C-evo Tutorial by Sam Trenholme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Table of contents

C-evo Tutorial
Starting a C-evo game
A new C-evo game
Moving your settler
Research
Improving Land
Changing production
Changing the active unit
Building ships
Military research
Using a boat
Finding the other nation
Once you find the desert island
Diplomacy
Attacking the other nation
Final thoughts

C-evo Tutorial

In this tutorial, we will show you the basics of improving the land around a city, researching technology to make ships and more powerful military units, and using said units to defeat another competing nation.

Starting the C-evo Tutorial game

Start up C-evo. By default, there will be an icon on your Start menu that will allow you to do that.

You will now see the C-evo start menu. Click on the word “Map” at the top of this window. Select the “Tutorial” map.

Now, click on the words “New Book”. Foreign nations will be “1”; “Controlled by” is to the left of a box which should be brown with the letters “AI” etched in to it. In the unlikely case it is not (maybe your brother likes playing against different AIs), click on this box and select “Standard AI”. Difficulty should be set to beginner; this can be altered by clicking on the little arrows just to the right of the difficulty level.

If you don’t see this when selecting “New Book”, but instead see nine boxes, uncheck the box marked “Free Player Setup”.

On the right hand side, you will see “End”, again with some small arrows to the right. Adjust the end year to be 3000AD.

Now, click on “Start” to start the game.

A new C-evo game

After a second or so, C-evo will ask you to choose a tribe. The tribe does not affect gameplay, but only affects the artwork for your cities and units, as well as you cities’ names. We will choose the “Babylonians”.

Once you choose the Babylonian tribe, the main window of the game will open up. You will see, on this window, a number of elements

- A window telling us we are leaving the stone age and establishing a city. This window needs to be closed by clicking on “OK” at the bottom of the window.

  A wooden panel in the lower left with a small black square in the middle and a raw of small checkboxes at the bottom. Be sure the checkbox one over from the right is checked, below what looks like a small tic-tac-toe game, is checked; if it isn’t, check it. This will make a grid appear on the main map.

- To the right of this mini-map, you will see a muscular man holding a scythe. This represents the unit we are currently controlling, a settler. The “1.5” above this figure is the amount of movement points the settler still has; the 100% below the figure is the amount of health the settler has. There are a couple of buttons to the right of this 100% reading; a button that looks like a book and a button with a “!” symbol.

- In the bottom middle of a screen is a picture of the tile we are looking at. This will say “plains” and show a road and irrigated land.

- In the bottom right of the screen is an octagonal button that allows us to end our turn; above this there is an image of an old castle on a hill. Clicking on this castle image will open up a menu that lets us see a military report, a city report, a report on the wonders of the world, among other things. This menu also lets us see the keyboard shortcuts to open up these windows; for example, the menu says “Economy and Tax... F10”; the “F10” means we can also open up this window by hitting the “F10” key.

- In the top left of the screen is a small logo that looks like a 4-petal red flower with a globe in the center. This is the C-evo logo, and clicking on it opens up a menu that lets us see C-evo’s reference manual, set some options, cheat via the “manipulation” manual, among other things. Conspicuous by its absence is no option to save a game; a game is saved by selecting close, and then saving the game when it asks us if we wish to save it.

- To the right of the C-evo logo is a slightly recessed box; in this box it shows us the year we are currently playing in the game.

- To the right of the box showing us the game time, is an image of a treasure chest. There are two numbers to the right of this chest; the number on top is the amount of money our nation has. The number below this is the amount of money we are earning or losing each turn. When this number is greater than zero, we are earning money.

- To the right of the box showing our nation’s financial state is an image of what looks like a beaker. This shows us the status of our scientific research. To the right of the beaker, it shows us what we are researching on top; below this it shows us how quickly we are researching.

- In the middle, largest part of the screen you can see a portion of the world map. Most of this map is dark right now because the land has not been explored. In the part that is not dark, you can see your city, Babylon, in the center and your settler unit (the muscular man with a scythe) flashing in the city. This indicates that your active (and, right now, only) unit is this settler, and is located in your one city, Babylon.

OK, that’s a lot of information! It is not important to understand all of this information right now; Civilization games are a little complicated at first. The best way to learn how to play C-evo is to learn one concept at a time, which is what this tutorial sets out to do.

Moving your settler

Your settler unit should still be flashing in your city. If you have clicked on anything and don’t see your settler flashing and on the bottom of the screen, make the settler your active unit:

- Click on “OK” in the window stating we’ve left the stone age if you haven’t done so already.

- Click on the city where the settler is located.

- At the bottom of the screen, just right of the center you will see a list labeled “units present”. Click on your settler in this list.

