Jokemaster's in-depth guide to Civilization II
Last updated: April 10, 2025 at 12:37 PM Eastern time
Table of contents:
The numbers game: Precise data and algorithms on various subjects
Foreword
Have you ever heard of the Civilization strategy game series? And, more specifically, have you heard about the second title of the long-running series, Civilization II? Yes? Well, this page is dedicated to help both newcomers and veterans of the game to improve their strategy and game play. I know that there are many Civ2 guides out there (after all, the game exists since 1996) but most of these guides are outdated, having been written many years ago. As I progressed in my Civ2 learning, I realized that a lot of good knowledge was held only by veterans of the game, and were not found in common guides (such as extensive trade strategies) as these guides were often not updated when new, better theories were put to the test and adopted. Game mechanics were very well documented, but not actual game strategies and transitions: and when they were indeed put on paper, it was incomplete, or scattered upon multiple places, which is not very convenient. I then decided to leap to the opportunity to create something great as part of an English school project. So, without further ado, here is my work. But before we’ll start, I would like to make you remember that we need to start at the basics, so I will not mention complicated things such as the zoom to city trick straight away. But we will begin at the beginning.
In addition to the many tricks described here, I also encourage you to read ElephantU’s Tips and Tricks thread for Civ2 located at the Civilization Fanatics’ Center. It contains a gold mine of useful information. Refer to it often: I strongly encourage it to add that page to your favourites/bookmarks in your web browser.
Before starting, I encourage you to try to play it once, so you know how the game works. (If you already know how the game works, then you may skip to the next step.) Now, read this guide a first time, but DO NOT read it all at once, otherwise your brain will not digest anything. Trust me on that one: it happened to me too when I was learning the game.
When reading, read in spans and take breaks so your brain can process what it just saw. Try your game out, and don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Then, read it a second time, and try again. While you play, check the relevant section(s) of this guide if you need some clarifications on what to do. Have both the game and this guide open at the same time: it really helps to understand what I mean when you have the actual example in front of you. Afterwards, I advise you to practice, practice, practice. Civilization II is a game containing a lot of concepts: The amount of tips, strategies and game concepts and what you have to remember when you play can be dazzling at first, especially when it is thrown in front of you all at once, hence why you should take it step by step.
My advice is: as you play, try to integrate slightly more elements from this guide than you did last time you played Civ2. Try to play in spans of turns, and to step back and re-evaluate the game’s course often, at each significant event (ex: When you meet your first AI civ (artificial intelligence, which is basically a fancy term to designate the computer). Brainstorm often. Try to think about new ideas, new strategies. It might be difficult to review your own work, but without that, good ideas might go unnoticed. Think ahead, plan ahead. Think about what others would do. Don’t come in there without a precise plan. And finally, be patient: It is impossible to become a Civ master overnight. They say practice makes perfect: This statement could not be more truthful for this game. If you achieve lesser results than the target results shown in this, don’t panic, don’t get frustrated: it takes time and practice to be able to achieve the same results as the game’s great players. Luck also plays a preponderant role, and you can’t ignore that too.
As for every single strategy game, it is absolutely necessary to plan ahead in Civilization II. Where to build your next city, when you should sneak attack the Spanish, when you shall rushbuy that critical Wonder of the World, when you plan to launch your spaceship... we could go on and on with this tirade. Remember this when you play, because game-winning moves and policies are always the ones that are planned ahead. And with that being said, here we go.
WARNING: This guide focuses mostly on an approach that emphasizes long-term growth of your civ, which is basically my variation of Starlifter’s Power Democracy strategy. So if you are looking for a guide on achieving a win early (whether it is early conquest or early landing) this is not the place to be. If you are looking for one of those guides, you might want to try Peaster’s Early Conquest guide and/or Solo’s Early Landing guide here and here. I tend to play for a high final score or/and GOTM score (an alternate way of scoring designed by fanatics of the game) and this guide reflects that heavily in the way strategies are presented. Some might think my approach is overkill and time-consuming: I say that my approach to the same is designed to help you get as much score as possible in the smallest amount of game turns.
This guide has been written up assuming you have the Classic (2.42) version of Civilization II. In the multiplayer version of Civilization II, the AI has been skewed in hating you from the get-go, so diplomacy will be much more difficult in Multiplayer Gold Edition (MGE) single-player games, and keeping the peace will be more difficult too. This also may not be a good strategy to follow in a multiplayer game against a human, because contrary to the AIs, human players can actually think ahead and plan their moves carefully until they overwhelmingly attack, and bang, game over. This guide also assumes that you play the Deity level, but lower levels are fine too. But, if you only get one settler at the beginning (like it sometimes happen when you don’t play Deity, which always gives 2 settlers at the beginning of the game) then don’t be surprised if you start lagging behind when it comes to expansion goals. However, a lesser unhappiness problem (with lower levels) can sometimes make up for that.
UPDATE in 2025: With the advent of 64-bit computers as a default, the Classic 2.42 version of Civilization 2 is now much less use, with MGE now being the preferred version due to its continued compatibility with Windows 10 and 11. There is a need for a 64-bit compatibility patch, however: you can use FoxAhead' Civ2 Launcher for an all-in-one solution that also fixes many longstanding game bugs (notably the MGE hostile AI and the dye-and-copper bug) and introduces multiple Quality of Life features to Civ2. I heavily recommend it as the best way to play Civilization 2 in 2025.
The game
This strategy holds true to a few factors. I’m going to assume you are playing a (round) normal map or higher: on a small map, strategies might differ. If you are playing a flat map, expansion might be more difficult if you are located in a corner of the map, but it might also increase trade bonuses because of increased distance between cities (don’t try to understand that for now). If you are also playing a user-designed map with poor grounds, then the strategy might also be changed.
Let’s start a Civilization II game. Let’s say that you choose to start a new game, 7 civilizations (the maximum: minimum is 3 in a single player game and 2 in a multiplayer game) normal map, barbarians are at ‘’roving bands’’ at level Chieftain (Six possible levels, Chieftain being the easiest and Deity being the hardest. There is a way to get levels harder than Deity, but we will talk about that later) playing as the Celts (you have 21 civs to choose from) with standard rules (you have the option to set custom rules that, for example, make the Earth flat instead of round). At the start of the game, your civilization will be assigned some starting technologies that will come in use later. You will ALWAYS know how to irrigate, mine, and road at the start. You can also know some more ancient arts: the number of ‘’free’’ techs you have depends on how good the Civilization program considers your starting location (so, a civ that has a starting location in, say, the North Pole will on average receive more techs at start than a civ that starts in the middle of grassland and river. We will talk more about techs later)
So, your civ has started the game. At the beginning, you will have, along with the starting techs, one or two settlers and also 50 gold pieces if you are playing the Chieftain level, which is the easiest level one can normally play at. You will have the option to move your settler(s) around, looking for a better city site, or to settle right now by pressing the ‘’b’’ key on your keyboard. Choose a name for your new city (or simply use the one suggested, taken from the pre-set city list) and voilà! You have now built your first city.
