User Guide

problem during the development of Civ III. The Golden Ages of
that game – a very popular feature – originally began life as Dark
Ages! We had wanted to show how the power of empires wax and
wane over the centuries, so we implemented a decline phase for
each civilization. It wasn’t a whole lot of fun, though. Rather than
dropping the feature, we just flipped the concept around. We
replaced 20 turns of decline with 20 turns of increased productiv-
ity, giving the game a sense of history’s cyclical nature while still
being fun for the player.
Similarly, we needed a positive feature which also encouraged
fewer, larger cities. Otherwise, we would have to turn up mainte-
nance very high – to dangerously “unfun” levels. City specializa-
tion was our solution. In fact, we had always wanted to encourage
this type of gameplay; we thought people would enjoy focusing
one city on research while focusing another on military and a
third on trade. Simply put, if city specialization became a positive
feature, we could lead the game away from ICS by giving players
a new, fun goal.
Linking the improvements and resources was our first step.
Civilization had always had improvements, like mines and farms, as
well as resources, like iron and wheat. However, we had never
taken the logical next step of combining the two. In Civ IV, farms
and wheat would both still add +1 food on their own, but a farm
combined with wheat would now produce +4 food. The result
was that city placement near resources would define their flavor.A
city near hills with iron and horses would make a great place for
a forge and barracks to crank out knights. Founding along a river
near spices and silk would mean increased trade and commerce,
encouraging markets and harbors.A settlement in fertile grasslands
with wheat and cattle would allow for a high population encour-
aging city specialists.
Specialists, in fact, needed a major overhaul, and they would be
an important key to city specialization. First, we increased their
potency – now, scientists would produce three beakers, engineers
two hammers, artists four culture and one gold. More important-
ly, though, they would provide the backbone of the new Great
People system.
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Like many of the new features of Civ IV, we had always want-
ed to experiment with this idea, tying in great historical figures like
Einstein and Plato and Michelangelo. We grouped these individu-
als into five broad categories: great artists, engineers, merchants,
prophets, and scientists. The system was quite simple – every spe-
cialist you created in your city produced great people points each
turn. Once enough points accumulated, one of these special units
would be born in your city. If your city had focused on artists, you
might end up with Beethoven. If the focus was merchants, Marco
Polo might appear.
The great people would be powerful, one-use units which
could change the course of the game.They could discover a new
technology or be combined to trigger a Golden Age. Great engi-
neers could finish a wonder in one turn. Great artists could create
a cultural boom in one city. They could also be added as “super-
specialists” to a city to permanently increase its output.A great sci-
entist producing extra beakers in your research capital could make
a huge difference over the course of an entire game.
Finally, city specialization was solidified by the National
Wonders, which every civilization can build one each. This con-
cept existed in Civ III but we have adjusted the building effects to
encourage specialization.Wall Street doubles a city’s gold output,
Oxford doubles the beaker rate, the Hermitage doubles culture
points, etc. Other effects include giving extra experience to new
military units and increasing the great people birth rate. Each city,
however, can only contain two National Wonders, which forces
players to spread them out across many cities.
Thus, powerful tools exist for increasing the output of highly
developed cities, particularly if they specialize in one area or
another.At a higher level, these increased player choices – or as Sid
would put it, “interesting decisions” – are a theme which can be
found throughout Civ IV. A good example is the worker unit,
which has commonly been accused of creating late-game tedium.
Many fans have even lobbied for eliminating the unit altogether,
which certainly is always an option to consider when micro-man-
agement becomes a concern.
When we looked at the issue more closely, however, we felt that
the problem was not necessarily the unit management but the lack
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