ManuscriptRe said:
Hey I'm new to civ, I just started playing civ 2 yesterday and Im having trouble understanding a few things
. Maybe you guys could help me out here as I really like this game and would like to be able to play it properly. Please explain everything in the simplest terms possible as Im a complete civ newbie.
1. Do you have to have settlers on mines, in order to utilize them? (For that matter, do you need to have them on irrigation or anythign else to utilize it?)
2. When something is built by a settler (i.e. irrigation, mine) what decides which city gets to use it? The closest city or the home town of the settler?
3. I build a ton of irrigation but it really doesnt seem to do anything. I start say with 3 food 0 surplus, and after building 4 irrigation I still have 3 food 0 surplus.
4. Connecting roads to mines and irrigation, does it do anything?
5. What are shields?
6. How do I increase population?
7. What specifically do the wonders do, and which ones are permanent?
8. How do I increase production?
9. On the "resource map" why can I increase nothing but luxuries?
10. Explain trade.
Alright thats all I can think of for now, Ill probably have more questions as these are answered, any help would be greatly appreciated thanks.
Welcome to a great game! I've only got time for short answers at the moment, but hope they help some.
1. No you don't need settlers on any square to work it - the work is done by the people in your city. Click on the city and you'll see which squares are being worked, and you can move the workers to how you want.
2. The AI sets the workers initally, but as per 1. above you can change that, so you could take a worker from 1 city off a tile and have a worker from another city start to work it. This is fact used in relation to trade with maximising caravan payoffs, but that is a bit more detailed.
3. I guess your workers may not be working the irrigated tiles, so check as per 1. Other wise, you may have settlers that are being supported by the city and they are taking up any surplus food - you can see this inside the city screen also. If so, have a settler or 2 build new cities on say grassland tiles using the B key .
4. Roads add to the numbers of trade arrows you generate, which adds to income and science. Railroads do more of the same later in the game. You will probably notice around here that a lot of the good players do very little irrigation until later in the game - they tend to use settlers for building new cities as soon as possible.
5. Shields are the resources your cities produce that can be put towards making things like settlers, other units, city improvments wonders etc. The type of terrain affects how many shields it produces. Forest produces 2 shields for instance. You can juggle your production of shield, possibly at the loss of food or trade arrow production, by moving workers onto different tiles.
6. A food surplus in a city is required at first, and in the city screen there is box which shows how much food you have accumulated. Fill the box and the population grows by 1, giving you a new worker to work another tile.
7. They do a variety of things, and some are much more popular than others. The short answer is that you can find what they do in the help section of the game, but I also use Nethog's reference pack for this and other items. A very good quick reference. Here's a forum link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=25870
Also check these forums for discussion on which are the best. But some of the most important (and I'll most likely get some dissension here!) are Colossus, Marco Polo, Michaelangelo, Hoover Dam, Shakespeare's Theatre. What to build depends on your playing style though - whether you want to win by spaceship or by conquest.
8. Increase production (shields) by increasing population so you have more workers working tiles, change the tiles which are being worked, mine hills, look for resource specials such as iron and build a city near there. You can build factories and other improvements later on too but then pollution can become an issue.
9. Um, not sure what you mean by resource map - can somebody else help/ I'm not at a PC with Civ2 on it right now.
10. Hmm - a large subject which I am in no way qualified to cover well. Simply, build caravans in cities, and you can deliver them to other cities (you own of the AI foreign cities) and you get trade routes established which gives you more science and income each turn, and you also get a one off cash and science bonus. Look at the demanded goods (F5 key if I recall) and try and see which cities want what and send it to them. You get better payoffs for longer routes, routes to other islands, if there are roads connecting the route in a particular way, if the city is a forign city, if you have railroads, and other factors. This is one of the most important factors in the games in terms of finishing fast. Trade is the driver for money and science in the game, and you need to get good at it if you want to have early landings on Alpha Centauri. Or else you can totally ignore it and just play for conquest.
Hope that helps - there's loads of top notch stuff from the experts on the site to add more detail to this stuff. It take a while to take it all on board, but that is the fun part!
