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This chapter is a guide to ''all'' Civ and Civ-related games. Therefore every guide will include this chapter. Civilization terminology is used here; see [[Civ:Terminology]].
{{Header Nav|game=Civilization II}}
{{details|Civilization/Gameplay}}
''Civilization II'' is similar to the first ''Civilization]]'', with some changes to the various units, civilizations, world wonders, tile "specials" and technologies. The graphics were changed from a top-down view to an isometric representation. Rivers no longer occupy the whole of each tile along their length; instead, they are part of each topography square through which they flow, adding productive value, defensive bonuses and movement ability. The AI was improved as well, including the elimination of most random events by now making the computer player go through the same production requirements as the human player.


==The goal of the game==
The game features entirely new concepts, such as firepower and hit points, and changes to some units' abilities and strengths. For instance, engineers and settlers can be automated to improve surrounding areas, but do not ignore enemy zones of control. Damaged units can now retreat to cities, where their hit points are restored. Some new units are added such as stealth aircraft.
The precise goals of the game vary from game to game, although all games employ conquest (eliminating all other players) and histographic (have the highest score after a set number of turns) methods of victory. In many games, more are employed, such as the "space race" (construct a spaceship that consists of multiple parts), "domination" (have most of the map within the reach of your cities), "regicide" (kill a specific unit), or "transcendence" (the researching of a specific technology).


As in [[en:chess|chess]], the game is divided into several phases and the ultimate goal of the game should not distract you from playing each phase correctly. Checking the king without purpose is useless in chess, as is making empty threats for no reason other than to make threats in Civ. In both games, an empty threat may or may not be effective, but for it to be truly effective it must have sound reasoning behind it, and if it does not work it must not punish the player who made the threat.
The player has the ability to consult the 'High Council' for advice (as long as the player still has the CD in the drive). The council consists of film clips of actors portraying advisors in the areas of the military (a brawny man, often drunk, angry or both; he becomes a stereotypical American general when Modern Age is reached), economics (a smooth-talking merchant, later a snooty and suave businessman), diplomacy (in the Modern Age, a saucy femme fatale with a vaguely Eastern European accent), technological progress (a nerdy scientist), and the people's happiness (an Elvis Presley caricature, wearing sunglasses even in the Ancient period). They often argue with and insult one another, as each advisor's department demands a different set of priorities.  


==Cities==
There are two paths to victory (and bonus points to the score) in this game: to be the last civilization remaining or to build a spaceship and reach [[Alpha Centauri]] before any of the other civilizations. The space race can be much more difficult because there are a limited number of turns in the game, which ends in the year 2020. If the spaceship does not reach Alpha Centauri by then, the game will simply end with the current score. The player can continue playing after all civilizations have been conquered, the spaceship has reached its destination, or the year 2020, but there will no longer be any scoring. The sooner a player conquers every other civilization, or the space ship arrives, the higher the player's score will be.
All Civilization games have cities. Alpha Centauri refers to them as "bases", but they serve exactly the same function. The primary function of a city is production. The secondary function of a city is acquiring and holding territory. By acquiring territory, you reduce your enemy's possibilities for production. Therefore, an unproductive city can still be very useful, but a productive city will almost always be more useful. The ideal city serves both functions.


===Good city sites===
The scoring system measures the player's performance in the end of each game. Population is a major influence on scoring as each happy citizen contributes two points, each content citizen contributes one point, and each unhappy citizen contributes zero points. This means that higher population yields better scores. Additionally, each wonder of the world owned by the player will also add 20 points to their score. Each wonder of the world can only be built once per game. Each wonder adds different bonuses so the Player must choose carefully which one(s) they want to work on and try to build them before the computer opponents do. Each square with pollution deducts ten points.  
The details of what constitutes a good city site depends on the game. For instance, in Alpha Centauri, high elevation is desirable. However, most other Civilization games have no concept of elevation. What they ''do'' share in common is that different terrain will produce different resources and have different defensive capabilities. Therefore, what makes a certain site desirable is always the same: an abundance of resources and an ability for the city to defend itself.


===Resources and production===
The length of time there has been peace (no armed conflict or war) up to the end of the game also adds three points per turn, up to a maximum of 100 points, and if the player won using a spaceship, additional points are rewarded, based on the number of people who reached Alpha Centauri alive. The final score will also give a civilization percentage, based on the difficulty level the game was played at (chosen at the very beginning of the game). The higher this percentage is, the better. Finally, a title will be given to the player. Particularly good ones include "Lion-Hearted", "the Great" with the greatest obtainable title being "The Magnificent".
Cities always produce three resources. These are usually named ''food'', ''shields'', and ''trade''. In SMAC, these are called ''nutrients'', ''minerals'', and ''energy'', respectively. In ''Civilization III'', "trade" was renamed "commerce". In ''Civilization II: Test of Time'', the names depend on the current game being played. Regardless of their names, they always serve the same functions. For consistency, we will refer to them as food, shields, and trade.
 
