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ALLIANCE PRESENTS
The Official Guide to
Sid Meier's
C I V I L I Z A T I O N
Keith Ferrell
The Authoritative Guide
Amiga Adaption by Baser Evil/Alliance
Greetings to Rygar - Scooter - 2-Tuff - Munchie - Loons - Flex
H.I.M, Skid Row, LSD, and the rest
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements......................................................VIII
A Game as Big as History................................................XI
1. Caveat...............................................................1
2. A Civilizied Frame of Mind...........................................5
3. A Walk Through Sid Meier's Civilization.............................13
4. Crude Huts and Rough Implements.....................................41
5. The Best Defense....................................................67
6. Taking Offense......................................................95
7. Cultural Considerations............................................119
8. Questions of Balance: Commerce and Government......................137
9. A World at War.....................................................155
10. A World at Peace...................................................175
Appendix A. 175 Tips, Hints, and Tools for Ruling Your Civilization....189
Appendix B. A Conversation with the Creators...........................217
Index..................................................................227
About the Author.......................................................235
====================================================================== vii
ACKNOWLDEGMENTS
There's no way to cover all of the options and opportunities offered by a
game such as Sid Meier's Civilization in even a sizable book. What I've
tried to do here is to give you the benefit of my own experiences with the
game, bearing in mind that your experiences will be different, and that,
indeed, everyone will approach the game with his or her own set of biases
and preferences, which will, in turn, shape the game at hand.
This flexibility is, above all, a tribute to Sid Meier, Bruce
Shelley, and the entire design and production team at MicroProse. I know
of no othr game so open-ended yet so filled with ideas and exitements as
this one. That's a neat accmplishment, and one worthy of much commercial
success and critical acclaim.
Sid and Bruce both made generous helpings of their time available to
me at a very early stage in the development of the game and of this book.
Their hospitality and insights helped shape the book's direction, and
helped me as well as get a handle on hw to write about a game that's
different evry time you play it. My goal, more than anything else, was
to write a book that would open the player's eyes to the many different
opportunities this fine game offers.
Kathy Gilmore at MicroProse proved over and over again why she is so
often mentioned as the best in the press relations business. Her concerns
that I have all the resources needed to do
===================================================================== viii
the book, her constant accessibility, her own generosity of time and
involvement all helped make this a better book.
Stephen Levy demonstrated daily - sometimes hourly - why patience is a
key among a publisher's virtues, especially during a diffiult and more
often than not hectic period of composition. Pam Plaut, the book's editor,
is a writer's dream and may be even more patient than Stephen.
All of the fine staff at OMNI helped with insights and advice,
particularly Sandy Fritz, who provided some excellent research materials
at just the right moment, and Murray Cox, who may have heard more about
this book than he cared to.
At home, Martha and Alec Ferrel were as always terrific to be around
during the writing of a book. They're pretty nice to be around at other
times, too.
And above all, the two to whom the book is dedicated. My brother Ed
Ferrel, and our spiritual brother Gregg Keizer, both contributed
mightily to my understanding of game design, civilzation dynamics, and
the intellctual bases this game rests upon. Thanks guys, let's do it
again sometime (without the book.)
======================================================================= ix
INTRODUCTION
------------
A GAME AS BIG AS HISTORY
The impulse to cultivate the land, domesticate wildlife, settle in one
location and frm that location send out explorers, envoys, warriors,
traders, and colonists - the urge, in other words, to civilize - is an
impulse less than 10,000 years old.
That's not much time. Our earliest primate ancestors appeared on the
scene about 18 million years ago, with the first members of the genus
Homo arriving 16 million years or so later. Homo sapiens spaiens, our
species, is barely 100,000 years old. Civilized humanity is, so to
speak, a most invention.
Yet that handful of civilized millenia encompasses a climb from
cowering in darkness to reaching for the stars. While civilizations have
risen and fallen over the past 8,000 years, the impulse to civilize -
to develop natural and human resources for the betterment of the
population - has remained, for the most part, constant.
Sid Meier's Civilization gives you the opportunity to create, rule,
and manage a ivilization. (Ruling and managing are, players quickly
discover, quite different things.) As the game begins, you control a
single band of settlers with little or no technology; to win the game,
yours must be the first civilization to colonize a planet in another
stellar system. This game has range.
===================================================================== xiii
Civilization may, in fact, be the most open-ended and flexible computer
game ever developed. Each step along the pathway to a fully functioning,
happy and healthy, well-managed civilization can lead in several
directions. Deisions made early in the game can generate consequences
that stretch across centuries. There is n right or wrong way to play the
game.
Paradoxially, the degree of freedom allowed by the game imposes a
greater responsibiliy on the player than is true of most games. There's
more at stake here, or at least there seems to be. Sid Meier has done a
wonderful job of creating the illusion of genuine consequence withing what
is, after all, an interactive elctronic entertainment.
Don't get me wrong: You can have quite a good time playing
Civilization quickly, taking a "smash-and-grab" approach. Devote your
entire attention and productive ability to cranking out military units,
seeking enemies, making war. Such an approach, though, may be foredoomed.
Your opponents are likely to be craftier, more intelligent (in the context
of the game, at least), and more organized than you. Their own attention
to economic and cultural development may ultimately provide them with more
effective weapons of war than your own approach. (Bear in mind, too, that
even a "quick" game can take several hours to complete ... unless your
civilization is rapidly overrun by other, more vibrant cultures.)
Conquest and warfare certainly play a major part in Sid Meier's
Civilization: This is a terrific wargame. Yet it is more than that, just
as even the most warlike of real civilizations are always more than just
military machines. Culture and government, religion and commerce demand
the same degree of attention as production of weapons and military units;
they may well prove more valuable to the ultimate destiny of your
civilization.
Meier's acomplishment here is, ultimately, the development of a game
whose peacful development aspects can be as or even more fullfilling than
its warlike aspects. How many wargames can
====================================================================== xiV
you think of in which you have the choice between producing either weapons
of mass destruction or Shakspeare's Theater? That the option is present is
an indication of Meier's growth as a designer; that plowshares can in some
ways be as fundamental to success as swords is an indication of the
sophistication of the game.
There is a science fictional aspect to Sid Meier's civilization - or
perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be to a fantasy scenario. The
game does not promise to duplicate civilization as our species' history
knows it. Rather, players are provided with the tools of civilization and
given the chance to make of those tools what they will. While all playrs -
one human (you) and up to six omputer opponents - start at the same level,
the evolution and development of individual civilizations does not follow
paralel tracks any more than it did in our own history. Forms of
government, ideologies, and technologies can collide. I have played games
wherein I constructed lovely civilizations at a roughly medieval leveel
of technology, only to be invaded and conquered by opponents in tanks and
aircraft.
Likewise, I have found myself in control of modern technologies that
provided the means for laying siege to the entire world. The clash of
cultures that dramtizes so much of human history is made vivid in the
confines of Sid Meier's game. That the clash can produce tragic results is
inherent in some of the game's messages: EEgyptian civilization destroyed,
for example, carries a measure of poignance, even if it fell at your
hands.
======================================================================= xV
As destroyer or destroyed, you will find yourself facing incongruous
but convincing confrontations. Placing chariots and catapults in the path
of armored personnel carriers without the confrontation seeming forced or
false, in the manner of a wargame construction kit, is a tribute to the
game's persuasive abilities. You will find yourself not only suspending
your disbelief, but also caring for the societies you create.
Through it all, the player is reminded of the management aspects a
civilization demands. Infrastructure is crucial. Your people must be
housed, fed, and cared for, or they will let you know their displeasure.
The infrastructure must be maintained and upgraded. Simple roads can
become highways or rail lines. Primitive sailing craft able only to hug
the shore give way to huge oceangoing transports, battleships, carriers,
and subs. Theer are libraries and universities here, as well as
barracks and depots. Ideas are as crucial as ordnance to the growth and
expansion of your civilization.
Best of all, there's a sense throughout of the interrelationship
among ideas, of the continuity of cultural evolution. Decisions made
early in the game echo throughout its progress, both to your
====================================================================== xVi
advantage and aginst it. Each path you choose both opens and closes other
opportunities. You learn quickly to choose carefully.
There is also a sense in which this game can be viewed as a sort of
living, interactive history book, with the understanding that the history
is being made up as you go. You will quickly discern the relationships
the relationships among ideas: which discoveries lay the foundations
for subsequent leaps, and which can lead you into fascinating but not
necessarily profitable directions. The intellectual underpinings of
Sid Meier's Civilization are compulsively interesting.
Meier is aware as well that civilizations play out their lives on
planetary surfaces, often despoiling them in the process. You are charged
in this game not only with exploiting the world's natural resources, but
also with renewing and restoring them. Fail to do so - or permit your
adverseries to go too far in despoiling the natural world - and you face
global disaster. Again, you are provided with both the information and the
tools necessary to accomplish the task of fending off cataclysm.
Extending the thought experiment another step, Meier provides an
option that lets you alter the climate of your world before you begin. If
you've wondered how civilization might differ on a wetter or dryer world
than our own, here's your chance to find out.
Our own world is here as well. While most of the games you play will
take place on randomly generated worldmaps, Meier has included a map of
earth and given you the chance to launch your civilization from its
actual, historical starting place. Do you have what it takes to lead the
Egyptians to teh stars?
There's even an interactive encyclopedia of sorts, with entries
specific to the game. Design and aesthetic decisions are well supported by
information resources, both within the game and in Bruce Shelly's
elegantly written documentation. You have at hand the materials you need
to make informed decisions.
Will they be the right decisions? There's no clear answer to that
question. Sid Meier is as aware of the dilemma of design bias as any
designer I know. It's not by accident - nor solely by marketing intent, I
think - the game is called Sid Meier's Civilization.
===================================================================== xVii
Insofar as is possible, Meier has minimized his overt presence in the
game: You don't have to "think like Sid" in order to prosper. What he has
done is to create a sort of electronic pocket universe with clearly
defined rules and proscriptions. Within those limits, you are on your own,
able to find your way according to your own inclinations and abilities.
Those inclinations and abilities may evolve as your relationship with
the game grows deeper. While the game is primarily intended as an
entertainment, it has an educational aspect that cannot be overlooked.
Meier is not teaching here, nor - except in a couple of enviornmental
areas - is he preaching. Rather, he is providing players with a
self-contained continuum to explore, and letting the reasonable and
realistic rules of that do the teaching. You learn by experience what
works and what doesn't. If the lessons learned are not directly applicable
to the real history of our planet, it's not going too far to say that they
may deepen your appreciation of the intracacies of history, and the odds
against which civilizations have always struggled.
Sid Meier's Civilization s a bold stroke from one of the boldest of
our interactive game designers. This is one game that challenges your
worthiness, your intellect as well as your instincts, that provides
interplay of ideas as well as fun. In short, a most civilized
entertainment.
==================================================================== xViii
CHAPTER 1
---------
CAVEAT ...
Sid Meier's Civilization is the end result of thousands of hours of
thought, creativity, and plain hard work on the part of designers Sid
Meier and Bruce Shelley, as well as the rest of the team at MicroProse.
They have put their best efforts into this game, producing a genuinely
original product, one that should provide literally hundreads of hours of
entertainment and edification.
Their creativity is also part of a business - quite a successful one,
in fact. Sid and Bruce, and the rest of the MicroProse team depend on
revenues from their games in order to pay their salaries. There's a
bargain inherent here, a two-way street. You pay before you play.
You owe it to them, in other words, to use only legitimate copies of
the game, and to acquire those copies the old-fashioned way: by purchasing
them. (Or by being given the game by someone who purchased it.)
That's not a lot to ask when you consider the vast riches and
challenges embedded in Civilization. You're a rare player if you can
master the game in a single sitting; and even quick games can take ten or
more hours to play. In other words, this game rapidly amortizes its cost
out to a few thousand dollars a session. And, if you're like most
Civilization fans, that few dollars will evolve into a few cents per
session simply because you're playing the game so often.
======================================================================== 3
To that end, be aware that this book is no substitute for the game
manual. While I think there's a lot in my book that's not in the manual,
there's also a lot in the manual that's not here. Specifically, I have not
included keyboard instructions or other specific details of game operation
that properly belong in the game's documentation. My aim here is to help
you get more out of the game, not to help you get around purchasing it.
Software piracy is a serious issue that grows more serious every day.
The interactivity that enteratinment software invites if also an
invitation to participate in repaying the creators of your favorite
programs. That participation - in the form of payment for products - is
crucial if the entertainment software industry is to continue to grow and
evolve, producing ever more challenging and delightful games and programs.
So play it straight. Pay befroe you play.
If you are playing a legitamet edition of Si Meier's Civilization, I
hope you find my book helpful, even rewarding. May your civilizations
flower and spread out among the stars.
Ad if you're playing a pirate copy, I hope your civilizations all
collapse in ruins and your citizens flay you in the electronic streets.
======================================================================== 4
CHAPTER 2
---------
A CIVILIZED FRAME OF MIND
This is a thinking person's game. Better than any piece of interactive
electronic entertainment I know, Civilization draws upon a variety of your
internal resources. While the game is fun, it can also be educational.
Understanding always that Civilization is a game and not an
event-for-event simulation of human history, you can nonetheless derive
from playing it a sense of the sweep and accomplishment of human
civilizations over the millennia. That perspective can also help you excel
at the game.
It will help to develop the long view. Think in terms of consequences
over decades, if not centuries, and you'll stand a better chance of
mastering the intricacies of Sid Meier's Civilization.
Certain skills will serve you better than others. A constantly
aggressive and expansionist playing style may work against you over the
long run. Likewise, too relaxed an approach, too great a willingness to
strike every treaty that comes along, may hamper your ability to grow. As
the ruler of your electronic civilization, you must seek equilibrium among
a variety of related but in some ways disparate playing skills.
======================================================================== 7
A SENSE OF PERSPECTIVE
Key among these skills is the balanced sense of perspective possessed by
good managers. Very quickly in Civilization, you'll find yourself juggling
a large number of conflicting if not contradictory demands, challenges,
and opportunities. There is no one correct way to organize your response
to these aspects of the game. But there are tools - thought tools, ways of
thinking - that can help ensure that your decisions serve your ultimate
goals.
Information is the foremost resource of the successful civilization.
Information in teh game takes two forms: that which you generate from teh
skills, civilization advances, institutions, and investments of your own
society, and that information you obtain from other civilizations. The
infrastructure of your civilization is important, but can be argued that
in this game, it's info-structure that marks the difference between
success and failure. Manage your information wisely and you will have
taken a large step twoard making the right decisions when crunches come.
The long time-frame perspecive and its relationship to information
come together in one of Civilization's most intersting aspects:
negotiation with other civilizations. You can strike treaties, exchange
knowledge, form alliances. There is a temptation, bred perhaps from an
entire generation of wargames pure and simple, or perhaps from our own
human nature, to build and aggressive, militaristic civilization, letting
little or nothing stand in the way of your expansion. This ruthless
approach can work, and work spectacularly well. Indeed, this is the
approach to take if you're looking for a quick, total victory.
But the odds are strong that Civilization won'y yield a quick conquest
of the world. You're going to have to share your planet with other groups,
some belligerent, some peaceful. Knowing which is which and striking the
best possible balance of aggression and concilliation will help you keep
your civilization strong.
======================================================================== 8
A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE
Civilization is also unusual in its approach to the relationships among
bodies of knowledge. Ideas build upon each other. Your scientists and wise
people can see further because they stand upon the shoulders of those who
came befor ethem. As you are prompted from time to time to designate a
particular course of academic research, put yourself in that long-view
mode.
The knowledge that seems best to serve your immediate temporal needs
may not help you so much a generation or two down the line.
You must feed, house, and care for those generations as they multiply.
Here, the skills of the city planner and resource manager come into play.
You may find yourself torn between expanding your empire and solidifying
your control at home. Opt for home: Over the long run you will be
rewarded.
Your citizens do have it in their power to reward you, but they also
have it in their power to slap your wrists - or worse! - for bad
management. The rewards take several forms, including noticeable increases
in productivity.
Citizen dissatisfaction assums several guises as well. You will find
yoruself losing productive capacity, even population, if you don't see
taht the basic needs of your citizens are met. Nor will harsh despotic
rule always serve you well, although it is an option. There are ideas at
work in this game, among them a fairly sophisticated notion of governement
and the adavtanges and disadvantages of its various historical and
contemporary forms. If you can possibly manage to do so, give your
citizens every freedom available. Your task will not necessarily be made
easier by the democratic approach, but the core of your society may be
healthier.
======================================================================== 9
DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY
That internal health needs to be stressed. This is another way of advising
you not to keep your eyes too constantly on the frontier, tempting though
that frontier might be. You cannot successfully wage worldwide war - or
even global commerce - if there's rot and decay at home. Upgrade your
citizens' cities at every affordable opportunity.
Bear in mind as well that your people do not live by food and toil
alone. Even the citizenry of a despot requires some luxuries: These are
the leavening that can help hold your depotism together.
As you progress through the game you'll find that your decisions grow
more complex and challenging. Here, you'll need something of the talent of
a seer, albeit a well-informed seer. As your world approaches the modern
age - as measured by technological ability, not just the calendar date -
you must shift your eyes from the planet at hand to worlds beyond your
own. Because the ultimate goal of civilization is to expand beyond your
own planet and onto others, there is a point in the game where rapid
scientific progress - the marvels of the Information Age - becomes vital
to victory. Prepare your society for the Space Age by laying a solid
groundwork of scientific accomplishment.
Prepare as well for laying siege and living under besiegement. The end
game in Civilization can be won - or lost - in a number of ways. You will
reach a point at which either the world lies at your feet, or you find
yoruself striking alliances and fending off invasions in order to hold
onto your empire. Time sof expansion end; times of consolidation and
control can win teh game for you. This is especially true in the end game,
the final 200 years or so, during which someone will first recah the
stars.
======================================================================= 10
A GAME THAT HOLDS WONDERS
That's the end game. The journey there can be as rewarding as the
resolution. This brief introduction - an entire book, for that matter -
can barely do justice to teh richness of detail and decision that lie in
teh game, and which you will encounter on your way to the creation of a
fnctioning civilization.
Along the way, for example, you will have the chance to create
wonders, different ones for different ages. The creation of a Wonder of
the World is an undertaking that virtually defines the long view. Think of
the Wonders as investments in the future of your civilization. Dedicating
a single city to single creation for dozens of turns, perhaps more than a
hundred turns, is a step not easily taken; yet build the right Wonder of
the Worlds, and you can reap the benefits for millennia.
Millennial reach, the huge sweep of history, is probably the great
accomplishment of this game, and teh aspect which will linger in your
memory. By applying that memory to the game - by taking lessons learned
from the real past of our species' history, and the electronic past
acquired through playing Sid Meier's Civilization - you will discover the
benefits of approaching your computer in the right, long-range frame of
mind.
======================================================================= 11
CHAPTER 3
---------
A WALK THROUGH SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION
It's you against the world.
That world consists of the natural world itself, its lands and oceans,
your computer oppinents, and, in a sense, your own people. These are the
operative elements of Sid Meier's Civilization, the elements with which
you will interact. It's up to you to manage, lead, negotiate, direct,
inspire, and coordinate your particular civilization's responses to these
elements. As the central character in Sid Meier's Civilization, you assume
the roles of ruler, general, industrial leader, political strategist,
cultural arbiter, and more. Because of the game's all-but-uniqe
flexibility - it's a rare situation where you don't have several choices
to make, some of them of great and long-lasting consequence - no two games
will be alike.
For that reason, the more familiar you become with the game, its
resources and manual, as well as this book, the better prepared you will
be to make the righ decisions as the arise.
In this chapetr, we'll walk through the main features and resources of
this exceptionally rich game, as well as look at its interface and command
structure.
======================================================================= 15
THE WORLDS THEMSELVES
The worlds in Sid Meier's Civilization are generated randomly, ensuring
that each world differes from teh others. The worlds have in common north
and south polar caps that extend around the globe and which cannot be
penetrated. Otherwsie, the worlds have oceans, islands, and continents in
varying degrees of concentartion.
You can vary some of the world conditions by taking advantage of the
options offered during the world-building phase of game setup. Raise the
temperature, increase or decrease the amount of water on the world, change
the game's time scale - make the game your own, in other words.
The one non-random, predetermined world available from the setup menu
is our own. You owe it to yourself at least once to play the game of
Civilization on familiar territory, testing yourself against the geography
of our home planet.
LEVELS OF PLAY
Sid Meier's Civilization offers five levels of play, ranging from beginner
to advanced. Naturally, the lower levels offer simpler challenges -
technological advances are more easily achieved, apponents more easily
defeated. Progress and production take more time at the upper levels, and
opponents are substantially tougher.
NUMBER OF CIVILIZATIONS
As teh game begins, you are prompted to select the number of civilizations
that will be involved, ranging from three to seven. If you're playing for
the quick, world-dominating win, your best bet is to select a smaller
number of civilizations. More nations, on the ther hand, makes for a more
sophisticated game, with larger opportunities for economic intercourse
between civilizations,
======================================================================= 16
alliances, and so on. A larger number of nations, incidentally, all but
ensures that you will encounter other civilizations very early in the
game, perhaps in the first few turns. If you want a better chance of being
left alone for awhile, your best bet is to play against a smaller number
of opponents.
THE GAME TURN
Civilization progresses through a series of turns, each representing the
passage of a set period of time. This time period ranges from 20 years per
turn in the early stages of the game to a single year per turn as the game
moves toward the modern world.
Turns are divided into segments, during which you make decisions
regarding the production of new units in cities which have completed a
unit or improvement under construction, move active units, and engage in
combat or negotition with other civilizations. Once all of your active
units have moved, your turn ends. The turn sequence also applies to all
other civilizations in the game.
At the beginning of a turn there may or may not be a natural disaster
randomly generated by the computer and trageted at a single city.
Disasters - fire, flood, and so on - can be avoided if you possess
appropriate technology.
City growth, essential to a thriving and expanding civilization, also
occurs, if possible, each turn. City growth is made possible by a number
of factors that you will become familiar with as you play the game. Key
among the factors are:
> surplus food - enables your population to expand.
> an orderly society - represented by a greater number of happy or
content citizens than discontent ones.
> capacity for city maintenance - which means that your tax revenues -
or treasury reserves - are large enough to support the various
facilities, institutions, and remote units each city is
responsible for.
======================================================================= 17
Other factors figure in as well, but those are the most essential
items for sustained city growth. As we'll see later in this chapter, the
city management screen provides you with the information you'll need to
know when a city is doing well, and when it's headed for the dogs.
GOALS OF THE GAME
The goal of Sid Meier's Civilization is to win the game by having the
world's most advanced or dominant civilization. There are a couple of ways
to win.
First is by completely eliminating all other civilizations. This
strategy, as we'll see in later chapters, all but requires an early and
ruthless commitment to combat as you devote yourself and your resources to
smiting other civilizations every time you encounter them. This is a risky
approach: Other civilizations may leapfrog your technology, giving them a
decided edge in battle. The largest army of musketeers you can assemble
won't last long against an array of tanks, mechanized infantry units, and
bombers.
Nor does the destruction of an opposing civilization necessarily mean
its ultimate elimination. Civilizations have a way of reappearing in other
parts of the map after you've crushed them. (Unfortunately, if you are
crushed, it's final: The game ends.)
An additional argument against pursuing complete elimination of your
enemies has an economic foundation. As your civilization grows, it costs
more and more to support. Other civilizations offer you opportunities for
income from trade and commerce - opportunities that are denied you if you
eliminate the civilization. Indeed, it's tough to navigate caravans
through battle zones, so just making war on a neighboring civilization can
result in economic challenges.
There is another way to win the game, and that's by surviving long
enough for colonists from your world to reach the world of another star.
======================================================================= 18
Ideally, these colonists will be yours. As you - and your opponents -
reach the later stages of the game and advanced technologies are acquired,
spaceflight becomes a main focus of development activity. Those
civilizations that can will begin constructing starships, assembling
modules and components in orbit above the planet. When a starship is fully
equipped and loaded with colonists, food, and life-support technology, it
can be launched toward Alpha Centauri. The voyage, even for the most
advanced starship, will take years. When a starship reaches the Alpha
Centauri system the game ends and final scores are calculated.
Score is kept in Sid Meier's Civilization by a formula based on the
number of happy citizens in each population (2 points apiece), the number
of content citizens (1 point each), the number of Wonders of the World (20
points for each Wonder), and teh number of polluted squares (you lose 10
points for each square that's polluted as the game ends.)
Bonus points are awarded for being the civilization whose starship
reaches Alpha Centauri first, on a formula of 50 points for each 10,000
colonists to reach the star system. You can also earn a bonus of 1,000
points for completely conquering the world.
Getting to the end of the game, whether or not you win, is quite an
accomplishment, especially at the higher levels. To win a game at the
higher levels means that you are truly a master of civilization, an
achievement you should be proud of. As we shall see in the next section,
this game is not only complex, it is laden with decisions and information,
all of which must be coordinated and managed by the duccessful ruler.
Fortunately, Sid Meier has designed an interface and game-management
system that makes the information you need accessible to you in a variety
of forms.
MAIN MAP SCREEN
Most of your time will be spent here, guiding your forces around the
world.
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The map screen and layout are simple. Most of the screen is occupied
by a map of teh local terrain surronding your active unit. The active unit
occupies the central spot in this portion of the screen. If the area
around that unit has not yet been explored, you'll see only blackness.
Otherwise, you'll see the terrain and ocean squares, your own and enemy
units, your own and enemy cities. City squares carry numbes representing
the relative strengths of the city. Pay attention to those numbers,
especially when looking at enemy territory. The higher the number, the
stronger the city. An awareness of city values can help you decide which
cities to attack when mounting a military campaign, or which to establish
trade routes with first in order to improve your economy.
Getting around the map window is simple. Civilization plays itself out
on a flat map of the world, which you see from an overhead perspective.
Impenetrable icecaps seal off the top and bottom of the map.
Circumnavigation, then, takes place only in easterly or westerly
directions.
Scrolling around the map is just a matter of pointing and clicking
with yoru mouse. You can view teh entire world in this manner, one screen
at a time.
Getting back to where you started is equally simple. A single
keystroke centers your active unit.
Another way to get around teh map is by using the "Find City" menu
option, described later in this chapter.
As the game progresses and civilizations grow, you'll find yourself
with more and more of the worldmap revealed; if the game lasts long
enough, all of the squares will be uncovered. This is when your
familiarity with the map will serve you best. Scroll around before making
important decisions. Look at your enemies' civilizations as tehy appear on
the map (bearing in mind that the information displayed is only as recent
as the last time one of your units passed through an enemy-controlled
square). Examine the layout of your own civilization, looking for areas of
vulnerability or overcrowding.
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MENU BAR
Extending along the top of teh map display is a menu bar from which drop
down the menus you use to issue orders and derive information, as well as
manage file saves and other computer overhead operations.
The menu bar has several main categories:
Game: Here you have several activities.
Revolution: As your civilization reaches certain levels, you can
change the nature of your government. Activatinf this item throws your
civilization into temporary disarray, from which emerges a new form of
government, with the possibilities ranging from depotism to republic.
Tax Rate: Determines what percentage of your civilization's income is
devoted to taxes for maintenance of your infrastructure.
Luxury Rate: Increases the percentage of income devoted to luxuries
for your population. The greater the luxury rate, teh happier your people
are.
Find City: Accesses a database of all the world's known cities,
especially helpful as teh number of cities grows into the dozens. Just
type the name - of the first few letters - of a particular city, and the
screen centers on the city. (This and other game menu operations can be
accessed via the keyboard as well as the menu bar.)
Orders: Here you issue orders to your various units in sequence. The
nature of the orders available for issue depends upon the particular
active unit.
Advisors: No effective leader operates in a vacum. Civilization
provides you with a variety of wise advisors whose counsel you will come
to count on as you guide your civilization through the centuries. The
advisors are:
> City Status: Shows you at a glance the cities that comprise your
civilization. An important screen, especially as
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you move into larger numbers of cities. Here's where you get reminders of
what you're producing and where, how much trade each city generates, its
food and resources, and so on. A good place as well to keep an eye out for
problems as they develop in cities.
> Military Advisor: Even if you're not running a warlike civilization,
you'll come to rely on the reports this menu offers. First, you are shows
the nature of your military resources, how many of each type of military
unit you currently have in existence, as well as how many of each unit you
currently have in production. The second report comes from the
battlefields, filling you in on the number of enemy units you've
destroyed. This can be especially helpful if you wage war against more
than one civilization, or if wars seem to be stretching over too long a
period of time. Check this csreen periodically to see if you're making
progress in destroying enemy armies of if you're expending valuable
resources on military campaigns that only seem to be whittling away at an
opponent, never eliminating it.
> Intelligence Advisor: The wise player builds and dispatches diplomat
units as early in the game as possible. These units serve several
purposes, but key among them is the establishment of embassies in other
civilizations.
Once an embassy is established, you become privy to information about
taht civilization. You may find that it is the most frequently visited of
all your advisor screens, as it offers a rich bounty of data about your
computer opponents.
Among the information your embassies can provide is teh type of
government the other civilization enjoys, with whom it is at war, the
amount of money in its treasury, the number of military it has currently
under commission (this is one well worth watching closely as you mount a
campaign), and its relations with other nations.
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A second intelligence-report screen provides further insights into the
civilization's goals and technological capabilities.
> Attitude Advisor: In order to have a civilization, you must have
citizens. And if you have citizens, you have to feed them, see to
their domestic needs, provide them with resources and luxuries, and
generally take care of their every need. It's not easy! And your
citizens are all too ready to let you know when you've let them down.
Your attitude advisor keeps you posted on the well-being of your
population, filling you in on the number of happy, content, and discontent
citizens in the cities that make up your civlization. As we've seen, the
attitude of of your population can directly and dramatically affect your
overall civilization score, so it's wise to check with this advisor on a
regular basis. The advisor's report includes a glimpse of each of your
cities, its population, and any city improvements that have a direct
bearing on the population's attitude. An overall snapshot of your
civilization's attitude is also provided. This report offers quick insight
into those cities where a change in production of city improvements may be
needed to return a portion of the population to tranquility.
But don't worry - if you don't check with your attitude advisor, your
population will let you know, in no uncertain terms, when it's growing
discontent. Remember, a happy population is a successful population, able
to produce more, able to grow, eager to expand.
> Trade Advisor: The economic nature of Civilization cannot be
overstressed. Wars may be won on the battlefield, but they're
paid for by the treasury, marketplaces, and banks of your cities.
The Trade Advisor's report is straightforward, broken out by cities.
You are shown the percentage of each city's revenues
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devoted to taxes, scientific research, and luxuries, as well as specific
amounts for these percentages.
Additional information provided by this advisor includes the city
improvements you possess and their cost for maintenance each turn. You
also get a picture of the next technological leap being pursued by your
scientists and the number of turns waiting until it is achieved.
> Science Advisor: Here you will see which scientific advances your
civilization has achieved, and how you are progessing toward the
next great leap forward.
WORLD REPORTS: These reports are your best guides to what's going on
in the rest of the world, even those parts you have not yet explored, and
those civilizations you have not yet contacted.
There are several world reports:
Wonders of the World: Civilization contains 21 Wonders that can be
built by individual civilizations, although only 7 Wonders are available
in each of the game's three historical epochs: Ancients,
Medieval/Renaissance, Modern. The Wonders report in-
======================================================================= 24
forms you of which Wonders have been built, by which civilization, and in
which city. This can be helpful in obtaining information about
civilizations as yet unkown to you.
Remember that if you capture a city containing a Wonder, you take
possession of that Wonder and reap its benefits. Target cities holding
Wonders for conquest.
Top Five Cities: Just what it says it is. You see a list of the
world's leading cities, with rankings based on the number of happy and
content citizens as well as the presence of Wonders. Here's an opportunity
to get a real edge on the game by discovering the existence of great
cities and civilizations of which you may as yet have absoltely no
knowledge. This information can help you target your exploration by
remaining on the laert for evidence of civilizations you've learned about
from the Top Cities report. When you find those civilizations, seek out
the cities that place in the Top 5 and, if you can, capture them.
Civilization Score: An overview of your current score based on
measurements similar to those used to determine your final score.
Additional factors taken into account here include points awarded for each
turn of world peace.
World Map: The entire known world, available to you at a glance.
