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Civ2 Little tricks: v1.3.2

These are any game aspects that offer interesting advantages to those who know them; you won’t find it in the manual and they only can be discovered by an experienced player… just in case you can’t find somebody like us who had played many thousand hours. Many of them aren’t logical, and others can be considered as cheats of uncorrected bugs, so it could be ethically cuestionable to use them in multiplayer games…but that is not our trouble. If you want to add something or you want to make any comments please contactus and we’ll gladly attend you. Here you can find our 18 little tricks, organized by sections:

1. Little tricks in administration

   1. Terrain and City Administration

   2. Unrest

   3. Trade

2. Little military tricks

   1. Military

   2. Exploration

1- LITTLE TRICKS IN ADMINISTRATION

1.1- Terrain and City Administration

1.1.1- If you need to buy something, it’s better to buy it splitted: first, the cheapest thing you can buy and then what you have to buy. The first time you pay for shields it will be mucho more expensive. You can also wait a turn to have any shields  and buy it the next turn. Of course, you should buy something that doesn’t involve a penalty if you change the production.

Example: if you want to build a cathedral from scratch in a turn, buy barracks or the cheapest building available; then split to cathedran and buy it. You’ll spend 320 gold; if you rush-build the cathedral directly you’ll spend 480 gold. You’ll save 160 gold.

If you buy from scratch, shields costs 4 gold each, but if you already have any shileds it will only cost 2 golds per shield. Almost the same with units and wonders, though it costs 8 gold per shield from scratch and 4 golds per shield if you already have shields..

1.1.2- Airbase = farm + railroad. So it’s much faster to improve the terrain and making railroads in mountains and hills.

But the most important thing it’s that you can have airbase and mining in the same tile, receiving the benefits of a mine, a farm and railroad.

This affects hills and deserts, because they are the only tiles where you can make eiter a farm or a mine. So, hills grant 3 (including supermarket effect) foods and 4 shields per turn and deserts will grant 1 food, 2 shields and 1 trade. It is specially interesting to do this in a hill with a river, because you’ll find the best tile in the game: defense +100%, 4 trade, 3 foods and 4 shields. So, try to convert any river tile into a hill!

1.1.3- Cities in a democracy or republic grow up every turn if they are in “we love the…” day, if they have at least one food unit.

It looks strange and surprising, but it has been the most used little trick since Civilization I, and we can’t wonder it isn’t properly explained in the civilopedia. We think that this means a huge adventage for republics and democracies that always receive a demographical boom with human players (AI doesn’t use this trick properly) and changes the games completely. When you receive certain technologies and you’re able to build aqueducts and sanitations, if you are a either a democracy or a republic, you can change your luxuries rate to a high level (even 100%) and let you cities grow up, making your trade (and, as a result of that, your science), population and score higher a way you wouldn’t believe (it’s clear that a 30-population city produces much more than a 12-population one).

1.1.4- You can make a city grow over its expectatives if it shares tiles with other cities. You only have to give that city all available tiles, wait to “we love the...” day (with democracy and republic) to let it grow up as much as possible. Then, give those tiles to another city to do exactly the same. So, you’ll have cities that grew up over their expectatives and will start straving, but in the time that the food storage gets empty, you’ll use the extra colonists as Tax Collectors and Scientists.

1.1.5- You can make your city grow up with food supplies caravans. Only the first food supplies caravan will create a trade route between two cities. But this is a very special trade route that, in spite of improving trade in both cities, will give an additional food unit in the destination city and will take away a food unit in the source city.

But there is a little trick: when a food caravan arrives to a city, it adds food to the city storage, the half of the food warehouse to be more precise..

So, with a continuous caravan production (any city with a production of 50 shields per turn will produce it in a turn) you’ll be able to complete a city warehouse every two turns and force it to raise over its true potencial.

Note: this will raise your final score, but it’s impossible to make more than 16 specialists per turn; any other new citizen will become free colonists that will produce nothing at all.

1.2- Unrest 

1.2.1- First unrest table:

This table shows us the number of citizens we need in a city to let the first city revolt appear. Though, most civ2 players know that this table only is true if the player owns  a little country.

The previous table values is modified by this other table:

The above table shows us how many cities are needed to reduce in 1 the value obtained from the first table.

Important note: these values are valid for a little map, must be multiplied by 1.5 if you’re in a medium map and by 2 if you’re in a large map.

For example: if we’re playing in Prince level and our government is a despotism, when we build our 10th city, the first unrest will appear with four colonists. When we build our 20th city, the first unrest will appear with tree colonists, etc.

As we’ve seen in the example, every time we exceed a time the showed number, happyness operation rises a level in any cities (it seems there is linked with the distance to the capital, but that isn’t always valid).

