Civilization II Hints

Setting Up Your Game

• It is worth while to choose to start a custom game rather than simply accept the settings chosen by the computer.  For rookies, I would recommend using the normal sized world for a while. The larger world tends to make for a rather long game and long periods without interaction between rival civilizations.  The small world provides for a quicker, faster pace game.  When choosing land size, this is strictly a personal playing preference.  I would recommend choosing a large land mass unless you are playing with a large world, for this seems to drag things out just a bit too much.  I would also avoid the small land mass/small world combination unless you are looking for a game with quite a different feel to it.
  
  For those of you who are veteran Civilization players, you might find the default map to be a bit annoying.  It may contain a similar amount of land mass, but it usually puts most of it together as one large continent.  This is the normal setting for land size ('varied'); however, I've found that if you choose 'archipelago' it more closely approximates the maps of the original Civilization.  For those of you who have been afraid to try this because you think you'll get stuck on some rinky-dink island with no where to build, don't worry.  This is rarely the case.  I've found this land size to be the most enjoyable to play.
  
  I would not recommend messing with the climate and temperature options though.  Unless you've tried everything else and are just looking for more of a challenge , leave these as they are.  Next you have the option of setting the world's age.  A young world of only 3 billion years age will tend to have large areas with similar land types (i.e. huge mountain  ranges).  A 5 billion year old world has more diverse terrain types which change quickly over small areas.  The default is the middle ground: 4 billion years. Although 4 billion makes for a nice game, I find that 5 billion is much more enjoyable, providing for many ideal city sites.
  
  Now, difficulty levels.  The difficultly of the game affects, among other things, starting funds (50 for Chief, 0 for the others), number of automatically content citizens (from 6 to 1), rate of population growth of computer controlled players, production times for computer players, rate of research (both computer and human players), and barbarian attack strength.  And here are a couple of special notes: at Chief level the player's attack strength is doubled and there is no shield penalty for switching production; at King and higher the computer players will expel your spies and diplomats; at Emperor and Deity levels the computer will bribe cities.  At the lower levels the computer is seriously handicapped, allowing for a much sloppier playing style.  At the higher levels the computer actually has some advantages over the human player, although it is still not nearly as intelligent as one would like.  The most evenly matched level is King level, giving both human and computer players pretty even odds.
  
  Finally, you must choose the level of barbarian activity.  Setting this lower than Restless Tribes will cause you to have a scoring penalty at the end of the game; above this level you actually receive a bonus.  The default is Restless Tribes, but for those of you who are veteran Civ players, try out the Raging Hordes level because this is the one which most closely approximates the level of activity in the original Civilization.
  

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