User Guide

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CITY CONCEPTS
To comprehend the CITY DISPLAY in Civilization II, you must understand the symbolism the
game uses to represent the concepts relevant to population growth and urban dynamics.
Take a look at the CITY DISPLAY while you’re reading — it’ll make things a lot clearer.
Cities arose when stationary populations banded together to produce not only enough
food to feed themselves day to day, but sufficient leftovers to store for later use. Once food
storage developed, not every citizen had to produce food all day, and some people
specialized in producing other goods. Eventually, cities accumulated enough surplus food
and goods that they could trade their excess with nearby populations.
To represent the accumulated population in a game city, Civilization II maintains a
POPULATION ROSTER. Each citizen icon— a small symbol— stands for a segment of that city’s
population (the exact number of people he or she represents changes as the city grows).
The roster displays both citizens who work the land around the city and citizens whose
specializations produce other effects. The POPULATION ROSTER tells you more than just how
large your city has grown (you’ll find lots more details under Population Roster in
Reference: Screen by Screen), but there are other points of interest in this display, so
we’re moving on.
The City Display
Population Roster
Resource Map
Unit Roster
General Information
Roster
Improvement Roster
Title Bar
Food Storage Box
Resource Bars
Production Box
Buttons
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