Take control of a civilization and lead them to power and glory, mostly by building a city hex by hex, sending armies to victory over enemies, and trying to manage the inevitable conflicts and disunity of your own people.
Of course, most likely you'll collapse under the weight of your own sin, but you can still accomplish a lot before then, right?
Cities are unified constructions that stretch across multiple hexes. The composition of a city determines its effects.
Cities are composed of a central, urban hub surrounded by buildings that are a part of the city. Each additional building requires a free terrain space and a free unit of population, but is otherwise generally free. Most buildings take one turn to be completed.
Central Hub
A city's central hex is an urban hub that holds the city together, surrounded by more specialized works. A city's hub usually provides some additional benefits in its own right, and may be upgraded to provide more.
In addition to providing general benefits and holding the city together, the level of a city hub determines the maximum distance additional city improvements may be built upon. An initial hub only allows adjacent tiles to be claimed, for instance, while one that has been upgraded once may claim tiles two spaces away. This benefit is generally in addition to the upgrade's original purpose; that is, upgrading a city hub to provide benefits automatically increases its reach as well.
City Buildings
A city's buildings exist around the main hub. City tiles must be adjacent to existing tiles; you cannot build across a gap. Each structure requires a point of population, a free tile on which to build, and a turn to be completed. A city may only build one thing at a time.
A city's benefits may be varied, and might range from producing resources to allowing units or other buildings. Many buildings require upkeep once completed, and some require access to special resources or conditions, either to function or be created in the first place.
Founding New Cities
New cities may be founded with a settler, which is a unit that costs one population to build. The primary advantage to this is access to different resources, as population growth is shared across cities.
Your empire's population increases as a rate of 1 per turn, meaning you can build a new structure each turn. Your empire's current population is that of your cities combined. A city's population is equal to the number of population it took to build it- so essentially, one per building and per upgrade of a building.
New population may be applied to any settlement you control.Units are organized groups devoted to a specific purpose. Usually this is battle, but in rare cases, such as with settlers, units may have other functions. Units may move across the map, making them invaluable for exploration and other actions further afield.
Units generally have a strength, movement speed, special abilities, and sometimes less concrete stats or functions.
Strength: A unit's strength is a rough gauge of its fighting prowess. Stronger units generally fare better in battle.
Movement: A unit's movement speed is a measure of how many hexes it can cover in a turn. Rough terrain, as defined by the unit in question, may slow them down. Most units have a speed of 2 over open ground.
Special Abilities: Most units have some form of special ability, even if it's simply being strong against another unit type. Others may have more advanced properties, such as strange movement conditions or abilities that trigger on certain events.
Miscellanea: Units usually have several implied properties, abilities, and conditions that may have less concrete effects. For instance, most units are at least something of a point of pride for their parent civilization, meaning their defeat or mistreatment may cause discontent at home; others may be unusually well- or poorly-suited to certain tasks for various reasons. Miscellanea is usually based on arbitrary determinations about the unit, and can thus be harder to predict or attach specific effects to.
Combat is handled separately for each side in battle, meaning the success or failure of one side has no bearing on that of the other. While slightly counterintuitive, this does open up several possibilities.
Combat and its effects are modified based on a number of things, most of them local to the owner of the unit in question. For instance, many special abilities grant bonuses against a given unit type; when combat between a unit and an enemy it's strong against occurs, the owner of the stronger unit receives the bonus, while the owner of the weaker unit receives no penalty and thus doesn't feel said bonus at all.
In addition to outright bonuses, whichever unit has the higher combat Strength receives a +1 bonus to the roll. As before, weaker units receive no penalty.
The actual effects of combat are usually arbitrary, but can sometimes have direct mechanical effects. Effects of either sort are not dependent on the other side; for instance, a raiding party's haul and the defender's stockpiles don't have to change in accordance with each other.Terrain is generally divided into fairly simple types. These types have no direct impact on city constructions, but might have subtler repercussions. For instance, a farm built on a swamp would not produce less than a farm built on plains, but inferences about the difference- for instance, the notion that the swamp produces mushrooms instead of traditional crops, or must harvest in poor conditions- might have an impact later.
