Taking Over A Planet With Style

Gengis Kahn had it easy: he didn't have to deal with Sid Meier.

But then again -- a Megabyte was just a good meal to him.

Winning Civilization on its higher levels is a challenge -- not only is the game complex and difficult, but the computer's artificial intelligence cheats. Outrageously. Blatantly. But that simply makes victory all the more sweet.

Like its distant cousin Risk, winning Civilization depends on momentum. Early in the game a player must establish a large resource base, advance in technology quickly, and develop politically. Afterwards, as a player's nation encounters enemies, victory depends on a nation maintaining superiority. Despite there being no Xeno-Laser-Blaster key to pound, Civilization is a fast paced game.

The First City -- Don't Die of Loneliness

Once a nation's first city is laid down, build a militia unit to explore the surrounding land. Defend with the second. Build a granary and buy it as soon as is possible. By the time the city builds a granary its population should have increased to 2 or 3. Set it to build settlers. Every city in one's nation will increase the money, production and population available; therefore, use this new settler to build a new city as soon as possible. Repeat this pattern for every city in your game: Defensive Army, Granary, Settlers. Fill a nation?s native continent as quickly as possible.

Finding The Best Spot for A Picnic

Laying down cities is critical to one's success in Civilization. Each city has a grid of 20 squares from which it can draw resources. Before building, be sure to know exactly where each city will lie. Food is absolutely the most important resource in the long run. Build cities in grasslands. Avoid desserts, mountains and arctic terrains, and take advantage of special resources. Rivers are best: they provide both food and trade. It is advantageous to place one's third or forth city on a coast so that it may build boats later. Be sure to plan how to fill continents. Take maximum advantage of available land space. Don't overlap cities and try to lay them adjacent to each other so that you may take the most advantage from roads and railroads.

Go Study

After building one's first city, make sure the one worker available is providing as much food as possible; however, also make sure he (or she) is contributing a light bulb to science. The game will default to the most food producing square -- be sure to deliberately choose where your early population units work or you may have to wait five or ten turns before your scientists even bother to show up!

She Blinded Me With Science

Some technologies, when acquired early in the game, provide a distinct advantage. Use the back cover of the manual to trace the quickest possible path to a desired technology. The following highlight those technologies which serve a nation best when learned early:

Acquire Bronze Working quickly for solid defense.
Learn Masonry for the Pyramids -- the single most important Wonder of the World.
Study for the Alphabet after Masonry to be the first to achieve Mathematics. Attacking with catapults early in the game is the single greatest advantage in battle before the advent of tanks and riflemen.
Ignore Horseback Riding. Ignore Chivalry. Both can be eclipsed by chariots and catapults.
Be the first to learn Map Making and explore the world.
Ceremonial Burial will quell unhappy citizens with temples.
Currency and Trade will increase revenues and prosperity. Caravan units are critical to the game.
Bridge Building and the Railroad will provide your empire with transportation and complete your city grids.
Later in the game, Gunpowder will continue to tip the balance of power in your favor.
Automobiles will add tanks to your efforts.
Push to Recycling to keep pollution down.
Religion is critical for democracies.
Never study types of governments -- take the knowledge from other nations after building the pyramids. Your scientists have better things to do than dream up concepts like communism.

Government for the Macintosh by the Macintosh

After your empire has grown to four or five cities, set one to build the Pyramids. Send caravans to speed their development. The Pyramids are the most critical Wonder of the World in any world. They allow you to flip between governments without periods of anarchy and without having discovered the knowledge of governmental types. Once the pyramids have been built, switch your civilization to a monarchy and then, after building temples in each city, jump straight to a democracy. Your tax income will be such that no other civilization will be able to compete, you'll never need to build courthouses, and your trade revenues will increase. Money is power in Civilization.

Other important Wonders include:
The Lighthouse -- for moving farther sooner.
The Hanging Gardens -- help with early democracies (happiness).
Copernicus's Observatory -- knowledge is also power in Civilization.
The Great Library -- ditto.
JS. Bach's Cathedral -- never becomes obsolete and increases happiness forever.
Women's Suffrage -- happiness is critical for democracies.
The United Nations and Great Wall are only interesting for the graphics, otherwise don't bother.
Hoover Dam -- the only wonder which affects production.