Space Ships: Visual reports on the construction of interstellar craft
by the various civilizations engaged in the game. You get a picture of the
craft under construction, which will, in turn, give you a sense of how
close your opponents are to launching their starship on its voyage of
colonization. If they're a lot closer than you, you might have to use
military force to try to slow their progress.
You can, be they way, bring enemy starship production to a complete
halt by capturing the capital city of the civilization building teh
starship.
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As you move deeper into the Civilization end game, you may find
yourself referring to the Space Ship Report with increasing frequency.
(It's also one of the game's most attractive screens.)
Demographics: Ranks your civilization's population in relation to the
populations of the other civilizations in the game. A detailed report, it
includes information on more than a dozen areas:
Approval Rating Population
Size Gross National Product
Manufactured Goods Land Area
Literacy Disease
Pollution Life Expectancy
Family Size Military Service
Annual Income Productivity
As you can see, this list encompasses many of the most important
aspects of real civilization, as well as Sid Meier's Civilization. It's a
good source of information about your opponents and yourself.
Civilopedia: One of the true Wonders of the Ineteractive Entertainment
World, Civilization's Civilopedia is nothing less than an on-line
encyclopedia containing information about virtually every aspect of the
game, its features and units.
The Civiliopedia shoudl become almost as familiar to you as the main
map display itself. The wise player will take the time to investigate the
information held in The Civilopedia, discovering the background and
context of the elements of the game. From The Civilopedia, for example,
you can derive in just a few keystroked or mouse-clicks the defensive
values of different types of terrain, the attack values of military units,
the benefits that accrue upon completion of a Wonder of the World, and so
on. There are many dozens of entries in The Civilopedia, and many
thousands of words.
You will be hard-pressed to exhaust its wealth. Even experienced
master players will find themselves referring to The Civilopedia with some
frequency.
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(Another element of The Civilopedia worth noting is the insight it
offers into designers Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley's notions of
civilization evolution. In addition to information specific to the game
itself, some of The Civilopedia entries contain historical asides placing
Civilization elements into the context of real human history. Reading
these entries with care can give you a glimpse into the game designer's
minds, which could, in turn, help you decide how to resolve difficult
situations.)
As we've seen, the items, options, and operations hidden behind
Civilization's menu bar are as rich and varied as the game itself. You
will come to count on the information they can provide to help you make
decisions affecting the course of your civilization. But you will also
learn to trust your own instincts, guided and informed by the resources
available to you but not enslaved to them.
WORLD WINDOW
In the upper left corner of the main screen, immediately below the menu
bar, is a miniature map of the known world. Here you can see at a glance
how much of the great dark unknown you have revealed. This window is
helpful in a number of ways.
First, the world window gives you a constant referment for your
voyages of discovery and exploration. You can see the trails blazed and
ocean routes opened by your explorers, get a sense of the boundries of
continents and the size of islands. Additionally, the window shows the
location of cities around the world, helping you plan trade and military
routes.
The active area on the main map screen is outlined on the worldmap.
Using your mouse and pointer, you can zoom around the small worldmap,
bringing distant areas into view quickly; when you click on an area in the
worldmap, that becomes the area displayed on the main map screen. To
return to yoru active unit on the main map screen, simply press the
"center active unit" hot key.
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Finally, the worldmap window serves as a spur. It reminds you constantly
of the great unexplored areas of the globe. Just as constantly, it shows
you how far you've come, how much of the world you've already uncovered.
PALACE WINDOW
Because you're a fine and noble leader, your people feel you should live
in a fine and noble palace.From time to time in the game, they will reward
your majesty with an addition to your palace. You have a choice of several
styles of architecture, and as the game progresses the architectural
flourishes available to you become more grandiose. A miniature version of
your palace - whose construction takes place full screen, during cutaways
from gameplay - is located just below the worldmap window. Again, we have
a feature that reminds you, at a glance, of the progress you're making -
or are failing to make. If your palace hasn't been improved in a century
or more, you might want to look closely at what sort of leadership you're
providing your people.
STATUS WINDOW
Below the palace window you'll find several information resources that
pertain directly yo the progress of the game. Attend these sources with
care: Careful monitoring of them can make you alert to impending danger or
looming doom.
The first bit of information found here is the population of your
civilization. Watch this figure over several turns. Is your population
increasing at a steady and manageable rate? Are you stagnating, achieving
little growth? Or are you experiencing a population explosion that will
soon cause your resources to be strained to the breaking point?
Next comes the date at the time of this particular turn. Games begin
in 4000 BC, unless you've changed the date during setup. Develop the habit
of glancing at the date and measuring your
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progress against the passage of time. If you've reached the modern age
without moving far beyond primitive technology, you may be doing
something - or a lot of things! - wrong.
Finally you will find in this wimdow the size of your treasury, as
well as the percentages of revenue you've assigned to luxuries, taxes, and
scientific inquiry. Each of these is vital to the vibrancy of your
civilization, but each consumes resources you might need elsewhere.
Watch your treasury figure. As your civilization grows, so do its
needs and the cost of maintaining its infrastructure and citizenry. If you
detect a precipitous drop in the size of your revenue, or even a slight
but steady decline over several turns, it's time for you to put in some
hard work on your civilization's economic resources.
One item is not in this window at the beginning of the game. And if
you and your opponents play a completely enviornmentally benign game, it
may never appear. (That's unlikely: Advancing civilizations naturally
despoil the natural world. It may not be inevitable, but it's certainly
been unavoidable in human history. Perhaps our generation will be the one
to change this. If not, ours may be the last generation.)
The item is a Sun symbol, and its color informs you of the degree of
global warming your world is experiencing as a result of industrial and
other pollution. The first appearance of a Sun symbol is an immediate
warning that your world is in danger of a rapid warmup whose results could
be catastrophic. Icecaps will melt, oceans rise, coastal terrain squares
may flood. Upon its first appearance the Sun is red, but unless steps are
taken to reduce pollution, the Sun will gradually grow brighter, moving
through shades of yellow until it becomes pure white. When the Sun reaches
the purest level of white, the catastrophic affects of warming are
unleashed.
Should the Sun come out in the course of the game you should immediately
seek to clean up any pollution for which your
======================================================================= 29
civilization is responsible. Give thought to dismantling some of your
industrial output and reducing pollution that way. If you are close to
other civilizations whose cities are pumping pollutants into the air, you
might consider a quick military campaign in hopes of destroying the worst
of the polluting cities. But be quick: Once your world is launched on a
route toward global warming, it's very hard to change course.
UNIT REPORT
Below the status report on the right of the main map screen, you'll find
information about the currently active unit. Reading down the list you
will discover its nationality (which you should already know: The active
unit belongs to your civilization) the particular type of unit, whether or
not it was produced in a barracks (veteran units are produced by cities
possessing barracks improvements), the number of squares of movement
remaining to the unit this turn, its home city, and the type of terrain
beneath the unit.
If the unit is carrying other units (a ship, most typically, carries
other units) or is stacked above other units, those units are displayed as
icons in the bottom portion of this report.
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CITY SCREEN
Second only to the main map screen is the closeup city screen that
provides you with information about and management control of the
functions of each city. This screen is made available to you each time a
city completes production of a unit, city improvement, or Wonder. You can
also open the screen for each city simply by clicking on that city's
square on the main map.
Information and control functions within the city screen take several
forms:
CITY MAP
Central to the city screen is a map of the city and the squares surronding
it. Symbolic representations tell you the purpose to which each developed
map square is assigned, whether agriculture, mining, or other purposes.
You can use this screen to reassign population units to different types of
work in order to improve the mix of resources and labor your city enjoys.
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POPULATION
In the upper left corner of the city screen you will find a symbolic
representation of the city's population. Each of the individuals depicted
here represents a single population point. The nature of the individual
figures tells you much about the nature of the city in question.
Sid Meier's Civilization divides city population into two main
categories: workers and elite citizens. Workers are the backbone of your
population, the salt, as it were, of your earth. Their mood - the
confidence your population has in your leadership - is reflected in their
demeanor. Citizens can be happy, merely content, or discontent, and their
attitude is reflected in their appearance in the city's population
display. If the number of discontent citizens grow larger than the number
of happy citizens, the city enters a state of disorder during which
production comes to a halt.
Elite citizens are the best and the brightest, able to bring to your
city certain advantages, but at a cost. You create elite citizens, but in
doing so you must srrender a portion of the city's production.
There are three types of elite citizens, cleverly represented with
symbolic icons. Elvis represents the luxurious side of life; creating an
elite Elvis increases the amount of trade income and luxury goods
available to your citizens, thus raising their level of contentment. The
Taxman is the most ubiquitous of civilization managers, the bureaucrat.
Creating a taxman raises your city's level of efficency and improves the
accural of tax revenues. The final elite citizen is represented by an
Einstein icon. Creating an Einstein increases the city's level of
research, aiding in speedig the development of civilization advances.
Remember that the creation of an elite citizen removes production
resources from the city. You are most well off if you can wait to create
elite citizens until the city has a solid surplus of food.
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It's tempting to rely on the Elvis elite to lift your city of disorder
if the number of discontents exceeds the number of happy citizens. Be wary
of overdependence on Elvis! (Just as Elvis himself should have been wary
of overdependence on cheeseburgers and other addictive substances.)
Seriously, a city that has fallen into disorder is a city that has one or
more serious deficencies at its heart. Look to solve those deficiencies
rather than simply "Elvising" your way around them. Buying your citizens
bread and circuses in the form of an Elvis is a temporary solution to
discontent, but no more than that.
CITY IMPROVEMENTS WINDOW
In the upper right corner of the main city screen, you will find a list of
the improvements you've added to that city. At first there will ve very
few improvements. (The first city you create will be the capitol of your
civilization, so it will possess from the beggining a palace. You can move
the capitol by commissioning the construction of a new palace in another
city. This can be helpful if your starting city seems likely to fall to
the forces of an enemy civilization.)
As the game progresses, your list of city improvements will naturally
grow. The list will also include any Wonders of the World that you have
built in the city in question. This is a good spot to check at a glance
and see if you are successfully balancing the infrastructure needs of your
city. Do you have an effective mix of different types of city
improvements? Are you leaning too heavily on the mercantile side of
advances? Have you attended well enough to your population's spiritual
needs by building temples? What about the intellectual side of society?
Does your window show city improvements such as libraries? Keep an eye on
your roster of city improvements.
Should you find yourself in serious economic difficulty, you may want
to consider selling some of your city improvements for
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cash. You can sell Wonders of the World as well, provided the benefits
they provide have not been superseded by technological advances
achieved by your own or other civilizations. Give careful
consideration to selling your city improvements. They were constructed
at great cost in turns of effort and can be replaced only by repeating
that effort. (Or by purchasing them anew, as we shall see below; but
if you can afford to buy an improvment, you probably don't need to
sell one.) Selling improvements that your population depends upon is a
good way to mortgage your own future and limit growth not only for
your city but also of your civilization.
PRODUCTION WINDOW
Immediately below the improvements list on the right side of the city
screen is that city's production box. Here you see what unit,
improvement, or Wonder is currently under constrcution, as well as the
production progress you're making toward completeing the item.
Progress is measured in surplus resource units, which are stored in
the production box until the price of the desired unit is achieved.
This is perhaps the key section of the city screen. Here you make
the decisions that determine the makeup of the city, and the forces it
can dispatch to other locations. Clicking on the "change button" at
the top of the production window takes you to a menu of available
units, improvements, and Wonders. This list will evolve as the game
progresses and civilization advances are achieved. Some items will
disappear as they are superseded by more advanced technologies, while
others will be added to the list. Select from the list the item you
wish to produce, and its icon appears above the production box.
You can change the city's production at any time before an item's
completion with no loss of accured resources. This can be a very
effective advantage if you find yourself in quick need of a military
unit from a city that has stacked up a fair amount of
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resources toward an improvement, for example. If, however, you have a
greater number of resources than the desired unit requires, the
surplus is eliminated and the production box emptied.
If you are creating a Wonder of the World and another civilization
completes that Wonder first, you are taken to the appropriate city's
production screen and prompted to reassign production to another unit,
improvement, or Wonder. Only one of each type of Wonder is available;
that's why they're called Wonders.
INFORMATION WINDOW
This portion of the city screen provides you with valuable information
and insights into teh nature of the city. At a glance, and via a
series of mouse clicks you can see the defensive advantages or
vulnerabilities the city possesses, the trade routes it enjoys and teh
amount of revenue they generate, the location of the city - and its
tradinf partners - on a worldmap, and even a fairly idyllic artistic
portrait of the city which will show you the evolution of its
architecture over the passing centuries.
As your civilization grows beyond primitive technology and into
the gaes of industry and widespread exploitation of resources and the
enviornment, your city's information window will show the city's
potential for polluting the landscape aound it; this potential is
displayed in the form of industrial smokestacks, each of which
increases the chances for pollution by one percentage point.
The status of defensive military units is indicated by their
representation: Shaded units are on sentry duty, while those encased
in a dark border are fortified. By clicking on the defensive units you
can relieve them from sentry or fortification duty and return them to
active status; further orders can be issued to those units upon your
return to the main map screen.
Use the information in this window to keep tabs on a city's
defensive posture. You would be wise to check the defenses of cities
close to battlefronts frequently. Coordianting defensive
======================================================================= 35
forces and production or dispatch of military units from other cities
can spell the difference between a city's ability to withstand siege
and dooming it to fall under enemy domination.
FOOD STORAGE WINDOW
Populations must be fed. A wise ruler is one who produces more food
than his city's citizens can consume in a single turn. Only by storing
food above and beyond your immediate needs will a city truly be able
to grow beyond its early stages. When your stored food completely
fills the food storage window, your population grows, emptying the
storage area to begin the process of storage and growth anew.
The food storage window, in the lower left corner of the city
screen, gives you a picture of your city's food resources and tells
you whether they exceed the population's appetite. Surplus food is
indicated by icons placed below a dividing line in the window itself.
The nature of the food storage window changes as your civilization
achieves pottery, which makes possible the construction of granaries
for the stotage of surplus food. Once you've built a granary, you lose
only half your stored food when your population grows.
REMOTE UNITS WINDOW
Immediately above the food storage window, on the right side of the
city screen, you'll find a picture of the remote units the city is
supporting, as well as a representation of the costs of supporting
those units. These units may be those actually produced by the city at
hand, or those which have been reassigned to this city for support. It
costs resources to maintain units away from home, and that cost is
directly deducted from yoru resources. Should you lack the rsources
needed to support remote units, those units disappear from the world.
Likewise, if a city if supporting remote units is captured or
destroyed, those units are taken out of play. Bear in
======================================================================= 36
mind that should you change your type of government to either
democracy or republic, maintaining remote units results in an increase
in domestic discontent.
CITY RESOURCES WINDOW
How is your city doing in regards to food, resources, trade, and
luxuries? It is contributing to the development of new technologies
and civilization advances? How much corruption is present in the city?
What are its tax revenues? This window serves to answer your
questions.
The first line of information is comprised of grain symbols,
representing the city's food production. Each population point needs
two food units per turn. A break in the line of grain symbols
indicates that the city is producing surplus food, with the excess
symbols placed to thr right of the break. Should you see blackened
grain symbols, be aware that they indicate agricultural shortfalls:
You're not producing sufficent food to feed the city's population.
Next comes the city's resources, represented by small shields. Again,
a break in the line inducates the presence of surplus; blackened
shields indicate that you're consuming more rsources than you produce.
Let the shortage or resources grow too large and you will start losing
units of city improvements as a result of being unable to support
them.
The third line of symbols represents your city's trade revenues,
which are generated by dispatching caravans to distant cities or by
developing special resources such as gold or gems that lie within your
city's sphere of influence. As with the other representations in this
section of the city screen, surplus trade revenue is placed to the
right of a break. Farther to the right will appear blackened symbols,
indiacting the amount of trade you lose to corruption. The farther
your city is loactecd from teh capitol, the greater a problem of
corruption becomes. Building a courthouse improvement can help reduce
corruption.
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Your city's trade and revenues flow in three directions, which are
represented on the next line of information. Luzuries, taxes, and
scientific research are the three categories, depicted here as
diamonds, coins, and light bulbs. You can vary the percentage of
revenues assigned to each category and, as a result, the symbolic
representation will change. Creating elite citizens also affects these
categories. Create an Einstein, for example, and the number of light
bulbs displayed will increase.
Between the main map screen and the individual city screens, you
have the tools needed to enter the world of Sid Meier's Civilization.
A word should be said here about the care and thought that have gone
into the design and execution of these screens.
You should be hard-pressed to find a deeper and more resource and
information-filled game than Sid Meier's Civilization. Yet at every
step of the game, Meier has endeavored - and generally succdeded to
simplify the manipulation of units, make easily accessible vast
amounts of crucial information (usually in clear symbolic formats),
and ensure that your time is spent playing the game, not trying to
remember arcane and arbitrary command structures. The design of this
game is absoluetly masterful.
Play around with teh various elements during your first few turns
at begginer level. Relax and let the game itself guide you. (But don't
feel too bound to follow the advice screens that are available to new
players: This advice is general and not necessarily the best approach
to each situation; certainly the advice screens don't represent the
only approach to solving a particular problem.)
Those first few turns - indeed, the first couple of games you play
- should be underatken for gaining familiaity with the game, rather
than the immediate thrill of winning. This is a game that grows with
you as well as on you, and you are unlikely to win your first time
out. You will, however, be gaining skills taht will make you a better
player the next time around.
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AND IF YOU LOSE...
You can learn a lot from losing the game, although there's no question
that it won't be as much fun as winning.
Aftr ethe destruction of your civilization, there are several
information screens that will repay study. First is a graph showing
the rise and decline of all teh civilizations in the game. Here you
can see, depicted over the span of time the game encompassed, the rise
and ultimate demise of your own civilzation in relation to those of
your opponents. Take a few moments with the graph. Focus your
attention on the point in history at which other civilizations burst
ahead of you in development, laying the groundwork for your eventual
downfall. From teh graph, you can get a good pcture of the point at
which the tides of Civilization turned against you. Hindsight may make
you a btter player next time.
Next is a horizontal graph showing the wars in which you've been
involved. This gives a sense of the length of time those wars spanned,
as well as the number of different adversaries you engaged or were
engaged by. Considering the fact that you lost the game, you might
examine this graph with an eye toward whether or not your civilization
was too militaristic. Perhaps you should have done more negotiating,
less warmaking.
Finally comes the most instructive of all the post-game
information resources. This is the replay, in symbolic form, of the
entire course of the game. Here you can see cities created, empires
spread and recede, and get a real sense of what you were up aainst, and
what finally defeated you.
The object of the game, though, is not to lose, and in the next
few chapters we'll look closely at some strategies that can increase
your chances of emerging victorious.
======================================================================= 39
Chapter 4
---------
CRUDE HUTS AND ROUGH IMPLEMETS
Critical mass has been achieved. Whether through inspiration,
circumstance, or sheer accident, hunter/gatherers have reached the
point where they're ready to put down roots, build cities, develop
agriculture. Pre-history is on the brink of becoming a thing of the
past. It's time to start building your civilization.
You don't start with much. As noted, Civilization takes as its
premise the creation of a world-striding culture from teh ground up.
And ground is pretty much what the game gives you in the beggining.
Starting with a single band of settlers, your challenge is to
establish a city, ensure its security, feed its inhabitants, and lay a
foundation for growth and exploration. You are ignorant of the nature
of the world: You can see but a single square of land. All else is
hidden by darkness, unknown territory. Where, then, should you locate
your civilization?
Site selection is crucial: A successful city must have natural
resources to draw upong for agricultural and industrial growth. At the
same time, especially at the upper levels of the game , you can't
afford to spend too many turns looking for just the right spot. Your
initial band of settlers is vulnerable to attack from other civiliza-
======================================================================= 43
tions and from barbarians. At lower levels of the game you should
establish your first city within half a dozen turns, more quickly if
possible.
If playing at Warlord level or above, it's advisable to establish
your first city on your first turn, no matter what the nature of your
location. At higher levels, your opponents develop more rapidly than
you, and you cannot afford to lose time to them.
DECISIONS, DECISIONS
The thing about civilizations is that they demand decisions. When you
create your first city, you alos face your first choices: What areas
of knowledge will your wise men pursue, and what pieces will your city
produce?
From the very first turn, your civilization is climbing a tree of
knowledge. Each branch makes other, higher branches available, but
each also cuts you off, at least temporarily, from other branches.
======================================================================= 44
Because Civilization is a game of conflict, it's vital that your
citizens be able to defend themselves against attack, and, if you
choose, be able to mount offensives of their own. To that end, a good
first pursuit for your wise ones is knowledge aimed at military ends.
A successful foundation can be built by pursuing bronze-working first:
This gives you the ability to create phalanx, a better armed defensive
force to protect your cities, followed by iron-working, which gives
your legions a strong offensive unit.
Mobility is equally important, and among your early advances, you
should pursue horseback riding and the wheel. These make possible
cavalry units (horseback riding) and chariots (the wheel) which move
farther - two squares of even terrain per turn - than units on foot.
Don't neglect the abstract side of knowledge: It yields practical
results. Civilization's world is vast and must be explored. A case can
be made for first pursuing the alphabet, which lays the groundwork for
mapmaking which, in turn, lets you create triermes, eary ships for
exploring the boundries of your world. An alphabetical foundation
lends othe benefits as well: The basis is laid for literacy, from
which your civilization can derive a host of other advantages.
Experiment. Civilizations are supple: There is no one infallible
pathway to success.
---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
The earliest units you acquire
should be selected for defensive,
offensive, and mobility factors.
Defend your home city first, but
use your more mobile units to
open up the frontier.
---------------------------------
======================================================================= 45
LOCAL QUESTIONS
To some extent, terrain and location can help you decide which
pathways to pursue. All that darkness surronding your initial band of
settlers must be penetrated. The more quickly you get your bearings
and explore the world your world, the more likely you are to know
where the challenges will come from and what form they are liable to
take.
For that reason, it's wise to make yourself as mobile as possible
as early is the game as possible. The extra square of mobility offered
by cavalry and chariots is vital for rapid exploration of the plot of
land on which your civilization is planted. Civilization deposits you
on an island or a continent, and either location can affect your game.
If you're on an island, you need to pursue a shipbuilding course,
enabling you to dispatch ships in search of other islands or
continents you can settle.
If you're located on a continent, shipbuilding can probably wait a
while. You'll likely find yourself sharing continental space with at
least one other civilization, possibly with several. Ship-
======================================================================= 46
building in such a situation can wait until you've better secured your
position on your homeland.
Either way, cavalry or chariots will help you explore your native
turf more efficiently than footsoldiers.
Even as you ponder these and other decisions, the other
civilizations of the world are making progress, building cities,
gathering armies, acquiring technologies. Sooner or later, you will
encounter them. The decisions you make at the start of the game will
help determine the nature of the game's conclusion.
Once established, the city must be secured. The first piece to
create is a militia. Taking just a handful of turns, that militia
force will help defend your city against attack.
The dark screen surronding your city beckons: This is a world to
be explored and conquered! Don't yield too quickly or too completely
to that temptation, however. The world is filled with adversaries and
barbarians, and your city, in its early stages, is woefully
susceptible to their force. Keep your first militia safely within your
city, fortifying the unit to withstand enemy attack.
A good general rule is to follow the production of that first
militia unit with the production of a couple more in quick succession.
With these, you can begin to explore your island, further fortify your
city, or establish pickets to alert you to approaching enemies.
With at least one militia unit fortified within your city, and
another one or two on missions of exploration, it's time to vary the
city's production.
---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Your first two militia - or other
military - units should be used
to defend your city. Fortify the
units. Don't forget to replace
them with more capable defenders
as new technologies and units
become available.
---------------------------------
======================================================================= 47
By this point, you have likely achieved one or two civilization
advances. It's time to begin taking advantage of them. If your wise
people have delivered bronze-working, shift your production to
phalanxes for a few turns. A phalanx offers a better defensive factor
within your city, so leave at least one there, fortified. With a
phalanx in place, you can free your militia to move outward, extending
the periphery of your pickets and further exploring your island or
continent.
Perhaps you have pursued the alphabet and mapmaking rather than
metals. In that case, you can produce your first trireme and send it
forth on a voyage of exploration in search of other islands and
continents. The world is beggining to yield its secrets to your
civilization.
LAY OF THE LAND
As you fare forth from your starting point, revealing terrain squares
as you go, keep an eye peeled for easily exploited resources. Some of
these squares will be available for immediate exploitation by your
home city. Others must await the creation of new cities closer to
their location. As you place your cities, bear in mind that some
squares will never, because of their location, be available for
production, although they may be developed for other purposes, such as
brining water to available squares.
Certain types of terrain are more beneficial to your cities than
others. Look to locate your cities in spots that offer easy and
worthwhile exploitation of resources. The easiest squares to exploit
are those whose resources are immediately apparent:
======================================================================= 48
> Rivers were where the first real civilizations sprang up. As in
earth's history, the rivers in Civilization offer plentiful
water for irrigation, and productive soil for agriculture.
> Grassland squares are agriculturally bountiful; irrigate these
squares and your breadbox will overflow.
> Hills can be mined for minerals.
> Mountains can also be mined but are more effective as a
defensive resource behind which you can build a city. Remember
the Swiss!
> Plains squares have good - but not great - resources of timber
and other materials and can be irrigated to increase their
agricultural potential.
> Terrain squares can be modified to increase their productivity.
Some squares you may wish to alter include:
> Forest squares are good sources of wood and other resources,
but can be converted into plains.
> Jungle and Swap squares can be made into grasslands or
forest squares.
> Grassland can be converted into forest.
======================================================================= 49
Some squares possess increased yields of valuable resources,
indicated by a special symbol in the square:
If you see fish, for example, in an ocean square, you know that
square will yield increased food production. The same is true for
forest and even tundra squares that hold a wildlife symbol. The
presence of horses on a plains square indicates that the square will
generate higher resource levels than one lacking horses.
Extra mineral resources are indiacted by symbols for oil, gems,
coal, and gold. Coal resources are best exploited by mining, while
the other mineral resources are best exploited simply by falling under
the control of a city. Their trade potential is tapped by building a
road through the square in question.
Keep tabs on teh location of resources and use that information to
plan the location of your cities. If you can see the resource squares
as economic in nature - which they are, of course - and bear in mind
the vital importance of a strong economy to your success in
Civilization, you'll have taken a large step toward their careful and
profitable exploitation.
SERENDIPITY - OR BARBARIAN ENCOUNTER
As you wander around the map during the early stages of the game, you
will, from time to time, uncover a symbol representing the leavings of
an ancient civilizatation, the presence of valuable materials, the
presence of a minor tribe, or the location of bands of barbarians of
varying population and level of technology. Think of these as
serendipity squares. The serendipity symbl is the same for each: You
don't know what's there until you move onto that square.
Often, what you find will be delightful: An ancient scroll that
immediately grants you a particular civilization advance, a storehouse
of money, a minor tribe that becomes a part of your civilization.
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---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Serendipity squares are scattered
at random across the world as it
is constructed. Moving onto them
can uncover wealth, wisdom,
friendly tribes, or angry
barbarians. Because of the
barbarians, you should move onto
serendipity squares only with
military units, preferably a
unit with a high defensive
factor.
---------------------------------
Other times, you will encounter barbarians. Then you have no
choice but to fight; barbarians are short on talk, long on plunder.
It's best, then, to uncover a serendipity sqaure with a unit that
possesses at least some defensive capability, enabling it a chance of
withstanding barbarian assault, and a further chance of striking back
against the barbarians.
Occassionally you'll defeat a group of barbarians only to see
their leader escape. Barbarian leaders resemble diplomat units. If you
can spare the resources, you should pursue the barbarian leader,
tracking him down and attacking him. rather than simply destroying
these units, you capture them and reap a bounty that is paid into yoru
treasury. As teh barbarian leaders have no defensive capacity on their
own, this is essentially found money, and well worth your time to
pursue.
MORE SETTLERS
While exploration is vital in the early stages of the game, you must
be careful not to neglect expansion on your civilization itself. The
temptation, particularly if you find yourself located in proximity to
other civilizations, may be to focus the productive output of your
first city solely on defensive or offensive military units. Be wary of
this approach. Although military units are crucial, so is the
establishment of other cities and, before that, increasing the
pro-
======================================================================= 51
ductive capacity of your initial city. To do this, you must build
additional settlers.
When your city produces its first band of settlers, check the main
management screen to get an idea of the purposes to which the settlers
must immediately be used. Of particular importance is your food
supply. If your city is located in a fertile area near a river, you
may find that you're producing a small food surplus already. Should
that be the case, you can send your settlers forth to establish
another community right away.
Think carefully about this strategy. Your city, with its limited
resources, must support the settlers until they reach the location for
the next community, a location that will lie at least three turns away
from your original site. If you dispatch your settlers too quickly,
without first increasing the production of their hometown, you run the
risk of being unable to support them on tehir journey. There are few
things in the early stages of the game that are more frustrating - and
unavoidable - than having units removed from play because of your
inability to feed them. Wated effort can be fatal in Civilization.
If, then, you feel your food supply is marginal, barely sufficent
to support your city and the units you've placed in other locations,
your first duty is to increase your agricultural productivity. Put
your settlers to work irrigating and cultivating the arable land
available to you. This is land with water flowing through it, or with
water resources located contiguous to the square you wish to
cultivate. Remember that yoru city can draw resources only from those
squares extending north, east, west, and south of the city itself; you
will derive no direct benefits from squares lying in diagonal
directions form the city. Also, your city's productive capacity is
limited to two squares's distance along any of the available axes:
Beyond that, the city won't benefit from your development labors.
You might, however, find yourself with untillable flatland located
along one of those axes. This can be desert or even grass-
======================================================================= 52
land with no readily available water supply. If there's water a square
or two away in a location that cannot directly benefit your community,
you might still consider sending settlers out to cultivate those
sqaures. The settlers can be used to build irrigation works through
which water will flow to land that will be agriculturally worthwhile
for youtr city. You will work your way back to your city's zone of
control, in otherw ords, creating the infrastructure that will support
agriculture in previously worthles sland. That's how civilizations
grow.
Not all of the land your city controls will be used for
agriculture. Hills contain minerals that can be mined; forests are
source sof timber for industry; some jungles and swamps contain other
resources. Exploiting these resources takes different forms. Building
mines, like constructing irrigation systems, commits your settlers to
several turns of labor. The resources of a forest or jungle, on the
other hand, can be tapped by simply building a road through the
squares in question.
ALL ROADS LEAD TO...
Raods are themselves valuable resources for your growing civilization
and are a worthwhile, if somewhat time-consuming activity for even
your first band of settlers. Roads increase your mobility, making it
possible for your units to travel an additional numbe of sqaures each
turn. This has obvious defensive and offensive benefits, and will
also, as your civiliztaion grows, serve mercantile sends by making it
easier for your caravns filled with goods to travel from city to city.
As your civilization progresses and acquire snew technologies, roads
can be converted into railroads, further increasing your mobility. A
good system of roads in the circulatory system of your civilization,
vital to its health, growth, and longevity.
At the same time, roads are not built overnight. Committing your
first band of settlers to building roads in generally unwise.
======================================================================= 53
They are luxuries in the very earliest stages of the game, and you may
not be able to afford them. It's more important to develop
agricultural, mining, and industrial resources, and then get on with
building your second city.
Once that second city is established, you can return to your
initial site and commission another band of settlers. By now your city
should be producing sufficent food to support more elaborate
construction plans, and roads may well be in order.
Where to build your first roads? That depends on the nature of the
game. If you've encountered another civilization nearby, you should
give some thought to your relationship with it. If you've struck a
treaty, you can perhaps wait to build a road in its direction. If
you're at war with the other culture, though, a road leading to the
battlefront or disputed territory may give you a military advantage.
Your units can be moved into place far more quickly, especially
cavalry and wheeled units such as chariots or catapults.
(Remember, though, that what's and advantage to you can also be an
advantage to your opponent should the tide of war turn against you. If
you're in retreat from the front, the enemy can pursue you quickly
along those very roads you worked so hard to build. As far as
infrastructure goes in Civilization, sauce for the goose can certainly
become sauce for the gander over the course of a very few turns.)
---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Roads not only increase trade,
they serve defensive and
offensive purposes. Build roads
to the frontlines - but don't
hesitate to destroy them if
you're forced into desperate
retreat.
--------------------------------
If you're not at war, there are a couple of approaches to
roadbuilding that will serve you well. Your first efforts should be
devoted to building roads through the land you are exploiting.