You will then be taken to the City Screen page. In this screen, you will be able to control what your city is doing. You will be able to control which squares near the city are exploited by your citizens, what the city is building, and plenty more things.
When you will first see the City Screen page, you will see a lot of information. But what really is trade, for example? Next, we will explore some basic city concepts. IF you already know them inside and out, feel free to jump to the next section, but be aware that some lesser-known city concepts are very important in the game, especially those regarding trade, trade routes, shields and citizen happiness. So I advise you to keep reading anyway.
Food: Food is the amount of food your city produces, represented in small sheaves. Each citizen in your city needs to ‘’eat’’ 2 food sheaves per turn in order to survive. Some units supported by the city (such as the Settler and the Engineer) can also eat one or two sheaves per turn, depending on your government type (but we will talk about that later) When your city generates excess food (more food than its citizens need to eat per turn) it is ‘’stocked’’ until a certain amount of food is obtained. An example is that your size 1 city has an excess food of 2 per turn.
This means that each turn, it will accumulate 2 food sheaves in the box. When a certain number of sheaves is meet, the ‘’box’’ that ‘’stocks’’ food will fill, and that will result in the city growing by a population point (citizen) next turn (not instantly), with food production and surplus/shortage being adjusted likewise. When a city grows, the food in the box disappears (except if you have the Granary city improvement in the growing city, or the Pyramids in one of your cities: in these cases only half of the food is used up when the city grows) and you will need to refill the food box again if you want the city to grow to size 3. The ‘’target’’ for a city growing is 20 sheaves for a size 1 city, with the requirement growing by 10 sheaves for any extra citizen in the city. The equation is: Food required=(10S+10) where S equals the size of the city. This means that a size 4 city will require 50 food sheaves to grow. However, when a city has a shortage, the amount of food in the food box will decrease by the amount of food that is in shortage every turn, much like a city generates excess food. When the food box sinks to an amount that it is less than empty, one citizen will die. No more than one citizen can die that way each turn.
It is of course important to have enough food produced by your cities to keep your citizens alive. Food surpluses are very important in the early game in order to get your cities to grow, especially if your cities are size one or two. However, as you progress in the game, you might find growing cities that way to be tedious, when the required food amount to fill the food box just keeps increasing with the size of said cities.
Shields: Shields represent your city’s production (raw materials) Shields are used to build many things in cities, ranging from military units to city buildings to even special buildings, the Wonders of the World (abbreviated WoW from now on) which can only be built once, for every city and for every AI civ as they give great advantages to the civ that builds or captures it. The way shields work is similar to food: You accumulate shields in a production box every turn, until the box is full. When that happens, the unit/building/WoW that was being built is built on the same turn the box is filled. For food, there is a one-turn delay for growing a city: this delay is inexistent for shields. Watch out though: Contrary to food, there is a possibility that you might ''lose'' some shields every turn to government waste, especially if your government is more backwards. If that happens, you simply lose those shields. The amount of waste your city has depends on its distance from your capitol. Courthouses (a building you can build in your cities) also halve the amount of waste in your city.
Shields can also be used by cities to support military units (at the rate of one shield used up per turn). You sometimes get ‘’free’’ support for your military units: the number of freely supported military units per city depends on your government type. A government that's more militarily inclined will be able to have more freely supported units than a government that's more peace-oriented.
When a city has a shield shortage, the next turn it will disband any military units it supports, until it has a production of 0 shields. If it sinks below zero, some military units (supported from the city that has a shortage of shields) are disbanded until there's a production of 0 shields again. The units disbanded that way are the ones that are the farthest from the city in shortage. A city cannot have a natural shield shortage, as the square the city is built on will always produce at least one shield, no matter the type of land the city is built on (with the obvious exception of ocean, as you cannot build cities on ocean tiles)
You can rush (buy) shields, to speed up production in your cities. Cost for rushbuying (abbreviated as rbing) city buildings is always 2 gold per shield, while WoWs cost double. RBing with an empty shield box also doubles the cost, which makes it usually better to only partially rush buy the production, or to wait until some shields are in the production box before making the purchase (known as partial rush buying, or PRB). But the military units’ rbing costs, however, are not linear: The more shields you rush at one time, the more you pay per shield. This makes it more economical, while rushing units, to rush them step by step. That way, rushing a, say, 30-shield diplomat with 1 shield in the box will cost more (100g) than first rushing a 10-shield warrior (22g) then switching to a 20-shield Phalanx and rush that (25g) and finally switch to a diplomat and rush that (25g. Total gold spent is 72g, which is 28g saved versus simply buying the dip straight away) This may seem like not much, but remember that in this game, 28g can make it a long way, especially if this gold-saving process (known as Incremental Rush Buying, or IRBing) is used often. But remember IRBing can only be used for military units! You can also let the city contribute the first shields of a row, buy it, and then let it contribute another row, and buy it, and do it once again until it is complete. This is called Incremental Partial Rush buying, or IPRBing.
Shields are very important in the early game, when you need to build settlers fast, so you can build new cities. But as the game progresses, shields start to become less useful, as you can now IRB more stuff with sweet money... until you start industrializing your cities and growing them to size 16+. When that happens, shields become more important again because at the exact same moment, the need for money grows and you need a boost.
Trade: Trade is the amount of... well... trade that the city has. Trade has 3 uses: You can devote trade to taxes (for extra gold that can be spent on buying more shields for cities or used to pay off maintenance costs of city improvements) science (to research new technologies) or luxuries (to keep your citizens content) Usually, a trade icon translates in at least a gold/beaker/luxury, however that can be increased by building city improvements or WoWs in the city (with the exception of the SETI program, that affects every city in your civ). Trade also affects the value of trade routes established between your cities. You can control what % of trade each priority gets by going in the Kingdom tab in the game menu, then by clicking ‘’Tax Rate’’. You will then be taken to a screen (referred to as the TLS screen) where you will be able to set empire-wide settings for each city regarding what % of trade the city should devote to a priority.