Every Wonder of the World is important: The Colossus, while soon obsolete, doubles trade in one city -- which doubles its income and science. Early in the game this can be a real advantage. To really win the game, one's civilization must be large and robust and consequently able to build almost all the Wonders of the World before other nations.

What?s A City Without A Decent Highway?

Using settlers to develop city grids is vital to a civilization's longevity. Build roads, irrigation, and railroads as soon as possible. Link cities on each continent so that armies and caravans may be quickly moved. Supporting thirty or forty settler units will slow a civilization's production base but will so increase its resource utilization that every settler pays for itself soon.

Camels Are Our Friends.

Caravans are critical to the game: they can speed the building of Wonders and, more importantly, establish trade routes. Trade increases tax revenues and science. Build caravans early for each city and send them out to trade with other cities. Foreign cities will reap more trade revenue than will your own, but choose carefully: the game won't switch trade routes as the manual claims.

Don?t Worry, Be Happy.

Revolts are revolting. Tweaking one's economy to produce luxuries takes away from precious tax revenues and science. Rather than do so, build temples, churches, Wonders, markets and banks. Switch a citizen into an Elvis if you must. Democracies are difficult to keep happy in war time but will produce the greatest resources for you.

Happy Babies.

A quick way to get a city to blossom in its early days is to switch all but one of its citizens to Elvises (Elvi?). A democratic city celebrates president's day when there are no unhappy people and happy citizens outnumber those merely content. For every turn they remain at the party, one unit of population is added. Many players ignore president's day but when used well it can jump start a city's population quickly and further propel one's momentum. One note about breeding happy babies: it is possible to over-breed beyond a city's food supply. Switch a city's Elvises into scientists or tax collectors when the population and food supply reach maximum equilibrium.

Cash or Knowledge.

Learning technology before other Civilizations will give a player the opportunity to build improvements sooner, start earlier on Wonders, and take an advantage in warfare. An easy way to get a head start is to drop taxes to 10% and beef science to 90% early in the game. It takes less science to learn early technologies; increasing science early in the game will proportionally garner the most benefit and more easily create a gulf between your civilization and your opponents.

Computer Cheating

Computer armies sure beat the odds more often than not. Ever see one militia unit defeat eight cannon units, four musketeers and a catapult? It has happened. Be sure to build barracks and lose only six cannon units to a computer's one militia unit.

Patient Teleportation.

Most players have discovered this cheat but nonetheless, here it is: after saving and re-starting the game, all your units have their full movement allowances available. This includes settlers working on roads or irrigation. Thus, with patience, one settler could develop all twenty city squares in one turn, or a single boat could circumnavigate the globe as many times as it might like.

One Last Possible Trick -- and Trip to Easy Street.

This cheat involves some serious computer whiz-kid dinkering. You'll need a disk editor which can read and edit hexadecimal data forks. (Norton Utilities has one, for example.)

Start a new game and play it until you've 50 or 60 gold.

Using a calculator or your brain, convert your cash into hexadecimal. [60=3C, 66=42, etc.]

Open your game file with a disk editor (such as that included in Norton's Utilities).

Find/Search for your cash in hexadecimal -- but remember, as a DOS port, hexadecimal codes will be reversed in order. Instead of searching for 00 3C, look for 3C 00. Generally Civilization's cash appears in the first sector of the file in the 250 -- 450 range.

Switch your 3C 00 to 3C 73

Save the file then open it and check out your 29,500 gold. Don't allow your gold to exceed 30,000: it will roll over to zero.

If you play this way, be sure to set taxes to zero and science to 100%. This will make the emperor level as easy as deleting El-Fish in a barrel.

Good luck! And happy voyages to Alpha Centari.

-- Scott
March 29, 1994.

"Scott's Addictions" are postings about the games I play as I play them. When a game captures my interest and becomes a front-burner favorite, I'll post a tidbit or two here for you fellow gamers to enjoy. I'll only post the best games of my crop. No ratings, just ravings. And I'm semi-agnostic: I love the Mac, tolerate my PC, and split time on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64.

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