C-evo has been designed to have much in common with Civ2, making transition fairly easy for players familiar with the commercial game or its predecessor. But there are many differences, some of which are major.
Terrain[]
Some renaming and/or enhancing is done, resulting in a new food-rich tile: grassland, which produces 3 food. Civ2 "grassland with resource" is named "plains", while Civ2's "plains" become "prairie". They all gain one food from irrigation, but under Despotism irrigating makes no change to grassland because of the "3 food" cap.
The above "plain terrain" tiles all have a built-in trade point available as soon as you have a Town Hall or Courthouse, and as soon as you research The Wheel every road on one of them gets another. So research it early (but check whether a friend may help you get it faster)! Forest and jungle also have a built-in trade point.
After you research Map Making, even if there's not so much as a pond on your map so that you won't be wanting to build even the cheapest ships, every river tile you work produces an extra trade point. One might explain that by saying that merchants can travel more efficiently if they know where to go!
In C-evo you see nothing of a land tile that adjoins the sea until your ship has been right up against it, but if you go back a step you then see its coastline. In the original game you would see a tiny bit of coastline at a distance - particularly useful if pushing your trireme out to explore as much as possible north-east of South America or south-west of North Africa.
Cap on production[]
Despotism's production penalty (which is just "minus 1" for numbers over 2 in Civ1 and Civ2) is a blanket cap of 3 food, 2 material, and 2 trade, so if you are still a despot don't mine iron or coal (and mine hills only if short of forests or jungles), don't irrigate grassland or wheat, and don't expect any resource benefit from putting railroad on bauxite or coal or gas or iron or oil or peat. (Of course, it would be rare to be under Despotism by the time you had researched Railroad.)
That "3 food" cap is significant, compared to the normal "2 food" maximum of Civ1 and Civ2. It means that an ordinary site may have several tiles (grassland or irrigated plains, with the occasional bonus such as fish, fruit, wheat) that produce more food than their worker eats, leading to spiralling population growth because of the fixed growth target (30, 40, or 50 food, depending on your level of difficulty, whatever the city size). Thus a well-endowed new city could take 20 turns to reach size 3, 14 to size 4, 10 to size 5, 8 to size 6 if it got a temple in time, and so on. In Civ1 and Civ2, corresponding numbers of turns would be 15, 20, 25, 30, and so on. When a C-evo nation moves beyond Despotism, the 4-food irrigated grassland will allow even faster growth.
Cities[]
Minimum size (and the reduction for building a settler or engineer) is 2. One of the populace works the central tile and gets four hearts (and food and maybe a resource or two) from it but never gets trade from it.
Basic happiness/morale is 4 hearts covering 4 people; for more, you need a Town Guard under despotism (2 hearts) or a temple (2) or theater (4) or cathedral (4 or with the right Wonder 6) or colosseum (whole population happy - but just one in your whole nation) or a Wonder (2, never expiring).
Despotism's production penalty (which is just "minus 1" for numbers over 2 in Civ1 and Civ2) is a blanket cap of 3 food, 2 resources, and 2 trade, so if you are still a despot don't mine coal or iron, don't irrigate grassland or wheat, and don't expect any resource benefit from putting railroad on bauxite or coal or gas or iron or oil or peat.
That "3 food" cap is significant, compared to the normal "2 food" maximum of Civ1 and Civ2. It means that an ordinary site may have several tiles (grassland or irrigated plains, with the occasional bonus such as fish, fruit, wheat) that produce more food than their worker eats, leading to spiralling population growth because of the fixed growth target (30, 40, or 50 food, depending on your level of difficulty, whatever the city size). Thus a well-endowed new city could take 20 turns to reach size 3, 14 to size 4, 10 to size 5 if it got a temple in time, 8 to size 6, and so on. In the old games, corresponding numbers of turns would be 15, 20, 25, 30, and so on.
Units[]
One significant difference is in movement, where a diagonal step in C-evo takes 50% more movement points than a step across a tile edge (other things being equal, e.g. terrain and roads). With the standard minimum movement ability of 1.5, a unit may often take two steps, one of them being "0.4" along a river, or (similarly to Civ2) three river steps.
The other significant difference from the early Civ games is that C-evo requires you to design most of your own units, taking time off from researching advances.
Of the nine pre-designed units, generally called "Special Units", several resemble their Civ2 counterparts:
- Militia are the cheapest pre-designed land unit, with their 6/6/1.5 (attack strength/defensive strength/movement) illustrating the larger numbers that C-evo players have to get used to. Cost is the familiar "10 resources"; you can design much cheaper units, with strengths 0/4, 0/8, or 4/4, but it would almost certainly be a waste of time.