Much like the shield waste effect, you can also lose some trade arrows to corruption, in the same base than waste (although corruption is more common than waste) Corruption also depends on your city’s distance from its capitol (the closer the better), your government type and if your city has a courthouse (in the same base than waste)
Trade is very important, as it controls many aspects of Civ2. It is important that your cities have good trade, both for research and income and for using caravans to establish trade routes. In the early game, more cities is the answer: in the mid to late game, growing cities and adding roads/city improvements will be needed.
Improvements built: There is a window in the City screen that shows the improvements that have been built in the city. Improvements have multiple purposes, from allowing growth of a city beyond size 12 (Sewer system) to being able to harmlessly shoot down enemy nuclear missiles while they are still in the air at a range of 3 squares. (SDI system) Improvements cost gold in a turn-per-turn basis to maintain (with the exception of City Walls, who are free to maintain) but they can be sold by clicking on them in the ‘’improvements built’’ window in the City Screen (with the exception of the Palace). Switching to Fundamentalism or building the Adam Smith's Trading Company WoW can also help saving on maintaining costs. Improvements can be sold for gold based on their value on shields (so, a 40 shield barracks will sell for 40g). Improvements can also be sold automatically when you run out of gold and you need more for maintaining buildings, when your cities are processed at the beginning of your turn. I’m pretty sure that the improvements sold that way are not chosen randomly, but I do not know of a formula. If you have info on this problem, please help.
Citizens and happiness: As you build more cities, and as your cities grow, your citizens start to be more worried about things, such as how well you are managing your civ. When that happens, more angry (red) citizens appear in the City Screen. The level of unhappiness can also be affected by the map size (a large map will suffer less unhappiness than a small or normal map) and by the level of difficulty you’re playing on. When the number of angry citizens is greater than the number of the happy (light blue) citizens, your city starts to riot. When a city riots, all of the city’s production (in terms of goods) will stop next turn. The exception is for food and science, which stay unaffected. (In other words, production still happens the turn a city riots. It simply does not produce, when the city goes back in order. So if a city that’s about to riot builds, with its last pre-riot shields, something that ends up making the citizens content, the riot will not happen as shield production is checked before city happiness by the Civ2 program. This is very useful in countering revolts.) A city can riot for as much turns with no effects on buildings or governments (with the exception of the nuclear plant, which blows up if a city riots 2 turns straight if the Fusion Power advance is not discovered. And when that happens... OUCH!) Also, if a rioting city riots 2 turns straight under a democratic government, the government FALLS and you will be in Anarchy until next oedo year, which can result in thousands of gold, beakers, and shields wasted. 2 good reasons to keep your people happy! (We will talk about oedo years later) Not to mention that the happiness of your citizens is important for final score: a happy citizen is worth 2 points, a content citizen is worth 1 point and an unhappy/very unhappy citizen are both worth 0 points. So increasing your luxuries to the maximum rate your government allows you to do the turn before victory is a good way to maximize any points. (The same goes towards changing citizens to entertainers in order to get more luxuries, and points, for a given city)
When a city has half or more than half of its citizens happy and none of its citizens unhappy, it will celebrate with a We Love the (your title as a leader: can be King, Emperor, President, etc) day. Any government can celebrate cities, except Anarchy, as Anarchy is simply absence of government. Celebrating cities under Despotism will give cities the same worker efficiency than in Monarchy, celebrating cities under Monarchy/Communism/Fundamentalism will give cities more trade arrows (much like in Republic and Democracy) and a celebrating city in Republic/Democracy will grow a population point every turn, provided that it can have enough food to support its citizens, stays in celebration, and has the city improvements required to grow past sizes 8 and 12. This can be very powerful when the food requirement to grow your cities the ‘’normal’’ way gets too high, when cities reach high sizes. Such a technique is often called WLTPD (for we love the president day) or celebration.
A quick note on luxuries: The maximum of luxuries that can be applied to a city is the size of the city times 2. So, if a city is size 16, only 32 luxuries will count towards unhappiness: the rest will be wasted, so exercise caution when handling the luxury rate. 2 luxuries will make an angry citizen content, or it can make a content citizen happy. If you build enough cities however (this happens more often in the later levels, because unhappiness is more present) your citizens might start out as black hats, or very unhappy. Black hats require more contentment structures to make content than red hats. The difference is there is a ‘’bug’’ for black hats: Instead of 2 luxuries from very unhappy to unhappy, 2 from unhappy to content, and 2 for content to happy, 2 luxuries will take a very unhappy citizen directly to happy. It does not make sense, but we’re not going to be the ones that will complain about that ;) This makes it a good strategy to try and expand as fast as possible, because more black hats make celebrations easier. Since the Hanging Gardens and the Cure for Cancer act as 2 luxuries (take a citizen happy) it can also be used as tools to single-handedly prevent unhappiness in size 1-2 cities, as a happy citizen and a very unhappy citizen is still enough to keep order, as it’s one happy versus one unhappy: very unhappy citizens are only counted once in the happiness calculation, and 1 is not more than 1, so there is no disorder as long as these cities don't grow to size 3. (In the early game, cities won’t go to size 3 very often anyways before the Michelangelo’s Chapel wonder is built, and in the late game you will have the time to rushbuild what you need for a size 3 city if Mikes, and later JS Bach, does not cut it. But it should)
Citizens and workers: A citizen’s primary job is to work the city radii around the city. To show the amount of radii covered by a city, go to the View tab and click on ‘’Show Map Grid’’ The white tiles are the tiles already covered by city radii in this mode. The square of the city will always be in used with irrigation and road/railroad if you have discovered it, no matter what you do. The amount of squares worked around the city depends on the number of citizens in cities: so a city that is size 7 will have 7 citizens working the fields around the city (plus the square that the city is built on, which is worked for free). Generally speaking, a field cannot be worked by 2 citizens of the same city, nor can it be worked if these citizens are from different cities. This causes overlap between cities: This happens if cities are placed too close together. There is a trick when 2 cities can work the same square however. Let's say the map is round. There is a spot, on round maps, where horizontal map coordinates will suddenly drop. 158, 159, 160... 1? This is where, on flat map, that the map limits would be. If you have 2 cities that are placed on each side of said ''date line'' and working the same square (does not matter on which side of the date line the concerned square is) then these 2 cities can share that square without any kind of ''penalty'', with no overlap. This is more of a game bug, but hey... it is a generally accepted one in the Civ2 community, and if it helps... why not?