Special resources are additions to tiles that appear when someone "discovers" a new resource, generally by inventing something that requires it. Special resources allow special buildings to be constructed on them, assuming your civilization also has a use for said resource.
Aside from special resources, there are only two types of resources at start- food and money. Money is used as upkeep for certain things, while food increases your population.
Other types of resource in this vein, tracked in discrete amounts, are possible but usually unlikely. Building materials, for instance, are generally assumed to be harvested when needed out of the surrounding countryside, while luxuries would usually be provided by a building as a static benefit.Your civilization is a complex entity, which is where much of your strength and most of your troubles come in. Empires have a tendency to eventually fall, mainly due to internal strife.
Numerical Concerns
Your empire may, on occasion, gain straight numerical benefits or penalties- +1 to food production, -1 Money/turn, and so on. These are reasonably common from structures, of course, but can apply to your civilization as a whole through extraordinary events that warrant it. For instance, surviving a civil war and becoming more autocratic because of it might apply an economic penalty from reduced freedom or a food bonus for forced labor, conquering a major foe might provide a money increase from increased culture or a food penalty for becoming more decadent and self-righteous, and completing a megaproject might do any number of things depending on just what your project is supposed to do.
Generally speaking, only severe rolls at vital times provide such permanent, sweeping changes.
Arbitrary Concerns
Much more commonly, your empire might acquire vague, arbitrary conditions that might do it good or ill. A revolutionary conspiracy, religious schisms, economic strife, or political corruption might all be examples of things with no immediate impacts, but that might become relevant later. For instance, a revolution lying in wait could cripple your empire at a bad time or allow part of it to defend itself without your aid, a religious schism could cause one side to take advantage of a bad situation or give you a scapegoat to pin the blame on, and political corruption could cripple your economy at the right moment or give you cloak and dagger methods of getting what you want.
Unfortunately, arbitrary concerns are far more often negative than positive. Most empires eventually collapse as a result of centuries of accumulated treachery, greed, rivalries, secret dealings, compromises, payouts, and other drippings of civilization.
Unity is a numeric measure of your empire's general cohesion. When citizens or factions cease to work for the good of your civilization and begin to worry about themselves, Unity goes down.
Unity starts at 10, and can be very difficult to repair. Damage to Unity is unfortunately relatively easy, and represents friction within your empire. When too many people are on too many different pages, it ceases to function as a unified whole, and collapses. The exact form of this collapse varies, but in all cases means you're out of the game.
Unity may be lost through any event that damages your peoples' cohesion. This might range from a lot of them dying or joining an open rebellion against you to being lazy, greedy, or stupid. Partisan issues, especially those that result in one side's loss, are especially likely to cause Unity damage.
Unity may only be regained through measures that markedly increase your peoples' cohesion. Usually this is limited to resounding victories, unanimous luxuries, or deeply and permanently resolving the disputes that damage Unity in the first place. Alas, resounding victories are hard to come by, making everyone's life better at the same time is almost impossible, and permanently resolving issues strong enough to cause damage in the first place often requires changing things to cause even more damage elsewhere.Five players at a time, no more. When one collapses completely, another may join.
Civ Name: The name of your hovel-strewn camp or glorious empire.
Civ Symbol: What your civilization uses as its sigil, calling card, favored phrase, or similar. May include multiple symbols of significance to your people.
Civ Description: What your civilization's like, what your people want or are good at, and so on. Pretty much everything you make or build will be custom-made and influenced by this, as will the effects of various events on you, so take this seriously- it will haunt you the rest of the game. This may also change with time, of course, but it won't be easy, and might not be cheap. Also include racial details if relevant.
Leadership: The name and description of who or what is in charge. This will interact with your civ. It may also change over time, and might or might not be less damaging and costly than changing the structure of your whole civ.
Current Players:
Caellath
Nirur
Spinal_Taper
TCM
Tiruin
Descan
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Topic: Ancient Empires RTD [Turn 1: Bloodlust and "Magic"] (Read 8964 times)