Once your settler unit is flashing, move it to the square immediately north of your city by right-clicking on this square. This is a green square one square to the left of the north-most tile showing a cow skull on red terrain, and immediately southwest of a square that looks yellow like corn. Once you do this, a couple of things will happen:

- Your settler unit will move to this square.

- One square, previously black, two squares north of your city of a will appear. This square looks like a brown hill on brown terrain.

If you wish to explore the map, you can move your settler around and explore the world. As you move your settler around, more and more unexplored (black) terrain will become visible and you will have more knowledge of the world’s geography.

Note that moving through dead land squares (squares that look like cow skulls on red terrain) and desert squares will damage your settler. Note also that your settler is unable to swim across the ocean, and that your town will generate a unit that looks like a man wearing black body armor every few turns; this unit, called a “town guard”, can also explore the world.

Also, every few turns, C-evo will ask you what you want to research. Since you’re simply exploring the world, it doesn’t matter what you research.

Research

We will assume that you haven’t explored the world. If you have, simply close the book, and reopen a new book with the same parameters (tutorial map, beginner level, 1 Standard AI opponent, game ends 3000AD, Babylonian tribe), and move your settler to the tile immediately north of Babylon.

Once you move your settler, C-evo will ask you what you wish to research. If it doesn’t, you will see the octagonal button in the lower right hand corner flashing; click on this button when it flashes. Once you see the window asking you what you wish to research, select “The Wheel”.

Improving Land

Once your choose what to research, make sure your settler unit is the active, flashing unit and is directly north of your city. Now, you will see three buttons in the lower left-of-center area of your screen to the right of the icon of your settler down there. Click on the button that looks like a “T”; a window with three options (Afforest, Build Immigration, Build Road) will pop up. Select “Build Road”. At this point, next to your settler on the map you will see a small icon next to the settler that has a diagonal line going from one corner to the other; this indicates that the settler is building a road.

In addition, the “turn done” octagonal button in the lower right hand corner will flash. This indicates that all of your units have moved and your turn is over. Click on this flashing button and your next turn will start.

Once a new turn starts, your settler will have finished building a road on this tile; if you look at the tile, you will now see a brown road on it. Take the settler, and move it southeast to to the tile directly one unit northeast of your town. This is done by right clicking on the tile you wish to move your settler to. The tile we will move the settler to is the tile between the city of Babylon and the “dead lands” tile two tiles northeast of your city.

Once we move the settler to this tile, C-evo will tell us that we have researched the wheel, and will let us either click on “OK” to decide what to research next, or “Info” to get more information about the technology we have just researched. Just click on “OK”. Now, C-evo will ask us what we wish to research; select “Alphabet”.

Once we select to research “Alphabet”, we will wish to irrigate the tile the settler currently is on. Similar to the process used to build a road on the other tile, build a road on this tile, again using the menu that pops up when one presses the button on the bottom marked “T” that is visible while the settler is flashing. Now there will be a small icon that looks like a blue cross with yellow corners next to your settler. This icon indicates that your settler is currently irrigating land.

Irrigation is a time-consuming process that will take several turns. You will click on the “turn done” octagonal button a few times. After a few turns, C-evo will tell us we have researched “Alphabet” and ask us what we want to research next. We will select “Map making”.

At the same time, our settler will finally finish irrigating the land northeast of our city. The square the settler is on will now have blue lines in it indicating irrigated land and your settler unit will be flashing again. We will now build a road on this tile as per the process described above. Tiles can both be irrigated and have roads on them.

Once this road is built, move the settler one unit southeast and build a road on this tile. This is the tile just east of Babylon, and is a green grassland tile between Babylon and a jungle tile further east.

Changing production

Once you start building this road, C-evo will inform you that a new unit has been built. The unit in question is a town guard, a fairly expensive unit that is really only useful for help exploring the world. If we do not change Babylon’s production, our city will continue to create town guard units every few turns until we will have far too many town guards.

So, after building a single town guard unit, we will change our city’s production to produce money. To do this:

- A City management window for your city stating “production complete” will pop up. To the right of “production complete”, you will see a man dark body-fitting armor in front of a beige grid with white lines.

- Click on the picture of this beige-and-white grid.

- A window asking us “What shall we build here?” will pop up

- Select “trade goods”

- There will now be a picture of a treasure chest with a red background where the town guard icon (man in body-fitting armor) was.

- Click on “OK” at the bottom of the city management screen to close it.

At this point, instead of generating a town guard every few turns, your city will give money to your nation’s treasury, ensuring that we do not run low on funds.

Changing the active unit

Since we have just generated a new unit, this new unit will be flashing. The unit is a town guard that can be used to provide defense for our town against foreign nations, as well as exploring the world. We can move the unit around in the same manner we move our settler around, by right-clicking on the square we wish to move the unit to. Unlike the settler, we can not use this unit to irrigate land or build roads; there is no “T” button visible on the bottom when this unit is selected.

