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I've been playing civ and civ2 for about 5 or so years now, and I'm quite good at both of the games. I still enjoy playing civ2 unlike all of the rest of my friends. Why am I so good? Well, for starters, I try to find tricks in the game that either aren't in the manual, or aren't used or known by most of the players.

I have something that I do in civ2, but I'm wondering how many people know about something that I do to win games. I've asked all of my friends if they know or ever knew it, and all of them answered with a "no".

Ok, so here's this thing that I do. On any type of terrain that you can mine on (hills, mountains, desert, and even glacier), there is a way to benefit from both mining AND irrigation, even though you can't irrigate on glacier and mountain. When this is done, you get the value of production from mining, and on mountain and glacier, you even get a food item each turn. For the other mine-able terrains, you get the regular food value and the production each turn.

So, if you don't know what this is, I'll tell you how to do it. If you do know what I'm talking about, please email me at tino@momare.com . Here it is: when you get on a mine-able terrain:
-mine
-build roads and railroads
-mine
-build an AIRBASE

For some reason, when this is done, you benefit from both. Don't ask me how or why, but it works, and it can change the way you play civ2 (assuming you still do). How did I find it? Well, when I was playing the WWII, and I accidentally build an airbase on a mined hills square, and I noticed the extra food production in my city window.

I'm pretty sure that this will change your strategy, because desert cities are no longer a liability, but rather, a shield powerhouse. Also, for once hilly cities, they can have sizes of 30 and get production of over 100! That's a pretty good combo. Also, for grasslands and plains that don't have access to water, building an airbase acts as irrigation.

There is, however one downside to this application. When a city is surrounded by airbases, it takes extra time to move air units around because they automatically stop at airbases. However, it's a worthy trade-off to have better functioning cities.

Any question or comments? Are there an other tricks like that one that I might not yet know about? I'd love to hear about it. Send to tino@momare.com


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Long time player of civ and civ2

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