C-evo HOWTO

How to play C-evo

Overview

This document is a guide on playing the excellent tiny free game C-Evo for someone who has never played any of the games in the famous Civilization series. The purpose of this document is to allow someone who has never played any Civilization game before to become familiar enough to be able to build a spaceship and win the game at the easiest level of play in C-Evo 1.1.1 (Beginner).

This document will not cover situations when there are other nations on the map, such as alliances and war.

Introduction

The Civilization series of games are a series of games which combine city building, society expansion and creation with traditional war gaming aspects. In the Civilization games, strategy consists of several facets:

• Improving your cities and the area around them
• Performing scientific and military research
• Making alliances with your neighbor civilizations
• Going to war if the alliances break down (or your neighbors don’t want to enter a treaty with you)
• Developing technology starting with spear men and advancing to space-age jet fighters, battleships and tanks.

Starting C-Evo

Once C-Evo is installed on your computer, start up the game. The game runs in full-screen mode at the resolution you have set your monitor at. On this screen, one can see a big version of C-Evo's logo in the upper right-hand side of the screen, along with a window in the lower left part that allows one to select how to start a game. There is, in this window, three tabs and two buttons marked "?" and "X". The "X" button exits C-Evo and returns to the desktop; if you wish to go to another running application without quitting C-Evo, it is possible to hit Alt+Tab (in Windows XP, you will need to have at least one other program running when you start C-Evo to do this).

The "?" button gives you help on the parameters you can choose to start C-Evo. The "Map" tab allows you to choose how big the map is; it is also possible to download and play maps, which would be in this menu, as well as making your own map. The most important option here is the size of the map; C-Evo lets you choose one of six sizes of random maps, ranging in size from fairly small to epic-size huge maps.

While it is possible to play a handmade map with C-Evo, the majority of games are played with random maps: When the game is started, the computer makes a map that resembles the Earth. Each game has a different looking map; no two games are the same as a result. Every game allows you to explore a new world.

Civilization games are very long games; even a game played with the smallest map (35%) can easily last several hours. Combine with C-Evo's very addictive gameplay, it is recommended to not start a game unless you know you will be free for a few hours.

In C-Evo parlance, a game is called a "book"; to start a game, do the following:

• Go to "Map" and choose a world size of 35% (the smallest sized world C-Evo supports)
• Go to "New Book", choose "Beginner" level and have 0 foreign nations.
• Have the game end at 3000AD
• Click on "Start" to start the game.
• C-Evo will spend a couple of seconds randomly creating the world you will play on.
• Now, C-Evo will ask you to choose your tribe. It doesn't matter which tribe you play; the gameplay is the same. Tribes on affect how your units and cities look, and the names of your cities.
• Once you choose a tribe, the game starts.

After the game starts, you will see a screen with a message saying your civilization is leaving the stone age. The C-Evo game choose an initial location for your first city. You start the game with just a single city, as well as a single "settler" who can either improve the land around your city or form his own new city.

C-Evo's user interface

Once a game is started, we are in C-Evo's user interface, which can be very confusing at first, but soon becomes simple to use.

In the upper left hand corner of the screen is a small version of the C-Evo logo. This allows you to open up the manual, change user-interface options (whether there is sound, etc.), cheat in various ways (see the entire world) via the "Manipulation" item (we will not do this), allow experienced players to automate some tasks via "Micro management", open up C-Evo's website (this is a good way of starting up a second application so you can Alt+Tab out of C-Evo in Windows XP), and save the game by "closing" the book.

Saving and loading games

C-Evo, unlike other games, doesn't have a "Save game" option; a game is saved by closing the game in progress. When you close a game, it will ask you if you want to save the game. Click on "Yes" to save the game.

Once a game is saved, it can be reloaded again by restarting C-Evo, choosing the "Earlier books" tab, and choosing the game you just saved. Multiple games can be saved; games are sorted by the time a game was saved, with newer games lower in the list. If this is the first time you have played C-Evo, the game you just saved will have the name "Book 1". If you or someone else has played a game of C-Evo before, the game you just saved will be the game at the bottom of the list of saved games. To open a saved game, select the game on the left side of the box then hit the box marked "open".

If you don't like how a game has progressed, you can load a save game at any point in the past. To do this, select the "book" (saved game) you wish to roll back the clock on. Next, below the mini-map icon, and above the "open" button, there is a display of the year (in game time) when the game is saved. It is possible to change the year to continue playing again by either clicking on the arrows to the right of the year, or sliding the long black bar immediately below the year.