======================================================================= 54
Your roads will make it easier for agricultural and other resources to
be brought to your city, increasing your income and the wealth and
happiness of the city's residents.
Once the agricultural and mineral production sqaures have roads
running through them, you should build a road to the nearest city.
That done, you cities linked, use your settlers to help develop
resources that the second city has not yet brought under deveopment.
Then press on toward the froniter, where you will establish another
city. At this point in the game, you have sufficent units and
productive capacity to commit the settlers to building roads as they
go, opening the frontier and establishing an infrastructure as the do
so. That way, when the next site is located and the new city comes to
life, it will already be linked to thriving metropolitan areas.
Another approach that will come in handy, if you can afford to
commit settlers' labors, is to construct roads around the largest
possible periphery of your civilization. If you're located on an
island, you might want to establish a roadway that completely
======================================================================= 55
encircles it. If you're on a large continet, your roads could lead in
several directions, to borders with other civilizations, or distant
areas that will serve as sites for new cities as your own civilization
expands. Assuming you can afford the time and labor that road building
requires, you'll rarely regret building them.
BUILDING PROGRAMS
You've built a city, perhaps two. You have military units in place to
defend the city, other units exploring unknown territory, maybe even a
band of settlers building mines and irrigation systems. Now is the
time to undertake the construction of items that will help your city
and your civilization grow physically, financially, and militarily.
These units and structures are called city improvements, and range
from barracks and granaries to libraries and temples. Each offers
advantages to your city, but each will require a committment of time
and resources.
As with military units, the nature of the city improvements you
can build is determined by the civilization advances your wise people
have achieved. Here, too, you must make careful decisions to ensure
that you achieve the adavances necessary to permit the expansion of
your civilization.
Pottery, for example, seems a simple enough advance, yet it makes
possible the construction of granaries for the storage of surplus
food. Only with surplus food in storage will your city really begin to
take off, its people well fed and content or happy. The development of
pottery must be among the first of your priorities.
The first military structure available to you will be a barracks,
and it's one that should be built as early in each city as possible.
In the next two chapters, we'll see the specific benefits of a
barracks for the production of veteran military units.
With a barracks and granary in place, and a few civilization
advances acquired, you can begin building those facilities that really
provide some depth of resources to your population.
======================================================================= 56
Temples increase your population's spiritual happiness. If you've
achieved writing, you can create libraries, which raise the level of
intellectual activity within the city. A marketplace is essential for
both the attitude of your citizens and the economic production of the
city.
A complete listing of all city improvements, their cost and
benefits, is available in The Civilopedia, as well as the game's
manual. Here, we'll be concerned with putting those improvements to
use in the game itself.
You'll want to vary your production during the early phases of the
game, as city improvements tie up your city's productive capacity for
quite a few turns. You might, in fact, want to postpone any city
improvement constrcution until you have an effective defensive force
fortified in the city, and a solid periphery of sentries posted around
it. Even then, proceed with some caution.
Once your civilization has expanded in a couple of direction,
though, you should apply yourself and your energies to adding city
improvements to your first city. Surronded by other cities, and your
wave of ouyward expansion, it should be safe from all but overwhelming
or unexpected attack.
The particular city improvements you build will be determined by
a) your immediate needs, b) the improvements your technology permits,
and c) your long-range goals.
Immediate needs, as we've seen, include a granary for storing
food, a barracks for producing veteran units, city walls for increased
defense (assuming you've acquired masonry,) and a marketplace for
increasing the city's revenues. Longer-range planning may call for
improvements that directly address the city's spiritual or
intellectual needs.
And some improvements are not improvements at all, but Wonders of
the World, edifices and institutions that can stand for centuries.
======================================================================= 57
WONDERS OF THE WORLD
Few aspects of the game do as much for your civilization as building a
Wonder of the World. Few aspects require as great a committment of
time and resources. A Wonder can take dozens of turns to construct,
and cost hundreds of resource units. but the payoff your civilization
derives from the Wonder may well be worth the allocation of time and
money.
Only 21 Wonders of the World are available throughout the entire
millenia-long timespan of the game. And those 21 are parceled out 7 at
a time, 7 for each of the three technological epochs: ancient,
medieval/Renaissance, modern. In other words, a Wonder helps you make
progress, but you must make progress in order to earn the ability to
build a Wonder.
The committment that building a Wonder requires may make you
cautious. After all, the city in which the Wonder is to be constructed
will not be able to undertake any other construction until the Wonder
is completed or until you change that city's production to something
else.
======================================================================= 58
Nevertheless, you must give serious consideration to building at
least one Wonder. The benefits it offers may take the difference
between your civilization's continued rise toward the stars or its
collapse into darkness.
Another reason to build a Wonder is that your opponents probably
are. Keep an eye out, especially when playing against several
civilizations at the upper skill levels, for notification of a
Wonder's completion while you are still struggling to crawl out of the
dirt. They aren't waiting - and neither should you!
Which Wonder to build? That question is best answered by the
particular game at hand, although certain general rules apply to
making the decision.
First, be sure you can afford to make the committment a Wonder
requires. It's foolish to apply yourself to building a Wonder when you
only have one city, even if that city is located on an island. In
fact, you should wait to undertake your first Wonder until you have
three cities, with the one where the Wonder will be located possessing
enhanced defensive capabilities, a granary, and a marketplace.
Second, build the Wonder that will benefit you the most. If your
population is generally content or happy, there's no immediate need
for a Hanging Gardens Wonder or Oracle Wonder, these being the Wonders
that exert positive impact on your population's attitude. Likewise, if
you're on the fast track for developing advanced navigational skills,
there may be no need for you to invest the time and effort required to
build a Lighthouse Wonder.
No matter what the nature of a particular game or strategy, you
should consider building the Great Library Wonder. This is a
storehouse for all the knowledge of the world, and provides you with
unparalleled access to the technology of other civilizations. With the
Great Library you come into immediate possession of any technology
that is possessed by at least two other civilizations. The benefits
are obvious. Your civilization will progress.
======================================================================= 59
Wonders don't last forever. Their benefits can be superseded by
advanced technology, rendering them useless and unable to be sold. If
you find yourself planning to sell a Wonder as an epoch appears to be
drawing to a close, you might not want to wait. Let another
civilization progress beyond the capabilities of your own Wonder, and
the Wonder becomes worthless, a reminder of a great past but nothing
more than that.
SETTING SAIL
Sooner or later, you're going to wonder what lies beyond your
homeland's shores. You may already know of a nearby landmass,
discovered as you prowled along your own coastline. Or you may have
revealed a coastline that shows you only ocean and more blackness.
Either way, you'll have to build ships in order to learn more.
Ships can only be built in coastal cities. You will want, then, to
create at least one seaport early in the game. Don't limit yourself
too much, though. Whether on a large continent or all but the
smallest of islands, you should place seaport cities in strategic
areas around the coast, giving you access to the oceans from more than
one spot. A well-placed seaport can help you get naval or transport
vessels to the scene of the action faster than those setting sail from
more remote locales.
The first ships you can build will be simple triremes (although
they were doubtless not so simple an accomplishment when the first
known sailing vessels were built more than 5,000 years ago). In order
to build triremes, your civilization must possess mapmaking among its
advances.
In civilization, the trireme's primitive nature is revealed in
restrictions placed upon its movement and its cargo capacity. A
trireme can carry only two other units. Laden or not, its movement is
restricted to three squares unless you've built a Lighthouse Wonder,
which gives you an additional square of trireme movement per turn.
======================================================================= 60
More seriously, the trireme and the sailors who crew it are as yet
inexpirenced in deep ocean voyages, and are without sophisticated
navigational aids such as the compass or knowledge of astronomy. The
seas are vast and your first craft are smll: If a trireme ends a turn
at sea, away from shore, it will be lost!
Because of this, you must plot your sailing routes carefully. Hug
the shore at first, venturing out no more than a single square at a
time, ensuring that sufficent movement squares are retained to permit
return to the safey of the shoreline. Out of such tentative,
frightening voyages was oceangoing navigation developed. Remember
Homer, and you'll feel a poetic shiver of sympathy for those early
mariners.
Once the outline of your own coast is revealed, you're going to
have to fare farther. If you're lucky, either your initial landbased
exploration or that first circumnavigation of your starting landmass
has revealed another landmass no more than a square away. Should that
be the case, you've got your first destination close at hand. Sail to
the nearby land and resume your coastline exploration.
It's a good idea to carry a couple of mobile units with you to
explore the interior of neighboring islands and continents. An
effective practice is to board two of your most mobile unit types -
chariots, cavalry, and so on - before setting sail. Then, upon making
your first landfall, debark one of the units. While you navigate
around the landmass, your mobile unit can reveal the nature of its
interior. The second unit should be held in reserve should your first
unit be lost to enemies or barbarians.
Another good reason to hold the second unit in reserve is to take
advantage of serendipity squares that might be revealed as your
trireme makes its way along the coast. If you have a unit onboard, it
can be debarked; reap the benefits of the serendipity square - or face
the barbarians who may dwell there! - and then reload onto the
trireme.
If you've achieved the civilization advances necessary for the
production of diplomat units, you should carry at least one on
======================================================================= 61
every exploration ship you send forth. The diplomat enables you to
establish with other nations, giving you vital insights into their
nature, resources, and size. At the same time, be wary of sending your
diplomats too quickly into unexplored territory or using them to
reveal the contnets of serendipity squares: They have a very low
defensive factor and are likely to be lost even to primative attack.
As you circumnavigate the new landmass, you'll want to remain
alert for other, farther island and continents that might be revealed.
Look sharp as well when you move into the far northern or southern
latitudes for the presence of the icecaps. These long, straight
stretches of tundra are worthless for colonization and exploitation,
but are exceptionally valuable as shoreline you can hug to further
explore the world.
SAILING FARTHER
Suppose, though, your exploration of your starting coastline has
revealed no nearby landmasses. To find other islands and continents,
you're going to have to sail into the vast darkness. While you will
doubtless lose some triremes to the dangers of the deep-ocean
voyaging, you can at least take some steps to minimize the risk, if
not eliminate it.
======================================================================= 62
Situating cities on rivers, with other easily exploited resources
nearby, is a large step toward ensuring constant growth. Resume your
circumnavigation along the already-explored coast. Look for peninsulas
that jut out far into the ocean. Position your ship at the very tip of
the peninsula, placing its edge as far out to sea as possible while
still maintaining contact with the shore. When it's in position, move
on to the next active unit, even if you haven't used up all of the
trireme's movement squares yet. Setting forth into the unexplored
ocean, you'll want all three of the movements available to your
trireme.
Next turn, set forth. You have only three movement squares, so
make them count. Don't move too hastily. Sail out a single square and
catch your breath. Has anything been revealed? If not, take your next
move. Nothing? You can't get back to shore and hime, so use your last
movement in hopes of landfall. You'll either find land or be lost at
sea.
======================================================================= 63
---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Explore the oceans carefully;
Your triremes are fragile. If
forced to set sail into deep
ocean, place your trireme at the
farthest point of land possible,
then wait until the next turn to
cast off.
---------------------------------
There is undoubtedly an aspect of hunch or intuition to this
approach, but there was undoubtedly the same sort of gut reliance on
instincts among the early mariners who first opened the oceans to our
race. And there are a couple of things you can do to reduce even
further the cost of ships lost at sea, if not their actual loss.
First, always have another ship in production or in motion.
Relying upon a single, fragile trireme is the equivalent of placing
all of your exploration eggs in a single basket. (Early ships were, in
fact, made of reeds, so the basket metaphor is especially apt.) Having
a second or third trireme under production or actually in existance
can make the loss of a vessel less costly. Your exploration program
stands less of a chance of lengthy interruption.
Second, don't send laden ships into the great unknown. While you
will undoubtedly want to carry emissaries and mobile units to the
lands you discover, you don't have to carry them immediately. A good
practice is to offload your passengers upon moving your trireme into
position at the tip of the peninsula. If the ship is lost on the next
turn, your units are preserved. If, though, the trireme discovers
another landmass three or fewer squares distant, it's a simple matter
for the ship to return home, reload its passengers and return to the
new territory, this time along with a familiar route.
Don't concentrate all of your sea voyages in a single area. Land
is scattered at random during the building of Civilization's worlds,
but it's not all scattered in a single part of the map. If you fail in
voyaging outward from one peninsula, look for another to serve as the
springboard for your next voyage.
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---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Put some passengers on your
exploration ships! Passengers can
be debarked on new landmasses,
and can explore the interior,
make contact with other
civilizations, and reap the
benefits of serendipity squares.
---------------------------------
This is an area where the world map on the left of the main map
screen comes in handy. Here you can see the paths your ships have
followed, where they've been lost, where they've made landfalls. As
the game progresses, more and more routes among the landmasses will be
discovered. You will also develop increasingly sophisticated marine
technology, letting you voyage farther and liberating you from the
necessity of making a landfall every turn. As these developments
occur, you'll want to send ships in wide search patterns, probing
through the dark regions to find previously undiscovered territory.
FINDING OTHERS
Our purpose in this chapter is to look at the basic tools for
explorating in your immediate vicinity and perhaps a bit beyond.
Encounters with other civilizations will be dealt with in greater
detail in the chapters that follow, yet there are a few points that
must be made now.
It is likely that the first "others" you encounter will be those
troublesome barbarians, located at first beneath serendipity squares.
(Later, barbarians will appear out of nowhere, literally: Whether they
arrive by sea, or spring up on your own island or continent,
barbarians dwell in and approach from uncivilized areas, map squares
far removed from cities and other civilizing influences.)
Try to keep the barbarians away from land you've already tamed.
Barbarians are rapacious: They love nothing better than
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reducing fields to stubble, destroying mines, eliminating any traces
of civilization they encounter. Don't lose time and effort rebuilding
properties that could have been protected.
If you're located on a continent rather than an island, you may
well encounter representatives of another civilization. In that case,
you're ready to give thought to whether you'll be mounting a defensive
and isolationist strategy or taking offense and launching campaigns of
warfare and conquest. These matters will be examined in detail in the
chapters that follow.
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CHAPTER 5
---------
THE BEST DEFENSE
Security at home has lain close to the heart of every emerging
civilization, no matter ho wlarge that civilization's ambitions beyond
its initial boundries. In Sid Meier's Civilization, domestic secuity
is equally important.
History books and epics resound with stories of brave defenders
withstanding onslaught after onslaught of better-armed, better-trained
enemy forces. Marathon, Masada, the Alamo - the defenders might
ultimately perish, but by their defense they slow the progress of the
enemy, buying valuable time for their civilization to prepare a
response.
Not that security is easily achieved. Civilizations are fragile
things, hard to defend, easy to destroy. Managing your domestic
defense will loom large among the challenges you face during the game,
and it will be one of the challenges requiring the most constant,
careful attention during the course of the game.
Yet without such careful defensive management even your offensive
campaigns may suffer from an Achilles' heel that cripples you - or
even dooms your efforts to failure.
What, then, are the most effective strategies to pursue for both
short- and long-term defense of your civilization?
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IN THE BEGINNING
At first, you can simply do what you can. You have a few tools, fewer
weapons. And the world in which you find yourself is filled with
hostile forces determined to bring you down.
Exploration of your borders and the interior of your home land
mass has a defensive as well as colonial purpose. Thorough exploration
will reveal to you the location of other civilizations, the
availability of agricultural, industrial, and defensive resources, and
the initial gathering places of barbarians.
Your defenses ultimately will take into account all of those
factors, but your immediate need is to secure your first crude
community, ensuring it the time needed to grow. As we saw in the
previous chapter, your initial city's first production shoudl be of
units that can be fortified for the city's defense: militia or
phalanxes. depending upon the capabilities of your city. But simply
fortifying a couple of units, while sufficent for the first few
centuries of your civilization's existance, is hardly sufficent for
the city's long-term security.
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Establishing the sfaety of your cities requires coordianted effort
on unit production and placement, defensive construction, startegic
use of terrain as a defensive factor, and the erection of "early
warning systems" to sound the alert when the enemies are approaching.
As we'll see, the infrastructure of your civilization, it's economy,
and its intellectual makeup also play major parts in a sound defensive
posture.
In short, your defense call supon all your skills as a leader of a
civilization. Those skills will grow as your experience as aleader
grows, but for now we'll look at some sound fundamentals that can help
ensure you get the experience you need.
GUARDING THE FRONTIER
You've buit your first city and fortified it with a militia and a
phalanx. Two militia units are currently exploring the continent on
which you live, pushing back the borders of darkness. While you are
currently concentrating production on infrastructure - a barracks, a
granary - and plan to build an additional band of settlers to begin
exploiting and colonizing the continent, you should also begin
thinking about establishing defensive borders.
There will come a point at which you will disband your more
primitive units rather than continue to feed and support them, but for
at least the first few centuries you'll want to keep all your units
active. As you develop more advanced military technologies, replace
your city-bound fortified militia with phalanxes, say, and either
place them on picket duty or use them further to explore unfamiliar
territory.
Once enough unknown territory in teh vicinity of the heart of your
civilization has been explored, giving you a sense of the location of
exploitable resources as well as neighboring tribes, begin using your
outmoded or more primitive units as sentries or pickets rather than as
explorers. Keeping them on exploration duty
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places your civilization at risk from barbarians or invaders closer to
your cities. They may be able to strike with little warning, whereas
pickets on the frontier would have alerted you earlier to their
approach.
Remember, barbarians are likeliest to emerge from wild and
unsettled territory. Placing a defensive unit or two on guard against
their approach can protect your developed lands from pillage and
destruction.
Situate your pickets strategically, locating the units in spots
where they will be likeliest to detect the approach of forces from
other civilizations, or barbarian raiding parties. Your units will
serve as a sort of primitive early warning system. They may not be
able to withstand the onslaught of a strong enemy force, but by
sacrificing themselves they will provide you with a bit of time to
prepare a stronger defense closer to home, or to mount an
expeditionary force in response to the invaders.
When placing a unit with low offensive capability - militia,
phalanxes - on picket duty, you may wish to fortify the unit rather
than make it a sentry. There are a couple of advantages to this:
First, if the unit is a veteran unit - if it was commisioned from a
city containing a barracks - the unit stands a fair chance of
defeating an enemy attack; second, should you strike a treaty with the
invaders, a fortified unit remains inactive unless directly attacked,
even if an enemy unit occupies a square immediately adjacent to it. A
unit on sentry duty will become active every turn, requiring you to
return it to sentry, and slowing down the progress of the game.
If you do take this approach, using weaker units on sentry or
picket duty, you should keep some stronger offensive units in
proximity to the frontier. These units can wait on sentry, ready to be
brought to life and moved into position should your militia- or
phalanx-based defense fail.
When defending your frontier with less-capable units, it's a good
idea to have a road in place leading to their position. That way if
you need to move reinforcements into position quickly you
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can. Your infrastructure is as essential to your defense as your
military forces.
As you can afford it, deactivate the militia and replace them with
defensive pickets capable of attack at higher values. These units can
be placed on sentry duty rather than fortified. With these units
you'll not only be alerted to approaching adversaries, but you'll also
stand better chance of smiting them down as soon as they're detected.
---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Don't stack units on picket or
sentry duty outside city walls.
Under attack, an entire stack can
be wiped out by a snigle enemy
unit. Inside a city, your units
fall one at a time, giving you a
chance to strike back.
Rather than stacking units on
the frontier, stagger them,
fortifying those closer to the
border wjile backing them up with
more powerful offensive units on
sentry duty. That way, if your
fortified unit falls, you can
respond immediately with a
counterattack.
---------------------------------
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LAY OF THE LAND
Terrain can play an important part in creating an effective defense.
Use the land to increase your defenses whenever possible.
As you become familiar with the game, check the Civilopedia for
the landscape/defense factors offered by different types of terrain.
Especially effective are mountains, whose terrain serves to slow down
the invaders. Cities placed behind mountains benefit from the fact
that, unles a road is built over the mountain, an approaching
attacker comes to a halt on the mountain itself. Assuming you have in
place a strong offensive unit ready to spring into action, the
slowdown a mountain imposes can leave your enemies at your mercy. Try
plaing strong offensive units on sentry duty atop mountains. That way
you control the high ground and can strike at them from above when the
mountain halts their progress.
Look for natural borders to place your pickets and sentries. If
you're alone on an island, its borders with the sea are your weak
points. Your enemies - other than barbarian bands located beneath
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serendipity squares on teh island at the beggining - will arrive in
oceangoing armadas. Suppose you haven't yet acquired seafaring
capability. You can still erect defenses aimed at detecting and
repulsing naval approaches from other civilizations.
During your initial exploration of your coastline, be on watch for
signs of a nearby landmass. No more than one square away, these
contingous islands and continents represent the likeliest source of
invasions early in teh game. Your opponents may possess only primitive
triremes and will thus be restricted to hugging shorelines as they
seek navigable routes around the world. If there's a one-square gap
between your land and another, you can almost bet on an enemy's use of
the neighboring coastline for safe harbor at the end of each turn.
(The neighboring lands also represent your own likeliest, quickest,
and most easily accessible sites for expansion.)
Put units on picket duty at spots along the narrow channel
seperating your landmass from the neighboring one. Should an enemy
vessel seek to make an approach along this coastline, your sentry will
discover it. In the earlier stages of the game this approach will also
serve as an effective means of locating other nations before your own
civilization has acquired the ability to go to sea.
USE THE RIGHT UNITS
Generally speaking, the stronger the unit on picket or fortification
duty the better the defense it establishes. This generality, however,
must be tempered by a couple of important points.
First, you must bear in mind that the unit will remain immobilized
while it serves as a picket or sentry. Be wary of over-committing
defensive forces to stationary positions too early in the game. You
must continue to explore, to push the boundries of your territory
outward, chasing back the darkness. So search out locations that offer
efective defense against enemy approach, yet
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at the same time allow you to hold to a minimum the number of units
tied up on defense.
Second, don't forget that remote units must be supported by their
home city. This can become costly to your treasury and, once you've
achieved advanced forms of government, to your peoples' well-being.
Some citizens do not appreciate and will not support far-flung
military forces.
Third, tailor teh duty to the type of unit available. Phalanxes,
militia, and muskateers make excellent fortified pickets, their
defense factors being stronger than their offensive power. Chariots,
catapults, and knights make excellnt sentries, springing into
wakefulness when contacted by an enemy unit.
Fourth, keep in mind the looming obsolescence of your units.
Especially in the early stages of the game, and at lower skill levels,
advances come quickly, rendering your earliest units obsolete. You
want to be sure that defending units are the most advanced, strongest
units you can afford.
Finally, know the difference between a sensible defensive policy
and caution carried to ridiculous extremes. If you find yourself
constantly using armored divisions to repel horse-borne invaders,
maybe you should be on a posture of offense.
DEFENDING LARGE AREAS
The enemy is smart and - prolific. Use a single unit to defend a large
area of approach against invaders and, if geographically possible, the
enemy will eventually outflank you. Enemy units will move into
position on more than one of your flanks, yet that unit of yours can
respond only to one angle of attack. (This assumes a sentry, rather
than a picket; if you have a fortified unit on picket, you may wish
simply to take your chances withstanding the enemy attack rather than
counterattacking.) Naturally, if you do counterattack, your response
should be directed against the strongest opossing unit, or against the
largest concentration of enemies, improving
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your chances of surviving the subsequent attack. This is where it
helps to have backed up vulnerable pickets with units able to move
immediately into position should your pickets fall.
Another approach to defending large areas involves mobile units
kept constantly on the go, patrolling areas vulnerable to enemy
invasion or barbarian appearances. I would have liked, in fact, to
have seen a patrol function in this game, by which the player could
set ground units or ships on constant back-and-forth courses over
particular areas of land or sea. Failing that, you can use the "go-to"
function to guide your patrolling units. It's more time-consuming than
a specific patrol command would have been, but ultimately just as
effective.
Look at the area to be patrolled. Press the go-to key and select a
destination for the unit in question. The unit will proceed to that
destination, using its maximum available moves per turn, unless it
first encounters an enemy unit. At that point, your unit returns to
your control and you are free to attempt to deal with the enemy.
Another effective tool for guarding large areas of land is a good
system of roads. Suppose you are located on an immense continent and
have built half a dozen or so cities, yet still have great areas of
land uncolonized. Those areas represent not only your easiest sites
for expansion, but also your Achilles' Heel. Because the land is as
yet untamed, it represents excellent breeding territory for barbarian
raiders. Equally dangerous, your enemies can land expeditionary forces
there without your knowledge, moving down through the wilderness to
strike at the very heart of your civilization.
Even worse, by leaving large areas unattended, you run the risk of
allowing the enemy to establish a city in your back yard, as it were,
from which diplomats on missions of espionage and sabotage, or
military units out for conquest, can be created and dispatched.
As you can afford the committment of settler units, set them on
projects of roadbuilding, driving thoroughfares into the wild.
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The roadbuilders should be accompanied or preceded by military units
for protection. Try to choose routes for your roads that accomplish a
couple of purposes: a) you want to create a system of roads that gives
you and your military quick access to vulnerable areas; b) roads built
for defensive purposes also serve the cause of expansion. With a
roadway in place, leading to the best potential city sites in the
wilderness, you've taken a large step toward completing the settlement
of your continent. Indeed, once your defensive roadworks are
completed, you can shift the settler units from roadbuilding to city
construction. (Don't forget to reassign the accompanying military
units to the new cities, lest they continue to be a drag on the
economy of their hometowns.)
HARBOR AND COASTAL DEFENSES
Fortify at least two defensive units in all of your cities, but
concentarte on your harbors if facing stronger seapower. The enemy
will attempt to weaken harbor defenses and population through
bombardment. Above all, build city walls in your harbors. Not only do
these protective fortifications help ensure the safety of the city's
inhabitants, they can also give you an edge against naval bombardment.
This is one point at which a weaker-but-fortified civilization stands
a good chance of wreaking some havoc upon a superior enemy. You may
find yourself delighted to see a harbor fortified with little stronger
than city walls and a cadre or musketeers brings down a far superior
battleship or cruiser.
Another approach to harbor defenses calls for a committment of
your own naval forces, with ships on sentry duty a square or two to
either side of the harbor entrance. This is an expensive strategy -
only the wealthiest of civilizations can well afford to tie up naval
forces that could otherwise be used for exploartion or transport. But
it is a strategy that will help reveal the approach of enemy craft
before they affect a landing or bombardment.
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As your naval technology progresses and your ships are no longer
shorebound, you might try placing a sentry ship offshore a square or
two in hopes of detecting enemy vessels sailing in from the open sea.
Again, this strategy is only worthwhile if your civilization can truly
afford to commit the ships to sentry duty.
Later in the game, when your opponents have developed effective
bombardment techniques, you may wish to draw some of your coastal
pickets inland one square. By moving them inland they become safe from
naval bombardment, but remain ready to respond to amphibious invasion.
On the other hand, moving them inland frees up territory on which your
opponents can land troops.
At some point you may find your harbors facing a blockade, sealed
off from the sea by enemy naval units. Here is where a strong treasury
can be helpful. If you have the funds - and naval technology at least
equal to that of your enemy - you can purchase naval units with which
to sink the blockading ships. This strategy is risky: There's the
chance that you will make the investment only to have your newly
purchased ship destroyed by the next round of bombardment.
Technological advances offer additional harbor protection. Don't
underestimate the effectiveness of aerial defenses against sea-borne
adversaries. Bombers (and occasionally, but only occasionally,
fighters) can eliminate enemy vessels. An advantage of aerial
responses to naval threats is that the planes can be based in cities
other than the harbor itself. They can fly out to sea from the
coastline. Aircraft can also serve important patrol functions,
although these should not be automated. Watch the aircraft's movement
allowance, and make sure you don't use it up before the plane has a
chance to land - it's costly to run out of fuel in midair.
While fighters are only occasionally effective against enemy
ships, they can protect your harbors from enemy bombers. If you have
the technology, build a couple of fighters and base them near
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the coastline where they'll be ready to respond to the approach of
enemy warplanes.
The other airborn tool at your disposal, once you reach the
appropriate level of technology, is the nuclear missle. Nuclear
warheads, needless to say, are devastatingly effective against enemy
seacraft, but they bear dreadful enviornmental consequences that we'll
examine in a subsequent chapter.
NAVAL DEFENSES
The best way to defend your shores is by preventing enemy craft from
reaching them. And you can best do that with your own naval vessels.
Your initial seafaring units will be used for exploration; later ones
for colonial expansion and wars of conquest. But as you can afford to,
or if you find yourself facing seaborne threats, you will want to put
some of your naval production to defensive purposes.
Harbors and areas of naval opportunity will be your first choices
for naval defenses. Indeed, those channels you once defended with
ground-based pickets can now be sealed with ships on sentry.
As your picket ships become more capable, use them in different
ways. Cruisers, battleships, and submarines, for example, being
equipped with radar that reveals the occupants of squares beyond their
own, can serve patrol duties as well as picket posts.
Use your picket ships wisely, determining their response to other
vessels by the nature of those other ships. If a trireme encounters a
battleship, for example, there's not much you can do but retreat. On
the other hand, you may encounter unarmed craft laden with colonists
or tropps. Try to sink these cargo vessels: You can severly crimp an
enemy's plans by sinking a frigate or transport bearing an invasive,
diplomatic, or colonial force.
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Once you've encountered another seafaring power, do your best to
follow its course back to its home landmass. Those earliest vessels
you encounter will probably be triremes, hugging the shore as closely
as your own ships. Not only will you get a better sense of what sort
of force you're up against, you'll also open up new areas of the world
for your own expansion.
When attempting to trace a route to another civilization's home,
consider loading your vessles with diplomats and caravans, if you're
able to produce those units. By doing so you increase the chances of
getting a picture of your opponents via the diplomats and earning
income from trade by way of your caravans.
Either way, once you've made contact with another seafaring
civilization, do everything you can to place units on picket along the
routes likeliest to be taken by your opponent. Do what you can to
decrease the possibility of surprise invasions or amphibious landings.
Obviously, naval forces can be placed on patrol just as ground
forces can. Use the go-to key, plot your ship's course, sit back and
let the computer navigator do the work. You'll be notified when your
ship has completed its voyage - or when it encounters enemy vessels.
KNOW YOUR ENEMIES
So far we've looked at defenses that take advantage of your
intelligence as a general, your ability to marshal and maneuver your
militray resources. Now we'll look at the intelligence resources
within the game itself. The diplomat unit, in articular, can be
employed to great defensive benefit.
In the beggining, diplomats serve to provide information about
your closest neighbors. This takes the form of establishing embassies
which let you "see" into the heart of neighboring empires. The
information you derive from your embassies will help
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you decide whether an international relationship will be defensive,
offensive, or based on commerce and treaty.
At first, as you encounter other tribes during your explorations,
you should probably accept any offers of treaty that are proffered.
There are a couple of advantages to this. First, you buy some time
before having to put yourself on a war footing. Especially in the
early stages of the game this time can be vital to your success.
Second, by striking a treaty, you have the opportunity to seal off
your neighbors from your territory. Under treaties, tribes are
prevented from intruding upon their neighbor's territory. By careful
placement of fortified units, you can contain the other tribe within a
proscribed area. Those fortified units, by the way, need not be your
most advanced or expensive: Militia units under fortification serves
just as well as legions or chariots in holding treaty-bound neighbors
in check. A wise ruler, though, will back up her or his fortified
units with stronger militray units on sentry
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duty, just in case your neighbor decides to violate the treaty with a
sneak attack.
Be alert as well for "holes" in your defensive line. If
neighboring tribes manage to "sneak" through and establish a presence
on your turf, you'll be faced with the same treaty-imposed movement
restrictions that should have held them in check. Then it's up to you
to decide whether to violate the treaty with a sneak attack of your
own. Be on guard as well for sea-borne attempts to subvert your
territory.
If your treaty holds, and you manage to contain your neighbors, a
good move is to create a diplomat unit, should you have the necessary
civilization advances required to do so. This unit can then be sent
through the treaty lines to establish an embassy and get a clear
picture of your neighbors. Embassy information varies with the
different difficulty levels of the game, but an embassy always gives
you a sense of who and what you're up against, information that can
prove crucial to your long-term strategy.
Even if you discover that you possess overwhelming superiority in
relation to your neighbors, you may not wish to crush them. For one
thing, a military campaign requires a commitment of resources that
might best be put to other purposes. Perhaps more important, that
neighboring city can serve as a cource of income for your
civilization. So long as you are under treaty, your caravans can cross
the border and establish trade routes with your neighbor's cities.
