"Civilization", Macintosh Style Quiz

Answer: Americans - Lafayette

The leader of the Americans is Abraham Lincoln. Sid Meier chose Lincoln because it was during his administration that a Civil War was fought and won, and the nation solidified into a union more permanent than before. Other tribes are the Zulu, Germans, Indians, Mongols, Chinese, Egyptians, Greeks, and the English, led by the lone woman, Elizabeth I. Of course, when you pick a particular tribe, as leader you get to name yourself whatever you want although the name of the tribe or civilization is fixed in "Civ I". Each civilization uses a real leader from history, e.g. Shaka Zulu, although of course history doesn't necessarily repeat itself in "Civilization"!

Creation note: Originally, the Turks were going to be a civilization in the game, but then Sid Meier opted to use the Germans with the leader as Frederick the Great (who was Prussian, to be precise, and a nephew of George II).

Answer: True

At the start of the game, you can customize your world to suit you by selecting land mass (islands or continents), temperature (warm to cold), climate (wet to dry), and age of the planet. There is also a 'Play on Earth' option, which gives you an approximated map of the world with the respective civilizations in their proper location.

Technical note: Sid Meier designed his game at a time when PCs were transitioning from 4-bit color depth (EGA) to 8-bit color depth (VGA), the standard used on the Macintosh. He decided to limit number of civilizations to sixteen so that the game would be compatible with EGA monitors.

Answer: A mountain with gold

A grassland tile with a shield is one of the best to build on because your productivity will be greatly increased, both in food growing and the speed in which you can produce buildings and military units.

Plains have poorer soil than grassland but better mineral and timber resources. They must be irrigated to produce sufficient food, but when you build a city, the irrigation on that tile is automatic.

A river bend is often good because it also has additional resources. Also, at first, your civilization will likely lack bridge-building, and cannot build roads across rivers, but building a city a on a river bend will act as a bridge.

Mountains and hills are the worst for building cities, even if they have special resources like coal or gold. Also less than ideal would be to build in a jungle or on a forest tile or a desert tile. On the other hand, it is good to build *near* tiles like forests, hills with coal, or mountains with gold, because they have resources your city can use. In "Civilization", you might see all these different tiles together near each other, so be careful.

Answer: Masonry

City Improvements can be structural things, anything from bridges to barracks to factories to mass transit systems. City Improvements can also be military units, such as Phalanx, Knight, Musketeer, Tank, Bomber, Frigate, or Submarine, depending on how advanced your civilization is. For example, Iron Working lets you 'build' a Legion, and Chivalry permits a Knight.

Technical note: Designed for 68K Macs, the original "Civilization" for Macintosh ran on all of 256 colors! If you play on a PowerPC Mac, you must use Mac OS Classic and set your settings to 8-bit color depth (256 colors), or it will decline to run. You can't play it on an Intel Mac.

Answer: Metallurgy and Magnetism

Each advance builds on a previous one, usually requiring a pair of them. This alert is to force you to consult the manual that draws out the technology tree that connects each advance to the next. The purpose is to make sure you understand what you are playing but also as an early cheat-prevention device -- if you have a pirated copy of the game, you probably don't have the manual. However, the Civilopedia is built into the game, which you can consult before you get a pop-up alert to learn. Also, many of the answers can be deduced logically, which you may have done to answer this question!

Some are less obvious, however. For example, the pre-requisites for Medicine are Philosophy and Trade! If you guess incorrectly, then the game immediately quits, and you lose all unsaved changes. You may have to go back 1000 years or more!

Answer: United Nations - Other civilizations never offer peace treaty

Actually, the United Nations wonder makes every civilization offer a peace treaty! Only one of each Wonder can be built in a game, so if, say, the Greeks manage to build the Great Wall, then the Chinese cannot build it! Some of these Wonders, are not necessarily an edifice of some sort but represent an important achievement, such as the United Nations or Women's Suffrage or Darwin's Voyage. Some of these are very useful: for instance, the Great Library permits a civilization to gain any Advance that any other two civilizations have!

