C-evo HOWTO: City Management

Parent article

This is the part of the C-evo HOWTO that describes basic city management in C-evo.

City management

In the Civilization games, a city generates three kinds of resources:

• Food, which allows the population of a city to live and increase. This looks like yellow-green mark (almost like a cob of corn) when managing the city.
• Material, which allow either the production of units or buildings in a city, or give money to the treasury. This resource is also called a "shield", since the resources looks like a small black shield.
• Trade, which can be used either for research or for money. You select which percent of total trade is used for research and for money by setting the tax rate. This resource looks like a blue or purple round beaker.

More information about these resources is available in the excellent manual C-Evo comes with.

A city gets these three resources from the land around the city. A given city can get land from any resource two tiles or closer from the city. Here is a figure of the squares a city gets resources from:

. # # # .
# # # # #
# # X # #
# # # # #
. # # # .

Here, "X" is the location of the city, the squares marked # are squares a city can get resources from, and the four "." squares in the corners are too far away from the city to get resources.

One interesting quirk is that, regardless of technology level, it is not possible for a given city to get resources beyond these 20 squares. While it would make sense for a modern culture to be able to use freight to move resources from distant farmlands to cities to feed the population or generate trade, C-Evo doesn't have this to keep the rules relatively simple.

The amount of resources one can get from a given square depends on several factors:

• The type of terrain a given square has
• The special resources the square has
• How well developed a given square is — we will describe this later on in the document.

An undeveloped square offers the following amount of resources (sorted by the amount of food the square offers) at the beginning of the game:

Desert:                     0 food 1 shield  1 trade
Arctic:                     0 food 1 shield  0 trade
Mountains:                  0 food 1 shield  0 trade
Prairie:                    1 food 1 shield  1 trade
Hills:                      1 food 0 shields 0 trade
Hills with grapes (wine):   1 food 0 shields 4 trade
Swamp:                      1 food 0 shields 1 trade
Tundra:                     1 food 0 shields 1 trade
Tundra with gold:           1 food 0 shields 6 trade
Coast (light ocean):        1 food 0 shields 3 trade
Forest:                     1 food 2 shields 1 trade
Jungle:                     1 food 2 shields 1 trade
Plains:                     2 food 1 shield  1 trade
Grassland:                  3 food 0 shields 1 trade
Prairie with wheat:         3 food 1 shield  1 trade
Forest with deer (game):    3 food 2 shields 1 trade
Jungle with banana (fruit): 3 food 2 shields 1 trade
Arctic with ivory (seal):   3 food 1 shield  4 trade
Desert with oasis (palm):   3 food 1 shield  1 trade
Coast with fish:            5 food 0 shield  3 trade

For a city to survive, it must have at least 4 food resources, including the food resources available in the square where the city is located. A city must have a population of at least 2, and every unit of population needs two food resources; a city with a population of 10, for example, needs 20 food resources. Cities without enough food have famines and decrease in population; cities with excess food have surpluses, which result in the city growing.

This means that, for a city to survive, it should be on a square that offers 2 food or more, and close to another square that offers 2 or more food.

City manipulation

To manage a city, left-click on the city. A window will pop open with the following information:

• In the upper left hand corner is a number indicating the population of the city, followed by the name of the city.
• Below this are icons of little men. The icons directly below the city name indicate workers gathering resources for the city; icons in the box to the right of this indicate workers who act as policemen to keep the citizens law-abiding.
• Below this, you can see your city as it looks on the map. This is where you can see which tiles the city is using to gather resources; you will see a row of icons representing food, shields, and trade in the squares where the city is gathering resources. The city is highlighted in a circle, like a spotlight; this shows which squares workers in the city can reach to gather resources.
• In the bottom right corner of the panel showing the city on the map is a small button that looks like a money bag; this is used to spend money so as to speed up the creation of a building or unit.
• In the left part below the city resource panel showing is a large colored circle. At the beginning of a game, this circle is a green circle with a picture of a baby carriage. This circle represents how the computer manages resources; there are a number of settings, such as "maximize growth" (increase population as quickly as possible), "maximize production" (build things as quickly as possible), and "maximize research" (develop new technologies and/or gather taxes as much as possible). These settings are changed by clicking on the circle. It is also possible to override automatic resource management and manually manage where a city get resources.
• To the right of this circle is an image of whatever item the city is currently creating (if the city isn't presently creating anything, but is instead contributing to taxes, this will look like a treasure chest with a red background). You can click on this square to change what the city is producing; this will open up a list of various items the city can produce. To get more information on a give item can produce, hold sown the “shift” key then left-click on the item you want more information about; the relevant page from the manual will pop up describing the item in more detail.
• Below this is a mini-map of the city which lets you see which buildings the city already has.
• On the right hand side of the city maintenance panel is some information about the city's current state.
• The top part panel on the right with small hearts shows morale: How well-behaved city inhabitants are.
• The second panel from the top on the right shows food: How much food we have; if the storage here reaches the highest level (30 if playing stock C-Evo at the easiest level), population increases. If the storage here goes below 0, it is a famine and the city either loses population or dies out if there is no population left.
• The third panel from the top on the right shows the progress building the item we are requesting the city to build.
• The bottom panel on the right hand side shows how much science (research, tech) and/or tax this city is contributing to our nation.