SIEGE-PROOFING
In 73 A.D., in a fortress perched 1,300 feet above the floor of the
Judean desert, a garrison consisting of fewer than 1,000 Zealots -
men, women, and children - withstood two years' siege mounted by the
Tenth Roman Legion, 15,000 strong. The fortress was called Masada, and
the epic story of its besiegement (the surviving
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members of the garrison finally committed mass suicide rather than
fall to the Romans) remains legendary to this day.
In Civilization, you can't really make yourself siege-proof, but
there are a number of steps you can take to make successful siege of
your cities more dificult. The lesson of Masada can serve you well.
The Zealot garrison was fortified, commanded the high ground, and
benefited from the fact the Roman supply lines were long and ran
through arduous territory. The more difficulty you impose upon your
enemies, the more time you buy to respond forcefully to the attempted
siege and, with luck and skill, repel it.
The first step, naturally, consists of shoring up the defenses of
each city you establish, and shoring them up as quickly as you can. As
we've seen, the initial phase of this rests upon building a garrison
of at least two fortified militia units.
This is an initial step only! Two - or even four - primitive units
fo not possess the strength to withstand a concerted assault by an
enemy possessing legions, chariots, or more advanced military units.
Augument or replace your fortified militia with additional units
of superior defensive value as soon as these units can be produced.
(Look sharp: Sometimes you'll find that you develop a technology
such as bronze- or iron-working while your cities are in the midst of
producing units based on more primitive technologies. Remember that
resources accruing toward the purchase of one type of unit can be
shifted toward the production of another type. Upgrade units in
production as soon as the upgrade becomes available to you. Do so
every chance you get, and you won't waste time and turns generating
units that are less helpful to you than they could be.)
If you can build city walls, do so. These triple the defnsive
factors of units within the city. Another advantage of defending
cities is that your military garrison is reduced by only a single unit
at a time when the city is under assault, no matter how many units
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are stacked in the city. Units stacked outside of cities can all be
destroyed by a single enemy unit on the attack.
THE INVADERS APPROACH
Despite your best efforts, the enemy has made a landing on your
territory, or breached your borders if you're already sharing the same
landmass. They are moving in strength toward your cities, and they
possess military technology superior to your own. What can you do?
One thing you might do is consider the example of Roman General
Quintus Fabius Maximus.
Fabius, as he was known, harried Hannibal, whose Carthaginian
armies had wreaked havoc throughout Italy a bit more than 200 years
B.C. A brilliant battlefield startegist, Hannibal's domination of
combat encounters led Fabius to develop a strategy of his own, one
based on avoiding direct confrontation with the Carthaginians.
Instead, Fabius struck quick blows at Hannibal's flanks, inflicting
what damage he could before darting away.
The same approach can work for you if you're careful. Use the most
mobile of your units, and watch their movement points closely. Try to
position your forces in such a way as to let you strike and retreat.
If that's not possible, use your less capable units as distractions,
drawing the brunt of the enemy assault. Then strike with your stronger
units.
Above all, always strike stacked units first. A single attack can
thus take out two or more of the enemy assault. Then strike with your
stronger units.
Above all, always strike stacked units first. A single attack can
thus take out two or more of the enemy at a time!
Fabian tactics ultimately are diversionary. Sooner or later you
may have to face the enemy on open field of battle - or from behind
city walls. The benefit of a Fabian approach, though, is that very
diversion. It buys you time to shore up your city defenses, create new
military units, and generally prepare for the larger confrontation to
come.
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(You might bear in mind as well the thought that it was another
Roman general - Publius Cornelius Scipio - who finally drew the
Carthaginians out of Italy. Scipio did so by the boldest of maneuvers:
He led an invading army of his own into Africa and laid siege to
Carthage itself. Study your information about your enemy, and if you
have the opportunity and resources, think about invading their
territory and tying them up at home. Sometimes offense is the best
defense.
ECONOMIC DEFENSES
Money may not buy happiness, but it can help purchase security.
Financial defenses can protect against both internal and external
threats.
Against external threats, your economy serves several purposes. A
healthy treasury enables you to purchase military units in a pinch,
creating reinforcements almost instantly rather than waiting for them
to be created by accrual of resources.
On the home front, a strong economy helps ensure productive
workers, eager to do their best for the war effort. (This, of course,
assumes that your people are suppportive of your military plans, and
of your government itself.) A productive populace can change on a dim,
as it were, pumping out military units or city improvements as
circumstance permits.
On the other hand, a dwindling treasury, an economy that spends
more than it takes in (sound familiar?) may force you to sell off city
improvements or disband military units at crucial points in the game.
Selling thise city improvements offers only temporary relief from your
crisis: You get an immediate infusion of cash, but your citizenry must
endure the loss of improvements that contribute to the quality of
their lives, increasing the likelihood of growing unrest among your
citizens.
There are several solid approaches to building a successful
economy. Most of these will be examined in greater detail in a
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subsequent chapter; for now, we'll focus on economics as an aspect of
civilization defense.
The first step you can take is to exploit fully the productive
capacity of each of your cities. Examine the terrain around the cities
and underatke the appropriate technology, whether mining, irrigation,
or simply building a road.
Even more effective is the caravan unit, made possible by the
currency and trade advances. Your caravans serve as a good source of
information. You can deposit a caravan or two on the shores of an
island or continent controlled by another civilization, and use your
caravans to explore the interior of that landmass, revealing the
location of cities, placement of troops, and so on. While your
caravans won't give you the detailed portrait of other civilizations'
cities that a diplomat unit can generate, they will reveal the size
and wealth - as represented by the numeral emblazoned on each city
square - of your opponents' cities.
(You should strike trade routes, by the way, with the largest and
most powerful cities in other civilizations. These are the routes that
will generate the largest income for your own economy.)
Finally, you can use diplomatic units to bribe enemy units to join
your civilization. This is costly, but can help avert a rout if you
can afford it. Especially effective is bribing enemy units of greater
technology than your own. This gives you the opportunity to turn, as
it were, the enemy's own guns against them.
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---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Monitor your treasury when under
assault from outside. A good
working knowledge of your
economy's strengths and weakness-
es can guide you in your response
to enemy pressure. Hard though it
may be to swallow, there are
times when it can pay you to pay
off the enemy in the form of a
tribute, strike a treaty, and
devote yourself to rebuilding
your resources. The alternative
may be annhilation.
---------------------------------
TECHNOLOGICAL DEFENSES
Among many other things, Sid Meier's Civilization is about technology
and the impact of technology on civilization. Naturally, then,
technology plays a large part in the defenses you erect. Selecting the
right technological paths to pursuse as you climb civilization's
ladder can make or break your defensive capabilities.
Obviously, at the outset of the game you should focus your
attention on fundamentals: Metalworking, masonry, and the creation of
barracks units all are essential to the erection of effective defenses
against attack.
The decisions become more difficult as your civilization grows.
Military technology cannot always take precedence over social and
cultural civilization advances.
That in mind, there are a few general principles that can help you
ensure that your defensive technology is adequete to the tasks it will
face.
1. Always buy the best. It doesn't do you any good to possess
muskateers if your cities are still defended by phalanxes.
Upgrade often and thoroughly, starting with your barracks
installations. These will require replacement upon the
achievement of certain civilization adavnces at certain levels
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of the game. In hot an dheavy combat, units not produced by
barracks facilities stand little chance of survival.
2. Push the technology to its defensive limits. If your
civilization is capable of producing frigates or ironclads, you
have the freedom to move offshore. Don't trap these powerful
units in your harbors or at the shore where they stand a
chance of sinking the enemy on approach. The same holds
true for aircraft and other highly mobile pieces. Stationary
positioning is not always the optimum defensive startegy:
Remember the Maginot Line.
3. Use your intelligence-gathering capabilities. Your diplomats
can keep you informed of other civilizations' technological
capabilities, giving you at least the possibility of adjusting
your own pursuits in hopes of achieving parity or maintaining
superiority. Don't let other civilizations guide the devlopment
of your own; but do put your understanding of your adversaries
to work for your own advantage.
All's fair, as they say: You can also use your diplomats to
steal technology from your more advanced enemies. To do this,
you must, of course, smuggle a diplomat unit through enemy
lines and into an enemy city. Nor do you get to choose the
the technology you steal. It's tough and risky, but technology
transfer - from them to you, at any rate - can make a
difference in the course of a war.
(If you're not at war with the civilization you wish to
steal from, you soon will be: The act of stealing constitutes
an act of war, as well as breaching any treaty that may exist
between your civilizations.)
4. Acquire technology through offense, if possible. Even though an
enemy civilization may outnumber you and possess superior
technology, you may have a chance to acquire some of their
technology through conquest. Send expeditionary forces
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to the peripheries of the other civilization, looking for newly
established cities whose defenses are weak. If you can capture
an enemy city, you'll have a chance to capture one of their
technological advances as well.
(You can accomplish the same goalds closer to home, if the
enemy has captured one of your cities. Take it back - and with
it get some of their knowledge.)
5. Pursue civilization advances and Wonders of the World than can
help give you a defensive advantage. In the ancient portion of
the game, such an advantage is lent by the Great Library
Wonder, which makes available to you any advance possessed by
at least two other civilizations. This is a good hedge against
being too quickly outsripped by oppossing nations.
In the nuclear age, you'll want to place an SDI defensive
unit in your capital city at least, and should consider
locating one in each of your leading cities. This is the only
effective defense against the devastations of a nuclear attack.
Ownership of the United Nations is the best defense of all.
If your civilization possesses the United Nations, all other
nations must make peace with you, no matter how superior or
powerful they might be.
6. Invest in a solid educational infrastructure, enhancing it at
every available opportunity. A sizable investment in and
commitment to education - in the form of universal literacy, a
good university system, and knowledge-oriented civilization
advances and Wonders - increases the rapidity with which your
wise people can achieve breakthroughs and advances. These, in
turn, increase the likelihood of your being able to mount a
technologically sound defense.
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FAR FLUNG DEFENSES
As your civilization spreads across its home landmass and onto others,
the majority of your attention may be focused upon the vicissitudes of
conquest and colonization. Don't neglect the defensive side of the
game. Don't make the mistake of concentrating the majority of your
forces on the leading adge of your empire to the detriment of your
civilization's core. More than one civilization has fallen from
weakness at home despite great strength on its outer edges. Upgrade
your city fortifications at every reasonable opportunity. Disband
outmoded units, freeing resources for the creation and support of
units, freeing resources for the creation and support of units more
suited to contemporary needs.
At the same time, it's foolish to continue devoting time,
resources, and money to over-fortifying cities located far from the
front. As in so many aspects of this game, you must strike a
reasonable balance.
First let's focus on the outer limits of your civilization. On
those edges, place garrisons ready to protect your interests. Even a
strong, world-girdling empire will have points of vulnerability at
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which ambitious enemies can strike. Your garrisons should consist of
at least two strong defensive units, just as your cities at home. In
addition, new cities on distant shores can benefit from the presence
of a couple of strong offensive units, able to deal with approaching
attackers or barbarians. Remember that as you settle new and untamed
lands barbarians will continue to be a problem.
As quickly as possible you should erect a barracks facility in
order to reinforce further your settlement with veteran units.
You will need to establish and defend effective lines of supply,
carrying reinforcements from your productive homeland to the more
tenuous locations you're establishing around the world. Guard these
resupply routes as well as you can, preferably escorting cargo vessels
with military craft able to scout out and deal with the ships of your
adversaries. Set yourself a regular schedule of resupply and
reinforcement, building your garrison until it is well fortified and
defended.
Second, bear in mind the lessons you learned when building your
first cities. As you produce more military units - or as additional
reinforcements arrive from home - you'll want to put into place a
strong line of pickets and sentries, establishing a protective zone
around your new city. As the city develops, producing settlers who
will develop and exploit the local resources, continue moving the
picket lines outward, adding to them to eliminate any holes through
which the enemy might slip.
Third, use your new city to produce a diplomat or two, especially
if the newly created community lies on a landmass containing other
civilizations. The diplomats can give you a picture of the size and
nature of enemy cities and defenses, information that will asist you
in defending your own new community.
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---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
The cities on the periphery of
your civilization should be well
protected, as they are the cities
most typically exposed to
extrenal threats. As the
boundries of your civilization
expand, focus your defensive
efforts on the outer edges,
shifting the cities of your
heartland - which should be
farthest from the enemy's
reach - to producing civilization
advances and Wonders of the
World.
Bear in mind, though, that
it's unwise to let your guard
down too far, no matter how
distant a city lies from the
lines of conflict. This is
especially true of your capital
city, although other cities as
well can be left vulnerable to
sabotage and espionage on the
part of enemy diplomats.
---------------------------------
Finally, bear in mind that your purpose is expansion, yet, since
you're in a defensive mode, you want to be careful that your
expansionist movements are not interpreted as threats by other
civilizations. If you establish a treaty, try sticking to it for
awhile as you build your military and economic resources in the new
location. Far-Flung colonies are vulnerable to assault and takeover.
Your job is to protect them until they're strong enough to withstand
enemy threats.
For all the vital importance of a good defense, at home and
abroad, it's tough to win at Sid Meier's Civilization by staying home,
tending your walls and fortifications, and minding your own business.
Isolationism will, ultimately, cost your society more than it gains.
You must at some point take a more aggressive approach, at least
against some of the other civilizations on your world. Conflict can be
delayed, but not avoided: Other civilizations will ultimately move
against you.
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In the next chapter we'll see exactly how you can prepare yourself
and your civilization to go to war, and look at ways to increase your
chances of victory.
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CHAPTER 6
---------
TAKING OFFENSE
Civilization provides you with more than enough tools to take a grand
offensive approach, mounting, in effect, a plan of global conflict and
- with luck - conquest.
Here your decisions should be shaped by your goals. Decide whether
you want to conquer the entire world, eliminating all opposition, or
whether you wish simply (not that it will necessarily be simple!) to
drive other civilizations from your homeland and prevent them from
returning to conquer you.
Whichever approach you take, you must at every step maximize your
offensive production and strategic planning, building armies, lifting
your level of military technology, structuring your government to
increase the willingness of your people to fight.
Your decision will affect as well the paths you follow toward
adavnced technologies, city improvements, and Wonders of the World.
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OFFENSIVE EXPLORATION
Again, exploration plays a large part in your pkans and the
accomplishment of your goals. Early on - during the first turn, if
possible - you should establish a city on a seacoast. (If you haven't
found the sea within three turns, go ahead and put down your roots.
Time is precious, and those first three turns represent sixe decades
of building for your opponents. You can always go to sea from a city
built subsequnetly; but make sure your second city lies on the edge of
the ocean.)
At the early stages of your civilization's growth, offense should
come second. Secure your home before setting out to conquer. As noted
in the previosu chapter, a strong defense is the best possible
preparation for an effective offensive startegy.
But be prepared to take advantage of offensive opportunity when it
knocks. As you explore your home territory, you may encounter a tribe
less advanced than your own. If possible, isolate or eliminate them.
Although few civilizations ever disappear completely from Civilization
after being destroyed, the interruption of growth that destruction
causes can be of great benefit to your own development. You have one
less opponent to worry about - at leats for awhile.
A persuasive case can be made, however, for isoloating the other
tribe rather than completely eliminating it. As yoru civilization
progresss, its maintenance and expansion become progressively more
expensive. Funding your civilization requires income, not all of which
can be generated within your own borders. You need trading partners,
and the most effective - and lucratove! - partners are cities in other
civilizations. By eliminating too completely those other cultures, you
may ultimately be cutting your own throat economically.
How, then, to encapsulate other civilizations in oredr to trade
with them but alos to minimize the possibility of their aggression
aimed at you? There are several ways.
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Easiest, perhaps, is to establish a treaty with the other nation.
You should be guided in this by the other civilization's proximity to
your own.
Which brings us back to the careful exploration of your starting
landmass. As quickly as possible after establishing your first city,
send units out to explore the land on which you've been placed. As you
explore, keep an eye out for several things:
1. Look for areas where the land narrows, such as an isthmus, and
which can easily be sealed off should there be other
civilizations beyond the narrows.
2. As your units travel around the coastline, look for the
northernmost and southernmost points of land. These are also likely
spots to detect the arrival of ships from other civilizations,
making their own way around the world by following the polar
coastlines. (It is from these spots as well that you might try
dispatching triremes in hopes of making a landfall before
becoming lost at sea.)
3. Be alert for different types of terrain, especially as you push
farther from your home city. Terrain can impede the progress of
your more mobile units; you'll want to map out the most easily
traversed routes to areas where you encounter other
civilizations.
4. Try to dispatch explorers in sufficent force as to allow the
posting of sentries and pickets around the perimeter of your
expanding civilization. These will help keep to a minimum the
appearances of barbarian raiders, who arise in wilderness
areas. Your job is to seek out and conquer other civilizations,
not waste time and resources doing combat with barbarians.
In some ways, your job as the leader of civilization is made
easier if your initial location is a huge continent. You have at hand
room for expansion, opportunities for trade and exchanges of
information with other civilizations located there, and you are
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freed, at least for awhile, from the necessity of developing segoing
capabilities.
ISLAND HOMES
Suppose you're on an island, rather than a continent. Your first
actiosn should be to complete the exploration of your landmass, with
an eye toward appropriate locations for your cities. You'll need
several cities from which to launch your campaign of conquest, and at
least two of those cities must be seaports, from which ships can be
sent forth. Position yoru cities carefully, ensuring that each is as
productive as possible. Begin producing triremes as early as you can,
dispatching them to the far corners of the globe in search of other
civilizations.
Don't send out empty ships. Even though an unloaded vessel can
explore the world, and locate other islands and continents, all you'll
be able to find are the coasts of these neighboring lands. Their
interiors will be denied to you unless your ships are carrying units
which can be debarked for exploration.
Agains, speed is of the essence. If you are able to produce
cavalry or chariot units, those are what should be loaded onto your
ships. The extra mobility of these units will enable you more quickly
to travel the interiors. This gives you the opportunity to locate
other civilizations, scout out the lay of their land, and also to
liberate any serendipity squares - scrolls of wisdom, mineral
deposits, and so on - as yet uncaptured by others.
Another good approach at this stage of the game is to include a
band of settlers on your exploration vessels. If your initial location
is an island, you will quickly need additional lands to colonize and
develop. Settlers can do this. Don't forget, as you establish your new
cities, to reassign any traveling units - and your trireme, if you
locate the new city on a secoast - to the new cities. This will
relieve some of the pressure on the communities on your initial
island.
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---------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Don't neglect the interiors of
continents and islands your
exploration craft discover. To
explore those interiors you'll
need to carry land units which
will be debarked on foreign
shores.
The choice of which land
units to send on exploration
journeys will vary depending upon
your overall strategy, but
diplomats and settlers can both
be efefctive explorers.
Because wild and unexplored
lands are fertile breeding
grounds for barbarians, you
should also include a military
unit among your explorers.
Be careful on your first
voyages out from your homeland.
Triremes can eaisly be loast at
sea, so it's a wise idea to find
a navigable path between
landmasses before sending out
ships laden with expensive units.
---------------------------------
If your civilization has developed writing, it's a good idea to
build some diplomat units and send them into the greater world as
well. Using diplomats to establish embassies will give you a leg up on
your plan of conquest. At certain levels of the game, embassy
intelligence reports let you know the size of your adversaries'
treasury and military, as well as keep you posted on who's at war with
whom. This information can prove crucial as you decide which opponent
you'll make war against, and with which you will negotiate treaties.
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CHECKPOINTS AND BLOCKADES
Another advatange of seafaring ability is the capacity it provides for
establishing and enforcing blockades. As you sail around the world,
you'll discover various checkpoints, through which other sailors must
come to find your own civilization. Position a trireme at each
checkpoint possible, sealing the straits against enemy vessels. Put
yoru ship on sentry duty; this way it will come to "life" when another
ship contacts it.
When your sentry ship wakes up, attack the other ship. There's a
good chance you will sink it, and send to the bottom of the sea any
units it is carrying. Not always - there will be times when it's your
own vessel that goes down! For that reason, it's not a bad idea to
keep at sea as many ships as you cna reasonably support, giving you
the ability to back up your forward pickets, and replace vessels that
have been sunk.
Sealing off checkpoints is only a first step in establishing naval
superiority. As you sail around the coastlines of distant landmasses,
you'll encounter enemy ports. The advantages you can
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derive from these harbors are both startegic and information-oriented.
Your contact with an enemy port provides you with a sense of the
strength of that city, letting you know at a glance whether or not
enemy ports are stronger than your own.
-------------------------------------------------------------
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
Blockades and checkpoints have proved crucial throughout
history. Consider one of the most dramatic examples of modern
naval warfare: Trafalgar.
Outnumbered and outgunned, Lord Nelson's British fleet
kept careful watch over Napoleon's marshalling of French and
Spanish vessels. Nelson understoof the value of biding his
time, and did so for months, until, on the 21st of October
1805, he engaged the enemy in waters near Gibraltar, offshore
from Cape Trafalgar. In little more than four hours,
two-thirds of Napoleon's fleet was destroyed or captured,
while Nelson, although fatally wounded during the battle, did
not lose a single ship. The course of history was from that
moment changed: Napoleon ceased to be able to threaten an
invasion of England, and his ambitions were confined to the
European continent.
What makes Nelson's accomplishment all the more remarkable
is that Nelson spent a full two years setting up his naval
trap. During that time, squadrons composed of ships from the
British fleet hugged the enemy coastline, alert for any enemy
movement into or out of harbors. The startegy effectively
prevented Napoleon from assembling a large invasion fleet.
The wise leader of a civilization understands the value of
catching the enemy at sea - and destroying him there. Be
patient, and let the enemy make the first move.
-------------------------------------------------------------
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Strategically, of course, the advantages are obvious. You know
where at least part of the other civilization's seafaring capacity
lies. That knowledge can prove crucial to your plan of conquest.
If you can support sufficent ships, it's worth trying to blockade
the enemy ports. Keep your adversary's vessels pinned at home and
you'll win an important advatage when the time comes to mount an
amphibious assault and lay siege to their lands. You can also
interdict their own shipping before it has a chance to get too far
from home.
Position a ship a square or two back from the port. Place the ship
on sentry duty and wait for ships emerging from port.
Bear in mind, if your sentry ship lies "at anchor" touching the
shoreline, that enemy land units passing by your position will also
wake up your ships, letting the enemy know you're there. There's
little to be done about this; it comes with the territory.
A succesful blockade generally requires two ships per enemy port -
this is expensive, and will put pressure on your own home bases. The
expense is worth it if you can halt the enemy's own plans for offshore
expansion. The advantage of having two ships bracketing the enemy port
is the backup it offers. Not every ship-to-ship battle will go well
for you. Should you lose your initial vessel, your backup ship can
endeavor to track down the enemy craft and sink it. (You'll have to
wake up the other ship manually, unless the enemy comes in contact
with it. Don't put this off, lest you forget and your movement turn
comes to close while your sentry ship remains somnolent.)
When you make that initial contact and your primary vessel returns
to duty, the best approach is to go ahead and "awaken" your backup
craft. That way, should you lose the first ship, your next unit will
be awake and ready for action. You won't have to cycle back through
the map to awaken the other ship.
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DIPLOMATIC CARGO
As you locate other civilizations, think about how you will approach
making war on them. Effective thinking requires accurate information,
and the unit best equipped to give you information is the diplomat.
But there is more to using your diplomat units than just establishing
embassies. Indeed, the diplomat can be the most effective of all your
units for laying the groundwork for a successful invasion or siege.
For that reason, it's wise to include a couple of diplomat units
on each vessel you send out. (If dispatching triremes, two units will
be all each ship can carry.) Debark the diplomats before putting the
ship in position to establish blockade: There's no point in risking
your diplomats to the dangers of sea battle or having them lie idle
during the turns when the ship is simply on sentry duty.
When a diplomat units comes into contact with an enemy city, your
first move should be to establish and embassy. Your embassy will
generate information about the enemy for as long as the embassy
exists. After that, each subsequent diplomatic contact offers you
several choices.
As we've seen, any unit touching an enemy city gives you a picture
of that city's numerical strength. But only a diplomat can breach the
city's barriers and deliver a picture of the city's particulars -
defense, inhabitants, structures. This sort of information is beyond
price whne planning a campaign or laying siege. Choose Investigate
City from your diplomat's menu to take advantage of this capability.
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Sometimes your opponents will be more technoligically advanced
than you. You'll know this from your initial embassy reports and from
subsequent missives sent back from your embassies. Again, your
diplomats can prove invaluable. By learning which technologies and
advances your enemy possesses, you can, if need be, reshape your own
intellectual pursuits in hopes of catching up or exceeding their
abilities.
You can also seek to exchange technology with other tribes,
although you'll be surrendering some of your own hard-won knowledge in
exchange for theirs.
But there's another option. Your diplomats can steal technology
from your opponents. This is a risky maneuver, involving the gaining
of clandestine passage through enemy lines and penetrating an enemy
city. The risks may be worth it if you gather the knowledge you need,
and can put it to work at the construction of units that will be a
battlefield match for the enemy.
You can steal technology from allies as well, although you should
be aware that this constitues an act of war, cancelling your treaties.
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-------------------------------------------
CIVILIZATION KEY
Get an idea of the enemy's technology level
before making war. To do this, you'll need
to establish an embassy in an enemy city.
If the enemy is more technologically
advanced that you, you might consider
postponing your aggression until you are
more evenly matched.
Catch up with the enemy in the
technology race through one of four ways:
1. Underatke concentrated research
efforts, building libraries and
universities in your cities if you
are able, and devoting a larger
portion of your revenues to
scientific research.
2. Exchange technologies with friendly
civilizations.
3. Build the Great Library Wonder; any
time two other civilizations obtain
the same advance, it becomes yours
as well.
4. Steal the technology by way of
diplomat units.
-------------------------------------------
In addition to stealing information, diplomats can assume the role
of saboteur, aiming their efforts at units.
Finally, your diplomats can sow dissent among the enemy
population, causing productivity to decline and unhappiness to
increase. This "psychological" warfare can be an effective tool when
used against a government whose hold over its people is already shaky.
Use yoru diplomats wisely, but don't be overcautious. You are
amking war, and there will come - all too quickly! - a time when
cloak-and-dagger missions are not enough. There will come
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a time when you must commit your military forces to assault and siege.
THE WAR BEGINS
You know ehere the enemy is. His front line sare half a dozen sqaures
removed from yours; you share a continent. You have established an
embassy which gives you the big picture. Advance spies - diplomat
units visiting each of the enemy's major cities - have let you know
which cities are best and least defended. It's time to launch your
campiagn...
There's little to compare with the anticipation that preceeds the
laucnh of an invasion. Don't let your excitement get the better of
you: Successful invasions are most easily accomplished when they rest
upon a foundation of thorough preparation and planning.
It may be that the early stages of your invasion go smoothly. This
is likeliest to happen when you strike quickly, on more than one
front, with units that are stronger than the enemy and which are
gathered in greater numbers.
Even if you possess overwhelming superiority, there are some
general principles to bear in mind.
Try not to stack attacking units. Doing so simply gives the enemy
the opportunity to dispose of two or more of your pieces at a single
blow. Even the largest of armies cannor long afford to support this
sort of profligate waste of manpower and material. Be on guard for
terrain that forces you to stack units. The natural "funnels" serve to
create "killing field" in which your troops can easily be mowed down.
Bear in mind that you don't have to attack every enemy unit on the
continent. Especially if you have struck a treat with another
civilization, there is the possibility that your adversary will have
erected picket and sentry lines to mark the border between your
territory and his. If you can go around these pickets, you stand a
chance to delivering a larger force to the enemy city intact;
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when you capture the pickets' home city, those units will be dibanded
for lack of support and will disappear from teh screen.
Use all the reosurces you have at hand. Even though you have a
direct land route into enemy territory, it may be advisable to send
some of your invading force by sea. That way you can circumvent enemy
lines, perhaps capturing a powerful city deep in enemy country. From
that position, you might well be able to split the enemy, producing
new units with which to solidify your holdings and expand them
You can also acquire advances by way of conquering enemy cities.
Consider as well, if geography cooperates, the possibility of striking
an early blow at the enemy capitol. By taking the capitol, you have
the possibility of creating a civil war amongst the enemy population.
You can then strike an alliance with one group while keeping military
pressure on the other.
LAYING SIEGE
Whichever approach you undertake - direct asault through the perimeter
of enemy territory, or deep penetartion into his heartland - you will
eventually face the need to lay siege to an enemy city. Recall that
one truism of militray history is that sieges are often as harsh an
experience for the attacker as for the besieged.
Study the city you wish to assault. What are its fortifications?
Does it boast city walls? How substantial is the garrison inside the
city? What are your best approaches to its attack?
Look as well at how the enemy has exploited the land and resources
surronding the city. You might wish to consider a "scorched-earth"
policy aimed at depriving the city's citizenry of food and income. You
can do this by destroying any terrain improvements on which your
military units are located. The downside of this approach is obvious:
Once the city becomes yours, you'll have to assign a settler unit to
rebuild the farms and mines you obliterated.
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(Settler units should be part of the assault force anyway. They
serve the purpose of engineers during your campaign, building roads,
field fortifications where necessary, and, of course, increasing the
productivity of captured metropolises. Be sure that you keep the
settlers to the rear of your adavncing columns, away from lines of
battle. Move them up only as you secure the territory they will
occupy.)
The natures of teh city defenses will affcet units you use in your
assault. If the city has walls, you are safest making an asault with
units of at least catapult level. Legions, chariots, and cavalry units
are less likely to breach the walls with their assault, more likely to
be destroyed in the attempt.
The dilemma with catapults is that, over open terrain, they are
capable of only a single sqiare's movement per turn. This means it
takes longer for the unit to arrive at the front, and that it can only
strike once per turn when in position. (Naturally, catapults - and
their descendants, cannons - can move farther over roadways. You won't
always, in early wars, have roadways at your disposal.)
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For these reasons, move your artillery in clusters, being careful
not to stack them if you can avoid it. With more than one catapult at
your disposal you'll be able to position your assault artillery on
more than one side of the besieged city, hammering the target at least
twice (unless your unit is unsucceddful) a turn. The more often you
can strike, the more quickly the siege is likely to be resolved in
your favor.
Keeping reinforcements moving toward the front. No matter how
carefully a campaign is planned, there will come a time whne you need
fresh units. A constant stream of new troops and equipment helps
ensure that your campaign achieves its goal.
When the city falls, don't be too quick to press your advantage
and push on into enemy territory. The captured city must be held, its
infrastructure repaired, its garrison replenished with your own
forces. Reassign any occupying troops to the new city, and give some
thought to building a temple or other civic improvement for the city's
inhabitants. After all, they've just come through a long siege, and
are not predisposed toward showing you a lot of support. You can win
their favor, and turn their productivity to your own ends, gving you a
source for new units that's located close to the front. Only when the
city is wholly secured - at least two fortified units in place -
should you move on.
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THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
Technology shaped the nature and evolution of siege
warfare, just as it shaped all other aspects of war.
The development of fortifications - represented in
the game by masonry and city walls - had to be countered
technologically. Walls called for artillery.
The earliest forms of artillery were catapults, a
technology which evolved over centuries, until gunpowder
displaced tension and gravity as the best means for
dispatching projectiles.
Descendants of the catapult include the Roman
mangonel, which could hurl stones weighing hundreds of
pounds. (The Romans, by the way, used woven human hair
as the cord which ws drawn tight by a winch, creating
the tension which, when released, hurled the stone.)
The balista was a sort of giant crossbow, and could
fire either stones or pointed projectiles, such as
javelins.
The trebuchet was capable of lobbing large projectiles
over tall walls.
Catapults and their kin were used to hurl more than
projectiles. Chemical weapons including "Greek fire" -
a combination of sulfur, pitch, and petroleum - served
as early precursors of napalm, and could be
discharged by some artillery. There are even instances
of catapults being used to heave dead - and, sometimes,
plauge-infested - bodies over enemy walls.
Although you don't have chemical weapons at your
disposal in the game, you should use artillery of
whatever level you can produce, when laying siege to
enemy cities and fortifications.
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In Sid Meier's Civilization, logistics are almost everything.
Lines of supply and reinforcement can in Civilization become as vital
as in the real world. It's a good idea to use a band of settlers to
build roadways from yoru cities to the front. This will greatly
increase your ability to move up fresh troops rapidly. Railroads, if
you possess the technology, are even better.