A citizen can be removed from the fields and converted to a ‘’specialist’’ at any time by clicking on a square that is occupied by a worker (shows food, trade and shields produced) in the City Screen radius section. The default ‘’specialist’’ setting is an entertainer. If your city is size 5 or more, then you may convert them to taxman or scientist by clicking once (for taxman) or twice (for scientist) on the citizen that is shown as an entertainer. Specialists do not have any happiness or unhappiness whatsoever. A citizen can be converted to a taxman (generates a base 3g per turn) to a scientist (generates a base 3b per turn) or an entertainer (generates a base 2 luxuries per turn) A city needs to be size 5 in order to be able to have a scientist or a taxman. Much like basic trade, said incomes of gold, luxuries or beakers can be boosted by city improvements or WoWs. The big difference between trade-generated Tax/lux/sci and those generated by specialists is that the specialist-generated Tax/lux/sci can’t be corrupted. It won’t matter if you’re in a more modern form of government, but it might matter if your government is more antique. To reset a specialist back to a worker, click on an unoccupied city radii square (in the City Screen) to set the specialist (if the city has one) back in the fields. You can switch workers around to different squares in the City Radii using this same technique.
Specials: Scattered around the maps are some land/ocean tiles with boosted capabilities. These tiles are defined as specials and offer boosted food/shields/trade capabilities versus the average land/ocean square of the same type. An example is the Silk resource, found in a Forest square: A forest usually generates 1 food and 2 shields, but Silk generates 1 food, 2 shields and 3 trade. These specials are not scattered randomly: If you want it, you might study all possible special combinations or resource seeds (there are 64 possible patterns) and be able to predict where the specials will be. However, it’s very difficult, and I don’t recommend it to anyone but veterans of the game. (As a matter of fact, I myself don’t understand anything about that, and I consider myself a very skilled Civ2 player!) Also, there are 2 types of specials for each different type of land/sea tile: Fish types and whale types.
You might realize that grassland squares follow a different pattern for specials, the “shielded grassland” squares. Said pattern is rather obvious. (Want a clue? Open up the ‘’Europe’’ map and take a look at Russia’s lands in the Civ2 MapEditor utility. You can also look at the ‘’Mediterranean’’ map. It should be obvious from the get-go) Instead of having full-blown special squares, it has instead a lot of shielded grassland squares that provide 2 food and 1 shield, in contrast with the regular 2 food a normal grassland square provides. Shielded grassland is very useful, especially in the early game when you don’t have the same terrain improvements than you’d have at, say, 1953 AD (which makes all-around terrain, such as shield grassland, very useful, especially if there’s a road on the shield grassland square) Grassland or shield grassland can ‘’hide’’ some specials: you can try to predict where specials are hidden using the same technique mentioned in the last paragraph, and then ‘’mine’’ the square (press M when the Settler/Engineer is blinking) with a Settler or Engineer to make a forest special appear. Again, this technique is not recommended for anyone but experts.
Terrain improvements: Speaking of mines, settlers and engineers can ‘’improve’’ the tiles surrounding the cities to improve your city’s productivity (as long as the improved square is being worked). While engineers are twice as fast as settlers at working (and also move 1 more tile per turn, which further increases their productivity: it also makes them very useful in combat situations as you can send some Engineers in enemy territory and still have movement points available in order to build a city improvement needed for your warfare, such as a critical railroad or fortress) you can use settlers too. Settlers can do 3 things (in addition from founding new cities). They can irrigate a square, mine a square or road a square. They can also build fortresses and airfields. The amount of turns a certain task takes depends on the type of terrain worked, the task being fulfilled and the unit(s) that are accomplishing it. You cannot improve ocean tiles, but you can build city improvements that improve their productivity. Switching governments can also affect their output. You can pillage (destroy) enemy terrain improvements by pressing Shift+P when one of your offensive units (attack value of 1 or greater) is active in an improved square. However, this causes war if you pillage an improvement built by a civ that you are at peace/cease-fire with, and pillaging an allied civ's work is plain impossible. I don’t recommend pillaging: instead, simply take their cities AND their terrain improvements :)
The way building improvement works is on a ‘’point’’ basis. A precise terrain improvement will ‘’cost’’ a certain number of ‘’points’’ in order to build said improvement for a Settler or Engineer. Every turn, a Settler/Engineer will contribute a few points to the project, until it is finished. A settler generates 1 point per turn, while an Engineer can generate 2. You can stack settlers and engineers together in the same project, but I don’t recommend doing this with more than 2 settlers/engineers as it would ‘’waste’’ working power.
Irrigation adds +1 food to the square production capability in certain squares (prairie, plains, desert, hills) and requires that there is an ocean tile/river/other irrigation in a square immediately around the irrigating square. There is a way to bypass that restriction by automating settlers, but it is not very reliable: best is to found a new city straight away. You irrigate by pressing the ‘’i’’ key on your keyboard and if the active (blinking) unit is a Settler or an Engineer. It can also change a forest square to plains or a jungle/swamp square to prairie.
Farmland is the next terrain improvement regarding food, after irrigation. Transforming irrigated tiles to farmland requires the Refrigeration advance. A farmland tile will produce 50% more food (rounded down) than an irrigated one, although you will need to build the Supermarket city improvement for farmland to have any impact in said city. Any irrigated tile can be turned in farmland, again by pressing ‘’i’’ when a Settler/Engineer is active.
Mining adds +1 shield (for a desert, mountain or glacier square) or +3 shields (for a hill square) to the square’s productivity. Mining can also change prairie/plains squares to forest. You mine by pressing the ‘’M’’ key while your settler/engineer is active. Remember that a square cannot be irrigated and mined at the same time: It can be one, but not both! If you try to have both, then the second improvement will replace the first.
Roads add +1 trade to all prairie, plains and desert squares. You cannot road/rail river squares until you have the Bridge Building advance. Rivers add +1 trade to a square, no matter what the square is. Also, roading a river square will add another +1 trade to the tile, also no matter what the type of terrain is. The same can be said for trade specials, even if said trade special is not located on a river. Units using roads to move only spend 1/3 movement points for every tile they use: the same is true for river tiles. However, a roaded river tile still costs 1/3 movement points to use. Watch out though: enemy units can use your roads too... You road squares by pressing ‘’r’’ when a Settler/Engineer is active. Roading/railroading river tiles will take 2 more ‘’points’’ than normal river tiles.