Map viewing options

In the lower left corner of the screen there is a, at this point, largely black rectangle with a small blue or green area. This is a mini-map; this lets you see the entire world at a glance. Below this mini-map are some options that affect how you view the world; the most useful of these options are the ones that allow you to see political borders (you can not cross these borders if you have a peace treaty with another player) and the one that allows you to see the isometric grid C-Evo uses.

Since we are playing without any opponents, the option to see political borders will only allow us to see our own borders. To enable this button, click on the third box from the left below the mini-map. The grid can be turned on by clicking on the sixth box from the left below the mini-map (the second box from the right).

While these options are below the mini-map, these options for the most part affect how we view the main map that takes up most of the screen real estate on the screen.

The main map does not show the entire world; it only shows a part of the world. One can change what part of the world one sees by left-clicking on the main map; the point you click will become the center of the main map window. It is also possible to change one's viewpoint by left-clicking on the mini-map, or by enabling scrolling in the options in the top left menu.

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 needs to 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 were playing against other players, either computer or human, and were 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. 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.

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.

Technology

Civilization games cover the history of humanity from the end of the stone age up until the space age. To implement this, each nation makes discoveries which improve their technology. This research is controlled by each player; after your first turn ends, it will ask, at the beginning of your second turn what you wish to research.

This window shows a handful of choices. It also has, in the upper left hand corner, a button that looks like a target or bull's eye. Pressing this button causes the number of technologies visible to greatly increase; you can now choose to direct your research towards a technology not immediately visible.

A number of technologies need other technologies developed first. The way technologies are dependent on each other is called a "tech tree" and is a very common feature of video games (not only do all of the Civilization games have tech trees, but also games like People's Tactics, Age of Empires and Starcraft also have tech trees).

For example, here is the tech tree to develop Monarchy:

• "Monarchy" needs "Polytheism"
• "Polytheism" needs "Ceremonial Burial" and "Horseback Riding"
• "Ceremonial Burial" has no prerequisites — it can be developed at the beginning of the game
• "Horseback Riding" also has no prerequisites

After clicking on the target button, scrolling down to select monarchy, and selecting the advance monarchy, the list of advances will become much shorter and the box will ask what you wish to research, with the caption "Focus: Monarchy" and a list of all available advances that are available prerequisites for Monarchy. You can either choose one of the technologies that brings you closer to having Monarchy, or click on the target-shaped button to change your research focus.

To find out what a given technology advance offers, hold the the shift key on your keyboard and left-click on the name of the technology in question; the manual page describing the technology will appear.

Some important early technologies to develop are "The wheel" (allows roads to increase research), "Monarchy" (lowers corruption, increases research), and, on maps with a lot of ocean, "Map Making" (allows longboats to explore the sea).

Setting Tax and Research Percentages

At the beginning of the game, 30% of one's trade pays taxes (adds money to the nation's treasury that the nation needs to run and can be used to speed up unit production), and 70% of one's trade is devoted to researching new technologies. This percentage can be adjusted:

• Click on the image of a building in the lower right hand corner of the screen, just above the octagonal "end turn" button.
• Select "Economy and Tax". This window can also be popped up by hitting the "F10" key on your keyboard.

Unless you are at war with another nation and need to build a military, adjust this number to have the lowest possible tax rate that doesn't result in the nation losing money every turn. At the top of the screen, you can see an icon of a treasure chest; next to this chest, the top line shows how much money your nation currently has and the line below it shows how much money the nation is getting or losing every turn.

Increasing technology research

Every time your nation discovers a new technology, the next technology needs more "bulbs" (research points) to discover. Getting more bulbs is a matter of:

• Establishing a new town
• A new town does not contribute to trade (research) at all until a town hall is built in the town
• A courthouse ("Code of Laws" technology needed) increases the amount of trade a town contributes to your nation.
• Putting roads around your town also increases trade once your nation has “the wheel” technology.
• Other structures, such as the library, university, observatory, and research lab also increase research.
• Changing the type of government you have increases research: Being a monarchy increases trade (by lowering corruption); a republic or democracy increase trade even more (but with different side effects).

Changing government type

To change the government type you have to do the following:

• Research the technology advance that allows the government type in question. The advance needed for most government types is the same as the type of government in question: Monarchy, Republic, Democracy, and Communism. The two government types where the advance has a different name is Fundamentalism; "Theology" is needed to be a fundamentalist government, and "The Internet" is needed to make a "future society" government.
• Start a revolution. This can be done by clicking on "Yes" when you get the advance needed for a new government type and C-Evo asks if you want a revolution, or by going to the menu visible by clicking on the icon of a building in the lower right hand corner of the screen and selecting "START REVOLUTION".
• For three turns, your government will be an anarchy; no money can be earned or spent and no management of your cities is possible.
• After three turns, C-evo will ask you what kind of new government you want.