This shows us that expanding too much and too soon could be dangerous. Time will come when simply you won’t be able to handle the revolts. We recommend to be cautious with the maximum size untill your civilization is able to support it without problems. 

***Note: it’s difficult to understand, but sometimes this doesn’t work as good as it should, even counting the effects of wonders that affect unrest. If somebody decides to make an experiment and discovers something, please tell us so we can include the information in this document. Thank you very much.

1.3- Trade

1.3.1- If you want to buy a caravan in a city but the city can’t build anything but food supplies, you can choose to build a colonist, when the food storage is full enough, so when the population descends an unit next turn the city will recover its original size (because food storage will be lesser but will preserve the same food units it had), thus being able to build a caravan you couldn’t before (every time a city rises its population level frees a trade box, it also happens with certain technologies).

1.3.2- Trade caravans not only add money everytime they complete a route but give you exactly the same quantity in science, thus helping your scientific progress.

For example: if you need 2,000 ‘bottles’ to achieve an advance and you obtain 200 gold for every caravan, you need ten caravans to achieve the advance. Make some maths and see how much would cost you to obtain the same advance with the traditional research method.

1.3.3- It is specially interesting to build colossus to improve your trade, science and growing in the city where you built it (usually the capital) and build as much as trade routes (i.e, caravans) as you can between that city and the rest of your empire, because this way (see little trick 1.3.2), you won’t only increase your money in your treasury but you’ll advance faster in science. This is obvious and works with every city, but in a city with the colossus you obtain more than two times the normal benefits. Even more, a city with colossus and three trade routes can easily turn into “we lov the...” day with a little luxuries rate, thus boosting trade in the city (and, through trade routes, in every city trading with it). If your government form is Republic or Democracy your city will rise a citizen per turn (see little trick 1.1.3), and that will rise your trade too. With a republic (usually Colossus is obsolete under a democracy), with the colossus in your most important city and every other cities trading with it and about 20% luxury taxes, it’s quite sure every city in your empire will have “we love the...” day too, thus boosting the population in your empire.

It is also interesting to build caravans in your most productive city and make them supported by other cities (see little trick 2.1.3) where you have troubles to build caravans (e.g, a coastal city with a lot of trade but few shields)).

If another civ completes the colossus, everything we’ve said is still valid; you only have to send your caravans to the enemy city where it was build. If not, send them to the richest city in the world (and, if you can’t do that, just send them to your richest city). This has a benefit, because trading with an enemy city is always more profitable, but it also has a disadvantage: you can’t control that city to assure its grow. The AI can have the luxury trade level at 0%, so the “We love the...” day won’t be celebrated; the AI can rennounce to build an aqueduct, thus killing the city grow; or maybe they enter a war against another civ, lose the control of the city with a lot of improvements (and, consequently, a lot of trade), which would affect your trade in EVERY ONE of your cities trading with that city. So, if you’re going to follow this risky but profitable strategy we recommend to assure the prosperity and security of that city; in a multiplayer game that city will be surely attacked. And if you think you can’t protect it anymore, you should consider the possibility to conquer it, adding it to your empire... just to protect it better, of course. You’ll lose about 50% of your trade income in all your trading route (the other modifications weren’t included in the count), but it’s better than losing 100%.

2.1- Military 

2.1.1- Units with “Ignore Zones of Control” ability (caravans, freights, diplomats, spies, partisans and all aerial units) can be used to allow the pass to the units without the ability. All you have to do is to move a tile the unit with the ability and then to move the other units to that tile; repeat the movements as much times as you want and you’ll reach your final destination.

This can allow us, for example, to cross a civilization (if we are at peace with them) to reach its borders with a civ who we are at war with. And if we have a cease fire agreement, this will allow us to enter with a mighty army in the enemy territory (with a cease fire, they can’t expel you from their cities) to reach an strategic position or even their capital city... what is linked with the next point:

2.1.2- If a capital city is conquered (yours included), his former owner will lose everything Space Ship parts he built before.

If you notice that another civ has a huge advantage and is going to lauch the spaceship, ¡go to his capital and take it! This will give you time enough to end yours to reach Alpha Centauri before. If you can’t afford a high-scale war, you can try a surprise attack against the enemy capital using 2.1.1.

2.1.3- You can change a unit’s home city if the unit is in the city, using the orders menu: select “support from this city". This can also be used to change the home city of a caravan/freight. So you’ll be able to build caravans with any city and receive the benefits with other, changing the caravan’s home city. You can repeat many times a specially productive route (e.g, a city with a colossus and a big foreign city  with a lot of rivers, as far as possible). This is extremelly useful (see 1.3.2).