Railroads add 50% (rounded down) to the square’s shield production and is the upgrade after your average road. The Civilopedia claims that it also improves trade by 50% rounded down, but I have yet to find in-game proof of this. Units using railroads will not spend any movement points, making it possible to send a unit (example: caravan, engineer) to a faraway destination on the same continent instantly if you have enough railroads to do the job. Enemy units can do the exact same thing however... Finally, railroads take twice as much time to build as normal roads take. Railroads require the Railroad advance to build. Again, you railroad squares by pressing the ‘r’’ key.
Terraforming (a.k.a radically transforming land): Now here’s something that only Engineers can do. (Well, you can use Settlers using a tip located in ElephantU’s Tips and Tricks thread at CFC, but let’s ignore that for now. By the time you have Explosives, you should have only Engineers and no Settlers using the Leonardo's Workshop wonder.) Terraforming uses new technologies (namely Explosives, which allow Engineer units to be built) to radically transform terrain, such as tundra to desert or prairie to hills. Terraforming takes up a lot of time to perform, but sometimes it is the only way to transform ‘’bad’’ squares, such as glacier, tundra, desert or mountains, in more useful squares. You terraform by pressing ‘’o’’ in your keyboard when an Engineer is active. Also, you cannot terraform ocean squares.
Supply and Demand/Trade routes: After the discovery of Trade, the City Screen will start showing a supply and demand screen. Supply is what goods the city has an excess of and that can trade it with another city as part of a trade route. Demand is exactly the opposite. A trade route is created by building a caravan (or freight) in a city, then sending it towards another city. Any trade routes that are created will show below the Supply/Demand list, up to a maximum of three. Above that limit, only the most 3 powerful trade routes (in term of extra arrows per turn) will be kept. The others will be cancelled (however, these trade routes can also affect the other trading city, if said trade routes are in the Top 3 for the other city. And it has no effect on the immediate gold/beaker payoff whatsoever) Trade routes can be of goods or food. The system is simple: If a city has a higher ‘’supply’’ than ‘’demand’’ ratio for a given commodity, it will go in the ‘’supply’’ queue. The same goes for demand. Top 3 in each category will go in the Supply and Demand screen. What cities supply and demand depends on many factors, however sometimes it is simply based on the city’s grid coordinates. These special supplies and demands are referred to as ‘’wildcards’’ and happen independently from normal supply and demand, which can lead to a city supplying oil (from normal algorithms) and demanding oil (from a wildcard) at the same time. It is also important to make a distinction between goods the city produces and specials the city has: these are NOT the same. Calculating supply and demand wildcards is fairly easy, but it is time-consuming and there are some ''exceptions'' that can really mess your result up, so I'm just warning you: stay to the basics. Normally, there's no need to be that big of a perfectionist in a PD game. It is possible to trade with a foreign civ that has not discovered Trade. You can check foreign cities' demand list by left-clicking on them in the main map, then the demand list for that city will show up
A trade route, when established, will yield an instant bonus to the player that delivered the caravan in gold and beakers. Every turn after, a trade icon bonus will be seen in both cities’ city screen. Delivering a caravan to a city that demands the commodity the Caravan has (ex. Silk) will yield a higher payoff than if the city was not demanding Silk (given that the other factors, which are based on cities’ trade, the map size, distance between the 2 cities, the techs that have been discovered, and improvements built in the cities, stay the same) That means that it is often better to deliver to a city that has a demand for your commodity. Also, when a commodity caravan is built, the commodity is blocked and shown in (parenthesis) with the exception of hides, which is never blocked. When a city receives a demanded commodity, it can block too if the recurring trade route gives a high enough amount of bonus trade arrows (top 3 routes) again with the exception of hides. However, you can manipulate which caravans you send and the trade arrows of cities at the precise moment you deliver a caravan in order to leave a precise demanded commodity untouched, or alternatively in order to trigger a reprocessing of the list by having a new trade route make it in the top 3, replacing one of these routes whose home cities had temporarily been set to minimum trade, before setting the workers back to former positions. This means that a city can build enough caravans and afterwards, only being able to send out food vans. You can use the wonder bread trick to trigger a reprocessing of the supply list, but that is something to be discussed later. The supply and demand lists (not the wildcard ones) are updated every 16 turns: that cycle of turns is called the Solo cycle, after the player' pseudonym on the Apolyton Civilization website who discovered said cycle.
Fortress: This terrain improvement requires the Construction advance to be able to build. Units in a fortress gain various advantages in battle, although fortresses can only be built outside of cities. Units in a fortress have their defence strength doubled (their attack, movement, firepower and health points stay the same) Also, when a defending unit (not an attacking unit!) is defeated when there are other units in the same square (also known as ‘’stack’’ of units) the whole stack is defeated and dies, not only the defending unit (no matter if there was 2 or 54 units in that stack!) The only exceptions to this rule are city squares (with the exception of nuclear weapons, which kills every single unit in and immediately around the city if they are successful) and fortresses. Fortresses take no damage whatsoever during battle.
Airfields: Airfields act as ‘’landing points’’ for your air units, that need to land somewhere (can be in a friendly city, an airfield or a carrier) before they run out of fuel (movement points). These require the Radio advance to be built. These can be very useful if you’re trying to harass the enemy from a remote location, or to control a strategic location with your air force, or to be able to ship your planes to destinations that would otherwise be too far (even if building a city would often be better). When an air unit goes in a square that has an airfield, all movement of said air unit stops for the rest of this turn (much like what happens with cities and carriers). You can land in enemy airfields, provided that they’re empty, much like they can do the same to you. (By the way, that action does not provoke war). Air units in an airfield DO NOT gain a defence bonus from scrambling when attacked by an enemy air unit, unlike in cities. That means that they are rather vulnerable to attack, so best is to build in land that gives a defensive bonus, such as hill or mountain. To build airfields, press the ‘’E’, key in your keyboard when a Settler/Engineer is active. Also, you cannot have both an airfield and a fortress in the same square. There is a trick that allows Airfields to function in the same way as irrigation and to have a mine in the same square, which allows the benefits of irrigation and mining in the same square. Such a thing is normally impossible to achieve, and beware: This trick is disallowed in GOTMs. It also appears that airfields prevent more than 1 unit being destroyed at a time when defending, much like with fortresses (air and ground units) but without the defence bonus. Again, airfields can’t take “damage’’ in battle. But they can be pillaged.
Governments
There is, in the Civilopedia, lots of information about government types and when they are useful. However, some stats present in the Civilopedia are false, and the analysis of some government types are sometimes lacking. This is why the next section will be of an analysis of the different government types and how they can be useful to you.