Your cities are populated by citizens. They will work the surrounding terrain and produce goods. Each citizen may work one tile; the city tile is always worked automatically. For instance, a city with 6 citizens can work up to seven tiles: the center tile plus one tile per citizen.  In most ''Civ'' games, citizens are restricted to the tiles they can work to a ''city radius''.  Citizens can also be specialists and not work tiles; this will be discussed later.
 
These are the three kinds of goods that your cities will produce:
* Food - No civilization can survive without food. Surplus food will accumulate until the food box is full. When it is, another citizen will be added to the city and the food box will empty. The food box grows with the size of the city, usually at a constant rate. Each citizen requires two food per turn to survive. A citizen will never take more or less than this. If the city is not producing enough food to meet demand, this food will be taken from the food box. If the food box is empty and a citizen still must eat, a citizen starves and the population count will be reduced by one. In some Civ games, Settlers units need support in the form of food from their home city in addition to the shields they need for support. In these cases, if the food box empties and more food is needed, the most distant such unit will be disbanded. If more food is still needed after that, ''then'' a citizen will die. The population count will never be reduced by more than one per turn due to starvation.
 
: In many ''Civ'' games, improvements and wonders may also affect how food is used to create new citizens.  For example, many ''Civ'' games have the Granary improvement that half-empties the food box, and a wonder that gives Granaries to every friendly city.  In ''Civilization III'', possession of the Longevity wonder will make your cities create two citizens instead of one when the food box fills.  In other cases, a new citizen may not be created when the food box is full because of the city reaching a population limit.
 
* Shields - A city must procure raw materials (shields), which can then be used to build things. Your city will ''always'' be working on one of three kinds of projects:
** Unit - Build a unit, such as a military unit or Settler.
** Improvement - An improvement to benefit the city, or a Wonder to benefit your entire civilization or even the entire world.
** Capitalization (in some games, Wealth) - Shields are converted to gold for the player's treasury, usually with a heavy penalty (e.g., four shields is converted to one trade unit).
 
:Shields are added to the shield box (except in Capitalization). When the shield box is full, production is complete and the unit or improvement is immediately available. In most Civ games, but not ''Civilization III'', shields are also used to support units beyond those that are deemed "free".  If more shields are needed by units than are being collected in the city, then in ''Civilization'' a unit is disbanded, but in other versions the needed shields are removed from the shield box. If the box empties but more shields are still needed, one unit will randomly be disbanded. In most games, shields in the shield box can be destroyed through espionage.
 
* Trade - Every civilization has some form of currency or barter system. You tax this trade, and the tax goes into at least one of three things:
** Tax - The taxed goods become money in your pocket. You can use it to rush-build or use it as part of a trade with another civilization, or even give it as a gift.
** Science - The taxed goods go toward improving scientific research.
** Luxury - The taxed goods go toward entertaining the populace, keeping them happy or content.
 
===Citizen happiness===
For your cities to be productive, their citizens must be kept content.  There are generally four degrees of happiness in a ''Civ'' game. From most happy to least happy, they are:
* Happy
* Content (normal)
* Unhappy
* Angry
 
Unhappy citizens are created from numerous sources.  One of the most common is unhappiness due to overpopulation, in which new citizens from city growth are created unhappy.  This is generally dependent of the difficulty setting in a game, with the highest difficulty level having its second and subsequent citizens in a city born unhappy.  Other sources of unhappiness in many ''Civ'' games include having military units in the field, drafting citizens, or war weariness.
 
If the number of unhappy people exceeds the number of happy people in a city, the city will fall into ''civil disorder''. Content citizens and specialists do not enter the equation. When a city is in civil disorder, no goods are produced other than food. In some games, you cannot rush-build during disorder as well.  In many games, there are city improvements that are dangerous to have in a city under civil disorder, such as nuclear power plants and their risks of meltdown.  Prolonged civil disorder in a city, or multiple cities under civil order, may lead the citizens to destroying certain city improvements (but never wonders), or, in the worst case, revolt, sending your government to anarchy.  This is especially true of representative governments such as Democracy in many ''Civ'' games, where having two cities in civil disorder, or one city for more than one turn, will lead to a revolution.
 
