In 1994 a new era of strategy games stepped into the gaming community. While Westwood provided Command & Conquer as the real time strategy game, Firaxis provided the very first Civilization as a turn based strategy game. You are probably wondering what is the point of turn based strategy gaming? Well, that and much more you can read here.
To answer the question I just suggested: This way there are more possibilities to play a game. Instead of mindless death and destruction in a RTS game, you can have different victories over your opponents: - Domination: Conquer 69% of the world map to claim the world as your own. - Conquering: Annihilate all of your opponents - Cultural: Let three of your cities grow to a cultural level of Legendary - Diplomatic: Build the United Nations wonder to trigger diplomatic elections and win votes from other players to become secretary general - Space race: Be the first to build a working spaceship to go to Alpha Centauri - Time: Whoever has the highest score in 2051
If you haven’t noticed yet, I didn’t really answer the question. Well, aside of the more possibilities to play the game, it is even a more fair game. When you know all the hotkeys and such in a RTS game you can dominate the game because you are faster. In a TBS game you work with turns and everyone has a fair chance to keep up with the leading player. Of course, this all is dependent on your starting location. When the game starts you appear somewhere on the world map in the year 5000 BC, or if you prefer it, the prehistoric. As far as your people know you are the only group of Humans in the world. But each time when you end the turn years will slip away, and more civilizations will appear to you. Some are friendly, some are neutral, but there is always one person who will be hostile against you.
The moment you encounter other civilizations and you realize this planet isn’t yours to keep; you will try to expand to get a larger territory. A world wide power struggle and only the strongest will survive. To become the strongest you must have total control over your cities. And to have control over your cities you must maintain finance, production, research, culture, resources, civics, religion, population growth, happiness, public health, great people and military.
Of course, achieving this is harder then you think. Most of the time you will be sharing the world map with at least five other civilizations, each with their own attitude and behavior. Through trading and helping you can gain their trust and eventually, you can share resources to gain a victory faster. Of course, when you befriend someone, you can become an enemy of someone else. And when you become a powerful nation, you can even threaten to begin a World War if they won’t pay you the sum of gold you demand.
When the game begins you will have control over two units. A Settler and a Warrior (or Scout, depending on your civilization). While the Settler settles your first and most important city, the other unit will be exploring the world map to search for resources, other civilizations and help from natives. Scattered across the map there are thatched huts with natives who are willing to aid you in your cause. They can provide you with units (such as Warriors, Scouts, Workers and even Settlers!), gold, map charts or new technologies.
Technology
When your first city is settled you have the possibility to research new technology to advance further in time. Among these technologies are key moments in the world history that had great impact on the world’s society. Like the wheel, agriculture, mining, mysticism, fishing and hunting. Learning these technologies allows you to build more various buildings, train different units and gives you the possibility to learn even better technologies. For example. If you learn Mysticism, you can study Polytheism (which leads to Hinduism) and Meditation (which leads to Buddhism). Of course you do not instantly learn a technology when you start it; you must wait a couple of turns to learn it. To learn technologies faster you will have to expand…
Population growth
To expand a city it must have a continuous flow of food to allow population growth. You can get food by training Workers, who will build farms (requires the Agricultural technology) in the influence territory of your city. Of course, the location of the farm is very important. You can’t just build farms everywhere you want. This is the prehistoric, there is no such thing as irrigation (yet). So you will have to build them near a river. When this is done you must connect it to your city with a road. Congratulations, you just provided your city with food which allows population growth.
Food, coin and hammers
There are more buildings that you can build in your immediate surroundings like cottages and mines. Cottages are best build on grass/forest patches that are free of rivers, hills and mountains. These buildings provide your civilization with money for they will grow to hamlets, villages and towns. Also very important for your city, is production. To start REAL production you must build a mine. These can be build on hills or special designated ground patches with a resource. Having a mine allows your city to construct buildings faster, giving you an advantage over other civilizations.
Happiness
Great, your city is now growing quickly. Continue with your Workers to build farms, cottages and mines to grow it even faster! What is this? The city is prospering and the people in it are mad at you? It seems that the city is growing to fast and is getting overpopulated. This is something we even experience in the present day. To counter this you must keep your growing population happy. You can make them happy by construction buildings that provide happiness (religion temples and theatres and such) or you must deliver special resources.
Public health
It can also happen that your population gets sick because of the bad hygiene and such. And a sick community makes them mad, but building theatres won’t help you now. In this case you must build an aqua duct or special resource buildings which provide health points. An other way to provide health is through civics.
Resources
Where food, coin and hammers are the main resources for the game, you also have copper, cows, rice, wine, iron, uranium, gold and many other luxurious resources. When you work on them with farms, mines and special buildings (plantations, quarry’s, oil wells etc.) they provide happiness for your city. When your people are happy they will work harder, making the construction of buildings and research for new technologies go faster.
Expanding
There will be a moment where one city just isn’t enough. Not just for economical or population reasons, but you can’t take over the world with just one city. So you must expand as quickly as you can. Train Settlers in your city and let them build new cities to expand your civilization across the world map (don’t overdo it or you will get an economical crisis since maintaining cities costs money!). Expanding means that you can build your armies faster, higher research rate, more diplomatic votes for yourself and more places to build World Wonders.