Despotism: This is the government you start off with. In this form of government, the leader uses the Army as the source of power, and gives the all-clear to the Army to do whatever they need to do for the Emperor to stay in power, including some not-so-nice stuff. Military units in the city (that have an attack power of at least 1) can be used for martial law, that makes an angry citizen content (up to 3 citizens made content) A citizen cannot be ‘’martial law’d’’ more than once, so turning a very angry (black hat) citizen in a content one using 2 martial law units won’t work out, as the citizen would still be red for angry. That second martial law unit would instead be applied towards another citizen: if the first citizen was the only citizen in the city, then the second martial law is wasted, and the red citizen now becomes permanently angry. (This is a feature of all non-Fundamentalism governments, but is most problematic in Despotism. Black hats tend to appear when you have too many cities for your level of government) You can technically use contentment structures, such as temples, to turn the now-red-hats blue. But we won’t build Temples in the early game because they aren't the best choice very often. Instead, build the Hanging Gardens wonder and switch to Monarchy to fight unhappiness.
In Despotism, unit support costs depend on the number of citizens in the city. The number of freely supported units is the same than the number of citizens in a city (so, a city that has 2 citizens will only be able to support 2 units for free - this includes settlers. Given the fact that your cities are likely to stay at a low population (read: 1 or 2 population points) for a while, this might create support/shield production problems. Also, a single citizen worker that produces more of 2 icons of something (food, trade, etc) will receive a penalty of -1 icon produced because of the abusive control the Emperor has on the economy, which restrains innovation and growth. An example is the Whale resource: It produces normally, when harvested by a citizen, 2 food, 2 shields and 3 trade. However, in Despotism it will produce only 2 trade because of that penalty (3-1=2) Moreover, Despotism suffers a lot of corruption (here, ‘’corruption’’ will include both corruption and waste) and is the worst government for happiness based on the number of cities (also known as the riot factor) so my advice is to switch to Monarchy as soon as possible, directing all of the 60% maximum science available research towards this goal. Settlers eat 1 food sheave per turn in this government.
Monarchy: The same as Despotism, except with lower corruption, better support (3 units supported freely) the elimination of the penalty for more than 2 icons of the same type produced by a single worker and less unhappiness. In other words, a clear-cut improvement over Despotism, and one that should be pursued ASAP. A Monarchy is a type of government that is ruled by a King. Such leader often uses religion to help his power (In the real world, a monarch often ruled with the principle of ‘’birthright’’ which was that he was chosen to rule by the gods) which makes for less unhappiness. Monarchy is great for the early game, when you need to multiply your number of cities quickly and don’t have the resources for ‘’fancy’’ types of governments. However, after a point, a good number of cities is no longer enough: you need to grow your cities. This is when to change to a better government, namely Republic (a good moment is often when you build the Michelangelo’s Chapel wonder, which will give you a massive boon in the happiness department). The maximum trade that can be devoted to a priority is 70%.
Republic: This antique form of government, first used in ancient Greek empires (and in the first part of the Roman empire) consists of a group of state cities regrouped under one banner, with way more leverage for the people to do their own business. Republic has many differences from Monarchy. The first one is that there is no martial law under Republic, unlike Despotism and Monarchy. The second thing is that every square that produces at least a trade icon will now produce +1 trade icon more than usual. A roaded square that produced 1 trade will now produce 2 trade. More trade and less happiness from units makes it a viable solution (and a necessity) to jack up the LUX silder to 20-30% or so to keep order (you can try to play with the slider to see what is more cost-efficient). The trade-off between martial law and luxuries is usually worth it, especially if you have happiness wonders (such as the Hanging Gardens and Michelangelo’s Chapel) and don’t need to support a big military. The limit for percentage devoted to T/L/S is 80%. Republic suffers less corruption than Monarchy and less unhappiness too. However, settlers eat 2 food sheaves per turn, there is no free support for your units (meaning every unit takes a shield to support) which can be difficult to deal with if your cities aren't very food-productive. Also, the 2nd offensive units (those that have an attack value of 1 or greater) and beyond that are not in a city or in a fortress 3 squares or less from a city will cause an unhappy citizen in your city. This unhappiness is applied AFTER normal happiness structures (temple, cathedral, etc) are applied, making it difficult to deal with it if you don’t have the JS Bach’s Cathedral wonder. Another reason why a big military and Republic are not best friends. In lower difficulty levels, you can switch to Republic more quickly, but at higher difficulty levels you might need to build some happiness wonders (such as the Hanging Gardens or Michelangelo’s Chapel: preferably both) before making the switch. Furthermore, the Senate might get in your way when you try to fight: If you want to keep fighting a rival civ, the Senate might sign a cease-fire or peace treaty behind your back. The Senate might also prevent you from sneak attacking a rival. But now comes the biggest advantage of Republic (and Democracy): a republic city celebrating uninterrupted will grow a population point each turn as long as it maintains a food surplus, which can make a bunch of weak size 3 cities grow to size 8 in 6 turns or so, which is often a game-decider. However, celebrating (or WLTCDing: The C stands for Consul) your many cities with this technique is often difficult if you do not have the Hanging Gardens (HG) or Michelangelo’s Chapel (Mikes) wonders, especially in the higher levels. You might get away without one or both in the lower levels, but not in the higher levels. Republic is great for an early game trading power, as a transition government after Monarchy, but it still has to deal with corruption, which can severely limit celebration potential in far-flung colonies. This is why after getting Magnetism, you should tech for Democracy and switch as soon as possible.