We can, at any time, change which unit is the active, flashing unit. This is done by left-clicking on the unit we wish to make active. If a given unit is in a city, or multiple units are on the same square, we select a given unit by clicking on the square with the unit we wish to make active, and then clicking on the actual unit we want to make active in the lower right part of the screen.

At this point, use the town guard to explore the world and continue to use the settler to build roads and irrigate squares near the city. Note that, in C-evo, only the twenty squares near a given city are used by that city; terrain improvements, which speed up how quickly we research, how quickly the city grows, as well as how quickly our city can make units, are only beneficial if a city is nearby—with the exception of the road, which allows units to move more quickly.

Note also that not all squares can have roads or irrigation. The dead lands squares (red tiles with cow skulls) can not have a road nor be irrigated. Deserts can not be irrigated; the jungle near our city also can not be irrigated unless it’s converted by our settler in to prairie land first. To find out whether a given tile on your can be irrigated or not, hold down the shift key and left-click on the tile in question; if the relevant reference page states “with irrigation”, the terrain can be irrigated; otherwise it can’t.

Building ships

After a couple of turns of moving your town guard and settler around, a window informing us that “New units are ready for production”, showing us a picture of a Viking boat. Click on “OK”; C-evo will then tell you that you have researched “Map Making”—the technology needed to make longboats, the first boat available in the C-evo game. Click on “OK” again; the next technology we wish to research is “Warrior Code”.

Now that we have the technology to build a ship, we will wish to build one. Click on the tile with your city, Babylon. This will cause the city’s management screen to pop up. Click on the image next to the treasure chest with a red background (or a man wearing black with a beige background if we never changed our city’s production) and select longboats to produce. Babylon will now start the slow process of building a longboat.

Military research

While your settler is improving land around your city and your warrior is exploring the island you find yourself on, your civilization will finish researching “Warrior Code”. This allows us to perform military research in order to build more powerful land units. Once you have researched “Warrior Code”, choose the advance “Military Research”

A window labeled “Military Research” will pop up. On the upper left hand side of this window are two blue buttons, the one on top with what represents an army, and one on bottom with a picture of a boat. Be sure to click on the top blue button so that, below where it says “Military Research”, it says “New unit design (Ground)”. Click on the up arrow to the left of where it says “Weapons” and make sure this number is 3; we will keep the number for defense 1. At the bottom you will see a unit in front of a beige-and-white grid; this is what the unit we are researching will look like.

There is, to the right of the image of our new unit, a purple bar which will say “Strength x4 = 12/4”. 12/4 means the unit has an attack of 12 and a defense of 4.

Once we have a design for a military unit we are satisfied with, click on OK to begin researching the design in question. Military research only takes half as long as normal research; we will have the design for our warriors ready before our first boat is built. You can see the lowered cost of military research because the progress bar showing our research (to the right of the blue beaker) is half as long when performing military research compared when doing normal research.

While our boat is still being constructed, the research for our new military unit will finish. A window stating “New units are ready for production” will pop up, along with a picture of our unit. Click on “OK”, choose to research either “Bronze Working” or “Horseback riding”, and continue production of the longboat Babylon is making.

Using a boat

Soon after the technology to make warriors is researched, the window for our city will pop up informing us that the longboat we requested has finally been built. In the city management window, request that the city builds warriors instead of another boat; this is done by clicking on the picture of the boat in front of a beige and white grid, then clicking on “Warriors” in the window that pops up.

Next, click ok “OK” to close the city management window.

In addition to our warrior and settler, there is now a ship. When the ship is the selected flashing unit, move it in to the waters near Babylon by right-clicking on a water square near the city. Make sure the ship is adjacent to the city. The ship should still be flashing because there are still movement points for the ship. Hit the space bar to indicate you do not wish to move the ship. Next, click on your town guard so that he is flashing; while the town guard is flashing, right-click on the location of the ship.

The town guard will now walk towards and eventually board the boat.

While the town guard is meandering is way on to your boat, you city will be creating a warrior unit.

Every turn, your ship unit will be flashing; C-evo, unless told otherwise, assumes you want to move every unit you have. You can either just hit the space bar every time you see your boat flashing, or inform C-evo you don’t want to move the unit for the time being as follows:

- When the boat is flashing, click on the button marked “!” at the bottom of the screen.

- Select “Stay here”. You can see a single “S” to the right of “Stay here”; this tells you the same action can be performed by hitting the “S” key on your keyboard.

While your units are being built or are moving towards your ship, you will finish researching “Bronze working” or “Horseback riding”. Once you have this advance, you wish to research the other advancement in order to have both “Bronze working” and “Horseback riding”.

Around the same time, production of your warrior unit will finish. Once this warrior unit is created, place him on the boat the same way you placed the town guard on your boat When the warrior unit is flashing, right-click on the square the boat is on.

