So I've been mucking around with Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (a.k.a BtS); which is the second expansion pack for the original Civilization IV. They've done an excellent follow-on to the Warlords expansion, with more of a focus on Corporations, more wonders and civilizations, and a rebalancing of traits and the late-era tech tree. The timescale also seems to work better and is more accurate.

However, one of the changes in BtS is that the Domestic Advisor (F1) screen now has additional columns that are not explained in-game. Some of them you're used to from the previous versions, but from left-to-right, they are now:


  1. City Icon: Allows you to enter the city screen for any particular city.

  2. City Name: The name of the city.

  3. POP: The city population.

  4. Yellow Smiley Face: This column represents the number of happy people surplus (or deficit). Green (and positive) numbers indicate that your city has excess happiness.

  5. White Circle with Red Cross: Represents the amount of surplus (or deficit) for health. Green (>0) numbers are good and indicate excess health.

  6. Bread: The amount of excess (or deficit) food being produced (from tiles that are being worked). Green (greater than zero) indicates that your city is growing (or can grow).

  7. Hammer: The number of hammers (production) currently being produced. Useful for finding those high-production cities when deciding where to build military units.

  8. Yellow Coins (two columns): The amount of gold being produced by the city. Good for finding where to put the Wall Street national wonder.

  9. Green Beaker: The number of research points being produced by the city. Denotes science, so put your main science buildings in these cities.

  10. Red Circle Spy: Indicates how many espionage points are being generated by this city.

  11. Purple Music Notes: The amount of culture being produced per turn (the "rate") in this city.

  12. Three Yellow Arrows: The number of trade routes in this city.

  13. Red Coin Icon: A lot of people call this a "red unhappy face", but it's actually a red coin. It represents the amount of city maintenance for this city, rounded to the nearest integer. So if the city currently costs 1.80 per turn, you will see a "2" in this column. A value of 3.26 displays as "3". Good for finding out what cities urgently need courthouses.

  14. Yellow Icon with Black Silhouette: The number of "great person" (GP) points per turn being generated and the approximate time of the next Great Person being born.

  15. Black Hourglass: This is supposed to represent old-style castle towers that were narrow-waisted. It indicates the number of units currently stationed in a city. Makes it easier to find out where you left that "stack of death". And for Hereditary Rule, allows you to determine how much of the happiness surplus is due to military units.

  16. Production: The current unit or building being produced and the estimated time (in turns) until it is completed.



I've been playing Civ4 for a long time (since after it came out) and I confess that I've never really figured out the Domestic Advisor screen. The only columns that I had a grasp of were the name, the production, research and commerce columns, and the list of what city was producing what.

But now that I've sat down and puzzled out the various columns, city maintenance can become a whole lot easier. Basically every turn (or 5 turns), you should look at this screen and ask the following questions:


  1. Do I have any cities with zero (or negative) happiness? It can be risky to have less then 1 or 2 surplus happiness in a city, because of war weariness or adverse events. I generally try to keep one spare happy face in each city.

  2. Do all of my cities have surplus (or zero) health? Health is a little easier to plan for, so I'll often grow a city right up to the health limit.

  3. Do I have excess food being grown? No cities should be starving and smaller cities should be producing extra food to aid with growth.



Those are definitely the big questions to ask. It ensures that all of your cities are at least healthy, happy, and growing. Much faster then looking at the map and trying to find cities with red or green unhappy faces.