User Guide

Over and above the boost to a city’s production, however, certain natural resources are

strategic—necessary for building certain units, improvements, or Wonders. (For exam-

ple, without access to Horses, you can’t train Horsemen.) A city doesn’t need to have

citizens working a square to gain this benefit; it simply must be connected to it.

A city gains access to a natural resource by being connected to it.Connection can be made

in several ways.The most dependable is to have the resource inside your civilization’s

borders and a road from the resource to the city.

Other ways to gain access include:

• Having a Harbor on the same sea as another friendly city that also has a Harbor

and access to the resource.

• Having an Airport in both this city and another friendly city that has an Airport

and access to the resource.

• Having a colony on the resource and an unbroken road (or railroad) between the

colony and the city.

• Trading with another civilization to gain a resource that they have access to.Your

capital cities must be connected to one another before you can trade resources.

(This, of course,is generally the least dependable method.)

Natural resources fall into three broad categories:bonus resources,luxury resources,and strate-

gic resources.Bonus resources,like Game,Wheat,and Gold,simply contribute to the pro-

ductivity of the city or your civilization as a whole.Luxury resources help you keep your

population happy. Strategic resources, as mentioned earlier, are necessary for certain

building projects.Tradable luxuries and strategic resources appear on the Diplomacy

screen as potential items of trade.This is how you arrange to have another civilization

provide you with a resource,as mentioned above.Since it takes only one square’s worth

of a resource to supply your entire civilization, any surplus from additional sources is

available for trading purposes.

Here’s a brief summary of the natural resources you might find.Note that many of these

will not be visible at the beginning of the game.As your technology progresses, you’ll

become able to recognize strategic resources that were useless to you before.