Communism: The idea behind Communism is that everything belongs to the people and should be shared equally, and that if everyone worked collectively for the society’s well-being, then our world would be fairer to everyone. In the real world however, it hasn’t exactly worked out that way, because people are naturally greedy and don't necessarily want to not have more stuff than the next guy up there. (Unfortunate...) Communism is a vast improvement from Monarchy, although it is not as powerful for war-fighting purposes than Fundamentalism. Communist cities do not experience any corruption, according to the Civilopedia. However, they can experience very minimal corruption based on some gameplay reports (something in the order of 1 corrupted arrow for every 45 or so healthy arrows: but getting that kind of trade in a Communist city is uncommon). What’s weirder here is that apparently, in Communism, a Palace does not completely destroy corruption in the capital: it simply acts as a courthouse (halves corruption in the city) as I had a capital with 93 trade and 1 corruption once. Moving the capital somewhere else moved the city trade to 92 trade and 2 corruption. The effectiveness of martial law is doubled (every unit makes 2 angry citizens content instead of 1). Also, communist cities or units are more expensive to bribe (make them go to their side from the enemy’s by paying the citizens/soldiers some gold). However, it goes both ways: a communist civ bribing will pay more to bribe cities/units than a non-communist civ bribing. The TLS limit is 80%. The riot factor (happiness of cities based on the number of cities in a civ) is also nullified under Communism, which means the same happiness level based on the number of cities is in effect for Communist civs no matter if that number is 7, 34 or 168. Settlers/Engineers eat 2 food per turn, and there is free support for 3 units in a city. All spies built under Communism are veterans, which make them 50% more effective in espionage and counterespionage missions (KGB anyone?) Communism is good if you have many small cities and want uninterrupted war, while still retaining a half-decent research rate. But it makes it costly to support higher-up infrastructure (read: factories, sewers, barracks) needed to wage a modern war because Communism does not bring in a lot of cash, so if you lack wonders like Sun Tzu’s War Academy or Adam Smith’s Trading Company, you’re out of luck, especially if your cities are smallish (which is not uncommon under Communism) Also, the cases when you would need Communism are very limited because of the poor cash flow and the fact that getting cities to celebrate (in order to have cities with the same trade arrows as in Republic/Democracy, and to be able to go on with trade) will be VERY difficult due to the fact that there will no black hats to help with this because there will be no riot factor. In other words, instead of choosing Commy for war, you should instead choose Fundamentalism, as it is superior to Communism. Veteran spies don't make it up.
Fundamentalism: In my opinion, this is the ultimate war-fighting government for long, bloody war that can’t be conducted swiftly (in other words, you don’t have the advantage right away... but the AI is so dumb in waging war, which makes it way more easier in gaining the advantage... and if you did not had the advantage right away, this means that something unusual must have happened for the Wartime Democracy plan to go wonky) A fundamentalist regime (much like the one that was installed in Iran after the 1979 revolution) is based on religious beliefs that the masses and the leader, instead of seeing them proved wrong, would rather die. A fundamentalist regime with a great army is always a threat, and this is no different under Civ2. There is no unhappiness whatsoever in Fundy, because the masses believe that whatever is happening to them is the wish of their god, and simply accept it. The Fundy happiness factor is applied after luxuries. Buildings that normally provide contentment (read: temples, cathedrals, coliseums and contentment wonders) cost no gold for maintenance, and instead yield tithes equalling to the number of citizens they would normally make content (so, a temple would yield 2 tithes. This number assumes you have the Mysticism advance). This means that having a huge number of small cities with the Michelangelo’s Chapel/JS Bach’s Cathedral wonders can equal LOTS of cash. Remember its contentment, not happiness! Diplomatic penalties caused by terrorist actions made by diplomats or spies are reduced under Fundy, because seriously, what else are the other nations supposed to expect? You’re the bad guy/girl!
Despite what the Civilopedia claims, there is no corruption in a fundamentalist regime. Fundamentalist cities can freely support 10 (not a typo... this is really 10) units free of charge, as your people are very zealous. Not to mention, Fanatics (that can be built only in Fundamentalism, granted that you have the Fundamentalism advance) are supported free of change, no matter if you have 3 or 654 of them supported by the same city (however, they DO take up ‘’free’’ support for other units... they only don’t cost shields when you’re over the limit. This means that if you have 2 Engineers, 36 Fanatics and one Alpine Troop supported from a city, you don’t pay shield support for the Engineers and the Fanatics, but you do pay for the Alpine Troop. But unfortunately, Fanatics are counted rather early when it comes to determining which units are supported or not). In other to maximize the Fanatic support bonus, try to rehome all of your Fanatics to one specifically designed ''fanatic support city'' so that the shield support waste is minimized (and rehome the non-Engineer/Fanatic units supported in the ''fanatic support city'' elsewhere). Be wary however: if you lose that city to a Barb or AI invasion, you also lose ALL of the supported fanatics (and all of the other supported units from the city too) so be sure to defend it with care, even if it means going to extremes you would normally not go to, such as City Walls, Courthouse or extra defences. Best is to pick an inland city far from any front.
Settlers/Engineers eat 2 food per turn. The maximum % you can set TLS is 80%. However, you cannot set your science slider to more than 50% starting from version 1.07 of Classic Civ2 (technically, you can, but it won’t have any effect: it will just act like if you set it to 50% and give the rest to taxes) Also, any science produced by cities is HALVED under Fundamentalism, which makes this government bad for science. A common workaround for this is to celebrate your Fundy cities by jacking up your LUX rate for a turn or two to make most cities celebrate (which gives them more trade, just like in Democracy) and then depend on caravan deliveries for science (and on a lone scientist to trigger techs, as beakers from vans can’t make you discover techs in your own: you need city science for this) as caravan beakers are not halved under Fundy. However, as more cities are built/conquered, they need to be added to the celebration loop, and doing so can be difficult sometimes: it might require a second round of spike in luxuries. Fundy is excellent to wage war and can be very powerful for economic growth, if used properly. However, Fundy is very often pointless in periods of peace, or if war is defensive or simply an attrition one. Not to mention that economic growth in Fundy from tithes is often not worth the loss of WLTPD in Democracy. Fundy can sometimes be useful if you have a lot of cities and happiness wonders and need tithes to rush some critical buildings and units needed to make Democracy shine (read: caravans and maybe Harbours) but when the dust settles (no pun intended), the time has come to switch to Democracy.
