waste to build a warrior instead of, say, a worker in a new city.

What civilization is best to choose? I mainly play as America, but only because I'm from there I don't really know if its good or not.

Thanks!

[Proteus_MST]

Specialists don't seem like they'd be all that useful! Wouldn't it always be better to work a tile for food or production or money than to make them a specialist? A specialist still consumes food, right?

Yes, a specialist consumes food, that´s because you should build lots of farms around your great people factories.
The more farms, the more specialist you can have in your cities (and the more GPPs you produce)

Of course, most of the times citizens working tiles are better than specialists, but sometimes it is good to use them as specialists (aside from the specialists in GP factories).
One example would be culture wars. A city of another nation which is adjacent to your teritory starts to produce lots of culture points and pushes yxour borders back, this would be a good reason to employ some artists, so that you produce more culture to halt the border expansion (at your costs) of the other civ.

New question: What improvements are best for what tiles? I usually do farm in grassland, cottages in the plains, and mines on the hills (unless there is something special, like cows or something). Is this good?

What tiles are best?
Depends; I normally use plains, grassland and floodplains either for cottages or for famrs, depending on the sourrounding fields of the city and the number of citizens I want to have there (it´s rather easy to calculate, as, before biology, every farm gives you +1 food [+2 after biology, if irrigated])
Hills get either used for mines, of, if they have woods, sometimes for lumbermills (I always try to keep some woods around my cities, normally 4-6 if possible, as each wood tile gives you +0.5 health]).

What about city placement? I know that if you go too quickly your economy suffers, but in all my games, it tends to be the person with the most or second most number of cities who does really well.

If you do well in your games there is no reason to change anything. You´ll see that you have overexpanded if you start loosing money and the percentage of your trade income which you use for science drops steadily, because you have to adjust for the rising costs.

I'm having trouble finding a balance between building lots of stuff and building a military. I'm not very aggressive, but the AI often invades me...it just seems like a waste to build a warrior instead of, say, a worker in a new city.

So you are a builder and not a warmonger
Much of your actions should depend on the neighbors you have. Against some of them it is really advisable, to have a strong army whereas others are rather peacefullsy and won´t attack you even if you are rather weak.
It´s best tonalways keep an eye on the powergraph,. If you fall behind too much you should build more units. Normally it´s best to be (at least) in the upper half of all civilizations in terms of power.

[Will9]

What civilization is best to choose? I mainly play as America, but only because I'm from there I don't really know if its good or not.

1.Rome
2.Rome
3.If your playing Warlords: Rome.

[AmericanCitizen]

Alright, I'm going to try to play a game now...we'll see how it goes!

[AmericanCitizen]

Alright, here is my game so far. I took your advice and decided to play as the Romans...
I didn't expand very much early on, but I got pyramids, and great wall, and hanging gardens, so I had a bunch of engineers...but I never had anything to spend them on, so I eventually had them join Rome.
Eventually I decided to take some Viking cities, which helped a lot.

I've been using slavery to help build stuff, except until recently where I switched to caste system so that I could load up on scientists.

It just doesn't seem like its worth it to me, though.
So if you could look over it and offer suggestions, I'd be quite happy Thanks

[Dis]

I like the descriptive screen name. . welcome aboard.

[Willem]

Originally posted by AmericanCitizen
Specialists don't seem like they'd be all that useful! Wouldn't it always be better to work a tile for food or production or money than to make them a specialist? A specialist still consumes food, right?

Specialists help create Great People, they definitely are useful! Your game is going to suffer if you don't try to generate them. And early on, specialists can be very helpful. Next time you build a Library, create a Scientist and you should see your tech research drop by 1 turn at least. That can make a big difference at the beginning of a game.

New question: What improvements are best for what tiles? I usually do farm in grassland, cottages in the plains, and mines on the hills (unless there is something special, like cows or something). Is this good?

It depends on the city. If it doesn't have alot of good farm land, you might want to farm your Plains in order to get a bigger population.

Myself, I like to put my Cottages on Grassland. That way the 2 food you get makes it sef-supporting. My Plains squares don't usually get developed until there's nothing left anymore. And I usually try to go for production on those, since they already provide a Hammer. Having a Watermill on a Plains square next to a River can really help your Hammer production.

What about city placement? I know that if you go too quickly your economy suffers, but in all my games, it tends to be the person with the most or second most number of cities who does really well.

That's true, the more cities you have the better off you'll be. If you start finding yourself short of cash trying to keep up to the AI, then build more Cottages. You're going to need lots of those in order to do well in the game.

I'm having trouble finding a balance between building lots of stuff and building a military. I'm not very aggressive, but the AI often invades me...it just seems like a waste to build a warrior instead of, say, a worker in a new city.

Keep an eye on your Power graph. You'll find it in the Demographics screen, where you'll see a graph with different coloured lines. The default view is Score, but you can select Power as well. If you see that you're at or towards the bottom, you can probably expect a visit from an AI's army. They'll prey on whoever's the weakest, especially if that happens to be the human player. Try to keep yourself in the top 1/3 and you won't get as many invasions.

What civilization is best to choose? I mainly play as America, but only because I'm from there I don't really know if its good or not.

If you're just starting out, it would probably be a good idea to play a random civ. That way you'll get to know what the strengths and weaknesses of all of them are. Myself, I always play random, it adds a bit more variety to the game.

And if you're playing vanilla Civ, not Warlords, Washington is one of the most powerful civs in the game. His traits were changed in the expansion, probably because he was a bit over-powered.

[Willem]

Originally posted by AmericanCitizen
I've been using slavery to help build stuff, except until recently where I switched to caste system so that I could load up on scientists.

It just doesn't seem like its worth it to me, though.

A Great Scientist can build an Academy. This increases your beaker output in the city it's built in by 50%. That's a very good reason for having Scientists. Plus, if you start finding yourself behind in techs, you can use the Great Scientists to add a large amount of beakers to a particular tech. At the beginning of the game, it will be enough to get the tech right away. Later on you'll still need to research for the rest. You can also have a Super Specialist which will increase you beaker output by 6 per turn, IIRC.

Also, when you get to the Representation civic, all specialists add 3 beakers to your research. That gives each Scientist you have an output of 6 beakers per turn. That's definitely worth it. But the main reason to have them is the Great Scientists they can create.

[Proteus_MST]

Playing a random civ, as Willem suggested, is no bad idea.
You learn more of the traits this way.

Rome, which Will9 suggested for example is a very good civ for warmongers, as you get the praetorians, which is a very powerful early unit. For builders (and people who rather prefer late wars) Rome in most of the cases is of much less use however.

[Cort Haus]

To learn about civics, play a leader with the Spiritual trait, so you can experiment with different civics without losing turns to anarchy.