At some point, as your supply lines stretch out, order your
settlers to construct a new city. There are several advatanges to
this - you can generate new units much closer to the lines of combat;
you can fortify the city, giving you a solid base close to enemy
territory; and you can reassign forward troops to the new community,
easing the productive pressure on your central cities.
As you move across the continent, continue to extend defensive, as
well as offensive lines, placing more primitive units on picket or
sentry duty. Your enemies are crafty and may well try to sneak
diplomats of their own into yoru cities where they will wreak the same
type of mischief and intellectual theievry you committed against them.
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CIVILIZATION KEY
Don't be afraid to take a breather during a long campaign or
war. You can go too far - exhausting your resources and your
people's willingness to fight, falling short of your goal of
absolute victory.
From time to time your enemies will offer to make peace
with you. If need be, accept the treaty and use the time
you're buying to rebuild your combat forces, replenish your
treasury, increase the public's morale and support for your
undertaking. You can always break the treaty later...if
you're that kind of leader.
Seriously, if you do take a respite from combat, be sure
to extend your information-gathering resources to their
fullest capabilities. Place ships on sentry outside enemy
harbors. Post pickets and sentries along land borders. have
diplomats ready to undertake spy and sabotage missions as
soon as hostilities are resumed.
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Gradually, as you consolidate your hold on the island or
continent, you can decide whether to fully obliterate the enemy or
allow him to keep a couple of cities alive for your use as trading
partners.
Suppose, though, the enemy is not on the same landmass as you.
Your job becomes much more complicated. You have to move your forces
across water and land on enemy shores.
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AMPHIBIOUS INVASIONS
The first step in a successful campaign of amphibious invasion and
conquest lies in logistics. Know where you're going, the shortest and
safest route to get there, and how many units you'll need to wage a
winning war, and how many ships you'll need to carry them. It doesn't
sound easy, and it's not as easy as it sounds.
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THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
The largest amphibious assault in history took place on June
6, 1944 when Allied forces invaded continental Europe in order
to to disloadge the Nazi conqueres. To do so, the Allies
amassed an armada consisting of more than 4,000 transport
vessels, more than 6,000 warcraft, a landing force in excess
of 175,000, as well as thousands ofaircraft flying support
missions.
Despite the huge number, the invasion force was for a
time held essentially stationary on its beachhead, pinned
down by well-entrenched Axis forces. Strength of numbers,
aided by constantly arriving reinforcements and material,
enabled the Allies to accomplish what neither Napoleon
nor Hitler were able to: mount a successful invasion across
the English Channel.
When planning an invasion, make sure, at all costs, that
you can seize - and hold - a beachhead. And be just as sure
that you'll be able to deliver additional forces to the
beachhead as soon as possible.
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Having located an enemy island or continent, your first step is to
examine its location relative to your home. Scroll around the screen,
following the route your ship took on its voyage of exploration. Learn
how many turns the voyage will take. Look to see if there are areas on
your home island or continent which lie closer to the enemy than to
your starting point. If so, put units in motion to
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establish cities and production in those areas. You'll appreaciate the
proximity once warfare has begun. Look for islands close to the enemy
homeland and establish cities there. Anything you can do to cut the
amount of time required to move additional forces to the front will
serve the cause of your campaign.
Do what you can as well to keep the enemy from discovering the
location of your forward bases. Here's another opportunity for
blockades and the sealing of chokepoints: Keep the other guy pinned
down while you establish your line of supply and mass your forces for
the invasion.
You might find it advantageous to strike at least a temporary
treaty with the civilization you plan to invade. A treaty will give
you the chance to land diplomats or caravans who can prowl around the
interior of the enemy landmass, scoping out defenses and attractive
cities while you prepare the main invasion force.
You'll also want to be on the lookout for landing sites. These are
not necessarily next to enemy cities, although those sites let you
launch immediate attacks on enemy strongholds. Sites next to cities
alos give the enemy the chance to strike a first retaliatory blow
against your landing force: Units which have debarked from ships have
no movement points left, and are vulnerable.
Your best site for an amphibious landing, then, lies a square or
two removed from areas of enemy activity.
Move your landing craft into position carefully. Marshall your
ships' movement points so that they can debark a unit or two, then
move to another location fo further offloading. This helps avoid the
risk of stacking units. Long, deep, natural harbors and fjords are
especially effective landing sites, as you can offload troops in a
variety of spots, even allowing for the limited movement capabilities
possessed by your ships.
(Limited cargo capacity will also hamper your invasion palns.
Triremes, able to carry only two units, make lousy invasion craft.
Sailing ships are only slightly better. The best craft for mounting
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large invasions are frigates and transports, both of which require
advanced technologies to produce. If triremes are all you've got,
though, they're all you've got: You'll learn, as you play
Civilization, to make do with the equipment you have at hand.)
Remember, too, that your amphibious forces will dwindle during the
invasion. You're going to take casualties, and you're going to have to
replace them.
BEACHHEAD
For that reason, among the first wave of invaders you should include a
band of settlers. With these you can establish a city of your own, on
enemy territory, and use it to produce fresh troops who don't have to
be trasnported. If you locate a city right at the front, you'll need
plenty of troops to defend it from what might be a pretty vigorous
enemy response.
better still, for this reason, is the "stealth" approach. As you
discover the enemy civilization's location, seek as well to discover
unexplored territory beyond their immediate frontiers. The presence of
serendipity squares is a pretty good indication that the enemy has not
yet explored the territory in question. Get a city established on that
territory as quickly as you can! That city will then serve as your
forward outpost, and can be especially effective as both a breeding
spot for diplomats and a staging area for a large-scale campaign.
The most effective - or at least most efficient - way to establish
such a forward base is to launch your campaign with sufficent funds in
the treasury to enable you to buy those infrastructure items you'll
need most quickly: a barracks for production of veteran units, a
granary for food storage, and another band of settlers to make the
city more efficient and productive. that's a fair piece of change, but
if you can't afford to make war, maybe you shouldn't.
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Don't neglect to build additional cities in enemy territory as
soon as you are able. They further increase your productivity - and
the odds in your favor - as well as giving you the tools to create
infrastructure to support movement of your military units.
Neither should you overlook the fact that, with a lone outpost on
an enemy continent or island, you are, for several turns at least,
returned to defsnive mode. Your priority should be fortification and
protection of your outpost. To that end, post pickets as close to the
enemy lines as you can without too quickly incurring an attack from
them.
If there is an isthmus between your outpost and the enemy's lines,
you might consider placing a ship at sentry there. The ship will
afford you the same knowledge of approaching enemy units without
placing any of your ground-based invasion units at immediate risk.
Should you have the time and resources, place a city on the
isthmus at its narrowest point. Garrisoned with defensive and
offensive troops, equipped with a barracks and city walls, the
fortified city should stop all but the most determined or overwhelming
enemy asaults. (It will also serve as a canal zone through which your
seafaring craft can travel from one side of the isthmus to the other,
cutting long distances from their journeys.)
As your bases become well-established, and you capture enemy
cities and make their resources your own, your amphibious asault will
eveolve into a ground-based campaign. Your ships will be free to
search for other landmasses and other civilizations to attack.
But there's more to civilizations - not to mention the game of
Civilization - than making war. As we'll see in the next chapter, even
a successful warlike civilization must attend to its domestic
devlopment - and that means establishing and nurturing its cities,
striking a balance between military and civilian needs.
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CHAPTER 7
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CULTURAL CONSIDERATIONS
What distinguishes Sid Meier's Civilization from all the other
interactive entertainments I've seen is the unrelenting emphasis the
game places on culture and cultural questions. Culture is the sum of a
civilization's parts. More tahn that, a culture consists of and is
defined by the ways in which those parts combine to create something
that is truly more than just a simple sum. The great cultural critic
Jacques Barzun has pointed out that the essence of culture is
interpenetration, that process of societal osmosis whereby art feeds
science, technology serves politics, and so on.
In Meier and Shelley's game, interpenetration also plays a role.
Each cultural advance or achievement introduced into the game lays the
foundation for another, but alos increases your abilities and
capacities in existsing areas. Coordinating the intersection of ideas
and goals is your job, and it should be taken seriously/ Get to know
the Civilization Advances chart in the game's manual, learning the
relationships Meier and Shelley establish among ideas and groups of
ideas. these do not necessarily coincide with true
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historical relationships, but do make sense within the context of the
game itself. More important, the relationship of ideas and advances
within the game is crucial to winning the game. You have to shed some
preconceptions in order to follow the game's flow.
As we'll see during the course of this cahpter, the nature of your
culture plays a large part in determining the nature of the game you
find yourself playing. There are steps you can take which help control
and direct your culture's evolution, but there are also limitations of
time and resources placed on you as a civilization leader.
Massaging those limitations to your best advantage - managing, in
other words, the nature of your cultural interpenetrations - is among
the largest and most engaging challenges contained in Sid Meier's
Civilization.
PRIMITIVE CULTURE
The words primitive culture, in fact, reflect our own biases: Many
early cultures displayed quite impressive levels of sophistication. So
it is in Civilization, as well.
During your first millennia or so of play, depending upon the
level at which you're playing, your cultural opportunities are
relatively limited. We've seen in previous chapters the necessity of
investing a major portion of your early cultural devlopment energies
in advances that offer immediate benefits to your cities' security and
productivity. At higher levels of challenges, your options will be
further limited by the increased amount of time it takes to chaieve an
advance, as well as by the more limited number of opening choices for
advancement.
Accepting, then, that you must possess metalworking skills in
order to build a strong defensive or offensive force, as well as
pottery in order to be able to gain and encourage city growth, is
there a single cultural advance whose value outweighs all others
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and whose devlopment is fundamental to all aspects of your
civilization? In fact, there is.
The answer, in the game as in human history, is the same: writing.
It was writing, devloped by the Sumerians about 3000 B.C., that
enabled the true long-term growth of society. Only by freeing memory
from the limitations of oral culture and its reliance upon the passing
down of information from one individual to another could large-scale
undertakings be pursued.
There is a ckicken-and-egg aspect to the debate over the
devlopment of writing. As agricultural endeavors became more and more
elaborate, with irrigation works constrcuted over years and decades,
the keeping of records became more complex.
Irrigation itself first came into use about 7000 B.C. in the
valley of the Tigris-Euphrates rivers. So about four milenia of
agricultural progress, however fitful, throughout the near- and
middle-Eastern regions, had elapsed before writing came into use.
Those 4000 years had resulted in a mass of information and records far
too large to be stored in an individual's memory. Necessity, some
istorians say, gave birth to writing. (Conversely, there are scholars
who argue that the devlopment of writing enabled the creation of more
complex irrigation systems.) Either way, some mechanism was required
for preserving the information obtained each season. That mechanism
was writing, the transformation of oral information into symbols.
Writing is memory made tangible. More than that, writing made possible
the easy transport of large amounts of information over long distance,
as well as the concentration of large amounts of disparate information
in centralized locations.
These accomplishments are reflected in Sid Meier's Civilization,
to your great benefit as the leader of a growing empire. The symbolic
nature of writing is represented in the game by the devlopment of the
alphabet, which must precede the development of writing itself. (The
alphabet also underlies mapmaking and the
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development of a code of laws, two other historical accomplishments
impossible to conceive without some symbolic and compact means of
recording, preserving, and distributing information.)
On the international front, writing makes possible the immediate
production of diplomat units whose special capacities we've already
explored. In your cities, writing enables the construction of library
improvements, which increases the city's production of knowledge by 50
percent - hastening your civilization's development of new ideas and
advances. Build libraries in every city that can support them, bearing
in mind that each library costs one monetary unit per turn for
maintenance, a small price in light of the intellectual capital the
library generates.
Writing is one of those gifts that keeps on giving, and the best
way for you to take full advantage of writing's potential is to pass
the gift on to all of your citizens. Literacy, which in Sid Meier's
Civilization is a direct lineal descendant of the development of
writing, lifts your civilization's intellectual potential a further
notch, making possible the greatest of all the ancient Wonders of the
World: The Great Library.
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THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
The portability and durability of writing as a means of
storing and transmitting information resulted in the first
vast strorehouse of human knowledge: The Great Library
of Alexandria, one of the crowning cultural
achievements of Ptolemaic Egypt.
Built around 250 B.C., the Library's collection
eventually numbered hundreds of thousands of scrolls, with
some estimates placing the collection as high as three
quarters of a million "volumes." Nor were these
exclusively Egyptian: The Library housed papyrus from
throughout the known world, a true example of cultural
interpenetration in action. (For that matter, the
Ptolemies were not Egyptian either, but Macedonian. Such
is the nature of cultural interpenetration.) Alexandria,
not least because of the Library, was for centuries the
greatest of all cities, and the true capitol of the
world's intellectual and artistic activities.
The Ptolemies were devoted to learning, and their
devlotion - along with resources such as the Library -
attracted and nurtured the world's finest scholars.
Euclid formalized many of the principles of geometry
during his time in Alexandria. The astronomer
Aristarchus studied there, daring to suggest that
perhaps our world revolved around the Sun. Erasistratus
made early attempts at systematizing anatomical
knowledge. Eratosthenes, one of the librarians in charge
of the Great Library, ca. 225 B.C., not only assembled a
world map based on knowledge but also derived the globe's
circumference, placing it at 25,000 miles: right on the
money.
Such Wonders cannot last forever. The Library was
destroyed by fire early in the Christian era. Some
attribute its destruction to Julius Caesar's siege of
Alexandria. Whatever the cause, the loss of the Library
was a blow to our understanding of the ancient world that
will never quite be overcome.
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Beyond that, writing offers a couple of other direct descendants,
including philosophy, and the greatest - if most difficult to manage -
of all government forms, democracy.
Develop writing at all costs as early in the game as possible. You
will be tempted, especially if you're located on an island, to pursue
advances with more immediate benefits, such as mapmaking. Don't be too
hasty: Writing is the basis of all modern culture, the foundation from
which all civilization advances flow.
RELIGION REARS ITS HEAD
Consider the brilliant central metaphor established with Sid Meier's
Civilization's very first screen: a world of darkness with only the
immediate local neighborhood known to you. Everything else is hidden,
mysterious, even forbidding. Press beyond your local enviornment and
you might discover wealth and opportunity - or enemies more powerful
than yourself. Dispatch sailing vessels into the unknown seas, and
they might never return. Gaze
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up at the sky and wonder what powers dwell there among the myriad tiny
points of light.
The metaphor of the darkened screen is an excellent one,
duplicating for the player some of the mystery of the world and the
cosmos that must have been felt by our own early ancestors. As the
leader of your civilization, you have some options for allaying your
population's fear of the unknown. As in true history, among the most
powerful tools at your disposal is the invention and devlopment of
religion and religion's appurtenances.
While the initial - and, in some ways, primary - benefit of
religion to your civilization is the effect it exerts on your
population, raising the citizens' level of satisfaction, do not
underestimate its pragmatic benefits. After the first two purely
spiritual advances - ceremonial burial and mysticism - direct progress
leads to astronomy, after which navigation, physics, steam engines,
electricity, and even computers flow.
Just as pragmatic but not as blatant are the effects of religion
on yoru government. Build temples and, later, cathedrals for your
people, and the task of managing them becomes simpler. You are
attending to their spiritual needs, which makes them more docile; if
yu look at it cynically, they become more energetic and at ease if you
take a more benign view of religion. The opiate of the people,
religion has been called, and its effects are certainly
well-represented in Sid Meier's Civilization.
(Ironically enough, in the context of the game, religion itself as
a discrete advance descends from the alphabet and writing rather than
mysticism and ceremonial burial. This may have as much to do with
constraints imposed by designing a playable game as with history
itself, although a case can be made for organized religion resting on
the development of written symbols. Certainly large-scale religious
organizations understood the power of writing - and thus endeavored to
keep that power for themselves.)
Religion's power within your cities is greatly extended by the
construction of religious institutions. Ceremonial burial, the first
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spiritual advance to your ancient civilization, gives you the ability
to build a temple in every city. Do so. Temples offer a solid
foundation for a happy populace at a relatively low price.
Additionally, the presence of a temple can stave off natural
disaster in the form of volcanoes that threaten your cities on a
random basis. While historically this makes little sense - ask the
temple-goers of Pompeii or Thera - it's a nice touch in the game.
Study the Civilization Advances chart in the game manual of you
want further evidence of the impact of early and subsequent spiritual
advances on your electronic civilization.
Once you've established a religious presence in your cities by
building a temple or cathedral, you have to maintain them. This can be
fairly expensive over the breadth of a large civilization, nor are
these easily sold items should your financial straits grow dire. While
you can generate some quick cash by selling your religious buildings,
your people will very quickly let you know what they think of this
strategy.
Finally, bear in mind that religion is best served by huge central
structures and institutions that give far-flung followers a focus for
their beliefs. Build religious Wonders of the World if you are able
to. Their benefits spread across whole continents and, although
intangible, are hardly insubstantial.
ARTS AND SCIENCES
The relationship between art and science has been the focus of much
thought during our century. C.P. Snow, perhaps most dramatically,
illuminated the dilemma in a short book whose title alone speaks
volumes: The Two Cultures.
In Sid Meier's Civilization, the two cultures are directly
related, although here, too, especially at the later stages of the
game, pure art and aesthetics tend to take second place to the
acceleration of advances in science and technology. This can be
problematic, to say the least. Purely aesthetic and spiritual ad-
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vances, improvements, and Wonders of the World keep your people
content and boost their loyalty and productivity, but may do little to
protect you from voracious enemies. Scientific and technological
advances, improvements, and Wonders of the World are vital to military
success and security, but may ultimately cause large-scale
enviornmental devastation that exerts a serious negative effect on
your overall score.
The trick, once again, is to strike a balance between the two.
Doing so places upon you the dual burdens of long-term thinking and
short-term economics. Cultural advances and improvements cost money,
both to create or construct, and also to maintain. You must be guided
in yoru decisions by what you can afford, as well as by what you want
to achieve.
There's also the pressure of time. As you pass the midpoint of the
game - ca. 1000 A.D. - the effects of your culture on the world begin
to be felt more dramatically. You are approaching the rewards and
dilemmas of industrial life, and that approach is further complicated
by increasing population pressures. Your enemies have grown stronger
and their numbers have likely increased along with your own. The
temptation, faced with the threats from outside, may be to focus your
energies and resources on purely scientific and technological
advances, deferring until better times the devlopment of artistic
wonders and technologies that exert a more benign impact on the world.
Making this decision leave you more vulnerable to social unrest
and enviornmental collapse. Your civilization becomes one-sided,
out-of-balance. Think of your civilization as a living thing, standing
astride the world. It's hard to stand for long on a single leg.
Eventually you topple. No matter how difficult it may seem, from turn
to turn, you must attend to both sides of yoru culture, both aspects
of your civilization if you have hopes of it standing tall, and
standing for long periods of time.
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CULTURAL IMPROVEMENTS AND WONDERS
Keep an eye on your cities. Each will, at times, require the
construction of a cultural improvement or Wonder of the World, but
each will also at times offer better conditions for undertaking that
construction.
Pay close attention to the cost of improvements. Costs go up and
down with the city's fortunes, or, rather, the time required to
complete the construction of an improvement may rise or fall with the
city's economic fortunes. As your treasury grows, there may be times
at which it makes both practical and economic sense to purchase a city
improvement rather than waiting for its turn-by-turn construction.
Monitor the "happy" window in your city's screen to get a good
index of your citizens' mood. This information can guide you in your
selection of which improvements to purchase. There will be times
during the game when you have little choice but to invest, perhaps
heavily, in "bread and circuses": improvements such as coliseums that
serve to allay public dissatisfaction.
Choose a good mix of cultural improvements for each city, bearing
in mind that these structures and institutions carry a maintenance
charge each turn. Pick those improvements that will lend the greaest
benefit to the city in question.
While temples, coliseums, and cathedrals lend immediate benefit to
your population, attending as they do to spiritual and leisyre needs,
don't neglect the more purely intellectual side of your culture.
Libraries and universities do little to enhance the public mood, but
they do exert a great and long-term effect on your civilization's
ability to produce new ideas and achieve Civlization Advances. Pick at
least a few cities and make them seats of great learning, perhaps even
shifting a citizen or two to intellectual work as an "Einstein."
You should also weigh the advantages of building cultural as well
as political and technological Wonders of the World. In fact,
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of the 21 Wonders of the World in the game, fully a third are purely
cultural in that their nature relates to ideas, art, or religion
rather than industry, economics, or warfare. These Wonders not only
boost your overall civilization score, but also lend strength and
suppleness to the cultural backbone of your civilization.
BUYING AND TRADING CULTURE
Interpenetration, as Barzun pointed out, is not simply the essence of
one culture; it's also the long-term consequence of contact with other
civilizations. In the game of Civilization, those consequences are
made available more quickly. When you acquire a piece of culture from
another civilization, its benefits spread immediately throughout your
own.
Cultural exchange in its most common form in the game occurs when
you make contact with representatives of other civilizations. You may
be offered the opportunity to exchange knowledge. The other
civilization will inform you of the advance in your possession that
they want, and you will be able to accept or decline the offer. If you
accept, you may choose from their roster of advances. (If you refuse,
you may find yourself at war.)
Here again, information is paramount. If you have established an
embassy inside the other civilization, you will already have a working
knowledge of which advances that civilization possesses. Stufy their
current request carefully. If they are seeking to obtain one of your
key technologies, one of the advances that has given you the upper
hand in yoru relationship with them, think twice about agreeing to the
exchange.
On the other hand, it may be that they seek an advance which has
only limited immediate use as a tool of aggression against you, in
which case it may be worthwhile for you to proceed with the exchange.
You may come out with the best end of the deal.
Perhaps the best situation occurs when a weaker state whose
borders you have carefully proscribed achieves advances that you don't
yet possess. Because the other civilization is substantially and
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probably permanently smaller than yours, you can feel freer about
giving them advanced technologies in exchange for knowledge you do not
yet possess. The advantage here is virtually all yours.
(This, by the way, is another good argument completely
overwhelming other cultures unless you're going for a quick total
victory. Keep an especially close eye out for enemy cities possessing
lareg intellectual resources such as universities. Their geenration of
knowledge may be faster than yours. If you're stronger, simply
encircle the other city and either exchange knowledge with its leader
if offered or use diplomats to steal the advances as they become
available. Manage this aspect of yoru world right and you can leap up
the cultural scale far more quickly than with your civilization's wise
people serving as your only source of ideas.)
Some enemies make cultural contact a one-way street, always asking
for advances, never offering any in return. In fact, what's generally
being offered in return is your life, or at least a delay in the
bully-state's warmaking efforts against you, so you may have no choice
but to give away your hard-won advances. (Remember, though, that some
of these recidivist states will seek only war no matter how hopeless
their cause. Make sure the enemy really is overwhelmingly stronger
than you before you accede to their wishes.)
Finally, you can acquire culture from other civilizations by
capturing their cities. This fact reinforces the need for solid,
constant information-gathering throughout the world. Especially as the
game moves into its final centuries and the race into space is
undertaken, you need to know who else knows what. that way you can
target specific civilizations for attack and the capture or theft of
idead and advances crucial to your victory.
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DOING WITHOUT
Don't.
It is certainly possible to pursue noncultural (in the higher
sense of the word culture) advances during a session of playing Sid
Meier's Civilization. You could, for example, follow a course leading
from an ancient foundation of metalworking and use of construction
materials through pure building and manufacturing technologies to high
science. You can do without ever building a cathedral or university.
You cannot, I think, do so as a highly advanced level of
government or with large-scale popular support. Only a despot can
effectively deny his people their religious and aesthetic due, and
despotism is the least efficent means of government in the game.
Besides, Sid Meier's Civilization is a game with more than a few
messages at its heart. Among them is the important and obvious lesson
that history rests on more than the drama of military conquest and
brute industrial force. these may be the items that make the most
commanding entertainments and diversions, but the history of ideas is
even more vital, even more entertaining if you take the trouble to
look, even more rewarding if you're playing the game in pursuit of a
high score rather than a high kill ration.
Invest in your culture, nurture your citizens' souls. You'll be
glad you did.
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CHAPTER 8
---------
QUESTIONS OF BALANCE: COMMERCE AND GOVERNMENT
In a sense, every aspect of the games rests upon economic and
governmental principles. Your productivity, whether for overtly
militaristic or altruistically domestic ends, is determined by the
economic structure and capacity of your civilization. The amount of
income you devote to scientific research, governmental revenue in the
form of taxation, and luxury income distributed to your people affects
the speed with which your civilization develops or declines.
The nature of your government plays a huge part in determining the
level of popular support you enjoy, the degree to which your people
support your policies and are willing to produce the goods and
institutions necessary to see your policies through.
The two go hand in hand, although economic decisions must be made
virtually every turn, whereas alterations in your form of government
occur much more rarely. Governmental decisions, if
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you will, are macro-decisions, large moves affecting the big picture.
Your economic decisions and manipulations represent the
"micro-management" aspects of the game, lots of small questions that
must be answered, closeup details to which you must attend, careful
adjustments that must be made with some constancy and consistency.
TO MARKET, TO MARKET
At the heart of each of the economic operations contained within Sid
Meier's Civilization is the idea of currency and the locales in which
it is used: the marketplace and, later, the bank.
The marketplace is among the earliest of the city improvements
directly related to your economy, and should be introduced into each
of your cities as early as possible. Doing so boosts both tax and
luxury revenue by half, and can go a long way toward putting a city on
sound economic footing.
The introduction of a marketplace may also introduce you to the
challenges of maintaining a strong city economy. If, as is sound
strategic policy, you build a marketplace only after your granary and
barracks improvements, you will begin to encounter the speed with
which the cost of maintaining city structures accrues. The barracks
and granary cost one monetary unit per turn to maintain, as does the
marketplace. (Subsequent barracks improvements, required as military
technology climbs the civilization advance ladder, cost two units per
turn for maintenance.)
While the marketplace increases your income levels, it also
increases your levels of expenditures. Add a temple to increase the
domestic tranquility, and you've added another unit per turn in cost.
Dispatch certain units to remote locations and, again, you incur costs
that must be paid each turn. Your overhead can quickly reach five or
six units per turn, or higher.
This may not seem like a lot of money, yet. Because you are
introducing the marketplace early in the game, you'll want to be
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certain that the city can afford its maintenance. It may be wiser,
upon consideration of the city's productive capacity, to invest first
in an additional settler unit to further increase the exploitation and
productive capacity of local resources, only then adding the
marketplace and other improvements. Careful examination of each city's
surronding terrain, as well as its income levels and resources, will
help you make the right decisions, and time those decisions properly,
ona city-by-city basis.
MANAGING THE LABOR FORCE
Sid Meier's Civilization automatically assigns your citizens to tasks
in the countryside surronding each city. Some are farmers, others work
at mines, some tend to industrial production. The default assignments
are generally sufficent to see to teh city's needs, but may not be the
most productive arrangement of your labor force. Additionally, there
may be times when you need to boost productivity and income for a turn
or two, and are willing to do so as the expense of, for example, food
production.
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At such times you can take a direct hand in the job assignments of
your laborers, choosing exactly which terrain squares are under
development and production, and which are not. As you move your force
around, keep a close eye on income levels as well as food production.
Food production is especially important, and especially
vulnerable. The presence of a granary makes it possible for you to
build up a surplus of foodstores with which to feed your population.
The surplus in turn enables you to feed your citizens from the granary
rather than the fields, should you wish to shift the balance of
production to your mines, say, for a turn or two, in oredr to increase
cash revenues needed to complete construction of an improvement,
Wonder of the World, or military unit.
This is a very risky approach! Your granary's resources can be
depleted more quickly than you might expect, particularly by the
population of a vibrant and growing city. For all that the increase in
revenue from mineral resources may help you temporarily, that help may
be more than mitigated, though, if you deplete your granary reserves
and subject your population to the devastation of a famine. Not only
do you lose population, which must be slowly rebuilt, you also risk
losing the confidence of your people (rightly so!) and throwing the
city into disorder. Drain your food reserves at your own peril.
TAXMAN
In addition to shifting workers among the city's customary productive
tasks, you can also remove workers from traditional productive
pursuits altogether, creating specialist citizens who apply their
energies to specific and, at times, vital tasks within the city's
economy.
Natable among these is the tax collector. This bureaucrat sees to
it that a higher percentage of your trade income is collected in the
form of taxation revenues. These monies are required to pay
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the maintenance costs of your improvements, as well as accruing toward
the purchase of new improvements, Wonders of the World, and additional
units.
You can adjust the balance of revenues for your entire
civilization, increasing or decreasing the amount of revenue applied
to taxes and scientific research. Experimentation with these
adjustments, tempered by careful monitoring of your population's
attitudes toward the tax rates, will help you find those rates most
effective for your goals.
But you can also boost the tax revenues from particular cities by
taking a square out of production and assigning its citizens to tax
collection. Doing so has the benefit of boosting the amount of money
at your disposal for construction projects, but carries the drawback
of loss of production from the terrain square in question. As we saw
above, that loss of production, if the sqaure was a food-producing
one, can result in dire consequences for your citues.
In Civilization, as in the real world, nobody really likes the
taxman - but you may find that he is just as necessary.
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LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU
Luxuries leaven the world's weight for your citizens, making them more
willing to put up with the travails of life in your civilization.
Luxury income is created by trade or by creating specialist citizens
whose job it is to entertain your people. The symbol for these
entertainment specialists bears a certain resembalance to a famous
entertainer, believed to have died years ago, but actually living in
secret in a variety of places throughout our world or on other
planets.
Seriously, entertainment specialists can provide a quick fix for
certain domestic problems. Luxury income and entertainers offset the
presence of unhappy and discontent citizens in your cities. the most
effective way to overcome the malcontents is by maintaining a solid
level of luxury income, by building and maintaining temples,
cathedrals, and structures such as the coliseum. and by establishing a
benevolent representative government.
You may not, however, have the time or resources to attend to all
of those undertakings. You can remove, in such cases, squares from
devlopment, converting its workers into entertainment specialists
whose presence decreases the amount of discontent in the city.
This should be done only when a city is in disarray, its citizens
unhappy. At such times the city ceases to be a productive institution,
and a quick fix is called for. Entertainment specialists serve the
function of "bread and circuses," distracting the citizens from the
city's more deeply rooted problems.
You must attend to those problems immediately and lay a long-term
foundation for that city's domestic tranquility. Elvis, as it were,
can only do so much - better to move military units, if your
government is of the totalitarian flavor, into the city and impose
"contentment" though martial law, than to lose for too many turns the
productive capacity of the city in order to sustain artificial levels
of luxury through entertainment.
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BRAIN POWER
The thirs - and, in some ways, most effective - specialist citizen at
your disposal is the scientist. Creating a scientist is accomplished
by removing a square from production, but in this case you may want to
consider the specialist a permanent citizen of some cities, rather
than a quick or remporary fix for short-term problems.
The reason for this is the special contribution the scientist
makes o your civilization. His presence boosts the level of scientific
research produced by his city, making a direct contribution to yoru
civilization's pursuit of advances and the rapidity with which those
advances are achieved.
Scientists are most effective when introduced into cities already
possessing large intellectual resources such as libraries and
universities. Because Sid Meier's Civilization is a race for advances,
the contributions of scientific specialists can play a large part in
whether you win the race or fall behind.
As with any specialist citizen, though, you must be certain that
the city in which the specialist lives can endure the loss of
production from the square converted to special purposes.
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TRADE!
The caravan is among my favorite units in Civilization. Its symbol,
the trader mounted on camelback, is inescapably romantic, implying
difficult journeys to distant cities in hopes of delivering valuable -
and profitable - cargo.
There's a pragmatic aspect to the romance. It is through trade
with foreign powers that you achieve greatest income. Properly
established and managed trade routes can become virtual rivers of
currency flowing to your cities, providing the financial basis for
great programs of expansion and devlopment.
There's a dangerous side to trade as well. Your caravans are all
but unprotected, easily destroyed by enemy military units or
barbarians. During times of war, caravans are easy targets for even
the weakest enemy units, yet during wartime your caravans are even
more vital to your civilization. You need the initial cash hit the
establishment of a new trade route supplies, and you will also
appreciate the revenue that route generates each turn.
Because each city can support only three trade routes, it's wise
to spend some time gathering information about those cities which will
make the most profitable trading partners. It's a given that your
trade routes will be more successful if they lead to foreign cities,
and even more successful if those cities are located on other
continents or islands.