Next, have your city build a special building called “The Lighthouse”. This is a wonder. A wonder is a very expensive improvement that gives you a very significant benefit; in this case, the wonder makes it so cities near water can build units more quickly.

Now that your warrior and town guard on your boat, it is time to explore the high seas. If you have selected the boat to not move, left-click on the boat to make it active again. Right click on the water square you wish to move the boat to.

Finding the other nation

We will use our boat to explore the high seas. Legend has it that, somewhere in the high seas to the east of your land is another nation on a small desert island. There is an oasis (which looks like a palm tree on the map) on this island that we wish to find.

Your job now is to use your boat to find this legendary island. While your boat is sailing the high seas to the east looking for this island, continue to move your settler around, improving the land near your city by building roads and irrigating land.

Also, every few turns, a new advance will be available. For example, since we have researched “Bronze working” and “Horseback riding”, we can perform military research make military units more powerful than the warriors we have already researched. Other advances give your nation other benefits; to see what a given advance in the “What do we research now” does, hold down the shift key and click on the technology advance in question; a window will pop up describing the relevant technology.

Once you find the desert island

While exploring the seas to the east, you may come across darker, deeper waters. Since the longboat is a fairly primitive boat, it is not possible for your boat to cross this deep water; if you try to do so, a pop up window will inform you “This ship has no navigation capability”. There is an advance that lets you perform military research to make ships with navigation; finding out about this advance is beyond the scope of this tutorial. More information about advances can be found in C-evo’s built in reference manual, as well as the C-evo HOWTO I have written.

On this map, it is not necessary to sail across deep ocean water to find the other nation’s small desert island. You should be able to find the island in a few turns; it is due east of Babylon.

Once you find this island, look for a palm tree on the west side of this island. The reason why we want to find this palm tree is because this island consists mainly of desert land that damages units that cross it; the only exception is the oasis (which looks like a palm tree) on the west side of the desert island.

Once you find the oasis, you will want to unload your two units on to this square. To unload units from a ship:

- Make sure the transport is one unit away from the oasis we will put your town guard and warrior on.

- Click on the map square containing the longboat with the units you wish to disembark.

- You will see, at the bottom of the screen, an icon of the ship along with all of the units on that ship.

- Select the unit you wish to disembark; this is visible in the toolbar at the bottom of the screen.

- This unit will now be visible and flashing on the map.

- Right-click on the square where you wish the unit to land.

Once your town guard and warrior land, you will see, to the east of the oasis, a single small town surrounded by dead land and desert. C-evo will inform you will are now in contact with this other nation; the name of the other nation changes every time you start the C-evo tutorial.

Diplomacy

Once your two units land on this island, you will see a window stating “An emissary of the nation wishes to speak to us. Will we receive them?” Click on yes, and a diplomacy window will open up.

Since we are playing the standard AI, they will offer us a peace treaty. In the tutorial, we will not accept this treaty and continue our aggressive actions against them (namely, landing military units next to their town). To reject their treaty, click on the icon that looks like a cigar near the bottom of the diplomacy window, then click on “OK”. The diplomacy window will close.

If, for any reason, clicking on the cigar does not end diplomacy, click on the icon of the closed doors.

Attacking the other nation

At this point, we can attack the other nation and take over their city. To do this, select one of the military units on the desert island by left clicking on them so that it is flashing. Next, right click on the square where the other nation’s town is located. At this point, your unit will take over the town. Since the other nation has a very small town, this will result in the town being razed and no longer existing.

Since this is the only town the other nation has, razing this town signals the end of their nation and culture. You will soon see a window pointing out the other empire has fallen, and that we are the only nation left on earth. Click on “OK”.

You can see some charts showing the progress of your nation compared to the nation you just destroyed. Click on the “X” in the corner of the windows with the charts to close this window when you are done looking at this information.

At this point, there will no longer be anyone who can attack you on the map. Unlike other Civilization games, C-evo does not have barbarians or other attacking units not allied with a given nation. Once all other nations are gone, you can safely remove all military units from the map and stop all military development.

Finishing up and winning the game at this point is left as an exercise for the reader. Or, if you prefer, you can simply declare victory when all other nations have been eliminated.

Final thoughts

By using this tutorial, you have learned how to move units, select what your city is building, and a little bit about making terrain improvements to make your city more quickly perform research and build units. You have also learned how to perform military research to create new types of units, as well as making a basic navy that can find and conquer another nation.

There is a lot more to be learned about C-evo. One good guide to read is the C-evo HOWTO, which is available in the “files” section at http://c-evo.org. C-evo’s built-in reference manual can also help you out. Technical support is available in the “forum” section at http://c-evo.org.

I hope this tutorial has made you more comfortable playing C-evo.