Democracy: In my opinion, the best government of the game. A democratic nation periodically holds elections to elect its leaders, based on the will of its citizens. However, there is no ''elections'' that you have to worry about in a Civ2 democracy, so you can just play on and do what the Senate allows you to do without fear of being replaced (since this, after all, is your game) A democratic city will receive the same trade bonus than in Republic (+1 trade on all squares that have at least one trade icon). Unlike Republic, Democracy does not suffer any corruption whatsoever, including for your cities and units, which can’t be bribed under Democracy. This means that maintaining a far-flung Democracy is very feasible, unlike in Republic. There is no free support for units and Settlers/Engineers eat 2 food sheaves per turn. There is no martial law in Democracy, which makes it necessary to use Luxuries most of the time, up to 100% luxuries if you want to. Democracy suffers less unhappiness than Republic. However, each offensive unit stationed outside a city (except those in a fortress 3 squares or nearer of a friendly city) causes TWO citizens to be unhappy, and each Bomber unit causes unhappiness regardless of where they are. This makes it difficult to wage war, especially if you have small cities. WLTPD can be used to pump up city size in Democracy, just like in Republic but often with more effectiveness because corruption is no more in a Democracy. There is a Senate in Democracy, just like in Republic, that can sign peace/cease-fire behind your back, and said senate tends to be more peace-oriented in Democracy than in Republic. If a city riots 2 turns straight in Democracy (or if an already rioting city that has been conquered the turn prior riots again) the government collapses and you’re back in Anarchy until next Oedo year, which can cost thousands in gold, beakers and shields. This makes it very important to monitor cities’ happiness and how you’re moving your military units, as unit unhappiness can be very difficult to counter properly. Building the Statue of Liberty can help with damage control when that happens, but best is to not let it happen in the first place. A democratic government is often the best for advanced civilizations, as you can grow your new and old cities via celebration very rapidly, provided you adjust the LUX rate accordingly, that you have enough cash and that you build the needed cities and infrastructure. Democracy is great for expansion (granted that you have enough cities to support it) score, growth and even war if you have prepared your blitzkrieg long enough.
Anarchy: Anarchy is simply the absence of government. You fall in Anarchy every time you have a revolution, in order to change governments. Anarchy is just like despotism, except with insanely high corruption and waste. Also, in Anarchy, you don’t amass taxes nor do you generate beakers (they won’t count). That makes it a good idea to set luxuries at the limit of 60% every time you’re in Anarchy, because luxuries are the only thing in trade that have an effect under Anarchy. You’ll stay in Anarchy until next oedo year, when you will be given a chance to change governments. You see, the dates when these changes occur are not random: these oedo years happen once every 4 turns. These dates depend on the number of turns your game has, the difficulty level and on the map size. For more information, see this for more information about oedo years and this for a complete list of oedo years.
Finally, the turn when you establish your new government, you can still switch back and forth to compare painlessly, provided that you switch back to the government that you actually want to have before the end of the turn. So, if you went from Republic to Democracy, you can take the opportunity to ask some tribute from other civs for a turn or two and get some gold.
Huts
While exploring the map, you may encounter small tribes, represented by a hut in a land tile. Notice the ''land'': it may be obvious, but there is no huts on sea squares. These huts represent small tribes that lacked the components to become competing civilizations. When you ‘’enter’’ huts (move in the tile that contains them with one of your (land) units) you will get something. It can be free gold or technologies, a new unit for you (mercenaries) It can be a NONE settler (unsupported: useful because it does not eat any food nor shields) or even a new city! But you might get nothing, or maybe even worse: barbarians that pop up to attack you... Just like with specials, you can predict where huts will be by using the resource seed: however please don’t kill yourself over it. As a general rule of thumb, the odds for getting any result are the same: 20% for each of the 5 possible outcomes. However, this can vary based on many more factors. Note that the ‘’nothing’’ result is not presented here, as it is very uncommon. For more information on hut outcomes, such as odds on specific situations, you may go here.
You should also know that diagonal squares count 1.5 squares, rounded down.
The way that techs are given to you, if the hut is a tech, is this way. According to Samson, the formula is the following:
Each tech is given a number between 1 and 93. The number that a tech gets is that the first tech (in an alphabetical order... so tech 1 is Advanced Flight. However, Advanced Flight is not available without getting Invention (which kills techs from huts) so the first result would instead be Tech number 2, Alphabet. (Note from me: That includes future techs (but only one FT is presented in the equation) and user-editable extra techs, not normally available for the game. Note that this list also includes the Plumbing advance, which was dropped from the game. That list is taken from the rules.txt file located in the Civ folder.)
The Civilization program randomly generates a number between 1 and 93. It finds the tech (in the rules.txt file) corresponding to the number generated. If that tech is possible to obtain (for huts, it is if you have both pre-req techs) the tech is ‘’accepted’’ as the hut tech and you get it with the hut. If the tech is not possible to obtain, the computer goes down the list (42, 43, 44, 45...) checking each tech until it finds a tech that it "can" obtain. If it gets to the bottom of the list, it goes back to the top. Things like ‘’The’’ in front of ‘’The Corporation’’ are not factored in, so ‘’The Corporation’’ would be regarded as a tech starting with C and not with T.
This essentially means that you can try to calculate the odds of a hut giving a precise tech, and then influencing your research choices in order to get/avoid a certain tech from a hut. The number 93 stands for Classic Civ2. For MGE, that number is 100, with the difference being more user-editable techs made possible for scenario purposes.
My advice on huts is: When you see one, pop it! It gives a good result more often than not (and that’s exactly why they’re called ‘’goody huts’’) However, if popping risks delaying the research of a critical tech, such as Monarchy or Philosophy/Monotheism (whether it is because of increased research costs or being forced to research the wrong tech. More on that in a few paragraphs) you might then consider popping later.
Also, if you get a military unit, it will be supported by the city closest to the hut that produced your unit. If the unit is unsupported (NONE) then that means that the closest city is an AI city, so try to track them down.
Research
As your cities start generating science beakers, you will be given the option to start researching a few techs. You will choose a tech to research, and when that technology has been successfully researched, you will have the option to research another one. You will also unlock new technologies as you research, as most technologies have ‘’prerequisites’’ that you need to research first before you can research said technology. The cost for tech beakers depends on various factors, including your power rating (how powerful you are compared to the other civs) the number of techs you have (the general rule is that the more techs you have, the bigger the cost is) and the size of the map. The tech cost increases based on the number of techs you have, and NOT which techs you are researching. In other words, researching an ‘’older tech’’ will not be any faster than researching a ‘’newer’’ tech. Be wary that the techs that were given for free at the beginning are not counted in the calculation of tech costs, but techs that were researched by the computer civ for you (such as when you are playing an accelerated startup, which is a mode of play when the computer plays out a few turns, then you take over) ARE counted in the calculation of tech costs. An example is that you can research Chivalry, Communism, Nuclear Fission or Flight next. While Chivalry is a medieval tech, Communism is an industrial tech and Flight and Nuclear Fission are both modern techs, they will all cost the same amount of beakers to research.
Below, here is the ‘’technology tree’’ for the Civilization II game, where blue and red arrows represent prerequisite techs and their relation to the techs that they allow. If you need to see more clearly, you may zoom in or zoom out using your web browser's zoom feature. But remember, the tech tree seen here is RELATIVE, and so is the approximate research program I will outline in a few paragraphs. The actual order you will get techs will depend on your strategy, your decision-making, the techs you got at the beginning of the game and luck.