Even then, there are further steps you can take to enhance the
value of your trading routes. Send explorers into the dark hearts of
other continents, in search of the largest cities you can find. the
larger the city - the higher the number displayed on its square - the
higher your initial burst of income and the revenues earned during
subsequent turns.
The exploration process and the challenge of getting your caravans
to less accessible but larger cities takes time, but it's worth it.
Sid Meier's Civilization automatically selects the three highest
valued of your trade routes, so there's no chance of your
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supplanting a higher-valued one with a lower. But there is a question
of time involved in establishing more than three routes in order to
get those three worthwhile ones. Again, information is everything.
Take the trouble to do your homework, then try to build no more routes
than are absoltely necessary in order to get three of high value.
You will be tempted as well to use caravans to help build Wonders
of the World. This is worthwhile, as a rule, only if you can build the
caravans quickly in cities that are well furnished with improvements,
which already enjoy successful trading relationships with three
foreign cities, and whose citizens are productive and happy.
Otherwise, the effort invested in producing a caravan unit and moving
it to the city building the Wonder might best be applied to seeking
out more profitable trade destinations overseas. The cash bonus earned
for establishing such a route immediately adds to your treasury,
making it easier for you to hasten completion of the Wonder by buying
it. Caravan contributions to Wonder of the World construction tend to
be minor, although if you can produce a large volume of caravans and
move them constantly to the Wonder site, the situation is improved
somewhat.
TRADERS FROM BEYOND
This is one of the trickiest aspects of Sid Meier's Civilization, and
one aspect over which you have little or no control. Traders from
other civilizations, you see, are invisible within the context of the
game. You don't see them, cannot interdict their progress, nor control
their access to yoru cities.
Yet they are there. You must live with their presence, and do what
you can to mitigate their effect.
How do you combat and unseen army?
One thing you can do is use diplomats to investigate enemy citie
sin search of those that are producing caravan units. When you find
them, use additional diplomats to sabotage production or
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dispatch a military force to conquer the city. This is
time-consuming - it may take far longer to produce and move into place
a diplomat that for the enemy to produce and dispatch its caravans -
but it's about the only way to interdict enemy caravans on land.
Naturally you should seek to sink any enemy ships you encounter:
It might be carrying caravans to your shores. Waging war against enemy
shipping has a direct economic, as well as military, effect on the
enemy civilization.
(Enemy caravans are, by the way, another good argument for
establishing a city on enemy territory as quickly as you can. By
shoring up the city with military units brought from your homeland,
you can apply the city's production to diplomat units almost from the
start, using those units to target and interrupt the production of
enemy caravans.)
INDUSTRIAL POLICIES
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The suesrt - although not necessarily the easiest - way to increase
your cities' production of income is by building a vast industrial
infrastructure. Mines, transportation systems, factories, and
manufacturing plants all contribute to economic growth, giving you the
resources you need to pay for your civilization's goals and ambitions.
There are tradeoffs, to be sure, and as your civilization grows
more advanced, the tradeoffs grow larger, with consequences that can
be devastating.
The largest of these tradeoffs is the impact of your civilization
on the enviornment. As your civilization reaches the stage of
large-scale industry, pollution becomes a factor with which you must
contend. Not only does pollution increase levels of discontent with
your cities, it also lessens your overall civilization score. Worse,
if pollution gets too far out of control, you can place your entire
infrastructure at risk. Global warming exerts a dramatic and
devastating effect on the planet in this game - as it seems to be on
our own real world - and its effects are not easily undone.
There are several steps you can take to minimize the impact of
your industries on your planet.
First, seek to invest in and construct enviornmentally benign
technologies. Hydroelectric power if key among these. Power your
civilization with water, rather than burn fossil fuels or split atoms,
and you run less risk of polluting the world.
Try to develop and institute other benign technologies such as
mass transit and recycling. These reduce the chances of pollution, but
can be quite expensive to maintain.
Finally, keep plenty of settler units on hand to clean up
pollution squares as they appear. It's easier - and far better for
your civilization's health - to pursue industrial policies that avoid
pollution in the first place, but if you can't do that, you should be
prepared to deal with the consequences of your industrial profligacy
as quickly as possible.
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THE ECONOMICS OF WAR
One fights when one has to in this game, or one fights because one
seeks global domination. Either way, the wise leader leaunches a war
only when she or he possesses a treasury well-prepared to bear the
costs of waging it.
Everything in Sid Meier's Civilization has a price, and the price
of war is among the steepest. Few other situations in the game offer
you the opportunity to lose so many costlt units so quickly. (The
explosive decompression of your economy, as we'll see below, is about
the only similar opportunity to lose a lot of units quickly - and even
then, the situation tends to stabilize, giving you a chance to get
your income back on track. Economic crises are at least potentially
under your control. In a war, the other guy can come after you and
keep on destroying your units.)
Because of this, you should never initiate a war unless you're
prepared to see it through, and a good part of that preparation must
of necessity be economic. Make sure your trade routes are in good
oredr, and don't be too quick to undretake campaigns against cities
with which you enjoy a healthy commercial relationship.
Watch your treasury especially closely, indexing it to the cost of
military units in the cities you'll be depending on for the production
of reinforcements. If your treasury declines too far, you might
consider seeking to make peace, at least temporarily, giving you time
to shore up the economic foundations of your civilization.
Above all, be certain that the cost of war does not affect the
cost of maintaining your cities' improvements. Pay as you go is the
rule for city maintainances, and no military campaign is worth the
collapse of slowly and carefully built cities. Be sure you can cover
your costs at home before undertaking adventures elsewhere.
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ECONOMIC WARFARE
You can wage economic warfare on your opponents as well as overt
military campaigns. There are several ways to do this.
As we've seen above, your diplomat units can be especially
effective economic tools, sabotaging production inside enemy cities.
Gather information on those cities first and use the diplomats to
sabotage targets such as caravans, marketplace construction, and so
on, as well as to interrupt the production of military units.
Effective blockades also serve military ends, both by interrupting
the movement of enemy caravans, as well as by sinking costly ships and
their cargoes.
Still another form of economic warfare occurs on enemy territory.
You can use units to pillage the enemy landscape, destroying terrain
improvements. Pillaging can be especially effective during sieges.
Destroy a city's ability to feed its people and that city will soon
fall to your forces.
There is an important economic consequence to consider here,
however. Because you are seeking to capture enemy cities ad put the
productive capacity of those cities to work for your own ends, you
should not be too quick to wipe out all of the terrain improvements.
You will only have to rebuild them once you take possession of the
city in question. Give careful thought to pillaging before you lay too
much waste to lands that are going to fall under your dominion.
Finally, there is a hidden economic strategy that, while you can't
plan it, can nonetheless be quite effective. That's the acquisition of
an enemy city by siege, rather than conquest. Encircle an enemy city
and cut it off from its civilization. Then wait. Occasionally the
city's residents will express admiration for you and your
civilization, defecting to your cause, to your benefit and the enemy's
economic loss.
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RECESSION ... OR WORSE
Everything ssem to be running smoothly. Your civilization is
prosperous and expansive. Your military campaigns are going well.
Global conquest is, if not within your grasp, at least within sight.
Suddenly, though, you begin to have economic problems. The
production of military units slows down. Citie sbegin to fall into
disorder. Your treasury, rather than growing, begins to shrink.
There's a recession on.
What's causing it? It could be several things. The wars you're
waging require that you send a lot of units to remote locations. This
costs money each turn. Check to see if any of those units can be
reassigned to newly captured cities, relieving some of the maintenance
burden on cities in your homeland. Disband any remote units no longer
necessary to your campaign.
Additionally, some of your larger cities may by now have quite a
maintenance tab each turn. Examine the city map to see if income
production can be boosted through rearrangement of the labor force.
Recession is one of those times when you should consider
introducing a taxman into critical cities, but only after ensuring
that his creation waon't result in loss of foodstores necessary for
your population.
If enough cities fall into diarray, you could be risking your
far-flung forces: If the cities can't support them, they'll be
disbanded. Introduce entertainer specialists into cities experiencing
civil disorder.
If necessary, consider selling off some city improvements in order
to boost your treasury. Try to restrict those sales to items whose
usefulness will soon be superseded: Sell factories, for example, if
your civilization is about to develop the capability of building
manufacturing plants.
All of your temporary fixes - specialists, sell-offs of
improvements - must be supported by longer-range economic planning.
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Perhaps you should consider reverting to a more primitive form of
government, one whose authoritarianism imposes more rigor and less freedom
on the citizens, making them less vocal in their discontent.
(Less-advanced governments, though, also result in less-productive
cities.)
You might wish to adjust the overall balance of your tax structure,
perhaps decreasing the amount devoted to scientific research and boosting
the amount flowing into the general revenue. This approach will slow down
the pace of civilization advances, and may cripple your progress in
relation to that of other civilizations.
One of the best approaches is to review all of your trade routes. Have
new, larger foreign cities been discovered since the routes were
established? Are all of your routes generating as much income as possible?
It might be that you should shift production to caravans for a time,
seeking through trade to heal your ailing economy.
Finally, review the locations of your strongest military forces. If
they are in position, you can mount full-scale rapid campaigns of conquest
against the largest enemy cities, hoping to gut their treasuries through
takeovers, boosting your own with the booty you seize.
Remember, though, each city you capture adds its own demands to your
economy, as well as makes its own contributions.
LEADERSHIP: QUESTIONS OF GOVERNMENT
Which brings us to the central question in Sid Meier's Civilization:
government itself.
The nature of your government is one of the larger questions in Sid
Meier's Civilization, yet will be treated only briefly here. Government,
like riding a bicycle, can be learned only by experience, not example. You
will derive that experience only by plaing the game.
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At first you'll stick to the simplest type of government to run:
despotism. As a despot you impose your wishes on your population, and they
follow your lead - not blindly, and not without some resistance, but they
do follow.
Despots, however, rarely rack up large scores. Additionally,
production under despots is limited; cities don't grow as fast or as large
as they can under more advanced forms of government. Despotism is the
default form of government, but one you must outgrow if your civilization
is to thrive.
Monarchies and communist dictatorships offer certain advantages while
maintaining certain kinships to despotism. Your people are a mite freer,
although you can still impose your will on them. Production is boosted
slightly and, under communism, corruption is reduced.
The most free of all the forms of government also impose the greatest
disciplines upon you as the leader of civilization: These are the republic
and the Democracy.
Representative government offers you the best chance of earning a high
civilization score for quality of life among your citizens, but also give
you the least chance of achieving victory
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through conquest of the world. Under a Republic, for example, your
citizens accept foreign peace treaties no matter how militaristic you
might feel. Under Democracy, your people get very unhappy very quickly
when military units leave their home cities.
You should, them, have your domestic houses in order before
undertaking to rule a republic or a democracy. Bring home your
military units. Give up your dreams of world conquest. Satisfy
yourself with ruling for your people's needs rather than your own
desires.
Or go back to being a tyrant. It's simpler, but ultimately less
rewarding.
THE NUCLEAR DILEMMA
Finally we come to the largest of questions faced by our modern
governments, and one of the largest you'll face while playing Sid
Meier's Civilization: the challenge of managing nuclear weapons.
Few moments during the playing of the game can be quite as
startling as your first encounter with a nuclear power. "Our words are
backed by Nuclear Weapons!" is a message that must be carefully and
warily heeded. Nuclear powers can unleash weapons of horrifying
destructive capacity, wiping out cities and distributing the vilest of
pollutants across the landscape.
You should be aware that it's fairly rare for an enemy to launch a
nuclear attack against you. It does happen, atomic fire raining down
with terrifying effects, but it does not happen often.
The temptation may be different for you, especially if the tide of
war is not going well. Nuclear weapons can shift that tide, and shift
it over long distances: Their range is the longest of any military
unit in the game. Their effects are likewise unequalled.
Those effects transcend the strategic and tactical. Use of nuclear
weapons hastens the world toward global warming and polar melting,
cauding the spread of pollution at a rate far beyond that of
industrial effluent. If you use nuclear weapons you should have plenty
of settler units in readiness to clean up the mess.
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You may not be able to clean up the mess their use causes your
score. Nuclear weapons use, and the pollution it spreads, exerts only
a negative influence on yoru score, subtracting points from those
you've achieved.
When you think about it, that's hardly enough punishment for what
nuclear weapons use represents. In the game, as in our world, nuclear
warheads are best employed as deterrents, never as tools.
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CHAPTER NINE
------------
A WORLD AT WAR
Earlier we looked at the fundamentals of warmaking in Sid Meier's
Civilization. We focused on ancient wars, those early conflgrations of
expansion and consolidation. Here, we look at larger wars, global
conflicts in which you will be fighting on several fronts across the
entire surface of the planet.
You will want, at least once in awhile, to take a global-conquest
approach to the game. One way, although not necessarily the best or
most efficent way, to win Sid Meier's Civilization is by conquering
the entire planet. While the game's manual implies that world conquest
is the ultimate goal of Civilization, and the scorekeeping process
reflects this, I think that the game's dynamics really imply other
goals - world peace, care of the enviornment, economic growth, civil
liberties - as more desirable. World conquest, though, does provide a
large scoring bonus when it's accomplished, so it is, indeed, an
approach you'll want to try.
And that, like so much else in this rich and complex game, is
easier said than done.
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MAKE YOUR DECISION
It's one thing to decide to play Sid Meier's Civilization as a game of
global conquest. It's quite another to conquer the entire world. To do
so, you need to decide early on that world conquest is your single
goal. That decided, every turn must include decisions and actions
aimed at making your plan a reality.
You'll need a continental base from the very beginning. While you
can win the game if you start on an island, it's very difficult to
conquer the world from an island home. As a rule, when your initial
position is an island, you have that island to yourself, and must
develop seafaring capability before encountering other civilizations.
That takes time, during which other civilizations based on continents
can more rapidly and thoroughly expand their own holdings to the point
at which, when you finally make contact with them, they may be a good
bit larger than you. If you find yourself on an island during the
first turn, you should consider either altering your world-conquering
dreams, or starting the game again in hopes of getting a better
opening position.
If you are on a continent, world conquest is a likelier option.
Even so, it will take a steady hand and a good bit of nerve, and you
must exercise those qualities from your very first turn.
The steady hand applies to managing your cities and your initial
expansion. That expansion must come rapidly. You will need plenty of
resources and reinforcements in order to achieve global domination.
That means violating some of the principles established earlier in the
book.
You probably should not wait, for example, until you have a couple
of defensive units in your first city before beginning serious
exploration of your world. Build and fortify a single militia,
following it with two more militia units who will be immediately
dispatched to map the world. These units will reveal whether or not
your location is an island or a continent.
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As soon as your second explorer is dispatched, begin building your
next band of settlers. If you can hasten their construction with
money, do so. You have to quickly get another band of settlers into
the game in order to devlop a couple of resource squares proximate to
your capitol so as to boost its production. Don't spend your time
developing every square; That can wait. As soon as two resource
squares are developed, move the settler unit to the site you've
already selected for your second city. Create that city and repeat the
process, building another group of settlers as rapidly as you are
able. You should have three functioning cities by the end of the first
millennium or so of game time.
Once your capitol has created its first band of settlers, spend a
few turns or security. Now's the time to build additional defensive
units, as well as the all-important barracks improvement. Because your
first city can produce units faster, use it and its barracks to
generate the defensive units for your second and subsequent cities,
moving them to their new homes and reassigning them there immediately
upon arrival. This approach frees the productive time and energies of
new cities for the generation of settlers, barracks, and other
improvements that will serve your goals of conquest.
Get some cities built as close to the potential battlefronts as
possible. You'll appreciate the increased access to the war that these
cities offer. Because they are close to the front, you should invest a
bit more heavily in their security during the first few turns after
their creation. After all, the enemy may launch a surprise attack,
violating the treaty before you have a chance to. Should that happen,
you want to be able to stave off his conquest of your civilization.
(Cities close to the front can also serve important functions at
later stages of the game. These are the cities where you can base
aircraft and other units that have to be returned to a friendly city
as the end of their turns. As you develop airborn warfare
capabilities, be sure you have in position sufficent cities at
appropriate
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loactions and distances to allow your safe landing when bombing and
strafing missions are ended.)
Use cities close to the front for production of units with more
limited movement capacity. Diplomats, for example, can move quite a
few units each turn depending upon terrain and other conditions, and
so can be produced fartger behind the lines. Catapults and legions, on
the other hand, are quite limited in their ability to move. By
producing them at the front of near it, you can shear off several
turns' time in getting them into battle. Those turns may prove
decisive.
Finally, well-protected cities near the front can serve as staging
areas where your forces can be concentrated as they mass for outright
assault against enemy lines. Since you've made the decision to conquer
the world, you must supprt that decision with forward bases from which
your troops will attack.
Be careful, though, about reassigning too many units to new
cities. The troops must be supported each turn, and it may be that
their city of creation - or another, better-established city farther
behind the lines - can better support them long-distance than can a
new city nearby.
SECURITY BEGINS AT...
You have established three or four cities and made contact with the
two civilization that share your continental landmass. Treaties are
in force with both civilizations, and embassies have been established.
Now is the time to begin your buildup for wars of conquest.
The first step toward global conquest is to ensure your security
at home. You will not be investing as much time or money in the
process as in a game where you are playing for the highest score, or
to be the first to reach the stars, but there are nonetheless some
defensive matters to which you simply must attend. If nothing else,
bear in mind that the tide of war can flow both ways: Your grand
campaign may turn into a rout.
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Upgrade the defensive units in each of your cities, using the new
production as an opportunity to move more primitive units to the
front. Place those units on fortification duty along your borders with
other civilizations, sealing off any holes through which enemy forces,
diplomats, or settlers might slip.
You should consider investing in defensive improvements in your
home cities, building city walls if possible. Because of the time
involved in building these, though, your best bet is to buy them - if
you can afford the price.
Just as important - and perhaps more important over the long
run - are domestic and economic improvements aimed at boosting your
people's productivity and, not incidentally, their levels of
contentment and satisfaction. War is expensive, and your people have
to pay its price - give them the tools to do so.
That means, at the very least, building a granary and a
marketplace in every city you control. If you have the time and can
afford it, a temple will further enhance your control over your
population.
Above all, build more settlers. Develop the resources surronding
each of your cities, boosting income and building the financial
warchest you'll need once the campaign begins in earnest. Now, too, is
the time to apply the energies of a band of settlers or two to
building roads between your cities, and, even more importantly,
building roads to the fronts where your campaigns will be wages. When
the war does begin, the presence of roads over which you can quickly
move fresh troops may prove to be the deciding factor in your victory.
The existance of additional settler units will also allow you
quickly to create additional cities as prime locations become
available or as settlers complete the development of terrain around
existing cities. Be bold when expanding your civilization's number of
cities. As you can see by reviewing games that you have lost, those
civilization that most quickly conquer the world are those that most
quickly establish and grow the largest number of cities a continent or
island can support.
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When thinking of the security of your home as you embark on your
campaign of continental and then global conquest, don't neglect
offshore questions. Because you are going to concentrate first on your
home landmass, you may defer for a time the development of seafaring
capability. You won't need ships right away.
Except: Civilizations located elsewhere are probably not deferring
their own development of triremes and more advanced shipping
capability. This could come back to haunt you, should they achieve
dramatic or overwhelming control of the seas.
To avoid this development, there are a few steps you should
consider. During your initial exploration of your coastline you may
have discovered nearby landmasses seperated from you by a single
square. As we discussed ealier, post a primitive unit - militia will
do just fine - on sentry of fortification duty at these spots.
Guarding the narrows between landmasses serves to give warning of
adversaries who approach by sea along these routes.
Should these offshore civilizations land troops on your continent,
your picket may be able to establish a treaty with their
representatives. Your task then becomes freeing up sufficent units to
contain the newly landed units and keeping the enemy from establishing
too strong a presence on your continent.
The northernmost and southernmost points under control should also
be garrisoned with a picket, as should any peninsulas jutting far out
into the sea. Protect yourself against unexpected enemy landfalls.
As you develop seafaring capabilities of your own, use them to
post sentry ships at strategic points. As discussed in an earlier
chapter, this approach can help ensure the security of your homeland,
leaving you free to concentrate on its conquest before you begin an
amphibious expansion.
When you're going for world domination, your sentry ships serve an
even greater strategic purposes. You are out to contain the enemy,
cripple her or his shipping, preventing any expansion of other
civilization. If you have the money and resources, move your
checkpoint closer and closer to enemy territory.
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Ultimately, if you manage your resources wisely ans enjoy a little
luck, you'll be able to contain the enemy at his homeland, blockading
his ports and keeping him sealed up until you can land forces of your
own on his territory.
KEEP YOUR OPTIONS OPEN
An important key to the conquest of your home continent, from which
will flow your forces for conquering the world, is your initial
exploration of the landmass. Explorers are more important than ever
when you take a conquer's approach to the game. You must use them
wisely, risking them only if you can't avoid it.
Serendipity squares, for example, should be approached more
cautiously, especially at the game's higher-difficulty levels. While
their ebenfits can be great - particularly if you uncover scrolls of
wisdom that provide a civilization advance, or advanced tribes who
give the immediate possession of a new city - so can the risks.
Barbarians lurking beneath srendipity squares can easily eliminate one
of your precious explorers. You can't afford to lose a unit to
"serendipity."
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Worse than that, you may be risking a city: Remember that in oredr
to explore your continent and quickly establish new cities, you are
running with lower-than-usual defensive levels during the first few
centuries of game time. Barbarians from beneath a serendipity square
may make their way to your vulnerable capitol. Locate the serendipity
squares on your landmass, but consider leaving them undisturbed until
you can approach them with the luxury of more powerful, veteran units
better able to deal with barbarians should they appear.
The same sort of caution should apply when you first make contact
with another civilization. Your goal during your first millennium is
to locate other civilizations, contain them if possible but also to
avoid conflict until you unquestionably have the upper hand. (Or at
least a solidly justifiable "fighting chance" of total victory.) The
militia units you dispatch on exploration missions during your first
few turns are hardly well-equipped to fight a war. They can, however,
strike treaties and contain enemy forces.
When your militia first encounters another civilization, take
advantage of the opportunity to talk to that civiliztion's leader. If
a treaty is offered, accept it. Study the terrain to see if you can
position your militia in such a way as to contain the other
civilization's expansion, preserving as much of your own territory as
you can.
Treaties work both ways, and can be violated by either side. This
is an important point, bearing directly on the options as your
disposal. It is not unusual to find youself the target of a sneak
attack by a civilization with which you have enjoyed a longstanding
treaty. When this happens you have a couple of options.
You can respond with overwhelming force, letting the enemey in
effect choose the point at which your war of conquest begins. If you
possess the force necessary to achieve conquest, this is not a bad
response. Remember that they key to worl conquest is speed -
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the earlier you eliminate all other civilizations, the higher your
score.
If you're weaker than the enemy, though, you have some things to
consider. Suppose, completely out of the blue, your picket is
destroyed by a military unit of an order far in advance of your own
technology. Its unlikely that you'll be able to defeat such forces.
You may choose, the, to seek another treaty during whose tenure you
can endeavor to catch up with the enemy's technology.
You may also decide that world conquest is not a likely
opportunity during this particular game. While that's a painful
decision, it's also a pragmatic one, and is a decision you should keep
available at all times. Knowing when to back off is an important key to
winning the game. As the leader of your civilization, your job is to
be wise as well as aggressive.
CHOOSE YOUR ENEMIES
During the game's first few millennia you may not wish to fight on
more than one front at once. Deal with one of the civilizations
sharing your landmass before launching a war against the other.
How do you know which one to attack first? Your diplomats can be
of great help in answering that question.
Study the nature of the civilizations bordering yours. Some may be
quite small: easy targets, as it were. Others may be far more
powerful, potential world conquerors themselves, with cities protected
by strong walls and large numbers of pickets posted along the same
borders you're guarding.
The temptation is to go for the easy target, putting off the
larger enemy until later. This is, more often than not, a mistake. The
weaker nation, particularly if it's well contained and has few
opportunities for expansion, is unlikely ever to pose a large threat
to your civilization and may, indeed, become a valuable source of
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technology you can steal. Its cities may also serve as trading-route
destinations for your caravans.
The stronger neighbor, though, is already a de facto threat to
your civilization, and each turn you allow it to grow places you at
greater and greater risk. Deal with strong neighbors as quickly as you
can, and your plans for ruling the world will be that much closer to
realization.
YOUR FIRST CAMPAIGN
You feel confident that your heartland is well guarded, with pickets
posted at outlying areas. You've built roads to the two fronts where
other civilizations share your continents. One of those civilizations
has only two cities, with limited and primitive military resources.
the other civilization has five cities and a large army roughly equal
to your own; your technology levels are likewise similar. That
civilization is your target. It's time to begin your first campaign.
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THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
Many have tried, none has succeeded. The siren song of world
conquest has called to Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and
Hitler, yet each was stopped short of his goal.
A few centuries into your plan of conquest you will
probably understand, more clearly then ever, why: World
conquest is a logistical nightmare, an economic morass, and
a cause best supported - if that's the word - by citizens
under the thumb of a despot. If you can manage to wage a
strong, democratic government, you might consider making a
stab at the project in the real world.
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The first step is building your army of conquest. Naturally this
should consist of your strongest offensive units, but should not be
composed solely of those units, at least during the early millennia of
game time. The strongest units available to you may have limitations
on their movement capacity, a vulnerability that can come back to
haunt you in the most painful of ways.
Consider the catapult, for example. Undoubtedly it possesses great
offensive power, and will be indispensable when attacking fortified
units behind city walls. But its movement across undeveloped territory
is limited to one square per turn, which can leave the unit at great
risk should its single move bring it into contact with a strong
offensive enemy unit.
Build a group of mobile units and send them into enemy territory
in advance of your big guns. Chariots and cavalry are good units for
this purpose in the early stages of the game, knights during the
midgame, armor and mechanized infantry during the endgame. (Aircraft
are even better during the final stages; with their long range and
mobility they can locate several enemy units per turn, and possibly
destroy large concentrations of units stacked in wait for you. The
devastating startegic and tactical effects aircraft have exerted on
modern warfare are well represented in Sid Meier's Civilization.)
Your mobile units can clear safe paths for you to move your assault
units into position to lay siege to enemy cities. This type of
"blitzkrieg" attack can prove terrifically effective, especially if
the enemy has made the mistake of stacking units outside the
protection of city walls.
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Another valuable option is the use of diplomats as your advance
force. They not only enjoy the greater freedom of movement and can
deliver vital information, they can also be used to bribe enemy units
to join your side, assuming your treasury can support this expensive
proposition. Additionally, larger cities in your homeland may be able
to pump out diplomats in quantity over a very few turns, letting you
flood the continent with these flexible units. Don't forget their
ability to sabotage enemy production, softeninf up opposing cities for
the arrival of your assault troops.
Your diplomats can also help you target the cities you will attack
first. There are a couple of effective approaches to this decision.
Use your diplomats to determine the nature of each city's production.
Your first tragets should be those most capable of producing veteran
military units: cities with barracks improvements in place. Next
should come cities containing Wonders of the World, if any, although,
like seats of learning, you may wish to let these cities stand,
encircled, as sources of information and trade.
Because you are planning to leave a couple of enemy cities
standing until the very last phase of the game, you should pick those
cities early. Under no circumstances should one of those
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cities be a harbor! Don't leave the enemy a back door through which he
can escape to expand once more. Contain the enemy civilization, use
its remaining cities for your own ends, and destroy or conquer them in
the final stages of the game.
SABOTAGE, ESPIONAGE, AND OTHER DIRTY TRICKS
Even as you strive to secure control of your hom continent, other
civilizations are seeking dominance over their own islands and
continents. You will be approaching these civilizations from sea,
making amphibious assaults against islands and continents that have
had millennia to entrench themselves and prepare their defenses
against your arrival. Your best strategy is to put off total assault
until after you've done as much softening up of their defenses as you
can.
In fact, even the softening-up activities might be best postponed
for awhile. Your first duty, as a responsible leader of a civilization
in pursuit of world conquest, is to build resources for the assault,
and to gather information about what your forces will face. The
information can be gathered not only by your diplomats, but also by
your caravans.
The advantage of using caravans to obtain portraits of the
interiors of other civilizations is that they do so while helping to
build your war chest. Seek first to establish treaties with the other
civilization, even though you plan ultimately to obliterate them.
The treaty serves to guarantee your caravans and diplomats free
passage through enemy territory. You can prowl around all of the other
civilization's cities, in search not only of larger cities which will
deliver higher trade revenues, but also for indications of more
heavily defended cities, concentrations of military units, and so on.
This sort of information will evolve from turn to turn, with mobile
units shifting position, but can nonethelesss give you a more
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through understanding of the degree of opposition your own military
units will face when your invasion gets under way.
You should also keep an eye out for landing sites and staging
areas for the actual invasion. Try to locate those areas closest to
your immediate military targets, the cities and facilities you will be
going after first. Look for infrastructure items such as roads that
you can use to military advantage.
An especially effective tactic is to locate and occupy islands off
the coast of the enemy mainland. Cities on these islands can be used
to produce diplomats who can reach the enemy more quickly than those
fom your homeland. The island cities can also serve as safe landing
areas for bombers, fighters, and missles during later stages of the
game.
Island-hopping, in fact, can be as important to your victory in
Civilization as it was during World War II. Map your world carefully
and puck those targets that best serve your long-term strategic goals.
Your main focus, obviously, will be enemy-led continents. Once
you've succeeded in mapping the interior of the enemy civilization,
establish trade routes using your caravans, striking the most
lucrative routes with the largest cities first.
During this phase of the game you'll want to use your diplomats to
gather information about the enemy's cities, their defensive
capabilities and the resources they possess. Investiagt every city you
can, starting with those you'll be attacking first. (These are
probably the ones lacking city walls, and thus more easily captured.)
Your diplomats should also make an extra effort to obtain a
picture of the enemy's capitol. As you pursue conquest of the world,
ther are special advantages to be obtained by capturing the enemy's
seat of government.
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GO FOR THE CAPITOL
You're making your big move, landing large numbers of military units
and diplomats on foreign shores. The enemy has conquered a continent
of his own, possessing close to a dozen cities. On the other hand,
you've established and maintained a successful blockade of all the
enemy's ports, effectively containing the enemy's expansion plans.
Naval bombardment has weakened coastal cities. Your invasion fleet has
moved safely into position. You land your forces with only minimal
casualties.
While you feel confident of your military technology and the size
of your forces, you'd feel even better if you had an edge. Capturing
the enemy capitol can give you that edge.
A couple of things happen when you take an enemy capitol. First,
and perhaps most important, you throw the enemy government into
disarray and civil war, splitting the enemy civilization into two
seperate nations. As a result, you may be able to strike a truly
seperate peace with one of the nations, increasing your ability to
achieve a swift and total victory over the other civilization.
Capitols can tend to be quite valuable cities, with plenty of
resources and improvements in place, making them valuable additions to
your own civilization's economy.
A further advatage to the capitol-capture approach comes if the
enemy has developed spaceflight capacity and is building or has
launched a starship. Should that starship reach Alpha Centauri saefly,
the game ends, no matter how close you are to total conquest or how
many civilization points you've added to your score. Capturing the
enemy's capitol forces an immediate recall of the starship.
You will also have to garrison the newly captured capitol - or any
newly captured city - with sufficent forces to hold it against
recapture attempts that will undoubtedly be mounted. The best approach
here is to move in troops from outside the capitol, reassigning them
to the newly acquired city. Because its capture has
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thrown the capitol and its population into disorder, your first
construction projects should be those aimed at quieting the populace:
Temples, cathedrals, and coliseums are good choices here. Don't forget
to buil barracks and granary facilities if the city lacks these
basics.
The capitol under control, you can proceed with your plan of
continetal conquest and consolidation, bearing in mind that you don't
have to kill everyone, nor detroy every city - at least not until
you're ready.
Some enemies are simply intractable. No matter how thoroughly they
are beaten on field of battle, they keep coming back for more, often
making ludicrous demands for tribute when they do. Unless there is an
overwhelming reason not to eliminate these annoyances from the world
completely - a valuable trading city, for example - you should proceed
posthaste with their destruction rather than waste too much time with
them.
MOPPING UP
Having broken the backs of all the other civiliations, and completely
elimnated those that are inarguably warlike, you will approach your
goal of a world completely under your control. It's time to undertake
the final eradication of your enemies.
Again, you'll want to deal with them in sequence, saving for last
those who serve as your most valued trading partners. Because of the
huge investment in military units sent to remote locations, the
economic demands on your civilization each turn are large, and you
will need to preserve until the very end all the income you can.
