Why do my cities always end up in civil disorder?!? I started a new campaign with 3 other civs. I conquered the Aztecs and have a continent to myself, but my cities always end up in civil disorder! My workers won’t automate anymore and they just go to a city and stand there, so i have been telling lots of them to just join the city, what does this do? Please give me advice, lots of it!
Hi kgriffey79. I too have been playing a lot of Civ III lately, it’s fantastic.
Keeping your citizens content is crucial in the game, there are many ways you can do this:
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Build Temples, Cathedrals, Colloseums and other improvements in your city. I believe each of these improvements will make one citizen content in the city they are built in.
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Raise the entertainment spending in your nation. You can adjust this with the slider control near the top of the Domestic Advisor screen.
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Build the right Wonders, like J.S. Bach’s Cathedral, the Hanging Gardens and some others. I believe each of these makes one citizen content in each city.
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Owning and importing luxuries also helps, but I’m not sure of the exact effects.
Your workers won’t automate anymore becuase you’ve already done just about everything you can to the ground around your cities. When you tell them to join a city the worker becomes a new citizen in the city. Be careful, they will probably be “born” discontent, so you’ll want to make sure your city can handle them before they join.
This thread will likely get moved to IMHO or Cafe Society soon…
You may want to spend some time at the Civilization Fanatics’ Center, where they have a fairly comprehensive message board system there. It’s probably the best source I’ve seen for information on how to play this game.
Without knowing more details about how you’re playing the game (difficulty level? map size?), I’ll propose the following hypotheses:
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You said that you conquered the Aztecs. That means you were probably at war for a while. If your government was a Republic or a Democracy, war weariness can set in and cause widespread civil disorder. The use of police stations and the Universal Suffrage wonder can help reduce this, but it won’t eliminate it completely. This means that warfare in Civ3 is handled very differently from the earlier versions of the games. When I play, I use warfare in limited terms, only to achieve specific objectives (such as capturing a strategic city, or gaining access to critical resources such as oil or coal).
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Another way to make your people happy is to have access to luxuries such as dyes, furs, ivory, and incense. If you don’t have them within your domain, you should consider arranging trade agreements with other civilizations that do.
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Other causes of civil disorder could be that you do not have adequate city improvements to keep your citizens content. Temples, cathedrals, colosseums, and wonders such as J.S. Bach’s Cathedral, Hanging Gardens, and Michelangelo’s Chapel can go a long way towards promoting a happy populace.
What others have mentioned is good advice although different improvements have different results (Temple=1 happy citizen, Colosseum=2, Cathedral=2 or 3 and so on). Different Wonders sometimes enhance exiting structures so The Oracle doubles the effectiveness of Temples to 2.
Page 115 in your manual describes civil disorder and things you can do to alleviate it. It will stay that way till something changes (loss of citizens, finishing a Wonder in another city that affects happiness, gaining a luxury somehow, making entertainers, etc.).
The most common way is to open the city screen of the city that is in disorder and make an entertainer. To do this simply click on a square that is in production. The square will clear and a citizen will appear along the right side of the picture window. Clicking on this citizen will switch him/her between an entertainer, tax collector or scientist. To alleviate disorder make this person an entertainer. NOTE: Sometimes it is necessary to make more than one entertainer to stop disorder but usually one will do.
Which city square you choose to take out of production can be important. You may cause a food shortage that causes people in your city to starve (shrinking the size of your city). Of course, if you’re in a race with another civilization to build a wonder so taking shields off-line may be the bad choice. Sometimes there are no good choices and you’re screwed whatever you do…it’s all part of the fun :)!
Of course, as soon as your city is functional again it behooves you to build an improvement that will make people happy (Colosseum, Cathedral, Temple, etc.). Once the improvement has been built you might consider going back into the city screen and putting your entertainer back to work (just click on an empty city square in the city screen).
Finally, pay attention to your war footing. Being at war causes ‘war wearniness’ among your citizens. This causes unhappiness in all of your cities but is particularly bad under a Republic or Democratic government. Note, however, that having other civs declare war on you actually decreases this effect (I guess your people get all patriotic) so it behooves you to goad another civ into attacking you rather than you attacking them (if war is what you want).
