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1.3 Beginning Your Exploration

Here we will play a turn or two to get acquainted with the client. If you want to follow along with something very similar to this tutorial, download this savegame to your home directory, and instead of starting the civserver as before, instead do:

        % civserver -f ~/client-tut.sav.gz 
and then start your client normally except that you should use "bob" as the user name.

Exploring

Zeroth Move By default, you start the game with 3 units: an explorer and two settlers (though this can be changed with server options).

<paragraph here: explanation of surrounding terrain...>

<paragraph here: units/middle button info popup to get detail>

Unit Selection Dialog Since units stack on a tile, you can either use the sidebar to cycle through the units, or click on the unit stack to bring up the Unit Selection Dialog.

<paragraph here: continue explanation of unit popup>

Click the explorer icon (the top unit) in the Unit Selection Dialog, to put it in focus. The unit stack on the map should now be blinking with the explorer on top of the stack.

First Move Press either the 8 or the Up key on your keyboard to move the explorer to the north.

<paragraph here: brief explanation of movement keys>

<paragraph here: 8 then 9 to capture hut, explain huts>

Second Move
Third Move Now the explorer has no moves left, the next unit becomes active. We can now do a bit of exploring with

<paragraph here: first 3, then 7, comment on whale>

<paragraph here: click end turn button>

Fourth Move Now click on the explorer to make it active.

<paragraph here: move 9, 9, 6 to make contact >

<paragraph here: explain fog-of-war now that it's obvious>

<paragraph here: explain other nations, extremely basic defense strategy?>

<paragraph here: with lower right settler, build road, explain how, explain infrastructure.>

Founding your Capital City

Select City Name The spot for the active settler looks like a good spot for your first city.

<paragraph here: continue why it's a good spot, how to locate a suitable city spot, rudimentary strategy>

Take a look at the menu button marked "Orders"; that menu lists commands relevant to the selected unit. Press and hold the left mouse button on the Orders button; you will see a list of menu options pop up. Some of them will be grayed out; they aren't available to the selected type of unit, or aren't available for the terrain it is in, or are otherwise not appropriate. One of the available options is "Build City". Notice that next to the name is the shortcut "b"; you could have done this by just pressing the "b" key.

Move the cursor down to the "Build City" line and release the mouse button. You will get a dialog asking how you want to name the city; it will already have a default name, taken from a list of built-in names of cities suitable for that race. You can certainly change the name if you so desire. Click OK. The dialog box and the unit will disappear, and in its place on the map will appear a new city. At the same time the city window will appear, so that you can give your first commands to the new city.


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