Surrond those cities from which you derive trade funds, but have in
position the forces you need to obliterate them when the time comes.
Otherwise, any enemy city on the planet is fair game. Keep an eye
on your information sources as well as the world map. Be alert for any
unexplored areas of the globe. While you have probably
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explored most of the world, even a small, hidden island can serve as
home to an enemy city or two. Locating that island, after everything
else on the screen has been defeated, can take valuable turns,
lessening your achievement - and your score.
And when the enemy is completely eliminated and yours is the only
civilization in existance, take time to examine that final score. What
is the percentage of happy or content citizens in your civilization?
How many Wonders did you manage to create? Could your score have been
even higher had you taken a different approach?
These and other questions are best answered the next time you take
on the challenge of conquering the world. Put your lessons to work and
add new challenges. Try to achieve the goal under more liberal forms
of government. Seek to raise your people's standard of living to the
highest possible level, even as you keep your cities on military
footings. Attempt to boost the aesthetic and spiritual sides of your
civilization without lessoning your warmaking ability.
It won't be easy - but, then, conquering the world never is.
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CHAPTER 10
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A WORLD AT PEACE
It can be argued that the heart of Sid Meier's Civilization lies a
frustrated - and frustrating! - utopia generator. Certainly the best,
or at least the most challenging, way to run up a high score would
seem to be through the creation and maintenance of a high level of
peaceful, wonder-filled, happy, spiritual, wealthy, enviornmentally
benign, spacefaring caiviliation. Is that all?
The deck, you must understand, is stacked against you, as in any
worthwhile game. One of the arts of strategy game design is, in fact,
precisely that stacking of the deck. You must make a lot of effort on
a lot of levels in oredr to weave your way around the built-in
pitfalls and booby traps designed to challenge you.
Civlization contains more than its share of pitfalls, but so does
civilized life on this earth. The concept of the tradeoff can be found
close to the center of every advance our species has made, and it's
there in the game as well. What you gain must be weighed against what
you lose as you make progress. In some cases you must be ready to
compromise your most highly held principles, at least for a time, in
order simply to stay in the game.
But those principles - peace, education, a light hand on the
planet - can be used to achieve great success and even ultimate
victory. Just remember taht it won't be easy.
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THE GENTLE WAY
As when playing a game of conquest, you should make your decision
early, building all subsequent decisions around your choosen goal of
winning the game along peaceful routes. And, also as in
conquest-oriented games, keep your options wide open: Peace may not be
an effective path, as revealed by circumstances that evolve along with
the game. Besides, you may find that you develop a taste for
aggression, however benign your original intent.
Nor will you be able to avoid war altogether. May of the units in
this game are military in nature for a reason. Aggression is built
into many of your opponents, and is the absolute essence of some of
the civilizations you will encounter. There are leaders in this game
who live to fight, and nothing more. You must be prepared to deal with
them on their terms for, with a very few special excpetions, there's
little way to persuade them to deal on yours.
That understoof, there are three fundamentals to winning a
"gentle" game of Civlization:
1. You must be militarily strong, able to wipe out the intransigent,
and build seperate peaces with the other civilizations on your
world.
2. Concentrate on financial institutions. Utopias can't be built,
but some of their aspects can be bought in this game. You must
build several financial power-house cities. This lets you build
the Wonders of the World that are required for you to satisfy
your people, earn bonus points, and reach the stars before anyone
else.
3. Choose freedom. The more democratic your government, the
harder it is to manage, but the better your final score will be.
Everything flows from these decisions. The first one, with its
militaristic advice, will lead to a game which, over its first few
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millennia, may play like a world conquest game. You have to seek out
the unbendable aggressors and remove them from the world - or persuade
other civilizations to help you do so.
Beyond that, you'll be making decisions a little differently than
if you were playing for conquest, and that begins with the choice of
units for exploration.
THE ART OF DIPLOMACY
If pursuing a peaceful world, you might consider using diplomats as
your prime exploration units. There are several advantages to this.
First, diplomats possess higher levels of mobility than most
units, letting you cover a lot of ground quickly.
Second, and more important, diplomats give you the flexibility you
need in establishing relations with other civilizations in the game.
Their ability to negotiate, establish embassies, look behind other
cities walls offers you a full palette of possibilities during the
vital early stages of civilization growth.
Finally, and perhaps most important of all, your diplomats can
wander through enemy civilizations at will, so long as there is a
treaty in force. If you're going to win the world without totally
destroying it, you'd better have a pretty good picture of the forces
you're up against. The diplomats can give you this.
(Caravans also make good explorers in this sort of game, thanks to
their ability to penetrate enemy boredrs. But caravans movement
allotments are limited, no do they offer the special talents of the
diplomat.)
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SPEAK SOFTLY, BUT CARRY...
Just because you're committed to peaceful expansion and growth does
not mean you can neglect your military development. In fact, those
civilizations best able to grow with a minimum of armed conflict are
alos those best equipped to win battls should they occur.
To that end, build your barracks as quickly as you would in a game
of military expansion. Create a substantial military force,
concentrating on the strongest offensive units you can produce.
Focusing upon units of great offensive power will in turn greatly
enhance your defensive strength. As you expand the defensive
perimeters of your civilization, your border forces will need teeth to
enforce their will. And their will, quite simply, must be that all
other civilizations shall leave you alone.
You must look more closely than ever at the impact of terrain on
your boredrs. Perhaps the most effective location for a civilization
seeking to win the game through world peace and intersetllar
colonization is a large island, capable of supporting seven or eight
successful cities. Islands define their own borders quite nicely,
forcing would-be conquerors to approach you from the sea, making the
advantage yours.
If you are located on a continent, you have a couple of choices.
You can carve out a civilization alongside others sharing the same
landmass. You can wage a temporary, and with luck, brief war of
extermination, conquering the entire landmass for your own. Or you can
emigrate to another, more hospitable location which you can claim for
your civilization alone. Each approach has its advantages; each
carries risks.
Should you seek to strike treaties with neighboring civilizations,
you must bear in mind that they can turn on you at any time. There is
also the chance that they will leapfrog your own civilization,
advancing beyond you in technology and wealth, either
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conquering you altogether or turning you into a subservient, client
state.
The path to continental conquest is equally risky. If you can
achieve domination of the continent in a few centuries, you should do
so, but watch the calendar as well. You may find yourself bogged down
in an endless, expensive war that devours time you should be using to
strengthen the foundations of your civilization.
Emigration carries perhaps the largest or risks, and is likely to
be the most time-consuming of your undertakings. You have not only to
find another landmass, but also to settler and exploit it, all while
other civilizations are growing and expanding on their original turf.
Your best bet, if taking this approach, is to solidify your base on
your homeland, however unpromising it looks over the long term. Then,
dispatch sailing vessels in groups of at least two, carrying at least
two bands of settlers. Settle everything you come to, hoping that one
of your new homes will turn out to be suited to your ambitions. The
important thing is to establish a large number of cities, enabling you
to expand until you find a location that can be more permanenly and
easily protected.
FORTRESS!
The ideal situation, of course, is to be located on a large island
from the beginning of the game. That way you have natural borders,
room to expand, and are better able to pursue an effective
isolationist approach.
Colonize your island rapidly. Try to have four cities in thriving
existance before the close of the game's second millennium. Ultimately
you should have seven or eight functioning cities on the island, each
reinforcing and supporting the others. Put two of your cities to
producing Wonders of the World, the others to develping a trong
defensive force to be positioned around the island's coastline.
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You'll need a strong navy as well. Your goal must be to sink as
many enemy craft as possible, eliminating invasion forces before they
can secure a toehold on your land. As you are able to upgrade and
expand your navy, you should do so, broadening the expanse of sea that
is covered, keeping enemy vessels as far away as possible. Aircraft,
especially carrier-based aircraft, are another effective deterrent as
they become available to you.
You must do everything possible to make your island home an
all-but-invincible fortress. Position defensive forces in such a way
as to make it impossible for an enemy to slip ashore unnoticed.
Upgrade your defenses on a regular basis. Build strong rail lines to
ensure ease of defenses on a regular basis. Build strong rail lines to
ensure ease of movement around your homeland, letting you get troops
to danger spots should they occur. Build city walls for all of your
cities, coastal communities first.
You must erect economic defenses as well. That means maintaining a
vital and sizable merchant marine to carry your caravans to distant
ports. Because of the ultimate size of your civilization is a bit
limited - you will probably not expand over much beyond the borders of
your island - it's up to your commercial fleet and the caravans it
carries to generate those large sums of money that are essential to
your growth.
As we'll see in the next section, you may be able to use your
economic success to great benefit in overcoming external threats to
your civilization.
THE PEACEFUL ART OF CONQUEST
Whether you are located on an island or a continent, you must make
provision for dealing with other civilizations and their military
forces. Because you are pursuing a peaceful route to the future, you
need a strategy that minimizes your military risk, while also defusing
some of the military threat you face.
If you can afford it, the best approach to this question is
bribery, accomplished by your diplomatic corps. use your diplo-
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mats to buy the loyalty of possing forces who pose a threat to you,
especially those units who have moved onto your territory. the
approach is costly, but carries the added benefit of offering you
subversion of the enemy without violating any treaties youmay have in
place.
On a larger scale - and even more expensive - scale, you can use
your diplomats to incite riots or subvert enemy cities, bringing those
cities and their improvements into your own civilization. Again, while
playing a "peaceful" game, this startegy is most effective whne used
against enemy cities on your own territory, or when looking for a
quick way of acquiring cities that already possess Wonders of the
World, a good way to boost your score during the final few turns of
the game.
Alliances can also generate paths to "peaceful" conquest,
especially if you strike the right ones. Use your diplomatic corps to
derive pictures of the various civiliations on your world; then target
those who pose the largest threat to your own civilization. Find
another civilization also threatened by your target, and approach its
leader with an offer of join military action. Your own participation
can be cautious: The trick is to get the other guy to do the work.
TO THE STAS!
because you've set yourself the goal of winning the game through
peaceful means, your actual goal is to deliver a cargo of colonists to
Alpha Centauri before the time limit of the game expires. To that end,
your progress and technologies must be guided toward achieveing
spaceflight early, exploiting your production to build and equip a
starship, and launching the starship on a course that lets you reach
the stars ahead of anyone else.
As usual, information is crucial. You must monitor the progress of
other civilizations, trade or steal advances when neces-
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sary, and be prepared to commit every resource of your civilization to
starship construction when the time comes.
When is that time? As early as possible. Indeed, the moment you or
another civilization begin building the Apollo Program Wonder, you
should start boosting your treasury so you can build or buy the
various pieces required to create a viable interstellar craft. Chack
the productive capacities of your cities. Some elements of the
starship take far longer to build than others; you may, in fact, want
tobegin building habitation and other modules a few turns before your
Apollo Wonder is completed. This gives you a head start on putting the
elements in orbit once you've achieved spaceflight capability.
You may find yourself in a true space race. As we'll see below,
there is a military approach to solving this competition, but there's
an economic approach you can take as well. If your civilization is
strong and its boredrs are secure, consider selling off improvements
such as city walls, and using the funds to underwrite a "crash"
program of starship building. By purchasing key elements, you can
complete your starship in record time and launch it before anyone
else.
If another civilization acquires spaceflight far in advance of
you, you may have to abandon your peaceful principles for a time. If
that other civilization reaches the brink of launching a starship that
will reach Alpha Centauri before you, you might want to make a
military raid on the enemy capitol. Only by capturing the capitol can
you disrupt enemy starship production - or force a recall of the
starship if it has already been launched. be sure you have sufficent
military force to capture the capitol, and be sure you're ready to
defend your own capitol should the situation be reversed.
You may find yourself in an opposite situation. If your
spaceflight capability is far in advance of any other civilization on
your world, take the time to build a large starship with lots of
colonists. As long as you launch and reach Alpha Centauri before the
time
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limit runs out, anything you can do to increase the number of
colonists you deliver will help you earn a higher score.
CARING FOR YOUR OWN WORLD
For all that your goal is to colonize another world, your score will
be affected by how well you care for your own world. A civilization
with plenty of wonders, happy citizens, a succeddful staship, can
still be undone by pollution, whose presence subtracts from your final
score.
You will not be able to avoid industrializing your society, nor
should you necessarily try. The presence of factories and
manufacturing plants greatly enhances your economy and also makes
possible the very rapid production of crucial units. Unfortunately,
these improvements also create pollution.
There are a couple of things you can do. First, as you move more
deeply into the indusrial world, build plenty of settler units to
clean up pollution squares as they occur. Two settler units per
industrialized city is a fairly good ratio, although you may find
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yourself needing more settlers around particularly large cities, or in
the even of nuclear accident or war.
Invest as well in benign technologies - hydroelectric power,
recyclying centers, and mass transit all repay their investment by
lessening the possibility of pollution.
Finally, as the game counts down to its conclusion, consider
selling off the most offensive of your pollution agents - again,
factories and manufacturing plants. use the cash you earn to purchase
more benign items aimed at increasing your population's happiness. Aim
for having zero polluted squares by game's end.
RULING
The most important of the aspects of building a peaceful, victorious
civilization, this is also the most subjective, and will be dealt with
most briefly. You'll learn quickly what givernmental organizations and
institutions work best in the context of the game, and also work best
for you.
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Generally speaking, though, the more free your form of government,
assuming you can keep your citizens happy, the better your
civilization will perform and the higher your final score will be.
To that end - which is, after all, the real end of the game - invest
your time and energy in providing not only a free system of government
and a strong economy, but also those "extras" that make civilized life
worth living. These include plenty of leisure improvements such as
temples, cathedrals, and coliseums. Invest as well in Wonders such as
Women's Suffrage, the Cure For Cancer, Shakspeare's Theater, and
Bach's Cathedral. Build universities and scatter libraries throughout
your civilization. Make sure your people have plenty to think about as
well as to eat and to spend.
Healthy, wealthy, and wise - come to think about it, that's not
bad advice for our own, all too real civilization. Maybe our leaders
could benefit from playing a few games of Sid Meier's Civilization.
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175 Tips, Hints, and Tools for Ruling Your Civilization
Sid Meier's Civilization is an electronic treasure chest whose contents
are all but infinitely renewable: Within broad parameters, the game is a
little different every time you play it. As a result, as noted in more
than one place elsewhere in this book, there is no one right way to play
Civilization. Decisions and goals are more contextual here than in most
interactive entertainments. What works during one game may fail abysmally
during another, and vice versa.
The tips and tricks offered in this appendix are based on hundreds of
hours of playing the game, but also reflect my own prejuidices,
strategies, and interests. These may not correspond with yours, so be
wary. You may find that, in some circumstances, your own goals are best
served by doing the opposite of what I recommend here. More power to you!
You may also find that some of these nuggets of advice - or some of
your own hard-learned lessons - contradict others. To
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paraphrase Walt Whitman: There's room for contradictions. Civilization
contains multitudes.
On, then, to a catalog of tools for winning Sid Meier's Civilization.
YOUR FIRST MILLENNIUM
1. Put down roots quickly. Your first city doesn't have to have the
world's greatest location: Better to get it up and running, pumping
out new units and improvements, than to lose valuable time.
2. Pursue writing before other cultural advances. No matter where you
start - island or continent - the development of writing lays the
groundwork for enhancing and expanding an exuberant intellectual
culture composed of libraries, universities, and intellectual Wonders
of the World which will serve your long-term goals on more levels than
any other development in the game.
3. Decide as quikly as you can what type of game you are going to play.
If you are going to pursue world conquest, for example, you should
begin building your armies and assembling your resources before the
first millennium ends. If you're going to play a game of peaceful
expansion and consolidation, you should shore up your homeland's
defenses against those enemies less benevolent than yourself.
4. Multiply, multiply, multiply! The race in Civilization often goes to
the most fecund. By the end of your first millennia you should have at
least three cities functioning and growing, with more on the way.
5. Because reproduction and creation of new cities is so important, don't
spend valuable settler time developing every square around a city. You
can create additional settlers to do
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that later. Do enough development to get the city on sound economic
footing, then move on to start another community.
6. Place defensive perimeters around your emerging civilization. Expand
those perimeters as your civilization grows.
7. Build roads as you can afford the commitment of settlers. Not only
do the roads increase your productivity, they also lay the groundwork
- roadwork, as it were - for the rapid movement of forces should you
be invaded.
8. Put one city to work building a Wonder of the World as early as
possible. The addition of wonders does much to boost your score, yet
if you wait too long to create them, they may be acquired by other
civilizations.
9. Develop pottery by all means. You must have granaries if you are to
hold any hope at all of increasing your population and growing your
cities.
10. Be prepared to shift strategies: The road to failure is paved,
sometimes, with peaceful intentions, and not every would-be conquerer
can actually manage to conquer. Play with the flow of the game, not
against it.
11. Alternate your cities' labor force between agriculture and resource
development until the population is large enough to attend to both.
Agriculture results in increased population; resource production
boosts your treasury.
YOUR FIRST CITY
1. Generally speaking, you should build two militia units and fortify
them immediately, then two more for exploration, before building
additional settlers, military units, or city imporvements. (If it
quickly becomes clear that your civilization is located on an
island, perhaps a single explorer is sufficent.)
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2. Do not put off the construction of your barracks improvement. Only
with the establishment of a barracks can you produce veteran military
units that are strong enough to face the test of combat.
3. Don't forget to upgrade your defensive units once the barracks is
completed. Units such as militia that were created before the barracks
can then be moved to outlying areas or disbanded.
4. Should the spiritual side of civilization become available to you, put
a temple in your first city. Establish the people's happiness early
on, and it's easier to maintain it as the game grows more complex.
5. If your civilization is surrounded by other, stronger ones, build city
walls. Although expensive in construction and maintenance, the walls
amplify your defense force's ability to withstand attack, perhaps
buying you enough time to prepare a militray response or seek a
treaty.
6. Develop at least two agricultural and one resource square before
moving too far from your first city. These squares will give the
city time to feed itself and generate enough income to grow during the
early phases of the game.
7. Study the loal terrain. If you've put down roots too quickly, and find
yourself in a less-than-ideal spot for long-term growth, don't be
afraid to move your capitol to a more fertile site once one becomes
available. (Don't move too quickly, though: Make sure the new city is
well established, defended, and growing before relocating your
government there.)
8. As your first city grows - or fails to - adjust the worker allocation.
If the city is wellfed and prosperous from the beggining, you might
want to create a scientist to boost the city's intellectual
production, hastening your advances.
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9. Concentrate on population at least two turns out of three: Your goal
is to have a civilization-wide population of more than a million by
the year 1 A.D.
10. Build a marketplace as soon as that improvement becomes available.
Better yet, buy the improvement. The increase in revenue will repay
the expenditure very quickly.
YOUR FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH OTHERS
1. Always accept the first treaty offer upon initial contact with another
civilization: It costs you nothing, and gives you time to gather your
resources, marshal your forces, and prepare a more considered, and
perhaps antagonistic, relationship with the other civilization.
2. The treaty established, use your militia to hold enemy expansion
in check, positioning your units carefully, and fortifying them
against enemy sneak attack. Use militia because they are easily and
quickly produced, freeing your cities to concentrate the bulk of their
productive time on more important units, city improvements, Wonders of
the World, or civilization advances.
3. Have some backup for your border guards, especially if your guards are
militia or diplomats, whose defensive factors are low. Stronger
offensive units in reserve close to the border, or able to reach the
border quickly, can make the difference between a successful enemy
invasion and one that's turned back.
4. Once you've established a treaty with a neighboring tribe, get some
diplomats into enemy territory as quickly as you can. During the
treaty's tenure, your diplomats - and caravans, if you can produce
them - enjoy essentially unlimited freedom of movement through
enemy territory. This gives you the
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chance to obtain a good portrait of the interior of your neighbor,
learning whether he is strongr or weaker than you.
5. If you encounter an enemy at sea, try to follow his vessels back to
their homeland, particularly if both of you are in triremes. The enemy
may already have mapped the shortest paths between landmasses, saving
you valuable exploration time.
6. Send caravans into enemy territory even if you plan ultimately to
wipe the enemy from the face of the planet. Earn income while you
can!
7. Use your ships to blockade - or observe - enemy ports. If you're
playing for world domination, you'll want to contain the enemy to a
single landmass. If taking a more peaceful approach, the presence of
your ships will allow you to "shadow" the other civilization's
vessels, giving you a good and useful picture of their expansions.
8. Look for natural barriers to enemy expansion - an isthmus, a large
lake - and place defensive units in the only available paths.
9. Use your settlers to build forts at strategic points along the border
with the enemy, then garrison the fort with defensive units.
10. If you can afford the allocation of units, place diplomats on
fortification or sentry duty at various spots within the enemy
civilization. They'll keep you posted of enemy troop and settler
movement.
SECOND CITY
1. Build your second city in the most ideal location you can find, making
up for the haste with which your first city was created.
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2. Put your second city's citizens to work immediately on the constuction
of a barracks and a granary. Defensive forces should accompany the
settler unit from the first city. Move them inside the new city,
reassign them to it, and fortify them. Your new city is instantly
defended.
3. Send settlers from your first city to develop the land around the
second while it is busy producing the imporvements it needs.
4. If you have the funds, buy the second city's initial improvements.
5. At least one of your first two cities should be a port.
6. Build a road between your first two cities as quickly as possible.
7. If the enemy lies to the west, consider locating your second city to
the east, minimizing the chance it will be attacked.
8. Just as with your first city, establish a defensive perimeter around
your second to stave off barbarians and unwanted neighbors.
9. With your first city concentrating its production on units, you might
want to use the second for Wonders of the World, for educational
institutions. Or vice versa.
10. use the unit production of your second city to generate defensive
forces for your third, and so on.
TREATIES AND TRIBUTES
1. Don't be afraid to reject entreaties from other civilizations. They
may take your "insolence" as an insult and embark on a war, but they
may also respect your independence and offer a treaty.
2. Get to know your neighbors: Some of them can be trusted to honor their
treaties, while others may stay friendly for no
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more than a turn or two. The computer leaders built into the game have
distinctive personalities; it will behoove you to be observant as your
civilization and theirs become acquainted.
3. Generally speaking: Don't trust Mao, Stalin, Hammurabi, or Genghis
Khan. And be wary of everyone else!
4. Occasionally you'll be asked to join another civilization in an
alliance aimed at yet another civilization. Weigh your response
carefully. It may be that you can strike a more advantageous alliance
elsewhere.
5. Think twice beefore paying tribute. Civilizations that demand payment
for peace are unlikely to leave you alone for long. Pay only when you
have no other choice.
6. Technology exchanges can be tricky. Your best bet is to exchange
technology only with civilizations more advanced yet weaker than
yours. Giving advances to strong, warmongering neighbors is foolish.
7. Meet with other civilization leaders at least every third time they
request a conference. It's time-consuming, but otherwise your
avoidance is interpreted as a rebuff, and will lead to war.
8. Even possession of the United Nations Wonder of the World can't
completely protect you from treaty violations, especially late in the
game. If playing peacefully, initiate negotiations immediately after
the sneak attack; the enemy will offer a treaty. (This, too, will
likely be broken again before the war ends.) If playing a warlike
game, use the time bought by the United Nations to build and
position overwhelming military force of your own; then use it to
crush the enemy.
9. Pay attention when an enemy's words are backed by nuclear weapons.
Some of your enemies aren't afraid to use the Bomb, use it without
warning, and use it more than once. Even if your able to eventually
make peace with them, the pollution unleashed may ruin your score.
Your best bet is to wipe out nuclear-powered enemies - if you can.
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10. Weave together networks of alliances against strong enemies,
especially early in a game of conquest. By building a league of
weaker nations against stronger ones, you may be able to cut down on
the time required for world conquest, boosting your score.
FINANCIAL TOOLS
1. A city without a marketplace is financially and socially crippled. At
higher levels, the same is true of a city without a bank.
2. Visit each of your city screens every few turns - or more often, if
you're really serious about winning the economic side of the game -
and experiment with your population's labor allocations. Some
exploitable squares are more productive and valuable than others, yet
may not be producing for your city. Move your people around and boost
your income.
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3. If you're planning to sell a city improvement - a step that should be
taken in only the most dire of economic cicrcumstances - do so
quickly, before the improvement is rendered obsolete by technological
or social advance. Obsolete improvements can't be sold.
4. Produce plenty of caravans, bearing in mind that each city can support
only three trade routes. Send out caravans from every city.
5. The game defaults to the three most valuable trade routes, but you
can waste a lot of time and energy on routes of lesser value that
will later be superseded. Send your caravans to the most distant and
largest foreign cities you can find: These generate the largest
amounts of income.
6. The one time you should consider selling city improvements is just
before they become obsolete. The develop of gunpowder, for example,
renders barracks improvements obsolete. Since you'll have to replace
your barracks anyway, why not earn some money from the old ones?
7. Another good opportunity to sell off improvements occurs when you
hold an absolute upper hand. Possession of the United Nations Wonder
of the World is a good example. Since your enemies must offer to make
peace with you, you may not need items such as city walls,
particularly those located far away from enemy borders. Sell off the
city walls, earn a fair piece of change, and relieve your cities of
the burden of supporting those walls each turn.
8. As you locate new civilizations with new, large cities, dispatch
caravans to establish trading routes. These may be more valuable than
routes already in existence.
9. Give your citizens plenty of luxuries. This helps them appreciate
your wisdom, often resulting in "We Love The King" days, which earn
you generous bonuses.
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10. In the latter days of the game, when some of your cities may be
capable of producing vast engineering works in just a few turns, try
building these works, then selling them as soon as they're completed.
It's impractical advice for the real world, but can generate lots of
cash in the game.
11. Monitor the amount your civilization costs in maintenance each turn,
indexing that amount to your cash flow. If your treasury has grown
fat, don't be afraid to spend, spend, spend for improvements or
Wonders. Just keep enough cash in your treasury reserves to cover
half a dozen lean turns or so.
12. If you really have a healthy treasury that can cover a few turns'
loss of income, try this: Convert everything to luxury income
for your citizens. They'll reward you with points beyond your wildest
dreams.
13. Use caravans to help build Wonders. When a caravan arrives in a city
building a Wonder, you have the option of assigning it's value to the
completion of the Wonder. If you can build enough caravans quickly,
this can hasten completion of the Wonder.
14. As your income rises, adjust your taxation level. Boost your
science allocations, leaving enough in tax revenue to cover the cost
of maintenance with minimal growth each turn.
15. For cities with more than enough food, turn some of those farmers
into taxmen. Your treasury will appreciate it.
16. Build rail lines through all developable areas available to a city.
Productivity will be increased by half.
17. Trade routes among the cities of your own civilizationm, no matter
how far apart they're located, are raely worthwhile.
18. Invest in factories and manufacturing plants as you are able to build
them, but create pollution-control corps of engineers (settler units)
to deal with their effluent. You'll need two
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settler units per highly industrialized city to keep pollution under
control.
19. Approaching the space race? Build the largest cash reserves you can -
only global warfare is more expensive than getting into space.
MILITARY UNITS
1. Don't produce too many military units without a barracks. Veteran
units are, essentially, the only ones really worth producing.
2. Develop mathematics as early as you can. This permits the creeation
of catapults, the first real "artillery." Only by amplifying your
abilities through the use of technology - catapults, gunpowdr,
flight - can you enjoy an offensive edge.
3. Early in the game, use cavalry and chariots to "blitzkrieg" your way
through enemy homelands. Slower-moving units such as catapults can
be brought up later.
4. Upgrade your barracks the moment they become obslete, especially if
you are at war. Use your treasury to purchase new barracks in those
cities closest to the front or at the greatest risk of being overrun.
5. Consider fortifying strong defensive units around enemy cities rather
than laying direct assault to those cities, especially if the city
possessed defensive walls or a large number of fortified units. Seal
off the city and starve it slowly with phalanx-level units if
possible.
6. Build plenty of seagoing units. Naval power cannot be under-estimated
in the world of Civilization.
7. Consider keeping a strong naval unit on sentry duty inside your own
harbors, especially if the war is going poorly. These units can spring
to life from withing the city, attacking enemy vessels which mightt
bombard your port.
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8. Use the "go-to" function to place units n patrol, covering large
amounts of territory or sea with minimum input from you.
9. Disband military units no longer needed or of unlikely value to your
civilization. Don't forget to disband older defensive units in cities
being garrisoned by more advanced units.
10. Keep a strong offensive unit on sentry duty - not fortified - along
with your fortified defensive units in each city. The offensive unit
will "awaken" at the approach of the enemy, and can attack in some
cases before the enemy assault begins.
11. Cities susceptible to frequent attack by barbarians might need more
than one offensive sentry either inside or close to the city. You
need to kill the barbarians before they can pillage your developed
countryside.
12. Never stack military units in an open terrain. They are far too
vulnerable to being destroyed at a single blow, sometimes by a
less-powerful enemy.
13. Blockade harbors with city walls; bombard thcse without them.
14. Especially in the age of transports, when a single vessel can carry
eight units, escort your shipping with cruisers or battleships. Your
advanced military vessels "see" farther than other units, and can
alert you to the presence of enemy warcraft lying in wait for your
convoy.
15. An aircraft carrier bearing bombers and fighters makes another good
screening device for convoys.
16. Because of their extremely long range, nuclear missles are among the
best advance observers. Launch them from strategically located cities,
or from aircraft carriers, and use them to explore and observe. Just
be sure you leave sufficent moves for the missle to return to a
friendly city or carrier.
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17. And be careful if you use nuclear missles in the manner described
immediately above. One slip of your typing finger, and instead of
surveillance your missle could unleash holocaust.
18. If your information reveals that an intransigently warlike enemy has
developed nuclear weapons, launch a crash SDI building program. Only
SDI can save your cities from nuclear attack.
YOU CAN'T RUN A CIVILIZATION ON AN EMPTY STOMACH
1. A city without a granary grows slowly at best.
2. Your granary holds several turns' worth of food. If your granary is
filled to bursting, shift your citizens to mineral resource work
or convert them to specialists for a few turns, living off your
surplus agriculture products. Just don't forget to return them to
the fields before famine strikes.
3. If you're having trouble getting a city's population to grow, shift
all of the citizens to the fields. You may lose a little economic
revenue, but before long your granary should begin to fill, and you
can readjust the assignments of a larger, better-fed labor force.
4. Look for the most efficent routes to follow if bringing irrigation to
your city's enviorns. Don't build more elaborate irrigation channels
than necessary.
5. Clear pollution from agricultural squares before otther squares.
6. Replace granaries immediately should they be destroyed. Granaries
should be replaced before any other structure.
7. When creating specialists, look at your granary supply. If it's
full, take an agricultural square out of production. If you're
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short on food, remove a mineral or other resource square from the
work force.
8. When laying extended siege, pillage or occupy enemy agricultural
squares, cutting off the city's food supply.
9. Take advantage of seafood: Those fish symbols in oceans and lakes
contribute mightily to cities located near them.
10. Irrigate oases when you have the chance.
11. If your granary is well stocked with foood, onsider onvrting one or
more agriultural squares into forests. Just keep an eye on food
levels after you do so.
WONDERS OF THE WORLD
1. The most valuable Wonder of the World of the ancient world is the
Great Library, especially if playing against a large number of enemy
civilizations. You can't beat the boost in knowledge you get when
two of those other civilizations make the same advance.
2. The most valuable Wonder of the World of the Middle Ages is Johann
Sebastian Bah's Cathedral, especially if you're ruling a republic.
You can't beat it for generating quite a few "We Love The King"
days, with their concomitant increase in population.
3. The most valuable Wonder of the World of the modern world is the
Apollo Program, if you're playing a space race game: Only with
Apollo can you begin building your starship.
4. If playing a game of world conquest, the most valuable latter-day
Wonder may well be, ironically enough, the United Nations. Because
this Wonder forces enemy civilizations to capitulate to you, you
can marshal your fores almost at
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leisure, gatthering them at critical spots before launching all-out
attacks.
5. Be warned: Violating one treaty when you possess the United Nations
Wonder seems to violate all of them. When you're ready to make war,
make war on all fronts at once.
6. As soon as you have three cities, put one of them - probably your
capitol - to work building a Wonder. The other cities can produce
military and settler units, if need be, that can be transfered to the
capitol to shore up its defenses or further develop the terrain around
the city.
7. Use diplomats to seek out Wonder production in the cities of other
civilizations. Then either sabotage that production or target those
cities for capture, and the addition of their Wonders to your empire.