Culture
To expand the influence territory of your city you must build up culture. When this happens you can gain control over more land patches with possible special resources. Or, when it is a city that is bordering the competition, you can push the border further away if it is big enough. You can gain culture by building Monuments, Theatres, Temples, National Wonders, World Wonders etc.
Civics
Civics are methods to manage your civilization. You have civics which can make your population happy (Representation) or that makes them mad (Slavery, when you use it). Adjust your civics every time when you are planning on doing something differently. You will need more war based civics if you plan on going to war.
Religion
Perhaps you are one of the lucky ones to get a religion. If you do, your civilization will be extra powerful for religion provides happiness and enables the Religion Civics (for example, the Organized Religion civic allows your cities to construct buildings 25% faster). When you have a religion you can spread it to your opponents to see what they are doing. If one of their cities has one of your religions the fog of war in the surroundings will dissapear and you can see what they are doing. Plus, it gives extra coin for every city with that religion. To get a religion, be the first to learn specific technologies:
Hinduism – Polytheism Buddhism – Meditation Judaism – Monotheism Christianity – Theology Confucianism – Code of Laws Taoism - Philosophy Islam – Divine Right
Military
If you are the kind of player who likes to win by conquering, this is the most important thing in the game. While advancing through the timeline you gain different units; melee, ranged, animal, siege, cavalry, gunpowder, armored etc. Each has its strong and weak points so manage them well. You will probably need many different kind units to take over an enemy city. When you lay siege to a city and you successfully take it over, you can choose between two options. Install a new governor and claim the city as one of your own, or raze it by burning it down to the ground, thus destroying everything in it (including World Wonders). Every civilization should focus on military, even if it is just for defending yourself from hostiles. One advice: NEVER leave your city undefended, one enemy unit is enough to take over your city.
Great People
When you look back at history you discover that the world didn’t grow on its own. There were certain people who helped advance mankind. People like Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and Vincent van Gogh etc. These people appear in the game as well, but then as Great People. These Great People can provide special bonuses to your cities or civilization since they all have specialties. After every amount of turns a Great Person is born (you can influence them by building World Wonders like the Parthenon for faster birth rate) and you can use him to your advantage:
Great Scientist: Joins your city as a super specialist, helps learning new technologies, builds science academy for research bonus Great Engineer: Joins your city as a super specialist, helps learning new technologies, fastens the construction of a building (often to just one day, including wonders) Great Prophet: Joins your city as a super specialist, helps learning new technologies, constructs the Unique building of a religion for bonuses Great Artist: Joins your city as a super specialist, helps learning new technologies, provides a huge amount of culture to a city to expand its borders Great Merchant: Joins your city as a super specialist, helps learning new technologies, when traveled to a friendly city (preferably as far away as possible) gives you a huge amount of coin Great General: Joins your city as a super specialist, constructs a military academy for bonus experience points for your troops, can join a group of units and grants them immediately extra experience points
City managing
You will be doing this the entire game. Managing your city is extremely important. When you go to the overview display of your city you see a part of the map. On it you see your city in the middle, and the immediate surroundings with the buildings and their ground value (amount of bread, coins and hammers). Since you can’t work them all at the same time, you must select the patches of ground carefully. Do you focus on population growth? Or perhaps production? It is all for you to decide. We call this micro managing, for you are deciding every single step of what your cities are exactly doing at that moment. On the city overview display you can also see what the status of your population is (how many are (un)happy, are they healthy etc), what your city is specializing in (religion, music, research etc) and what you are building/training at that time. In your city you can construct buildings which provide you more units and special bonuses. A few examples:
Barracks: Gives military units experience points so that they are stronger Monument: Provides more Cultural points Market: Provides happiness if specific resources are in your possession Jail: Minus 25% unhappiness when at war
Wonders
The most important buildings in the world are at your disposal in Civilization. When you have learned a new technology it is quite possible you can construct a World Wonder, providing a special bonus to your city and/or civilization. You have two different kinds of wonders; National and World Wonders. Every Civilization can construct a National Wonder; there is no limit for it (except maybe for the fact that you can just build one of each). The same is for the World Wonder; the difference is that there can just be one in the entire world. One Stonehenge, one Great Pyramid, one Great Wall, one Hagia Sophia etc. The bonuses that you gain from them are sometimes so tremendous that you can win the game by having a specific one.
Stonehenge: Centers the world map The Oracle: One free technology The Great Pyramids: Enables all Government Civics The Parthenon: 50% extra Great Person birth rate in every city The Hagia Sophia: Workers build improvements 50% faster The Pentagon: Gives extra experience points to units who were just trained
And these are just a few of the World Wonders that you can build. Each World Wonder also provides extra Culture and/or Coin and/or Science points.
These are just the basic subjects about maintaining a civilization; it goes even deeper when you play the game itself. This is because you begin with just a few of these while when you get further in the game, you will have to them all at the same time! Okay, that was the answer to the first question and we are already five pages further. Only four questions more to go… nah of course not. I probably bored you already with this so the tormenting is over! This was an overview of the possibilities and primary subjects of civilization 4. Enjoy playing the game!