When in a city screen, you can also conduct a poll to find out what is causing your unhappy citizens. Just click on one of 'em.
Civil disorder is a lot bigger problem in Civ III. You can no longer grow and grow and never really use luxury (now entertainment) spending. You need to control your growth – don’t allow population to get too large in a city without temples and the like. War is a blow to morale no matter what your government, especially in newly-conquered cities (or cities in a war zone). Conquered cities also take time (generations!) to become truly assimilated. My advice: start out using Pangaea-style land, and build lots of morale-boosting Wonders. Still, you’re going to have to use entertainers in big cities if you want no-disorder.
Don’t discount luxuries. Send out explorers early and snatch them up. If you’re running thin, trade for more. They tend to clump around areas, also – a great target for conquest, if they’re taken. Remember, you need to have a viable trade route also, via roads or harbors (or later, airports).
Excess workers are handy, joining cities can boost population in slow-growth areas or you can build “colonies” on strategic resources.
Keep some of your workers around though; you’ll need a FRIGGING TON when you get to the industrial age. Pollution is incredibly rampant, and naturally starts up right when you’ve just gotten access to making railroads (a very valuable project, especially for me as I always play in very large worlds).
Civ III takes some strategy readjusting if you’re used to Civ II, so hang in there.
kgriffey,
Everything that can increase your citizens happiness is known and concrete. Not everything that causes unhappiness is known and concrete however. The formulas for war weariness, overcrowding, and “occupied” territories are less accessible but their cause is nevertheless identifiable.
The civ fanatics center, as someone already mentioned, is the best resource on the web. One thing that people didnt mention is the marketplace improvement which multiplies the happiness effect of marginal luxuries.
I never spend a dime on entertainment in the domestic advisor and rarely make entertainers out of individual citizens either even during long periods of war as a democracy. I always have every happiness increasing improvement and rush build the infrastructure necessary to get to the happiness wonders first. These wonders keep your cities quiet and your culture rolling in. I only war for strategic resources and swallow up the other civs with culture. Also, keeping your people happy results in “We the love emperor day” which are periods of significant increase in production. There really isnt any downside at all to keeping your people happy because everything your doing contributes to other areas as well.
Cathedrals and Colloseums are more powerful than temples once you lose the power of the Oracle. The Sistine Chapel will double the power of any Cathedrals on the same continent.
In addition, all three improvements generate Culture, something that is very important to expanding your empire peacefully in Civ3.
This works on a grand scale, but if your problem appears to be local to a city or two, picking up one or more citizens and making them Entertainers works OK, too.
It’s also a good way to curtail unwanted growth, since Entertainers don’t grow food.
J.S. Bach’s Cathedral will make two unhappy citizens content in every friendly city on the continent.
The Hanging Gardens makes one citizen happy in each of your cities on the continent, and three (!) in the city in which it is located. IIRC, the Gardens are made obsolete by Steam Power.
Each luxury your trade network delivers to your citizens produces one smiley-face. A smiley face will make a content citizen into a happy citizen. Once all the content citizens are happy, smiley-faces make unhappy citizens content.
You can increase the smiley-face potential of luxuries by building a Marketplace. A Marketplace will double the smiley-face output of your third and fourth luxury, triple it for the fifth and sixth luxury, and quadruple it for the seventh and eigth luxury. So far, I have never amassed more than six luxuries at once.
Another thing to watch out for is joining captured workers to your cities. Citizens that are native to a country you are at war with generate civil unrest, so if you’re busy fighting the French, adding French workers to your cities can be a really bad idea.
In addition, drafting citizens to make soldiers or hurry projects makes the remaining populace unhappy. This remains true even if it was your opponent doing it, and you just captured his city. There is nothing in the book that I’ve seen which explains how or when (or if!) this ever goes away.
Like I said, it can be really useful if you plan to reduce your food output, although I suppose scientists and tax collectors work that way too.
One important thing to remember is that your score is not the score on the final turn of the game, but your aggregate score over the course of human history. Happy citizens give you more points than content, unhappy, or specialist citizens, so if you have nothing better to do, why not increase your score?
Also, if you need to make Entertainers to start a “We Love the ____ Day,” do it! Even under a Democracy, you’re subject to some corruption, but while you’re partying, corruption in a celebrating city is nearly halved!