- Settlers and Engineers are almost unchanged from Civ2. Defensive strengths are greater, 10 and 20, so even a settler is immune to attack by a single enemy militia. Major difference is the time taken to build bridges: nine movement points longer than if the tile had no river; that's six extra turns for a settler and three extra for an engineer. Unless the road would have great value for movement, the possible additional trade point is unlikely to justify the time cost at an early stage of a city's development.
- Town Guard (4/6/1.5) is the only unit able to act as a policeman, suppressing unhappiness, and that happens only under Despotism. Its defensive strength is doubled in a city.
- Special Commando (12/12/2.5) acts like a Civ2 diplomat or spy. It can pass freely through territory belonging to a friendly nation (as no other units can) and investigate cities and unit stacks, but cannot do any other covert operations there. It has some attack strength, but surprisingly weak in view of the prerequisite Intelligence, which is in the middle group of the tech tree, where most units designed by enemies would be stronger, at least 16/16.
- Longboats (0/3/2.5) - very like the familiar first ships of the Civ games; not just ill-advised to enter deep ocean, but quite unable to.
- Freight has much in common with Civ2's caravans and freight, but redeems only 2/3 of its production cost (for a unit, building, or Wonder, as can be done in Civ1) and is not involved in any kind of trade.
The other two Special Units, Army of Slaves and Glider, are available only to the nation that possesses the relevant Wonder for each.
Wonders[]
Several C-evo Wonders share only their names with Civ2 Wonders.
Key Wonders are:
- Colossus, which reduces by 25% the resource cost of every future Wonder its possessor builds
- Michelangelo's Chapel presumably makes builders happier, because it reduces from 4 to 2 the cost per resource for rush completions of buildings and Wonders (down to the same level as they have all along in Civ2)
- Eiffel Tower, which negates all obsolescence of Wonders
For "Great Wall", see below.
State Improvements[]
Called "Little Wonders" in later Civ games, these are valuable buildings; each nation can own one of each. Some are restricted in their effect to the city where they are built. Others apply to all of that nation's cities (or - for the Great Wall - to all on the same continent). One or two have ambiguous wording in the Manual, so it is unclear how far their influence spreads. You can, in effect, move one to a different city by building it there and selling the original.
If you have more than four cities on your major continent, build a Great Wall in one of the safest ones; existing City Walls can be recycled at a discount or sold at full "price". As soon as you have two or more Banks, consider building a Stock Exchange. Late in the game, build a Space Port and see your bonus tiles double their bonus elements!
Diplomacy and territory[]
There are more things you can offer to exchange with friendly nations. You are not allowed to enter the territory of any nation with whom you have a peace treaty except with your "spy", the Special Commando. Territory extends generally three to four tiles out from any city and one tile out into the water.
Research[]
The tech tree has the same general outline as in Civ series games, but two key techs, Science and Mass Production, have a choice of two out of three prerequisites. Knowledge you obtain by exchange or conquest or the Great Library is only partial, requiring half the normal number of research points to complete. You see which advances you and your friends have fully or partially researched.
Levels of difficulty[]
In Civ1 and C-evo, the levels of difficulty are effected by making a higher-level nation pay more, in time or material, to fill the foodbox or construct units, buildings, or Wonders (and probably research, but C-evo is unclear on that detail). The ratios (between your costs and the AI costs) for ascending levels of difficulty are:
- Civ1: 5/8, 5/7, 5/6, 1, 5/4
- C-evo: 3/5, 3/4, 1, 4/3, 5/3 - but rounding-down of fractions makes small variations to those figures, e.g. a militia costs 10 normally but 7 on the easiest level and 12 on the hardest, so for that unit the ratios would be 7/12, 7/10, 1, 10/7, 12/7
- Civ2 adds a top level at 5/3, thus having a similar range to C-evo, whereas Civ 1 had a smaller range
However, a C-evo player can make subtle variations to the level of difficulty at the start of a game using the Free Player Setup, which allows the setting of specific levels of difficulty for individual nations. For example, you can set yourself at the hardest of the three available levels and have a few other nations at that level, several at the middle level, and all the rest at the easiest level.
External links[]
- Short list on "Thomas's Civ-Evo Page" - partly out of date?
- Impression from Civ2 mod expe - @Chaboss
This page is a stub. You can help the Civilization Wiki by upgrading it.