BMK BMK The Bitmap Kid Presents... ----------------------------- THE ULTIMATE CIVILISATION PLAYER'S GUIDE --------------------------------------- Civilisation. A world on some floppies. Quite an achievement, really. Being such a massive game, beginners are bound to need some good help, hence this rather good guide. So if you're getting mangled by Mongols or fried by the French, never fear - BMK is here! - Oh no....! Chapter One - Starting off 1 - That book! To say I was daunted on seeing the game manual is a bit of an understatement, with 128 pages and a supplement, my first impression of the game was far from good! Thankfully it turned out that Civilisation is one beauty of a game. Phew! The first thing I recommend you do is take a good look at the supplement, this gives some vital information for playing the game. Ideally, you will now read the whole manual at least once, but if you're anything like me and just want to get started, read the first fifth of the book and examine specific areas when you need to. Once you are confident that you know the basic idea of the game, open up the advancement chart, start up the game and have a quick go - don't worry too much about playing a good game at this point, just try a few things out. When you're happy that you have indeed a basic knowledge of how to play the game, start a new game. 2 - Brave New World. To be honest, I find the 'Earth' scenario much more difficult than a random-based world. For one thing the environment isn't any good at all in places and two, the continents are far too massive for my liking. So normally I choose a random world and fiddle about with the settings. You can, of course, choose the settings as you want, but I don't recommend a 'large' land mass for many reasons for a beginner, I never choose that option anyway! As for the number of other civilisations, I would go for a smaller number as you have less competition in the long run. Keep in mind, however, that the more civilisations there are, the more places you can go to trade. As soon as the game starts, put the tax rate up to 100%, you won't, of course, have anything to pay for yet so this is a good idea. Remember to reduce it to 50% again when you build an improvement, though, or you'll have mega-problems! 3 - First City. Choosing the right place for your capital is vital if you're going to get anywhere in the game. By no means take the first place recommended to you by the computer, have a good look around and then choose your site, don't, however, take too long about it because you don't want to fall behind the other civilisations do you? It is vital that you put your city on or next to a river, the sea is even better. The next thing you need is good land to irrigate, plains are best because other areas like forests and hills take longer to fully irrigate and in hills you don't get so much food. If possible, though, make sure there are a few mountains and hills nearby for extra resources should you need them. Once you have found a suitable place, press the 'b' key to found your capital. Remember to name your cities well, it may be nice to call your capitals 'Terry' or 'Peter' (like James Judge does, he he) but when you have a lot of cities you may find it hard to remember which is which, so give cities good names, like 'Capitarna' for your capital. Stop laughing! I'm sure you can think of something better, but I was never any good at names in my books! I can remember in one game I played that I wanted to convert a very big Empire to Democracy, but I had units all over the place (units in a Democracy should be in their home city). So what I did was rename all of the cities that I had protected by their own troops to 'X_cityname'. I then could see the ones I still needed to sort out! When all the cities had an 'X' mark and all my surplus units had been disbanded I changed to Democracy without causing any disorder at all! The first improvement I recommend you build is the Granary (for that you need pottery). This will help your city grow and is essential throughout the game. I wouldn't worry too much about being attacked right at the start, the other civilisations are busy building their own first city and barbarians shouldn't turn up quite yet. Once the Granary is done, I recommend settlers to irrigate nearby land etc. 4 - Civilisation Advances (1) There is no 'best' way to advance your civilisation, but there are good and bad ways to start. For now, however, I recommend you advance in this order: Pottery, for Granary; Bronze Working, for Phalanx; Ceremonial Burial, for Temple and Alphabet for a general good start. 5 - Foundations of a city. Only build one settler unit for now and then build the best defence unit you've got to start defence of your city. Now go and irrigate all of your city squares, building roads everywhere you go. Mine any mountains. Another important improvement to build is the temple, this keeps the people happy and so stops them from (being) revolting. By now you should have fortified your city more. Phalanx are the best until much later in the game, about five fortified on the actual city square should make you invincible for a long time! Another important improvement is the city walls, build them fairly early too, they protect the population when your cites attacked. Once your city is a bit bigger, build another settler group to help the first out. That's all for now - look out for the next edition of this Civilisation guide in which I'll reveal all about colonising the world.... See ya! BMK BMK