Civilization IV/Gameplay: Difference between revisions

Colonization, instead, has 16 types of "cargo" produced, some "gathered" directly from the terrain and some manufactured/converted (or, in the case of horses, just fed with surplus food production). They can all be sold for money. Food is needed, as in the other Civ games, and will increase population in a colony that has a 200-ton surplus after the end of a turn. The Colonization equivalent of "science" is the Liberty Bell, which goes toward having successive "Founding Fathers" joining your Continental Congress and thereafter providing your "empire" with various benefits, some major and some minor.

All games have cities which are populated by citizens. They will work the surrounding terrain and produce goods. Each citizen may work one tile; the central city tile is always worked automatically when the city is created. 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''.  However, any one tile on the map may only be worked by a single laborer within a single city: that is, if two cities have overlapping city radii, a laborer working a tile within the overlap within one city will prevent laborers from any other city from working the same tile location in the second city.  Citizens can also be specialists and not work tiles; this will be discussed later. Civ cities contain 25 tiles, Colonization colonies contain 9 tiles.

* Food - No civilization can survive without food. Surplus food will accumulate until the food box is full. When it is filled, another citizen will be added to the city and the food box will empty. The food box grows with the size of the city, (and thus requires ever more surplus food to fill it in order to get the next citizen or worker), 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 (a city improvement) that only half-empties the food box upon creation of a new citizen, dramatically reducing the time required to refill it, 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.

** Improvement - An improvement to benefit the city, or a Wonder to benefit your entire civilization or even the entire world, but which is physically located in the city that built it.

** 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). Civ 2 does not have this penalty.

:Shields are added to the shield box (except when "building" Capitalization, the gold generated goes into the treasury instead). 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 activities of the Spy unit.

* Trade - Every civilization has some form of currency or barter system. You allocate the total trade resources of your civilization on the "set tax rate" screen.  Each turn, the trade resource is "spent" according to the rates you set on at least one of three things:

** Tax - The trade goods become money in your civilization treasury. You can use it to rush-build, given the right conditions, or use it as part of a trade with another civilization, or even give it as a gift.  Tax revenue is also used to pay required maintenance fees for improvements and wonders, as well as, in ''Civilization III'', support your units.

** Science - The trade goods go toward scientific research, allowing you to research new technologies that can unlock new units, improvements, wonders, and unit abilities.  Falling too far behind your competitors in the science race is one of the most reliable ways to lose the game.

** Luxury - The trade goods go toward entertaining the populace, keeping them happy or content, which increasingly becomes a factor the larger your city population becomes.  In addition, the more cities you have, the sooner you have to deal with unhappy citizens.  In many Civ games, luxury output first transforms content citizens to happy ones, then, if there are still unallocated luxury output and no content citizens, transforms unhappy citizens to content, then happy, citizens.  Angry citizens and resisters are generally unaffected by luxuries.