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The Academy

Advices for Multiplayer Games

• A human player doesn't have to build his cities over flat terrain. This is shocking for the multiplayer newbies, but it is an essencial truth. A city over a hill or forest tile receives a very interesting deffensive bonus. So when you want to ensure your borders against other human players, always try to get these mountains and forests with cities: the growth of your cities will be limited, but your opponents will have troubles to conquer them.

• A human player uses diplomats massively. A single player is used to see the AI rarely bribing cities or stealing an advance. But a human can send a lot of diplomats along your frontiers at the same time. In a multiplayer game, the technological advance can vanish in a few turns, so you should remember that an advance that you can't turn into a marvel sooner than another civilization is almost useless.

• Alway, always, always build wonders. It's highly suitable to have a city building Wonders and another one building caravans. With human players, to discover any technologies like Monoteism or Invention and to build the respective wonder is a matter of two turns or less.

• Trade, trade. If there is a Civilization II topic that is unused at single player games is the trade. Every caravan you drive into a city will give you a benefit of money and since inmediatrly; a caravan can you help to build a wonder, too. The extended use of caravans is a skill needd to reach the victory against the best civilization players.

• As general Waku says: “A strong Empire is a well-connected one". Truly, a road network allows units to move fastly in your empire, reducing the number of the units needed to defend your country and, much more than this, allowing a caravan trada fast and profitable. Of course, roads add trade bonus to each tile they cross

• Naval power (based on an idea by Alfonsus72): Playing against the AI, ruling the waves is not an important matter, because the AI is particulary inept handling sea units; it uses to stack them in the same tile to make you easier to destroy them. Though, human players do it higly better. Every coast in your empire can be a point o disembark for the enemy: a fleat allows disembarks at many points, surprise strikes and further retreads. Having a fleet at the beginning of a game means that you can attack another civ and the other player would be unable to respond.

• Embassys: How many embassys do you open in a normal Civilization II game? In multiplayer games, embassys are very helpful: you can know the technologies of your opponent, which one is developing, which cities are building wonders (a pre-emptive attack can cause him a high loss of shields) and how many cities does he have (just to know if it's already expanding). For the same reason, you won't want that an opponent stablishes an embasy in your capital.

• In case of war, don't expect limited attacks. Human players are able to go round strong points, to dissembark by surprise, to bribe deffensive units, etc. Any plan has to be based in the supposition that the enemy will attack everywhere your empire is poorly deffended. But a mighty fleet can prevent sea attacks, making your defense a lot easier.

• There are useless wonders in multiplayer games, and there are wonders that are even more useful than in single player games. An example is the Great Wall, that will give you peace for many centuries against too agressive players that will see how your city walls destroys their attacks.

• Agressiveness and astuteness: one of the keys of multiplayer games is to be agressive in the beginning of the game, seizing as much terrain as possible. Wars are often a psychological matter, and proofs of strength (or false weakness) can make up the mind of your opponents. Learn to use this, try to look powerful when you aren't or try to be weak and fledging... hopefully nobody will disturb you.

Our next lesson: Trade, Trade and Trade!