User Guide

63
MANAGING
YOUR TRADE
TRADE RATES
When you start a new game of Civilization II, none of your trade benefits are tied up in
luxuries — instead, 40 percent of your trade goes toward revenue from taxes, and 60
percent of it is funneled into science. To change the proportion of tax and science income,
pull down the KINGDOM menu and choose the option TAX RATE. Choose a new rate by sliding
one or more of the buttons along the slider bars. A notation at the top of the box mentions
the maximum any one percentage can be, given your current form of government. Another
notation lists the income and outflow as gold per turn, and finally, an entry calculates how
many turns it will take to achieve a new advance. If you are interested in focusing on
civilization advances, you might want to increase the amount of science being conducted.
If you rapidly build city improvements, you might want to increase your taxes to cover the
maintenance costs. If you are concerned about the attitude of your citizens, you might
want to increase the availability of luxuries to make your citizens happier (we’ll explain all
about happiness in a few moments). Experiment with different rates to see what levels of
income and science you can achieve.
If it is difficult to adjust all three sliders at once, you can click the box at the right end
of any bar to lock that value in place. Now only the other two sliders move when you drag
on one.
GOVERNMENTS
Another tool of city — and trade — management is the type of government under which
your culture operates. Every civilization starts out as a Despotism, but some of the
advances you can research are intellectual in nature, rather than technological, and these
include five new governmental concepts. Once you have discovered a new form of
government, you can choose to sponsor a revolution in order to change government types.
(You can also gain access to new forms of government by building the Statue of Liberty
Wonder.)
Anarchy, or the lack of government, occurs only when you lose control, either because
civil unrest topples your current government, or immediately following a revolution. Civil
unrest continues as long as conditions are ripe for it. In the case of a revolution, your
people’s attitude naturally stabilizes. After a few turns, once your civilization settles down,
a dialog box appears listing all the possible forms of government your culture has
available. Choose the one you like, and that regime takes effect immediately.
A new feature in Civilization II lets you change governments instantaneously and
without penalty for the remainder of this turn. If your first choice turns out to be
unsatisfactory, pull down the menu again and select a different government. Once you
press
e
to end your turn, you must go through the entire revolution process (including
several turns of Anarchy) if you want to change governments again.
Civ 2 Man.pgs 1-88 5/22/00 5:24 PM Page 63