Spice (Civ2)

Spice is a commodity and resource type in Civilization II.

Stats

• Food: 3
• Shields: 0
• Trade: 4

Increases the amount of Food produced in Swamp Terrain from 1 to 3 and increases trade from 0 to 4

Civilopedia entry

Certain types of plants have evolved in such a way that they produce mild toxins or repellents that make their odor or flavor distasteful to animals. Oddly enough, many of these plants were sought by humans because of these smells and tastes. A profitable spice trade was begun by merchants in the Middle East before 2000 BC. Spices are used now, as they were in the ancient world, to preserve food and enhance its flavor. Although spices are now commercially cultivated and prepared, most types can still be found in abundance in nature. Many of the most popular spices, such as cloves and nutmeg, are extracted from plants that grow in tropical or swampy regions of the world.

Commodity

Main article: Commodity (Civ2)

As a commodity, spice is available to cities near a desert, jungle, or swamp that also have access to a river or ocean. Supply is increased in cities near the map's equator and doubled on islands smaller than 26 tiles. It is halved on continent number 1 or on continents with more than 300 tiles.

The value of a spice caravan or freight is tripled if it is in demand. Demand for spice increases with continents' size, but a city will have no demand if the sum of its coordinates is divisible by 4. Demand is also halved upon the development of refrigeration.

Spice cannot appear as a supplied or demanded wildcard until a civilization has 32 technologies.

Resource

Main article: Resource (Civ2)

Swamp squares can contain... Spice, exotic flavorings which are prized the world over, and therefore represent bonus yields in both food and arrow icons. —Manual

Spice is a whale-class resource that appears in swamps and increases its food by two and its trade arrows by four. The spice resource does not make the spice commodity more likely to appear in a nearby city, except insofar as it counts as four swamp tiles instead of only one.