New Player with some noob questions..

[saw]

I just purchased the game and played through the tutorial but still when I played my first "real" game I realized I didnt understand some things...hopefully someone can lend a hand.

My home city started frowning with a red frown face, the msg said like -1 we are unhappy because of overcrowding.
---what was happining here and how can I prevent or repair this?

I had several workers, I told them each to improve automatically. For a little while they ran around and built farms and roads etc, but eventually they all returned to the city and as far as I could tell were idle..however there were still places inside the boarders which buildings could be built on.
---so what caused them to stop building before all spaces were used up?

Chopping down trees, when I hover over the axe icon it says it will provide +30 hammers to chop down trees.
---is it better to chop down trees before building on area?
---I had a small force of workers strip clearing trees, is there any negative affects to doing this?


thanks in advance!
Saw

[Heraclitus]

Re: New Player with some noob questions..

Originally posted by saw

My home city started frowning with a red frown face, the msg said like -1 we are unhappy because of overcrowding.
---what was happining here and how can I prevent or repair this?

You get these if you have less than in a city. They are basically unhappy citizens that refuse to work. They don't cause trouble but they are a drain on your economy, dead weight that you still need to feed.


You can't reduce the unmber of caused by overpopulation (unless you kill off the unhappy citizens :stalin smiley: ), but you can increase the number of , so that they outweigh the

You can do this by:

-having luxuries (mining some gold or silver and building a road to your city, or having a plantation of silk or trading with another civ to get a luxury, there is a list of them in the civilopedia)

-Spending a part of your budget on culture (you can do this once you discover Drama)

-Having your state religion in the city gives it a +1

-building certain buildings (temples, coliseums, radio towers ect.)

-having units in the city. If you are running monarchy, each unit you have fortified in a city will give that city a .

ect.

[Heraclitus]

Re: New Player with some noob questions..

Originally posted by saw
---is it better to chop down trees before building on area?

No.

You see most improvements destroy the forest anyway. When you order your worker to dig a mine or irrigate he automatically chops the forest (giving you the extra hammers) before building what you ordered him to build.

There are a few exceptions to this, off the top of my head forts (which provide a defensive bonus) and Lumber mills (these can only be built on forest squares and improve their output). If you want to build these don't chop.

Originally posted by saw

---I had a small force of workers strip clearing trees, is there any negative affects to doing this?

Forests make for a healthy cities, by choping the forests you are loosing a health bonus they provide to nearby cities.

By going into the city screen and holding your mouse over the icon you get a breakdown of how much health bonus you get from which source.

But, the forests yields are bad until you can get lumber mills or forest preserves. Meaning the city will be less productive in the early game with all forest.

Also forests have defensive bonuses, but this is less an issue since enemy troops standing in the plot can take advantage of the thick cover as well as your troops can. I myself prefer mobile defenses. But I have seen players leave jungle/forst and building forts in them on key choke points.


It all comes down to strategy.

I usually chop when I need new improvements not to rush production. But again some players chop like crazy during wartime (the logic being that choping the forests helps you win the war and winning the war gets you "new" forests )

Hint: Never chop forest on tundra plots. Wait until you get Mathematics for large scale deforestation (the tech gives you a bonus on the number of hammers you get from chopping the forest).

[saw]

cool thanks guys.

So by clearing all the trees, I created a poor area to live in no wonder my people were not happy, thanks for the help and advice.

[Jaybe]

No, having no forests does not result in unhappiness. It just results in less healthiness. Two different aspects to population potential.

[snoopy369]

Chopping forests AFTER you build the city is a good thing, generally, unless you really need the health bonus (you expect it to be a very large city). Before, it's silly.

[rjmatsleepers]

Re: Re: New Player with some noob questions..

Originally posted by saw

Chopping down trees, when I hover over the axe icon it says it will provide +30 hammers to chop down trees.
---is it better to chop down trees before building on area?

Saw

Originally posted by Heraclitus


No.

You see most improvements destroy the forest anyway. When you order your worker to dig a mine or irrigate he automatically chops the forest (giving you the extra hammers) before building what you ordered him to build.

I disagree. The time to build the improvement is the same whether you chop first and then improve or simply improve. But the hammers come earlier if you chop first. That can be crucial if it gives you a wonder or the benefit of a city building earlier.

RJM

[Heraclitus]

Re: Re: Re: New Player with some noob questions..

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers



I disagree. The time to build the improvement is the same whether you chop first and then improve or simply improve. But the hammers come earlier if you chop first. That can be crucial if it gives you a wonder or the benefit of a city building earlier.

RJM

Well yes, but I understood his question as in "will the improvement be done sooner if I chop first?".

[Baldyr]

I had several workers, I told them each to improve automatically. For a little while they ran around and built farms and roads etc, but eventually they all returned to the city and as far as I could tell were idle..however there were still places inside the boarders which buildings could be built on. ---so what caused them to stop building before all spaces were used up?

My best guess would be (and I usually don't use automated Workers) that your Workers already have improved all squares within you city radius. Note that your cities can't use all squares within your Cultural Borders, only those that are within both the city radius AND within your borders.

Thus, the Workers know that there's no point in improving the terrain you can't use anyway. (They might build roads and/or improve Special Resources though, since you always can utilize these within your own Cultural Borders.)

[Baldyr]

Just to clarify about the usefulness of both Forests and Forts for defense: They both give a cumulative defensive bonus, thus making a Fort built on a forested hill a Super Fort! (You can also fortify a Super Defender in the fort by giving that Unit both the City Defense, Hill Defense and Forest Defense promotions...)