Like Civilization Advances, each Wonder requires certain Advances to be attained before it can be built. And further Civilization Advances will cause their benefits to expire. An interesting case is the Shakespeare's Theater, which makes all unhappy people content in the city in which it is built. Its pre-requisite is Medicine, and Electronics cancels its benefit.

Answer: Republic and Democracy

It is actually challenging to keep cites from revolting in a Republic or a Democracy in "Civilization". A revolt occurs when too many citizens of a particular city become unhappy, and in the freer forms of government in the game, the citizens make more demands for their happiness. Building a Temple and a Colosseum in the city will help but will also drain your finances. You can transform some citizens into entertainers, but the loss in trade and productivity can worsen the situation. What else can you do? Send Caravans to establish trade routes with cities in neighboring civilizations; the larger the cities the better. Try raising the luxury rate and lowering the tax rate and building Wonders of the World -- Women's Suffrage and J.S. Bach's Cathedral are the best to increase happiness.

In a Republic, the further away the city is from the capital, the more corruption (which requires the building of Courthouses to control) and the greater likelihood of revolts. Democracies and Republics will also become unhappy when military units leave the city, Democracies even more so than Republics. In Communism, corruption is evenly spread, and the presence of any military unit will quell unrest, and you can get by with a higher tax rate, but productivity is far lower than the freer governments. Women's Suffrage is one the very best Wonders for a Republic or Democracy because it decreases by 1 the number of citizens made unhappy by military units outside their city.

Answer: Cast a spell to capture the city magically

You can directly attack a city from land, from the sea, or from the air. If you are in a Democracy or Republic and have a peace treaty with the Germans (or any other civilization), you MAY NOT attack them unless the Germans attack first, automatically canceling the peace treaty. Alternatively, you can overthrow your own government and change it to Monarchy or Communism!

You want to be careful about waging war, however, as this decreases your overall Civilization Score! You get higher scores for creating trade routes, developing Advances, building Wonders, growing your population, and maintaining the peace.

You can also send out military units to build outside fortifications. The unit is basically frozen in place, and cannot attack, but has far greater defense capabilities. Lastly, you can send a Diplomat to the German city, and if you have enough gold you can bribe the citizens into revolting. Diplomats can also meet with leaders and sign peace treaties, and they can spy on cities.

Answer: False

Actually, in "Civilization", an ancient unit can defeat a modern unit in a seemingly impossible battle, known as the "spearman defeats tank" phenomenon. Terrain, City Walls, and veteran status of the units, plus the movement points left in the attacking unit, plus a random weighting applied to each combat make it mathematically possible for a Phalanx or Musketeer to defeat a Tank (or even an aircraft!)

Technical note: "Civilization" is a turn-based strategy game rather than a game played in real time (like "SimCity" or "The Sims"). Each unit, from Settler to Submarine, takes its turn to move, and each city takes a turn in its progress in building its Improvements (or revolting or whatever else is going on). Likewise, with each turn you accrue knowledge and collect taxes. Sid Meier in fact designed it this way to distinguish it from Will Wright's "SimCity" and pioneered this format.

Answer: Win the space race by building a SpaceShip to Alpha Centauri

Once you acquire the Space Flight advance, you can build the Apollo Program, a Wonder of the World. Once that is built, the builder can see all cities in the world. But more importantly, ALL civilizations that have Plastics, Robotics, and Space Flight can now begin to build a SpaceShip (note kooky spelling). You build one component at a time, and each city can contribute. (Each civilization builds its own SpaceShip -- it's a race!) Once built, the SpaceShip takes off for Alpha Centauri. After a period of time, it reaches Alpha Centauri. Once that happens, the game is effectively over; you can continue to play, but there is no more scoring.

Creation note: Sid Meier chose the Apollo Program for "Civilization" as it was the NASA program in the USA that put the first human being on the moon in 1969. In fact, the Apollo missions are the only lunar-landing missions that mankind carried out in the twentieth century.