A senior moment, please advise

[rah]

Ming just game be CPT2 for Christmas. I never played the earlier version.

I selected the hard setting for the first game and started playing. 100 turns in, it was obvious that I had no clue what I was doing. So I read the manual (wasted effort) and started again. Not much help but as in Civ, the ai developes faster, so just go out and conquer AI cities. But two things are real annoying and I'd love a little help.

1. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to make tile improvements. I looked and looked and found nothing. I finally turned on mayors and half my civ was improved like magic. I know I'm missing something basic, but I would really appreciate any help. Please be specific, help a senior today.

2. I have an 233 speed machine. (ordering a much faster one tomorrow) I though I was playing civ MP it took so long. It's so slow between turns. It takes forever to open a city screen. Is this normal. What options can I turn off to speed it up? I can take a nap in the time it takes to start the game and load up a saved game.

RAH
Thanks for any help.
Someday you will be old too

[Didymus]

Diagram of screen

*M*E*N*U*********->***
*....................*
*....................*
*....................*
*....................*
*[------]............*
*[------]............*
*[------]....@@^^^^oo*
*[------]....@@----oo*

"->" is the shovel (public works) icon. (some people think it looks like a hammer). The amount of public works you have is displayed here.

[------]
[------]
[------]
[------] represents the inset global map.

"QQ"
"QQ" - represents the clock-like feature with icons for army, empire, city production, etc.

^^^^^ represents the tabs for frankly I forget exactly what, (Empire, Units, ???, PWs) but one of them accesses public works. Each one actually looks more like:

::________::
:/::::::::\:
/::title?::\

(pretend the colons are spaces)

or maybe it has an icon. I haven't played for a week -- waiting for the WesW mod to get stable.

oo
oo - represents the area in which you select what tile improvement you want to use. Notice the four categories: land/water/special/Terraforming. Special includes forts (which extend your empire's borders two tiles, and give you vision BUT NOT OF UNITS!) and
radar/sonar placements and Obselisks (for science victory). Terraforming allows you to change useless terrain to useful terrain, but at a high cost.

Amount of public works per turn == selected in F1 (empire) screen as % of production.

As for your machine, it sounds kinda slow.

[This message has been edited by Didymus (edited January 02, 2001).]

[rah]

Thanks Didymus,
Sure as hell more infor than in the manual. When I get home from work tonight, I'll give it a try and if I'm still confused, at least I'll know what I'm confused about.

And yeah, looking forward to a much faster machine.
It ran ok the first 100 turns.

RAH
I really appreciate getting a response to the real easy things. I'm sure it's been asked many times before, but I looked back and didn't see it. Thanks again.

[Davor]

Use your public works. Set your % in the empire manager and wait a few turns to collect enought pw. once you have enough click on tiles and the improvment you want to use. It will turn red if you cant do it or green and you can place it. Right click to cancel.

Page 15 on the manual.

Davor

[rah]

Thanks Davor, sounds simple. I did have a percentage set and obviously had enough since the mayors had no problem using it. I did read that and thought that's what I did, to no avail. I will try again armed with better knowledge.


RAH
And it was real funny/frustrating knowing i had all of the potential stored up unused, and would run across AI's that had no problems. So I just took their cities.
[This message has been edited by rah (edited January 02, 2001).]

[rah]

Thanks gents, it worked like a charm. Actually pretty simple after an explanation.

RAH
You'll get old some day too.