User Guide

City Construction
No one but you can build a city on land inside your borders.
Resources
You can get the benefit of “resources” only if they’re within
your borders.
Improvements
Your workers build improvements only on squares inside your
cultural borders (except for roads/rails, which they can build
anywhere).
CLASH OF BORDERS
When you have a city that is near another civilization’s city, the
two will compete for “cultural control” over the squares
between them. Generally, if the square is equidistant from both
cities, the city with the highest culture value will have control
over it. It is important to keep in mind that the earlier a city
begins producing culture, the more difficult it will be for a rival
city to dislodge the tiles it controls.
Cities are not guaranteed to control a certain number of tiles;
if one city’s cultural value greatly exceeds the other city’s, its
control may extend to squares closer to the other city and pos-
sibly to the squares directly adjacent to it. Since a city can draw
sustenance only from squares within its cultural borders, this
may greatly limit the city’s growth and possibly lead to starva-
tion or even to the city switching sides and changing its alle-
giance to the encroaching civilization.
CAPTURED CITY BORDERS
When you capture an enemy city, that city loses all of its pre-
viously-earned culture and must begin producing culture from
square one. It is not unusual for newly-captured cities to have
control of very few tiles until the conqueror begins producing
culture in them. Note that a captured city will not begin pro-
ducing new culture until all “resistance” within the city has
ended. (See “Capturing Cities,” page 47.)
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TECHNOLOGY
There are over 80 technologies available in Civilization IV,
each representing an important advance in mankind’s ability to
manipulate his environment. Each technology provides your
civilization with some cool new ability. Some allow you to
build new units and/or buildings. Some allow you to conduct
diplomacy with your neighbors. Some provide you with new
“civics” (forms of government). Others may allow you to
access new resources, or allow your workers to construct new
improvements.
It’s critically important to keep up with your fellow civiliza-
tions in the technology race. Otherwise they’ll clobber you.
There’s nothing worse than going to war against somebody
who has the technological edge on you – as the sword-wield-
ing Aztecs discovered when they found themselves facing
Spanish soldiers with muskets and cannon.
ACQUIRING TECHNOLOGY
Each civilization begins the game with knowledge of several
primitive technologies.This list varies from civilization to civ-
ilization: one may know The Wheel and Agriculture, while
another may know Mysticism and Fishing. Beyond the origi-
nal technologies, there are a number of ways to acquire new
ones:
Friendly Villages
As your units explore the world, they may encounter tribal vil-
lages. These villages may attack your explorers, or they may
provide maps, money, or new technology.You need to find the
villages quickly, however; there are only a limited number of
tribal villages on the map, and all civilizations want them.
Diplomacy
As the game progresses, you will be able to acquire technolo-
gies from other civilizations through trade. See “Diplomacy”
(page 99) for details.
Research
You can discover new technologies on your own, through
research.This is the most common way to acquire technologies.
You can begin research once you have constructed your first city.
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