New player- Stupid question, but please help

[DanielMo]

Hi everyone,

I was hoping someone could explain the citizen system to me. What is the point of adding citizens to your cities? (not specialists, just ordinary citizens). As far as I can see they just remove a worker from one of your tiles and thats it!
Why would you add citizens to your city?


Also, how do I solve the overpopulation problem? I have tried making towns and clearing forests but I can't seem to fix it.

i have read the manual but I am still a bit confused about these two questions.

Sorry if these are really stupid questions but I am really loving this game and I'm hoping to get better at it!

Cheers

[Julian Delphiki]

Sometimes you cannot run any real specialists yet, but might need the +1 hammer the citizen specialist provides (like a early wonder race) & you get representation +3 beakers & culture benefit from Sistine Chapel from them as well. They don't contribute to great people points, though.

So, as always within civ it's situational and might be useful sometimes.

[Unimatrix11]

Oh, it seems You really lack some basics, Daniel...

To fix overpopulation (other then by slaving - i dont do that, Snoopy will show up soon to share his view on this, i guess), You try to keep the city-sizes below their caps, happyness espeacially. In order to do that, you enter the city-screen and redestribute the people in a way, that you have no food-surplus anymore, before the city-size exceeds the cap. When You havent built anything that enables you to use specialists, that means, you might end up with one or more ciitzens in that city. Or you build worker or settlers, which uses food-surplus for production of these units.

Building towns and clearing forests doesnt do anything to the overpopulation problem. I can understand, how You think it would. Kinda like: People move out of the city proper into the towns. Well, in Civ they dont. There is no migration modeled in Civ other than settler-building and city-founding.

[TriMiro]

Let a city grow until you hit either the happiness or the health cap. Then redistribute the workers so that you make just enough food to feed everyone (stagnate growth) and also have some hammers (for buildings/units). The rest of the population you should put as specialists (I think you called them citizens). Get witting and build a library, then set two scientists. That would be good boost to your science (especially if you have Pyramids and switch to Representation). Specialists also generate growth points, when you accumulate enough growth points you will get a free great person. You can use the great person to get and instant tech (lightbulb), build special building (Holy City Shrine, Academy) or settle the great person in a city to g et a super specialist (gives bigger bonuses but does not eat and does not generate growth points).

That is the oversimplification of the idea. Give it a try to see how it works and please say so if I am not clear about something.

[couerdelion]

Generally speaking, you do not want citizens. Every specialist is better than a citizen so you should appoint specialists first. A citizen still has to be fed so for 2 food you get 1 hammer (a terrible deal). Whip that citizen and you get 30 hammers (normal speed) immediately.

Sometimes it is unavoidable. You have citizens because there is nothing else for the worker to do (eg desert/ice tiles) or you have free specialists (mercantilism civic or statute of liberty) but cannot appoint another specialist becuase there are no "slots" available. The simple solution to this is to build something that allows you to appoint specialist and your citizen will happily take up the more profitable professions of scientist, merchants etc

[Willem]

Originally posted by DanielMo
Also, how do I solve the overpopulation problem? I have tried making towns and clearing forests but I can't seem to fix it.

The "It's too crowded" message isn't what you think it is. It has nothing to do with overpopulation and towns won't solve the problem. It's just a mechanism in the game that has been around since Civ 1. If your city grows to a certain size, some of the people will become unhappy. "It's too crowded" is just an excuse to provide some sort of rationale for this unhappiness. The only way to solve it is do something thing that will reduce the unhappiness, like adding a luxury resource, building a Temple etc.

[snoopy369]

As stated earlier, citizen has basically no use. It's just the 'in-between' status between 'workforce' (normal, getting food/hammer/commerce person) and 'specialist' (science specialist or whatnot). It technically has some value (+1 hammer), so if you desperately need hammers in a city of all food, you could use it, but that rarely comes up (and is a very bad tradeoff, of course).

I don't recommend it even for limiting growth; not only should you use slavery unless you have some sort of moral objection to that, but even if you don't use it, you should use less food intensive things (ie, mined hills). The 'prevent growth' button will prevent growth with no problem. Just don't settle any 100% food cities.

[Unimatrix11]

Wait a sec - the ´prevent growth button´ ?! Of course i know all about it, but just for the others, would you please explain to me - ahem - i meant them, where it is located and what exactly it does (since you can probably explain it a lot better than i could, despite the fact, that i know all that is to be known about it) ? I mean, some people might think, it redistributes the citizens in a way, just how you would, when you want to prevent growth, while others might think, it prevents the city from growing even at 100+% food storage, and then again others might think you just talk about an imaginary button, which you made up just now, because there is never enough real buttons for you to press...

[Blaupanzer]

Unimatrix! Well phrased.

[Unimatrix11]

So You are one of those who dont know, Blaupanzer ? Common admit it... no shame in it, you know ?

[couerdelion]

Originally posted by Willem

The only way to solve it is do something thing that will reduce the unhappiness, like adding a luxury resource, building a Temple etc.

Although technically, you do not reduce unhappiness (as measured by the unhappy face score) but rather increase happiness.

[Blaupanzer]

I think the button is on the bottom of the little city grid where you emphasize hammers, commerce, etc, draft or slave citizens and so forth in the city screen. I am away from the game right now, so someone will need to confirm that lest I mislead everyone. I liked your adaptation of the old "my friend has a problem" schtick. Again, well done.

[snoopy369]

Bottom right indeed. It will not only tell the AI not to use food squares much (unless you use it with emphasize food, which is just odd) but you literally won't grow.

For someone who will use slavery it's a poor choice to ever use it, but if you won't slave then it can be useful.

[Unimatrix11]

In the name of Blaupanzer and all the others who did not know i wanna say: Thanks for the info, snoopy...

EDIT: And of course in my own name, too, tho for the entirely different reason of having spared me from giving a long wordy explanation down to the last friggin´ coded details (and in that sense: doublethanks from the others, i guess).

[Blaupanzer]