2.1.4- You can make colonists with no home city. If you found a new city nearer a foreign city than one of your own cities, and then abandon it producing a settler before it reaches size 2 (buying it or building it), that settler will have NONE as home city. This is extremelly useful because you can have dozens of colonists that don’t need support, thus sparing big amounts of shields and food. It is a very slow strategy and requires a lot of gold to afford  buying the settlers, but it will be worthwile (we recommend using 1.1.1 to build colonists avoiding bankrupcy).

Note: in versions older than 2.42, when you exceed a concrete number of cities, the additional cities didn’t support anything, yo you could use them as home city for every unit and colonist in your empire. 

2.1.5- If you attack a city from an ocean square, the city won’t lose population even lacking city walls. This is true for every unit type (aerial, naval or land with amphibious ability, i.e marines). This is very useful if you don’t want to destroy a little city or even you want to conquer the city without losing too much population. So you can send your bombers to a sea square to attack the city instead of attacking it from a land square... if we’re talking about a coastal city, of course.

2.1.6- Spies can’t bribe or sabotage if there are more than a unit in the same tile.

So we shouldn’t forget to have always two units in our defensive points, because the AI has the unconfortable tendence to bribe the highly fortified units. You don’t need to have two defense units, you can have a defense unit and any other unit like a diplomat or a caravan… enemy spies won’t be able to do anything..

2.1.7- Helicopters can recover HP if you don’t move in the turn (even in the ocean). It’s better to stop the helicopter in the sea, in a closed sea if possible to be less vulnerable to enemy attacks; helicopters can be attacked by land, sea or air units. The designers decided that this had to be a completely unuseful unit bocause of its high costs and its irritating tendence to die when attacked by a simple infantry unit, so we recommend to use it only to take cities, leaving it near a city where we’re going to attack with bombers.

 2.1.8- When you discover explosives, it’s a good idea to transform into hills the city tile in the cities that are near the borders or have a high strategic value (e.g, cities in enemy continent used as a platform to send caravans or unload troops) and transform into hills (better into mountains) and build fortresses in strategical points like isthmus, or if you have time enough, to fortify all your borders and coasts.

Using this, your cities with walls, SAM battery and coastal fortresses will be almost impregnable to enemy attacksHaciendo esto, tus ciudades con murallas, batería de misiles SAM y fortaleza costera se volverán prácticamente inexpugnables frente a los ataques enemigos.

Of course, this has a little disadvantage: with a grassland, city tile produces 3 food (4 if you have a supermarket), a shield and a trade unit, but a hill produces 2 food (3 with supermarket), a shield and no trade (a trade unit if there is a river). 

It seems obvious anyway that it’s a good idea to lose any engineer turns and some food and trade in a city if it is a strategic city. If using 2.1.4 we can have any desired settlers with no support, in the final phase of the game we can do this operations in just a few turns using multiple engineers teams working together.

2.2- Exploration

2.2.1- If you move a trirreme or an aerial unit and then, before ending its movement, you order it to wait (w), when you’ve moved every other unit, you only have to pass turn (you can find this order in orders menu or just press: CTRL + N), it won’t be lost at sea or run out of fuel, but will be available with all movement next turn.

Note: versions before 2.42 you can fortify aerial units in land squares so they don’t die; do it when you only have a movement and you’ll go where you want.

This is one of our favourite tricks because it is little known and is a gread advantage, specially in the first seafaring times because our trirremes never get lost at sea, and in the modern times because this trick gives us an unlimited range for bombers, fighters or missiles, and makes airbases unuseful (excepting trick 1.1.2). But look out for enemy fihters! 

2.2.2- You can use the cursor to know aproximately the form of the seas and/or continents surrounding. You only have to place the cursor in an unexplored tile and you’ll see that next to the cordinates there is a number that indicates to which continent, island or sea belongs. So if you see that this number changes when moving the cursor over the unexplored zone, you’ll know that tile belongs to another sea or island. It seems that they are ordinated by size, so the biggest continent or ocean will be #1, the next #2, etc. So, a 1 indicates the biggest ocean (but this depends on the Sea/Land rate of the map), and you can move the cursor over this ocean until you find another number so you’ll know where is the land (as lowest the number, biggest the continent).

This little trick is really important because we’ll know where to send our ships without losing time exploring the oceans, so it’ll give a decisive advantage in exploration and colonization over the other civs… specially if used with litthe trick 2.2.1.

Contact the Authors:

Send the authors every suggestion or anything that could help us to explain better some phenomena like the linked with unrest or trade to:

Mikegod:       diosmiguel@yahoo.es 

Toom:             toom@eresmas.com