User Guide

For further information on this subject, see “Advanced Cities.”
City Health
The City Health/Happiness Display on the City Screen tells
you how healthy your city is. Further, if a city is unhealthy, an
“Unhealthy City” icon (see diagram) will appear next to the
city’s name on the Main Screen.
A city can be healthy or unhealthy. In general, the larger a city
is, the more unhealthy it is. Cities sited near jungles or flood-
plains tend to be unhealthier than ones surrounded by grass-
lands. Cities near to rivers or freshwater lakes are healthier than
ones that aren’t. Cities with factories are less healthy than cities
without them, and so on.
A city’s poor health has a number of detrimental effects. Most
importantly, an unhealthy city requires more food to sustain its
population, and cities that are too unhealthy may begin to
starve.You can improve a city’s health by clearing jungles, pro-
ducing certain buildings, and by accessing more kinds of food
resources.
City Happiness
The City Health/Happiness Display on the City Screen tells
you how happy your city is. Further, if a city is unhappy, an
“Unhappy City” icon (see diagram) will appear next to the
city’s name on the Main Screen. Unhappiness is caused by a
number of factors, including overpopulation and war.
If a city’s inhabitants are unhappy, some of them will refuse to
work.These slackers continue to consume food, however, but
they bring in no food, production, or commerce.
You can increase a city’s happiness by constructing certain
buildings – temples and coliseums, to name two. Various
resources will increase a city’s happiness, as will certain civics.
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WE LOVE THE KING!
If a city is especially well-run, your happy people may reward
you with a “We Love the King” celebration.
REQUIREMENTS
We Love the King occurs randomly to eligible cities. In order
to be eligible, the city must meet the following criteria:
• The city’s population must be greater than 7.
• The city must have no angry citizens.
• The city must not be losing any food because of unhealthi-
ness (see “Advanced Cities” for details on city health).
EFFECTS
A city that loves the king pays no maintenance costs that turn,
which can be a significant financial boost to your empire.
Specialists
When your city has grown a bit in size, you might want to
consider creating one or more “specialists” in that city.
Specialists are created by taking a population point of the city
and assigning that population to a specific job: priest, engineer,
artist, and so forth. Each of these specialists provides a specific
bonus to the city; in addition, specialists allow the city to gen-
erate those incredibly useful “Great People” (see page 91).The
more specialists a city has, the faster that city will generate a
great person.
WHEN YOU CAN APPLY A SPECIALIST
A fresh new city doesn’t have the population or facilities to
support a specialist. Each specialist removes one population
point from the workforce: thus, if your city has a size of 1 and
you create a specialist, no one will be working the fields and
the city will starve. As the city reaches medium size, you may
be able to assign a specialist without starving your city, and
once a city becomes large enough, it will have excess popula-
tion who can be turned into specialists without much ill
effect on the city’s intake of food, commerce or production.
In addition, the city must have a certain level of infrastructure
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