h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The game of Civilization takes place upon a world map. The map consists of a grid up to 75 x 150 squares. You and your competitors share this map, and it is up to you how to go about behaving yourself on this world. It is also your job to discover what is exactly out there and where all the other civilisations happen to be. When you start up a new game of Civ on your first turn, all you are faced with is one unit, slap bang in the middle of a huge swathe of darkness. All that is visible of the world that you are playing in are the squares directly adjacent to this unit. This first unit you are given is a settler, whose main job is, as one would expect, to settle new cities.


Cities are where all the main guts of the game takes place. The success of a city in Civ depends upon the land surrounding it, so choose to a place to settle carefully. The population of a city is measured by integers, from 1 to anything up to 40. Different squares in the game can produce three types of resources: Food, trade and production. A city can use the land within a two-square radius for resources. For example, if a city settled next to a river, it would yield trade and food resources. If you chose a nearby forest you would gain extra production resources. All of these squares can be augmented with mines, irrigation and roads to increase production, food and trade respectively. Just how much of the city's radius you can use depends upon what size population you have. A city of one can use one city square, a city of five can use a maximum of five, ten uses ten and so on. All this city management takes place in the city window, which pops up when a city is selected. You can have as many cities as you want in Civ, as long as you make the settlers to settle them.


Why one Earth would you want to get all these resources though? It's simple,to eat, to make stuff and to get money and do some science. In the city window it will tell you how much food you produce from all the city squares you have selected. If you have a surplus every turn of, say, three food units then every turn your food storage will increase. When it is full you can support another population unit and your city increases in size and you can select another city square to plunder resources from! Production is the most fun part, you can make all sorts of buildings for your city or military units to explore and conquer your foes (if you want to that is). The city window tallies up all the production from all your city squares and adds it to you current manufacturing project. If a temple takes 40 production "shields" to build and you produce 10 shields per turn, then it will take four turns for that city to make a temple. The types of units and buildings that can be chosen depends totally on what technologies you have discovered, which brings us on to trade.


The trade resource is slightly different. It is split into three types of sub-resources that can change how your civilisation progresses. Say one city produces 60 trade units, this can be split into either tax, scientific research or luxury goods for your populous. This is all set using another window that sets the relative rates of the three. When you build a building for your city, they take money to pay for their upkeep. Science is important to keep abreast of technological advances, so you can build new units and buildings and luxuries are important to keep your population happy. This is a balancing act that you, as Emperor are in charge of.




I never got round to technologies in detail, but I'm not sure how relevant it is as I've already mentioned it in passing. tell me if you want to do more on it.



Ste

Hi CMaster,

I'm going to write something about Civ's appeal, if you think that would be useful. I'll post it here when it's done.

Otto

See, I said I'd do it. Feel free to edit, use, and abuse...

Otto

What's the appeal?

Psychologists have long used the concept of an "inner child" to describe the part of a person's psyche that never quite grows up, and remains shy, scared and vulnerable. The Civilisation series of games is proof of the existence of an "inner megolomaniac" - the part of each of us that never quite gives up the early-teenage dream of world domination.

It's no understatement to say that no two games are the same. You can choose to explore peacefully and avoid conflict, expanding your knowledge and aiming for the stars, or smite everyone mightily. Conflict can happen at different stages in history, and different tactics are needed in each. There's so many different strategies to try. Although you can win either by world domination or by landing on Alpha Centuri, there are many different strategies to try. Rapid military expansion followed by a push for science, attempts at isolationism, development in one area of the map, constant exploring, pacifism, outright war-mongering, and even Machiavellian diplomatic scheming are all possible tactics. The wide range of difficulty levels allows a gentle introduction, but a big challenge at higher levels, which leads to a different kind of game.

It's also educational. At least one academic institution, Keele University (link A346367) in the UK, uses Civilisation to illustrate management techniques. Click here if you don't believe me!
http://www.learn.keele.ac.uk/00-01/ug-mod/man/man-324/

You've said "so many different strategies to try" twice there

I think this would be great as a part of a conclusion

Ste

Put something about how thereare three civ games now
Bye

There was when we started this, although I've played it now.
Still, maybe I can get this article going again.