8. If pursuing a peaceful strategy - trying to win through diplomacy,
financial strength, and expansion to the stars, focus your attention
on those Wonders of the World that force your enemies to sue for
peace: The Great Wall and the United Nations.
9. If playing a "peacful" game, build as many Wonders of the World as
possible, concentrating on those that boost your citizens' happiness.
Your score will benefit greatly.
10. When playing a peaceful game and concentrating on building Wonders,
don't forget that they must be defended. Put plenty of strong units
in and around cities holding Wonders of the World.
11. Some Wonders of the Wrold serve all the world: The Apollo Program is
a good example. Use your diplomats to discover whether other
civilizations are further along toward completing global Wonders of
the World than you. If so, devote your resources to creating something
exclusive to your civilization.
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HAIL, CONQUEROR
1. He who conquers the world fastest conquers the world best: If playing
for global domination, every turn is vital. You can't stop to smell
the roses if you want the world at your feet.
2. Strike the strongest civilizations first, with as much military might
as you an muster. Use your diplomat skills to keep weaker nations
weak, for easy destruction after the "big guys" are gone.
3. Coordinate, coordinate, coordinate! Establish a treaty with a
civilization you plan to destroy. Flood the civilization with
diplomats even as you mass your assault forces along its borders.
When you hit, hit all at once, using diplomats for subversion and
sabotage before invading with ground forces. Break the enemy's back
during the first twrn of the war.
4. If necessary, sell off improvements in your heartland to finance the
final stages of a war on the frontier. Use the funds to subvert enemy
cities first, to bribe enemy units second.
THE UNFRIENDLY SKIES
1. As soon as you develop aircraft capabilities, begin cranking out
fighters and, later, bombers. Don't wait a single turn: You can't have
too large an air force, particularly in heated games of global combat.
2. Try to garrison a couple of fighters in every city - not just those
near the front. Fighters can respond quickly to enemy threats, saving
you from the dangers of surprise attack, or invasion from an
unexpected direction.
3. Your fighters can attack - and keep on attacking. This makes them
especially valuable when you're facing waves of enemy units. Go for
stacked units first, of for transport raft that might be carrying
several units.
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4. If your resources are running low, don't station your fighters or
bombers too close to the front - in harbors, for example. They are too
vulnerable there to enemy bombardment. Base them a few squares back
in a city or on board a carrier. Then, when enemy ships or bombers
appear, you can fly out to engage them.
5. Bombers have as much strategic value in Civilization as they do in
the real world. A squadron of bombers can turn the tide of war, even
against overwhelming odds.
6. If you're planning to make war on a civilization with whom you enjoy
treaty status, take advantage of the peace and get your air force
in position to attack. Try to target three bombers for each city
you're planning to hit, more if you can afford it. Attack stacked
units in the open first.
7. Don't overlook the surveillance capabilities of your aircraft,
particularly the bombers. Their long range makes them perfect for
exploring the interior of enemy continents and islands.
8. Carrier power is ideal for isolating and containing an enemy island.
Position a couple of carriers at either end of the island, support
them with cruisers to guard against enemy ships, and use their
to patrol the enemy coastline.
9. Remember the lessons of Desert Storm: Once you've launched an air
war, don't let up.
10. Desert Storm Lesson Two: Once the air war has taken its toll, be sure
you have plenty of fast, mobile ground forces in position to mop up.
11. Desert Storm Lesson Three: In this Civilization, you don't have to
stop. If your air power has made it possible for you to roll all the
way over the enemy, do so, assuming that suits your overall
strategic plan.
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AND ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA ...
1. Never send a loaded tireme out into uncharted waters. It's one thing
to risk a ship to loss at sea, quite another to risk valuable units.
Chart your course before moving cargo.
2. Early on, designate one or two coastal towns as major shipyards.
Manipulate their population and resources so as to be able to
produce ships at a rapid rate. (You should have another seaport within
easy sailing distance, to which newly constructed ships can be
reassigned in order relieve the shipyard of the burden of support.)
3. Build fleets in the major oceans and gulfs, along with seaports to
support and load them. Cut down on the necessity for moving ships
all over the globe.
4. As soon as you can build cruisers, battleships, and submarines, do
so - their extended range of view is invaluable for spoting enemy
craft, and equally invaluable for opening up any remaining hidden
areas of the sea.
5. Use your advanced naval craft to patrol the coastlines of unexplored
enemy islands and continents. Advanced ships "see" an adjacent two
squares, which can give you a good picture of another civilization's
coastal defenses.
6. Don't forget naval power during ground assaults. Look for isthmuses
and narrows through which enemy ground transport must move. Position
a battleship or cruiser on either side of the landmass and open fire
on enemy units stranded in your sights between turns.
7. If bombarding a fortified harbor with a value of nine or higher,
bring at least two warships. You'll likely lose one.
8. Transports are worth their weight in gold, not just for mounting
amphibious invasions. Fill your ships with caravans and send them to
all the corners of your world. A successful
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leader is one whose merchant fleet is as large as his navy. And your
merchant fleet may be even busier.
9. Plot your invasion routes so the transport vessels reach landfall on
the first move of their turn. That lets you move the ships after
debarking some of their forces, spreading your troops across the
broadest possible front.
10. Submarines make terrific blockade vessels, but their limited movement
capability all but requires that you kepp some fast, long-ranged
cruisers nearby to take their place shoul they be sunk.
11. Be careful, early in the game, about building ships before the
immediate area around the harbor is fully explored. You might wind
up with a landlocked tireme stuck in a lake with nowhere to go!
GETTING AROUND
1. Use the Go-to key only occasionally. While it takes some of the burden
of issuing orders from you, it rarely moves your units along the most
effecient routes, nor does it take full advantage of the movement
benefits offered by rail transportation.
2. Pressing H will return your bombers and fighters to the nearest
friendly city or carrier, if the aircraft possess sifficent movement
points.
3. Moving through a city costs movement points. Build railways around
cities as well as up to them, letting you conserve movement points
for your units.
4. When engaged in a continental war, continue driving rail lines to the
front. It's worth commiting extra settler units to this task,
especially if you're conquering enemy territory at a good clip.
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5. Study the world map as it's revealed. Its layout can give you good
guidance in the placement of cities proximate to advantageous sea
routes.
6. Look fro rail lines along the coasts on newly discovered continents
or islands, or enemy continents or islands you're revisting. Debark
your diplomats and caravans on squares with railroad track and they'll
be able to move farther when the next turn arrives.
7. Centralize your embarkation points for units bound overseas. The
central locations need not be a city. Run a rail line to a remote area
near an advantageous shipping lane. Send the units you wish to move
overseas to that point first, picking them up with your cargo vessel.
Of course, you'll eventually want to put a city there, and probably
should do so sooner than later. It's also smart to protect such remote
loading zones with a ship or two, to prevent enemy craft from sneaking
in and opening fire on your sentried units.
8. Build cities on remote islands to serve as island-hopping airbases.
These need to be the most viable islands for long-term development,
but should be well fortified against enemy assault. Islands lying
just off enemy coastlines make the most valuable airbases of all.
9. Pillage enemy inter-city roads and rail lines if possible during
wartime. Cutting their lines of transport gives you the chance to
catch enemy units in the open, unable to move.
10. If forced into a long retreat, pick a spot at which to cut your own
transportation lines. Doing so in the right place can help you
establish a "killing field" where the enemy units will be halted and
vulnerable to your fire.
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DIPLOMACY
1. The diplomat is arguably the most valuable unit in the game; certainly
it's the most flexible. Produce plebty of diplomats and send them
throughout teh world.
2. Don't overlook the value of the diplomat as a "place-holder." On
sentry or fortification duty, your diplomat will alert you to the
presence of enemy forces. The advantage is that the diplomat can
attempt to bribe teh forces over to your side, if you have the money.
3. Stealing technology is an and violates any treaties in existence
between you and your target. If you have several diplomats traveling
inside enemy territory, make sure all are in a position to make their
move during the same turn. Otherwise you run the risk of losing them
to enemy retaliation.
4. If a city looks vulnerable to subversion, try it. Weaker cities can
generally be subverted for less money than wealthier ones.
5. Try to get two or three diplomats in position around each of the
enemy's major cities just before you invade. Use the diplomats one
after another to sabotage enemy production and destroy enemy
improvements.
6. Don't use diplomats to uncover serendipity squares. They are too
easily wiped out by barbarians.
ENERGY
1. In terms of long-term scoring, the best energy sources are those that
pollute the least.
2. The game, or its designers, has a built-in bias against nuclear
fission: Be wary of building nuclear plants until you'vre developed
fusion. At the very least, build nuclear plants only in the most
socially stable of cities.
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3. Build Hoover Dam. This Wonder of the World provides clean power to
your whole continent - and the game defines continent liberally.
RULING
1. Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven: You may not be able to be
as nice as you want while you play the game.
2. If you're going to war, do so as a despot of a monarch. Otherwise, the
war carries too high a social cost.
3. Alternate your form of government often, depending on your short-term
goals.
4. Go for "We Love The King" days, earned by giving your people the
"good life" of luxuries. You'll end up with more people.
5. Try a strategy that focuses your attention and production on cures for
cancer, women's sufferage, and other social benefits. You might be
surprised at the effect this has on your people's willingness to
support your choices.
SPACE TRAVEL
1. If playing to win by reaching Alpha Centauri first, commit everything
you have to the space race once it begins. Spend the time waiting for
that beginning by building up your perimeter defenses against
attack. Once you've undertaken to build a starship, you'll need the
productive output of every city you can spare, and you can allow
nothing to interefer with that production.
2. Since starship modules take longer to build, start them first. Have
at least three cities of roughly equivalent size working on module
production.
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3. Starship structural pieces are the easiest to build, yet are the
pieces you'll need in largest quantity. Find a couple of cities that
can crank these pieces out and get them going.
4. The more propulsion units your starship has, the faster it reaches
Alpha Centauri. The more colonists you attempt to deliver to Alpha
Centauri, the more your starships' weight. Try to install two
propulsion units for every complete colonist package - habitation,
life support, and solar power modules - you intend to launch.
5. Guard your capitol! Losing it brings your interstellar program to a
crashing close.
6. Watch the clock. You must reach the Alpha Centauri system before your
reign expires, or all your work is for naught.
7. Watch the other civilizations' starship development. If they launch
before you do, you may want to make a mad dash for their capitol in
hopes of capturing it before their starship reaches its destination.
8. Consider selling off some improvements in order to buy more colonists
and life-support modules. The more colonists you deliver to Alpha
Centauri, the higher your score.
9. Once your starship is launched, convert all starship-related
production to other ends. After launch, no further starship production
can take place unless your craft is lost or recalled by the loss of
your capitol. Shift your resources and production to items likely to
boost your overall score. Remember, after launch, the game is counting
its way down to the finish line.
10. Don't launch unless your arrival time is less than 20 years. If it's
more than that, add more fuel and propulsion units.
11. Not tired yet? Take a deep breath, reboot and restart Sid Meier's
Civilization, and begin again, pretending that now
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your settlers are taming an unknown world, in orbit around Alpha
Centauri.
TWO GREAT UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
1. Tired of facing the same old enemies? Press Alt-R to randomize the
personalities of the leaders of other civilizations.
2. In the earliest copies of teh game, pressing Shift-1234567890t lets
you get a complete world map, see into enemy cities, and generally
peek behind the scenes. This "feature" was discontinued after the
first release, but it's worth a try just in case.
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APPENDIX B
----------
A CONVERSATION WITH THE CREATORS
================================
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING SID
There is about Sid Meier an air of quiet thoughtfulness. Not just in a
courteous sense, although he is a considerate and generous host.
But also thoughtful in the larger sense - Meier is filled with
thought. To our benefit, he devotes much of that thought to the creation
and design of interactive entertainments. Even more to our benefit, Meier
increasingly thinks about ways in which to make enteratinment that is
about something. And, still better, his games remain imminently playable,
no matter what their subject matter.
"There are games that ask you more to admire the design of the game
than to play the game," Meier says, although - always the nice guy - he
declines to name names. "Too many games are designed first, and played
later." In his own work, Meier always puts the player first.
That priority, in fact, is what he's proudest of in Civilization. "In
our games we try to make the player the star," he says. Every
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step of the design process is aimed at giving the player the tools needed
to have an entertaining time playing the game, no matter how complex the
game appears.
On the surface, Sid meier's Civilization appears ferociously complex,
yet even first-time players find it easy to take charge of a new society,
building cities, encountering other nations, manipulating some large
variables as their own nation grows. That was a deliberate goal on Meier's
part. The material of the game conspired along with Meier's desires:
Everyone begins at the same primitive level.
Interactivity can be a burden, Meier points out. "I'm most comfortable
with games that relate to the real world," he says. That comfort level
imposes on him a dilemma: How do you design a "real-world" game that's
still manageable for new or first-time players, those who do not
necessarily have hundreds of hours of experience with computer games. It's
a dilemma Meier first solved with PIRATES!, which he sees as a sort of an
"adventure game for people who don't play adventure games."
In Civilization, Meier solves the problem by providing a graduated
scale of tools for the player. You don' start with everything at your
disposal; you have to grow and learn along with your civilization, adding
tools to your own arsenal of experience wven as your own electronic
citizens are adding advances of their own.
"Most games have a learning curve," Meier says, "a barrier to entry
that almost requires you to be dedicated to reading the manual, playing
again and again. You can probably find ways of starting people off with
only having to know a small number of concepts, layering them and
introducing them as they become important. It's a style we probably ought
to do more of. If games are ever going to break out into the mass market,
I think they have to have a much more friendly quality in terms of the
barrier to entry. They have to be intimidating. There's a large
intimidation factor that most people have as far as computers are
concerned, and that's what we have to overcome."
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The anture of those layered concepts in Civilization - economics,
philosophies, technologies, and so on - help Civilization stand both above
and apart from its predecessors. Those predecessors include a board game
that was also called CIVILIZATION and a board game called EMPIRE.
The board game focused almost exclusively on the earliest days of
civilization, specifically in the regions surronding the Mediterranean.
Allowing for the limitations imposed by the medium - board, pieces,
cards - the game nonetheless managed to communicate many of the
complexities and consequences of intellectual ferment and progress as
exemplified by Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and so on. Its specific
infulence on Meier was the game's use of big concepts - law, religion, and
so on - rather than more narrow representations or examples of ideas. "I
think that if I hadn't seen that game," he says, "I might have been a
little more specific. But even before we played it, we had decided that
ours would be a broader, more hands-on game." Meier had decided as well
that his game would have a much longer time frame.
EMPIRE was - and is - a game of planetary conquest and industrial
production that has come close to being a full-time occupation for many
players. Starting with a single visible map square, EMPIRE challenges
players not only to conquer the world, but also to explore it, to regulate
and manage the production of various military elements at cities across
the surface of the planet.
The two games may well be predecessors, but they are also
springboards. Meier's game contains its homages to the two earlier games,
but quickly moves beyond them on every level, most notably in the sheer
number of aspects of civilization that are included for the player to
manipulate.
How did Meier research a project so vast? "I'm kind of anti-research,"
Meier says. "It's my philosophy that you don't want to be too much smarter
than your player... you don't want to impose superior knowledge on the
player. Research is done to get the facts
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right, but no to overwhelm the player with obscure knowledge that only the
designer knows."
Nevertheless, the game shows the deep reading and thinking that Meier
and Shelley have done in history, which shows particularly well, I think,
in the game's portrayal of the history of ideas and interrelationships.
Certainly the fact that the concept of literacy underlies so many of teh
game's branches implies a deep respect for the place of learning, of the
idea in human history.
"There's a high moral tone to the game," Meier says with a laugh, then
turns more serious. "Frankly, every now and then we have guilt pangs about
doing games where things blow up. But there's also this idea that during
the playing of the game, the palyer feels good about introducing concepts
such as literacy, or religion. If you're going to give the player a crumb,
why not give him a big crumb? There's no reason not to make the game about
as many interesting, and large, and important topics as possible. Again,
as long as the game remains playable."
Meier was joking, but there is a moral quality to teh game that's not
only refreshing, but that also directly addressed his commitment to
relating his games to the real world. There are consequences at work here,
and Meier is very much aware of them. Players come to care about their
civilizations, thinking of them almost as living things.
That "living" aspect of the game raises it, I think, to the level of
art, one of the few computer games to achieve such levels. There are
parallels here to artificial life, cellular automata, even traditional
history books.
The game breaks much ground. If nothing else, the idea of the
Civiliopedia, a hige on-line help system, should be adopted by more
designers and publishers. The more assistance that can be offered a player
via the computer itself, the more the game helps the player overcome that
intimidation too many people still feel
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Approaching the end of nearly a year's work on this game, Meier is
tired, but generally pleased. Not self-satisfied: He is a truly modest
man, but one who truly brings every energy he has to bear upon rendering
invisible the complexities of game design, putting the player truly in
charge of the electronic destinies of their creations.
For all of his modesty, Meier seems aware of just how much he has
accomplished.
"This game contains all of my best ideas right now," Meier says. Those
ideas are very good indeed, and they show in every frame and at every
level of the game.
BRUCE SHELLEY: A WRITER'S TURN OF MIND
Bruce Shelley seems like a writer. He has all the attributes: a certain
distant gaze in his eyes, the care he takes in choosing his words, the
willingness to explore the consequences of ideas that come up in even
casual conversation.
Of course, it helps that he is in actuallity a fine writer. Compare
the prose in one of Shelley's manuals with that in most software
documentation and you'll see what I mean.
Shelley has worked with Meier on several producst, bringing his own
imagination and wide reading to bear on many of the ideas that Meier
raises with his designs. There is an easy give-and-take between the two,
with Meier always quick to acknowledge Shelley's contribution to finsihed
game designs.
Shelley's participation extends beyond design and manual
responsibilities. He has the pleaure of being the prime playtester for new
projects, working through them again and again, and offering Meier
insights and suggestions as he does.
Shelley's office is filled with history books, but he echoes Meier's
comments on specific research and its place - or lack of it - in the game.
"We based a lot of the game on our own under-
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standing," he says, "but we did consult some historical atlases and time
lines."
Along thos elines, as it were, there are moments in the game's
"histry" where the drama heightens. "There are a couple of points in the
game where technology changes and teh pace of teh game accelerates,"
Shelley says. "You worry more. The lurking danger is there. They might
have something that can really hurt you. Nuclear weapons can devastate
your whole economy. The stakes are higher." As, with the introduction of
nuclear weapons in our century, the gloabl drama grew more tense.
To that end, how much does the game rest upon the actual history of
the world, out world?
"We're building a civilization," Shelley points out, "not specifically
our civilization. Temples, cathedrals, and so on are specific to each
civilization in the game, not Jeudo-Christian in nature."
That flexibility, the freedom from specific historical sequence or
reference serves not only game design, but also, more importantly, the
player. "The player decides how economies are run, when to go to war,
science, technology, etc. You're the guiding spirit of your civilization."
Shelley is proudest of the richness of the game experience. "The game
transports you, makes you really get attached to what you're doing, even
as you're making great plans for the future. It's an absorbing exercise.
We've taken the technology to a new level."
Shelley appreciates, perhaps above all, the gameplay benefits that
derive from this flexibility. "You can decide whether to pursue a
technology path that leads to a certain type of military unit, or one that
leads to a certain type of overnment," he says. "It's all up to you."
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====================================================================== 226
INDEX
act of war 89, 106
active unit 20
report on 30
advisors 21-24
agricultural production
increasing 52-53
versus resource development 193, 194
air force 167, 182
building 207-208
used for surveillance 208
airbases
building on remore islands 211
Alexander the Great 166
alliances 183, 198, 199
Alpha Centauri 19, 183, 213-215
alphabet 45, 48, 123, 127
Aristarchus 125
art 128-129
attitude advisor 23
balista 112
bank 199
barbarian leaders 51
capturing 51
barbarians 51, 65, 203
barracks 56, 57, 88, 92, 194, 197, 200, 202
cost of maintaining 138
replacement of 88
upgrading 202
Barzun, Jacques 121
battleships 209
blockades 116, 149, 196, 203
establishing and enforcing 102-104
handing 79
bombers 79, 207-208
returning to nearest city 210
Bonaparte, Napoleon 103, 115, 166
border guards
backing up 195
bribery 182
bronze-working 45, 48
Caesar, Julius 125, 166
cannon 110
capitol
captruing 171-172
effect of loss on space program 214
moving 33, 194
captured cities
securing 111
caravans 81, 87, 144-145, 179, 195, 196, 200
as intelligence gatherers 169-170
as sources of information 87
enemy 145-146
using to build Wonders of the World 145
versus diplomat units 87
cargo vessels 80, 209
carriers 208
catapults 76, 110-111, 112, 167, 202
cathedrals 187
cavalry 100, 110, 167, 202
ceremonial burial 127
chariots 76, 100, 110, 167, 202
chemical weapons 112
chokepoints 102, 103
cities
building in enemy territory 118
defense of 93
establishing in global conquest strategy 159-160
establishing on seacoast 98
first 192
city
determining status of 21
finding 21
securing 47-48
city defense
versus city improvements 57
city growth
factors of 17-18
city improvements 33-34, 56-57
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effects of war on 148
selling 33, 86, 150, 200, 214
city map 31
city resources 37-38
city screen
opening 31
city squares
numbering in 20
city status 21
city walls 84, 112, 161, 182, 194
building 78
launching assault on 110
selling 200
civilization
rise and decline graph 39
Civilization Advances 130
civilization score 25
civilization site
selection of 43-44, 48
civilizations
elimination versus isolation 98
selecting number of 16
Civilopedia 26-27
coliseums 130, 187
colonization
winning through 18-19
communist dictatorship 152
cruisers 209
cultural exchange 131-132
through conquest 132
when to render advances to the enemy 132
cultural improvements 130-131
cost of 130
culture 121-133
date 28
defense 45, 193
aerial 79-80
in peaceful expansion strategy 181-182
naval 80-81, 202-203
nuclear 80
of coastline 162-163
of harbors and coasts 78-81
of large areas 76-78
of second city 197
of settlements 91-94
technological 88-91
upgrading 91
versus offense 76
Democracy 126, 152-153, 178
demographics 26
Desert Storm 208
depotism 152
diplomat units 51, 81, 83, 92, 101, 105-108, 168, 179, 212
and intelligence gathering 170
and sea exploration 61
use at fortification or sentries 196, 212
use during treaty tenure 195
versus caravans 87
economy
maintaining strong 138-139
recessive 150-151
successful 86-88
education
as a defensive weapon 90
Einstein 32, 130
elite citizens 32-33
creation of 32
types of 32
Elvis 32-33, 142, 150
overdependence on 33
embarkation points 211
embassy 107
establishing 22, 83, 105
information provided by 22
emigration 181
Empire 221
enemy capitol
capturing 109
enemy cities
exchanging culture with 132
enemy leaders
changing personalities of 215
meeting with 198
trusting 198
enemy ports 102
blockading 196
enemy units
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bribing 87
enemy vessels
following 196
energy sources 212-213
hydroelectric power 147, 186
engineering works
developing and selling 201
enviornment 129
cleaning up 147
devastation of 129
Erasistratus 125
Eratosthenes 125
Euclid 125
expansion
in defensive mode 93
strategies for first millennium 192-193
exploration 98-100
as defense 70
in global conquest strategy 163-165
of starting landmass 99-100
using diplomat units 179
exploring the high seas 62-65
fighters 79-80, 207-208
returning to nearest city 210
Find City 21
food 204-205
cutting off enemy's 205
production of 140
storage 36, 56
forest 49
fortified unit
backing up with military unit 82
forward outpost
establishing 117
fortifying 118
frigates 117
garrison 84
building 84
global conquest 157-173
building army for 167-169
determining target cities in 168-169
from an island base 158
history of 166-167
military buildup for 160-161
playing for 207
global warming 29-30, 147, 153
Go-to-key 210
goals of teh game 18
government 152-153, 187
granaries 56, 57, 161, 193, 197, 204
vost of maintaining 138
depleting 140
replacement of 204
grassland 49
Great Library of Alexandria 125-126
gunpowder 202
development of 200
Hammurabi 198
Hannibal 85
hills 49
Hitler, Adolf 115, 166
horseback riding 45
information
acquiring 35-36
and requests for advances 131
embassy 83
forms of 8
gathered by caravans 87
post-game 39
intelligence advisor 22
intelligence gathering 89, 101, 105, 132, 169
interpenetration 121, 131
invasion 108-109
amphibious 115-117
as a defense 86
iron-working 45
irrigation 204
of oases 205
within city limits 205
islands 100-101
and peaceful expansion 180
building airbases on 211
defending 74-75
occupying 170
isolationism 93
jungle 49
Khan, Genghis 198
killing field 211
knights 76
land units
choosing 101-102
====================================================================== 229
landing sites
choosing 116
legions 110
levels of play 16
libraries 57, 130
building 124
literacy 124
logging 53
Lord Nelson 103
losing 39
luxuries 38, 142, 201, 213
luxury rate 21
mangonel 112
Mao 198
map screen 20
navigating 20
mapmaking 45, 48, 60, 126
marketplace 57, 138-139, 161, 199
buying 195
Masada 83
masonry 88, 112
mass transit 147, 186
mathematics
development of 202
Maximus, Quintus Fabius 85
Meier, Sid 3, 19, 27, 219-223
menu bar 21
metalworking 88, 122
military advisor 22
military units 193, 202-204
active status of 35
assignment in democracy 153
backing up fortified units 82
defensive status of 35
disbanding 203
offensive 203
remote 76
stacking 108, 203
use in settlements 78
militia
strategy for 47
militia units 71, 76, 193-194, 195
fortifying 72
in global conquest strategy 158
replacing with pickets 73
mining 53
mobile units 167
patrolling 77
mobility 45, 46, 53
monarchy 152
mountains 49, 74
movement
shortcuts and tips for 210-211
musketeers 76
mysticism 127
napalm 112
natural borders 74
natural disaster
and religion 128
avoiding 17
navy 182
building 209-210
nuclear attack
defending against 90
nuclear fission 212
nuclear plants
building 212
nuclear threat 153-154, 198
nuclear weapon 80
nuclear weapons 203-204
use of 153-154
oases
irrigation of 205
offense
using defensive units 202
oredrs 21
palace 28
peace offerings 114
peaceful expansion
and military strength 178, 180
winning through 177-187
peaceful relations
advantages of 83
phalanx 48, 71, 76
philosophy 126
pickets 71-72, 77, 81, 99
choosing units for 75-76
circumventing to capture cities 109
placement of 72, 73, 74
pillage command 204
pillaging 149
Pirates! 220
====================================================================== 230
plains 49
pollution 35, 185-186, 202, 212
and nuclear weapons 153-154
cleaning up 185
clearing from agricultural squares 204
minimizing 146-147
population 32-33, 194-195
and job assignments 139
contented vs. discontented 9, 32, 200
experimenting with labor allocations 199
maintaining happiness of 130
turning farmers into taxmen 201
pottery 56, 122, 193
production 34-35
changing 34-35
early strategy for 48
production units
upgrading 84
psychological warfare 107
railroads 113, 182, 201
building 210-211
recycling 147, 186
reinforcements 111, 113
religion 127-128
as a tool to prevent natural disaster 128
effects on government 127
remote unit 36
Republic 152-153
resources
development of 194
natural 50
revolution 21
rivers 49
roads 53-56
and military operations 54
building 53-56, 193
building for defense 77-78
for defense 72
peripheral 55
sabotage 107, 149, 212
science 128-129
science advisor 24
scientific progress 10
scientific research 38, 107, 143, 151
scientists
creating 143
Scipio, Publius Cornelius 86
"scorched-earth" policy 109
scoring 19
bonus points 19
civilization 25
SDI defensive unit 90
sea navigation 61
use of diplomat units in 61
use of mobile units in 61
seafood 205
seaports 100
creating 60, 209
second city
defense of 197
establishing 54, 196-197
placement of 197
security 69-94
establishing defensive borders 71-74
serendipity squares 50-51, 100, 117, 163
and diplomat units 212
and military backup 51
settlements 196
defending 91-94
development of 92
in gloabl conquest strategy 159, 161
use as offensive weapons 113
settlers 52-53, 100
accompanying military units 110
role in amphibious invasions 117-118
supporting 52
Shelley, Bruce 3, 27, 223-224
ship passengers 65
offloading 64
ships
as invasion crafts 116
building 60-62
building extra 64
empty 100
military escort of 203
patrolling 80, 81, 209
sentry 78-79, 80, 102
tracing enemy 81
Sid Meier's Civilization
====================================================================== 231
design of 38
desiging 220-223
siege
withstanding 83-85
siege warfare 149
history of 112
lasying 109-114
Snow, C.P. 128
space exploration 202
space travel 213-215
and peaceful expansion 183-185
Stalin, Josef 198
starships 25-26
building 213-214
halting enemy production of 25, 214
installing propulsion units on 214
launching 214
status window 28-30
strike and retreat approach 85
submarines 209
subversion 183
sun symbol 29-30
supply lines 113
guarding 92
surplus resource unit 34
swamp 49
tax rates 21
adjusting 201
setting 141
taxes 38, 140-141
restructuring 151
Taxman 32, 140-141, 150
technology
acquiring through conquest 89-90
catching up with enemy's 107
exchanging 106, 107, 198
impact on civilization 88-91
maximizing use of 89
stealing 89, 106, 107, 212
temple 57, 130, 161, 187, 194
selling 128
temples
building 128
terrain 48-50, 99, 108, 194
use in defense 74-75, 196
terrain squares
modifying 49-50
The Two Cultures. 128
top five cities 25
tarde 83, 87, 98, 144-145
trade advisor 23-24
trade revenues 37-38
changing 37-38
trade routes 151, 170, 200
among own cities 201
enhancing value of 144-145
Trafalgar 103
transportation lines
cutting 211
transports 117, 209
treasury 29, 86, 88
depleting to buy ships 79
increasing through bounties 51
monitoring during war 148
spending reserves in 201
treaty 82, 93, 99, 114, 164, 169, 197-199
accepting 195
temporary 116
violating when possess United Nations 206
trebuchet 112
tribute
paying 198
trireme 45, 48, 60-64, 100, 100-101, 196
and amphibious invasions 116
versus battleship 80
turns 17
United Nations 205-206, 206
ownership of 90, 198, 200
universities 130
in enemy cities 132
war
and fighting multiple enemies 165-166
economic impact of 148
post-game graph of 39
wheel 45
winning
by colonization 18
by eliminating all other civilizations 18
Wonders of the World 11, 24-
====================================================================== 232
25, 33, 35, 90, 128, 129, 130, 178, 193, 197, 205-206
and advanced technology 60
Apollo program 184, 205, 206
building 58-60, 206
building cities near 201
building with caravans 145
capturing 206
Cure for Cancer 187
deciding which to build 59
defending 206
Great Library 59, 90, 107, 124-125, 205
Great Wall 206
Hanging Gardens 59
Hoover Dam 213
Johann Sebastian Bach's Cathedral 187, 205
Lighthouse 59, 60
Oracle 59
selling 34, 60
Shakspeare's Theater 187
Woman's Suffrage 187
workers 32
world map 25
accessing 215
world reports 24-27
world window 27-28
writing 123-126, 192
and religion 127
development of 123
====================================================================== 233
====================================================================== 234
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith Ferrell is the editor of OMNI magazine, the world's leading consumer
science lifestyle magazine, and Editorial Director for COMPUTE magazine,
the leading magazine for home computer enthuiasts.
Ferrell attended the Residential College of the University of North
Carolina in Greensboro and has taught and lectured there. He is the author
of seven books, including biographies for young adults on such historical
figures as Ernest Hemmingway, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, and H.G.
Wells. He has written a successful series of thrillers under a pen name.
Forthcoming are biographies of Jack London and Robert Oppenheimer, another
novel, and arumination on the impact of video on world culture.
Ferrell has for several years written the computer hardware and
computer software articles for World Book Encyclopedia and World Book
Science Year.
As a public speaker, Ferrell has addressed public schools,
universities, and business people and has spoken in front of audiences of
over 2,000. Topics addressed include the future of business, the
importance of competitive research, the dangers of censorship, and the
future of libraries and information technologies. He has done conutless
radio interviews and made several television appearances.
Ferrell was honored in 1990 and 1991 with the Software Publishers'
Association Award for "Outstanding Journalistic Contributions of the
Microcomputer Software Industry." Since 1990 he has been the spokesperson
for the Consumer Software Publishers of America.
====================================================================== 235
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