I don't know if it's possible to build Forts on Forest squares in Vanilla though - it might be a feature in BTS. (Back in the day when I was just starting out with it bugged me that all forests would be automatically chopped down when I built a Fort on that square.) Or they changed it for all version of the game in the patch, I dunno.

[saw]

thanks baldyr that must be it my citys are a bit spread out in some areas, and when I buit a new city they went back to work ok..is

[Targonis]

Re: New Player with some noob questions..

One thing you may not have noticed is that EVERY city gets a -1 happiness for every size. So a size 2 city has a -2 happiness. This is offset by a certain number of citizens that "just enjoy life", so for smaller cities, the automatic negative is offset by the automatic positive. Certain buildings such as temples, colosseum, theaters, and others will provide extra happiness. Some resources like gems, ivory, incense, and dyes will provide happiness to all connected cities. Note that by connected, you need to have improved the tile appropriately(plantation for dyes for example), as well as have the resource connected, normally via a road.

Generally, once the size of a city has grown to the number of happy faces the city has, you should intentionally limit the food being gathered by the city(if possible) until you have it set to stagnant, or very low growth(lots of turns until it grows again). This can mean going for hammers(so instead of that big loaf of bread, you aim for maximum production, keeping in mind you don't want to reduce the size of the city in most cases.

For the auto-improvements, I don't think the workers will build cottages, but will put down roads all over the place. There are three different types of auto-improvement orders you can give your workers, so check out which one you are using. In general, I suggest sticking with the build trade network option, which will connect your resources but will not run rampant making changes you don't want.

For chopping, you want to keep some things in mind. Replacable parts for example will let you build a lumber mill on the forest, giving you an extra hammer on the tile(which you don't get if you have chopped the tile). So for later in the game, it helps to have those forests around. What you can chop are things beyond the "fat cross" that your city can directly access. When you go into the city screen, you see which tiles the city can directly use. There will always be tiles between your cities that NO city has direct access to via a city screen, so you can chop these without a direct penalty. Just keep in mind that if you are on the border of your civilization territory, you may build a new city out there, so just because it isn't being used YET, that doesn't mean you won't in the future.
If you never noticed, mathematics provides a huge boost to what you gain from chopping, so if you don't have something like a wonder that you are racing to finish, it's probably worth waiting for mathematics before you chop, even in "safe spots".

I hope this answers your questions...

Originally posted by saw
I just purchased the game and played through the tutorial but still when I played my first "real" game I realized I didnt understand some things...hopefully someone can lend a hand.

My home city started frowning with a red frown face, the msg said like -1 we are unhappy because of overcrowding.
---what was happining here and how can I prevent or repair this?

I had several workers, I told them each to improve automatically. For a little while they ran around and built farms and roads etc, but eventually they all returned to the city and as far as I could tell were idle..however there were still places inside the boarders which buildings could be built on.
---so what caused them to stop building before all spaces were used up?

Chopping down trees, when I hover over the axe icon it says it will provide +30 hammers to chop down trees.
---is it better to chop down trees before building on area?
---I had a small force of workers strip clearing trees, is there any negative affects to doing this?


thanks in advance!
Saw

[saw]

Re: Re: New Player with some noob questions..

Originally posted by Targonis
Generally, once the size of a city has grown to the number of happy faces the city has, you should intentionally limit the food being gathered by the city(if possible) until you have it set to stagnant, or very low growth(lots of turns until it grows again).
I hope this answers your questions...

Thank you for the information, it answered several questions...and raised one.

How do I limit the food being gathered as you suggest?

[Targonis]

Re: Re: Re: New Player with some noob questions..

Originally posted by saw


Thank you for the information, it answered several questions...and raised one.

How do I limit the food being gathered as you suggest?

When you go into the city view(double-click on the city), you will see the tiles around the city, and which are being used. Click on one that is being used, and you will notice that you now have a specialist over on the right hand side. You can now click on the tile you want to have working.

If you have a city size 4, that means your city will be working itself(the center), plus four tiles. The tiles generate food, hammers, and/or money. Flood plains for example tend to be 3 food, no hammers, and 1 gold when you have not improved the tile. You can turn this tile off and switch to using something that provides 1 food and 2 hammers, which will slow down the growth of the city.

At the same time, you may find the tiles being used provide 3 hammers but no food in some cases. If you want to push a city to grow and you have food producing tiles, switching from the three hammers to the food producing tile would make more sense.

Keep in mind that while MOST items you will make use hammers to produce them, workers and settlers are created using a combination of food and hammers(which is why your city does not grow while you are making these types of units). In many cases when a city size meets the happiness, you will want to stop the growth of the city, but when you want the city to make a worker/settler, you will want to turn on the best combination of food and hammer production. 5 foods with no hammers will be better for worker/settler creation than 0 food and 3 hammers.

Once you get used to shifting which tiles are used in the city screen, you will also have control over a very powerful ability, specialists. Specialists are enabled when the number of tiles worked is less than the city size-unhappy people. So if you have a city size of 4, and decide to work only two tiles, that will give you two specialists which you can then assign based on what buildings you have made. Specialists fall into the following categories: Spy, Engineer, Merchant, Scientist, Artist, and Priest, plus commoner. Each specialist will provide extra production in different areas, so the spy will help with espionage points, engineer will provide hammers, merchant is money, scientist is science, artist is culture, and priest is a combination of hammer(s) and gold.

So if you have a city on the border of your territory and feel you can afford it, setting up an artist to boost your culture output will help a bit.