A city may also turn some or all of its citizens to ''specialists''.  In some games, this ability is restricted to cities above a certain size.  Specialists are always considered content, and do not work a tile in the city radius, but instead produce other effects.  Many ''Civ'' games have at least three kinds of specialists: ''taxmen'', which create additional gold for a player's treasury; ''scientists'', which contribute to research; and ''entertainers'', which create luxuries that can content unhappy citizens or turn content citizens happy.
 
Angry citizens usually appear only after capturing an enemy city, being loyal to their mother country. Angry citizens refuse to work for the new regime, and thus do not contribute anything to the city, and cannot be converted to a specialist, and in some games, rush-building is impossible while an angry citizen exists.  Many strategies of dealing with angry citizens include starvation and the garrisoning of strong defensive troops.  ''Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri'' does not have angry citizens, having Drones (unhappy citizens) serve both roles.
 
In many games, there is an additional incentive for having happy citizens, as, with the exception of angry citizens, there is no production bonus or penalty associated with the mood of a citizen and its association with the tile they work on.  This incentive is called ''"We Love the King Day"'' (although in many cases "King" is substituted for a better title).  This occurs when there are no angry or unhappy citizens, the number of happy citizens exceed that of content citizens, and the city is growing. "We Love the King Day" generally brings reduced corruption and waste to a city, and may bring forth additional production through production bonuses or the elimination of production penalties, depending on the type of government. In some games, and under representative governments, a city may even spontaneously grow in size.  In a histographic game, happy citizens contribute more to the score than content citizens.
 
==Research==
Each turn of the game, you have a chance to accumulate research toward a ''civilization advance'', often simplified to "tech". Techs will grant you new capabilities, or at least the chance to acquire them later, and can be used as a trading item. The only circumstances you will not accumulate research are if you have no cities, your research rate is at 0% and you do not employ scientists, or you have cities and a research rate but are not generating sufficient trade in any cities to put taxes into research. The technologies always follow a hierarchy, called the "tech tree". Most Civ games have one huge tech tree, but certain games (and certain scenarios therein), such as ''Civilization III'', have multiple tech trees. All the games have extremely different tech trees, but they all share similarities. For instance, many players could not tell you the exact effects of "Electricity" for every single Civ game without looking it up (but good players will certainly know them for their favorite games). This is because the name of the tech may have little to do with its effects.
 
Choosing which tech to start researching is an important decision. It matters even more in the early game, as each tech usually takes many turns to research. <!--Is this true in Alpha Centauri, too?--> Researching many techs early can trigger a game-lasting advantage. Whatever you do, make sure (except when at war sometimes) to keep researching down the path that your strategy is based on. You won't get very far in war against a much more advanced civilization.
 
==Expansion phase==
The first phase of any Civ game is the expansion phase. Each civilization tries to stake its claim to as much territory as it can, possibly even knocking out a rival with a "rush". The details of this will differ from game to game and from player to player. For instance, in Civilization I and II, a player might place cities as far apart as necessary to avoid overlap, four squares between cities, not including the cities themselves, being roughly optimal. In Civilization III, the same player might place cities extremely close together, with two squares between cities, or even one square in extreme situations. All games share a need to produce colonizing units as fast as practicable in the expansion phase.
 
===Infinite City Sprawl===
Infinite City Sprawl (ICS for short; "smallpox" in FreeCiv), refers to the strategy based on the concept that a player should have as many cities as possible to crank out hordes of cheap military units. In Civ1, this is marked by building many cities adjacent to other cities without so much as a space in between. This strategy was so powerful that in all other Civ games, it is illegal to place a city immediately next to another. So players started placing them with a one-square buffer zone in between. Civ2 did have some other countermeasures in place, such as having too many cities will cause unhappiness problems, but on the whole, using ICS was far more effective than not using it would be. Against a player already known to use ICS, the only real effective response was to also use ICS. Because this simplifies the game to an absurd degree and increases the tedium, many players hated ICS and players would usually forego their differences to gang up on anybody found to be using it. To this day, using ICS against human opponents in Civilization I or II is a serious breach of playing etiquette.
 
ICS as an "unbeatable" strategy came to an end by Alpha Centauri or Civilization III, although it can still be an effective strategy and many players will still use it, while facing much less hostility in response because the strategy is now beatable by other means.
 
==Diplomacy and the meta-game==
The term "meta-game" when applied to Civ diplomacy was possibly first proposed by Velociryx, one of the acknowledged masters of Civilization-style games. It is difficult to define this concept precisely, but it refers to idea that diplomacy is a game in itself, with its own rules and strategies, particulary in the way that three civs can interact with one another.
 
