User Guide

CHOOSING TECHS TO RESEARCH
After you have built your first city, the “choose a technology”
menu appears.This menu lists all of the technologies that you
can research at the moment, as well as the time necessary to
complete your research. Click on the tech you want your civ-
ilization to study. [Rollover] the technology to see a brief
description of its benefits and what future technologies it pro-
vides access to.
Tech Availability
Not all technologies are available to you at the start of a game.
Many techs have “prerequisite technologies” that you must
know before you can learn the new technology – for instance,
you need to know the Animal Husbandry tech before you can
study Horseback Riding and get those cool horse archer units.
Some technologies have multiple prerequisites; other tech-
nologies require one tech OR another tech to research.A tech
will appear on your list only when you have learned the nec-
essary prerequisite technologies.
The Tech Tree
The extremely useful Technology Tree displays all of the tech-
nologies in the game and how they are interrelated. Press [F6]
to check out the Technology Tree.You can select which tech to
research from the tree. If that technology is not yet available to
you, your civilization will study the necessary prerequisite
techs in order. If multiple paths lead to a tech, your civilization
will pick the fastest.
CHANGING RESEARCH
You are free to change what your civilization is researching at
any point in time.You can do this by clicking on the research
bar at the top of the main game screen, or by opening up the
Tech Tree (see above) and selecting a different tech there.
Note to Veteran Civilization Players: Unlike previous
Civilization games, there is no immediate penalty for changing
research paths.You can research half of one technology, change
to a second technology and finish it, then return to the first
one and pick up right where you left off before. Just make sure
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you return quickly as your people will start to “forget” what
they have learned as time passes.
COMPLETING RESEARCH
When you have completed your research and learned a new
technology, you are then asked what you want to study next.
All of the just-learned tech’s benefits are immediately available
to you.
HOW LONG TO RESEARCH A
NEW TECH?
Each turn your civilization generates “research points” which
go toward acquiring new technologies. The more research
points generated, the faster your civilization will learn new
technologies. The Tech Tree and Choose a Technology screen
lists the number of turns it will take to learn each technology
– at your CURRENT research rate.This rate may change as
research progresses.
Generating Research Points
The number of “research points” that you create each turn is
determined by the amount of “commerce” the laborers (pop-
ulation) in your cities generate (see “City Commerce,” above).
As your cities work the land around them, they earn food, pro-
duction, and commerce.You use the “research button” to set
how much of that commerce you want to turn into research
and how much you want in gold. Only commerce generated
by your cities can be turned into research: monies you earn
from trading, pillaging and looting, merchant activities, and so
forth are not available for this purpose.
The Research Button
The research button on the game’s main screen displays the
current percentage of commerce you are dedicating to
research. At game start it is set at 100%; you can change this at
any time.
If your treasury is running low and your current research per-
centage would cost more commerce than you can spend, the
game automatically lowers your research percentage to the
highest percentage that you can afford. (You can manually
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