100% It's too overcrowded!

[Argeye]

All the time my biggest problem seems to go from not enough population in a city to produce shields.. then BAM, I've got PO'd citizens because of the overcrowded thing.
Is there something I can do to ease this other than making entertainers out of the people? This happens in smaller cities where I'm getting maybe 2 or 3 shields and sometimes I've got to give one up to get the city out of disorder
I'm pretty new still to the whole civ thing, and the instruction book is terrible so I'm having a really tough time figuring out how to get stuff done :/
Like how to use a leader. The instruction book, and civlopedia in game, say *what* leaders can be used for, but I can't figure out *how* to actually make them do it lol!
Anyway, I haven't gotten much into fighting so that is a lesser concern than the overcrowding issue at the moment. Any suggestions on what I can do to ease this would be great. Thanks!

[Guynemer]

One thing you can do to lessen unhappiness in your people is to increase the percentage of your budget spent on entertainment. On one of the advisor screens (domestic, I believe), there are a pair of sliders on the top of the page, one for science budget (preset to 50%) and one for entertainment budget (preset to 0%). You can increase the entertainment, which will take some of the commerce generated by your cities and turn some of your unhappy folk into productive, content little smurfs. Also, get access to luxuries! That's huge--the more kinds of luxuries your civ has access to, the happier your citizens become. So build roads to sites of luxuries inside your borders (ivory, incense, fur, dye, wine, etc.), expand your borders to lay claim to luxury squares, and trade for them through diplomacy. Building marketplaces increases the amount of happiness those luxuries produce.

As for leaders--I also had that problem last night, but I figured it out. What you have to do is bring your leader to a city. Then, when your leader is active and within a city, you'll see a new button on the bottom of the screen, next to those fortify/wait/sentry/whatever buttons. It'll say "create army" or something along those lines. Hit that, and then move the units you want in that army into the city. There will be another new button, this time when other units are active--this one says "load". Hit that, and the active unit will be "loaded" into the Army. I know this doesn't sound very clear, but I hope it helps.

[Yook]

Build lots of temples and colliseums and cathedrals, and Wonders that help with citizens. You get culture and happy citizens, which is nice.

As for leaders, I think you need to get them back to a city. Then you get options to turn them into an army or use them to speed up production on a wonder. Once the leader is an army, you can load units into the army by bringing them to the same square as the army and checking for the new order option.

Keep on trucking with the game. I remember being utterly confused with Civ2 (never played Civ1 seriously, just dabbled in it) until it finally clicked for me and I could start having fun.

-Yook

[edit: I am a slow monkey. Must type faster. ]

[kmj]

Keep with it! The game is very complex and may confound you, especially if you've never played a civ-type game before.

As mentioned; luxuries are very important, if you can gain control of a few, you'll see how awesome they are at keeping your people happy. Also, as mentioned: you'll soon find that temples and cathedrals are two of the most important city improvements in the game; in fact, the temple (IMO) should always be the first you build in any city, to kickstart your culture.

Trust me; if you stick through it, come here whenever you have questions about the interface or gameplay, you'll find this to be one of your favourite games.

[Argeye]

Oh I'm sticking with it alright! hehe I've become addicted big time
Thanks for the help too!!
I try and build a temple as fast as I can also.. Usually for a new city that is a bit away from my capitol, I'll build a worker 1st, then temple..
But I'm still wondering about the Overpopulated issue.. Whenever I've got a mad guy in a city, I click on him to see what's up, and it's 99% of the time "100% It's way too overpopulated!"
I'm wondering, does making a combat unit, worker or settler decrease the population in the city at all? Or fortifying them there increase the population? I've got cities with all the improvements I can get for them, and keep having to take away from production to turn someone into an entertainer.. very very often I'm having to do this =/

Thanks tons for the leader help.. I didn't notice the new buttons pop up when I got him to the city hehehe!
Now if only you could manage multiple units without an army.. that would be great.. the game I'm currently in I'm trying to avoid combat, and well.. no leaders can be made unless you're fighting... I just want to tell a stack of workers to do stuff.. I despise building long roads =(

[Guynemer]

People being unhappy because "It's too crowded!" or whatever means just one thing--you've hit the content limit for that city. Depending on what skill level you're playing, the first few citizens in your cities will be content. But once your city grows past that number, whatever it is (again, depends on the skill level), every new citizen will start out unhappy. The way around that is to build happiness improvements, acquire luxuries, fiddle with the entertainment rate, create entertainers, etc.

And an easy way to build long roads is to press Ctrl-R when a worker is active. A new cursor will come up; place the cursor over the square you want the worker to build a road to, and he (or she) will get to work.