The only information we will concern ourselves with now is which squares the city uses to get resources. We will work on improving these squares.

Improving terrain

The unit used for improving terrain is the settler (later on in the game there are other units that can improve terrain, but the settler is the only available one at the start of the game). A settler actually has two jobs: Building new cities and improving terrain around a city. A settler can improve terrain a few ways:

• Increasing the amount of food by one unit on grassland, plains, prairie, hills, and tundra with irrigation.
• Using irrigation to convert forests and jungles in to prairie, and swamps in to grassland.
• Increasing the amount of shields (material) available by putting mines in hills and mountains. Note that a given square can either be irrigated or have a mine, but not both (this only affects hill squares).
• Converting plains, grassland, prairies, and swamps in to forests.
• Adding roads which increase movement; roads also increase trade once we have "The Wheel" technology (this is one of the first technologies available to us)

These improvements are done by moving the settler to the square we wish to improve, then pushing the button near the bottom of the screen that looks like a "T" to open up the terrain improvement menu. To move the settler (or any other unit):

• Left-click on the settler you wish to move.
• Now, right-click on the square you wish to move the unit to.
• When the game starts up, some of the squares around the city are already irrigated.

Irrigation is more useful than making mines near the beginning of the game, especially on plains and grassland squares.

Building new towns

In addition to irrigating terrain and building roads and mines, settlers can also build new towns. It is important to build a town that is a little distant from other towns and cities so the town has its own resources. Only a single town or city can use a given resource square; if two cities are too close to each other, each city has fewer resource squares available.

To build a new town, a settler needs to find a place which has enough food to support the town's population. While a settler can build a town in a place without enough food, the town will quickly die of famine and disappear.

Ideally, a city should be built on a plains or grassland tile, and be within two squares of another plains or grassland tile. If this is not possible, it will be necessary to irrigate land around the site before establishing the new town.

To build a new town:

• Use the settler or other units to explore the unexplored (black) part of the world to find a suitable site for the new town.
• Once the settler is on the square which is a good place to build a town, start building a town either by clicking on the button in the lower left area of the screen marked “!”, or by hitting the "B" key.

It takes a few turns to construct the town (this is done to minimize the advantages of building a lot of small towns instead of a few cities)

Improving a town

Once a town is built, the first thing you will want to build is a town hall. If you have the "code of laws" advance, build a courthouse instead. Another improvement worth building is a granary to increase the town's population growth (pottery needed). If you are playing against other players, either computer or human, and are in hostile territory, it might make more sense to build a military unit to defend your town, but this tutorial only covers playing a map without any other players.

The reason it is so important to build a town hall is because a new town will not contribute to your nation's research or tax until it has this building (or a courthouse if one has the "code of laws" advance). In the "city manipulation" section above, it describes in detail where the button to change what a town builds is; for a newly built city, this button looks like a treasure chest with a red background. Click on this button and you will see a list of units you can build or improvements you can make. As the game progresses and more units and improvements become available to you, to stop things from being unwieldy, the possible things you can build in a city are divided in to:

• Buildings and structures that improve the city.
• Units, such as settlers and military units.
• Wonders of the world, very expensive structures that give the play some advantage, depending on the wonder. Only one of a given wonder can be built in the entire world.

The buildings are accessed by pressing on the button that looks like a little house; the units are accessed by pressing on the button next to the little house that looks like a man holding a spear; the wonders are accessed by pressing on the button that looks like a triangle pointing upwards.

To get more information on what a given building or unit does, move the mouse pointer over the unit/improvement in question, and hold down the "shift" key while left clicking on your mouse; the relevant page from the C-Evo manual will come up.

Some city improvements are "state improvements" — improvements that a given player can only have one of, but each nation can have their own state improvement. The first state improvement in the list of city improvements listed is always the palace; since it's your nation's capital, you start the game with your first city having this improvement. All units above the palace are not state improvements; all units below the palace are state improvements.

City population

If a city has enough food, its population will steadily increase. A city can have a population up to 30; a city without an aqueduct can only have a population of 8. A city with an aqueduct can only have a population of 12 until the city has a sewer system. You need the construction technology to build the aqueduct and the sanitation technology to build a sewer system.

As the population of a city increases, there will be more workers working on more squares; the more population a given town has, the more food the city gathers and uses, the more quickly the city can create units or city improvements, and the more tax money and/or research the city contributes to your nation.

As a town becomes a city, there is more crime and unrest in the city. It is important to keep this unrest under control; a city that experiences civil disorder does not build any units nor contribute trade to your nation. C-Evo for the most part automatically handles this; when there is danger of there being civil unrest, some of the population, instead of working around the city and gathering resources, polices the city so it doesn't fall in to civil disorder. Some city improvements also lower civil unrest: The temple, the cathedral, the stadium state improvement, and all wonders.