Information about the various government types is available in the online manual; click on the C-evo logo in the upper left corner of your C-evo screen, select manual (or hit the "F1" key to get at the manual), scroll down the manual, and click on "government forms". The manual does not make the effects of each government type completely clear:

• Despotism. A very bad government type; change to a monarchy as soon as possible.
• Monarchy. A good early government type; balances research with the nation's ability to wage war against other hostile nations.
• Republic. A good government type during reasonable peaceful times; faster research but it's more difficult to go to war.
• Democracy. Even faster research, but not a good government to go to war with.
• Fundamentalism. A good government to have if at war with another nation and the war will be resolved before the nation you're fighting can develop new technologies.
• Communism is a good government for building units or building structures. It is not the best government for advancing technology.
• Future society is good for the endgame when all of your cities do not need more population, and you need to either develop future technologies to defeat any enemy nations still around, or build the spaceship to win the game.

Building and using ships

The first naval unit the becomes available in C-Evo is a longboat. This is a slow-moving boat that can not attack and can transport two units. The "map making" technology makes this boat available.

Longboats can only be built in cities next to a body of water. To build a longboat:

• Research the map-making technology (see research above; the tech tree is simply the introductory technology "alphabet" followed by "map making").
• Once you have map-making, C-evo will inform you that a new unit, the longboat, is available.
• Go to the management screen for a city next to the sea (left-click on the city)
• Click on the box that selects which unit to build (it has an image in it and is directly below the button that looks like a money-bag)
• Select to build a longboat. You may need to click on the button that looks like a man holding a spear to see the longboat option.

It will take a couple of turns to build a longboat. Once the longboat is built, it can be used to:

• Explore other islands and continents that your initial city can not access over land.
• Transport up to two units over water to other lands.

Note that longboats are civil units that can not attack other boats.

To use a longboat as a transport:

• Put the longboat on any square adjacent to land (to move a unit, first left click on the unit to select it; this will make the unit flash. Then right-click the square you wish to move the unit to)
• Move a land-based unit, such as a settler, next to the longboat.
• Now, move the settler on to the longboat. Note that boarding a ship is time consuming and takes all of a unit's turn.

To unload a unit from a ship:

• Make sure the transport is one unit away from land to put the unit on.
• Click on the map square containing the ship with the unit you wish to disembark.
• You will see, at the bottom of the screen, an icon of the ship along with all of the units on that ship.
• Select the unit you wish to disembark that is visible on the toolbar on the bottom of the screen.
• This unit will now be visible and flashing on the map.
• Right-click on the square where you wish the unit to land.

Note that a longboat can only hold two units; if you try to load more units on the the ship, you will get a "The transport is fully loaded" message and be unable to load the unit.

Also note that longboats can not sail over deep water; only shallow coastland.

Building better ships

It is desirable to have ships that can sail the seas faster than longboats, that can sail over the deep ocean, that can hold more than two units, and that can attack. All of these features require "military research" to develop; some of these features (transporting more units, sailing over the high seas) need certain technologies more advanced than map making.

To create new types of ships, your nation needs to invest research and development in to a new ship design. To do this:

• Wait until the last technology you are researching is researched, and the "What Do We Research Now" window comes up
• Select "Military Research"
• Click on the picture of a ship with a blue background in the "Military Research" panel that pops up
• Some technologies affect which capabilities a ship can have. If all we have is map-making, we can make a ship that moves 3.5 squares (instead of the longboat’s 2.5 square move), has no attack, a defense of 1, and can transport two units.

Click on OK once you have a ship design you are happy with.

Military research can be used to design new ships, land-based, and air-based units, depending on the technologies available. While the majority of this is geared towards making units that can fight wars, this can also be used to make transports more capable than longboats.

Unlike other games in the Civilization franchise, new units have to be designed and researched; you set the balance between cost, strength, and speed for a given unit.

Science and resources

Certain special resources are only visible once the “Science” technology becomes available:

Prairie with bauxite:        1 food          3 shields              1 trade
Forest with bubble (mineral) 1 food          2 shields              4 trade
Jungle with black ebony      1 food          2 shields              4 trade
Hills with coal              1 food          2 shields              0 trade
Mountains with diamonds      0 food          1 shield               7 trade
Swamp with peat              1 food          4 shields              1 trade
Tundra with gas              1 food          4 shields              1 trade
Desert with oil              0 food          3 shields              1 trade
Coast with manganese         1 food          5 shields              3 trade