==Warfare==
No matter what you do, it's likely you'll eventually end up in a state of war with someone. Sometimes the warring parties are too far apart to actually engage in combat, and declaring war is mostly a token way of saying "I hate you". (Don't rely on that, though: sometimes they'll send in the navy or air force!)
 
==Combat mechanics==
The details of combat differ from game to game, however, all systems share a few things in common. For instance, every military unit has hit points. If a unit's hit points are depleted, the unit is killed in action.
 
===Nuclear warfare===
All Civ games allow the possibility of nuclear war. For instance, all Civ games have nuclear warheads, and Civ2 allows spies to detonate nuclear devices. (SMAC's retrovirus Probe Team action is similar to this.) Use of a nuclear weapon usually has the following effects:
* If aimed at a city, half of its population dies
* If aimed at a stack of military units, the stack is completely destroyed
* Surrounding tiles have pollution added, influencing the possibility of global warming
* ''Everybody'' will declare war on you (except in SMAC, where this happens only if the UN charter is in effect)
 
Using nuclear weapons is not recommended unless you either have a lock on the game and want to finish it more quickly, or are in such a desperate losing position that it is the only thing that may turn the tide in your favor.

Latest revision as of 04:29, 22 May 2021

Table of Contents

Gameplay
Appendices
Civilization II
Walkthrough
Civilization II: Conflicts in Civilization
New features
Walkthrough
Best of the Net
Civilization II: Fantastic Worlds
New features
Walkthrough
Best of the Net
Civilization II: Test of Time
New features
Walkthrough
For more details on this topic, see Civilization/Gameplay.

Civilization II is similar to the first Civilization]], with some changes to the various units, civilizations, world wonders, tile "specials" and technologies. The graphics were changed from a top-down view to an isometric representation. Rivers no longer occupy the whole of each tile along their length; instead, they are part of each topography square through which they flow, adding productive value, defensive bonuses and movement ability. The AI was improved as well, including the elimination of most random events by now making the computer player go through the same production requirements as the human player.

The game features entirely new concepts, such as firepower and hit points, and changes to some units' abilities and strengths. For instance, engineers and settlers can be automated to improve surrounding areas, but do not ignore enemy zones of control. Damaged units can now retreat to cities, where their hit points are restored. Some new units are added such as stealth aircraft.

The player has the ability to consult the 'High Council' for advice (as long as the player still has the CD in the drive). The council consists of film clips of actors portraying advisors in the areas of the military (a brawny man, often drunk, angry or both; he becomes a stereotypical American general when Modern Age is reached), economics (a smooth-talking merchant, later a snooty and suave businessman), diplomacy (in the Modern Age, a saucy femme fatale with a vaguely Eastern European accent), technological progress (a nerdy scientist), and the people's happiness (an Elvis Presley caricature, wearing sunglasses even in the Ancient period). They often argue with and insult one another, as each advisor's department demands a different set of priorities.

There are two paths to victory (and bonus points to the score) in this game: to be the last civilization remaining or to build a spaceship and reach Alpha Centauri before any of the other civilizations. The space race can be much more difficult because there are a limited number of turns in the game, which ends in the year 2020. If the spaceship does not reach Alpha Centauri by then, the game will simply end with the current score. The player can continue playing after all civilizations have been conquered, the spaceship has reached its destination, or the year 2020, but there will no longer be any scoring. The sooner a player conquers every other civilization, or the space ship arrives, the higher the player's score will be.

The scoring system measures the player's performance in the end of each game. Population is a major influence on scoring as each happy citizen contributes two points, each content citizen contributes one point, and each unhappy citizen contributes zero points. This means that higher population yields better scores. Additionally, each wonder of the world owned by the player will also add 20 points to their score. Each wonder of the world can only be built once per game. Each wonder adds different bonuses so the Player must choose carefully which one(s) they want to work on and try to build them before the computer opponents do. Each square with pollution deducts ten points.

The length of time there has been peace (no armed conflict or war) up to the end of the game also adds three points per turn, up to a maximum of 100 points, and if the player won using a spaceship, additional points are rewarded, based on the number of people who reached Alpha Centauri alive. The final score will also give a civilization percentage, based on the difficulty level the game was played at (chosen at the very beginning of the game). The higher this percentage is, the better. Finally, a title will be given to the player. Particularly good ones include "Lion-Hearted", "the Great" with the greatest obtainable title being "The Magnificent".

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