General Interface:
Ctrl-C accesses the civlopedia. Use this. A lot. You can use the arrow keys to go back or up. Remember most things can be right clicked to get civlopedia info (except the one place it'd be most intuitive, the production box)
Ctrl-P accesses the preferences screen, CHANGE THESE. I see a lot of people complaining about stuff that can be turned on or off.
Use the number pad and numpad enter to avoid those stupid double click radio buttons.
Shift mousewheel to scroll left and right.
Shift right click on a city to change production.
Right click on a city/stack of units/transport then shift left click on as many sleeping units as you want to wake - much faster than doing them one by one.
Push delete on a queue item to delete it. Shift delete to clear the queue. Shift Q to save it. Q to load it. Queues are set by holding shift when you click on an item.
Double clicking on the Star on your capital will open the Establish Embassy menu, once you have Writing (real intuitive...) Also used for embassy missions in a city with the intelligence agency. Communists have superior spies.
G on the city screen will open the governers menu.
Shift-L pops up the locate city window. Press the first letter of a cities name to locate it. Push a letter multiple times to cycle through multiple cities with the same letter. Hit enter to zoom to the city.
Ctrl-G toggles the grid.
F7 for Wonders of the World (can be handy for choosing targets
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F11 for silly demographic statistics
Also has the top five cities.
F8 for Histograph, F9 for palace, F10 for Space Shuttle.
Advisors:
F1-6 for your advisors. Use these. A lot. If there's something you want to do to manage your empire at large, it's probably here. F1 and F3 are your friends. F2 and F4 are tied together. F6 is mostly for reference. F5 is purely for reference.
F1: Domestic Advisor
Right clicking on production on the domestic advisor will let you change it directly. Left clicking on cities will enter them. When you exit, you'll be back at this advisor. You can quickly identify and change production here. If you need to know the best commerce or industry city at a glance, it's here as well. Left click on the various icons (production, maintenence, etc) to sort and reverse sort the list. All costs and incomes are evaluated here, and this is where you change governments or war mobilization.
F2: Trade Advisor
Trade goods can be instantly evaluated, and you can see what other civilizations have to offer you.
F3: Military Advisor
Military units can be upgraded, disbanded, activated from the military advisor. You can also view all units by city to instantly assess weak defensive areas, or by unit, to evaluate your overall military and quickly make broad decisions. Use these, I mean it. Seriously
Between these, Zoom, Locate city, the easy Goto commands, you should have NO problems managing your empire as it gets larger. From the view by City screen, left clicking on a city will enter it. From the view by unit screen, left clicking will zoom to the unit, right clicking will give you orders.
You can also identify your captured workers here, and evaluate the strength of any enemy you are at war with. Finally, don't miss the 'units supported' box here, this is the fastest way to check how many units you can support free of charge, and how many you have total.
F4: Foreign Advisor:
Double click on a civ to get info. Use this to plan out your diplomatic alliances against rival civs, or to get advance warning of alliances in place, so you don't find yourself in a 3-1 situation.
F5: Culturual Advisor:
One of the less useful advisors, not much manipulatable data here, but you can get info on the culture value of old structures, giving you an idea of the importance of age with culture. Either you're going to use culture, or you're going to have it used against you.
F6: Science Advisor:
Don't forget you can set a long term goal by clicking down the tree. Early on, you'll probably want to choose one at a time based on what your empire needs, but later, you can go two or three down the line occasionally to save yourself the bother.
Worker Specific Goodies:
Ctrl-R builds a road to a destination.
Ctrl-Shift-R builds a railroad to a destination.
Ctrl-N builds a road network throughout your empire to all resources.
Ctrl-B with a worker builds a road to a destination and builds a colony there.
Ctrl-I builds Irrigation from a source to a city.
Shift-I improves closest city.
A automates settler (use this if you like to play civ blindfolded, or dose your settlers with hallucinoginic drugs)
Shift-A is *ok*, it only does untouched terrain. Use this if you know the boundries of your empire well and you don't mind losing fine control at the potential cost of 1 gold.
Shift-F to clear all forests.
Shift-J to clear all jungles.
Shift-C to clear all pollution. This can be handy if pollution is a regular problem for you, and you've got a good rail network.
Unit Specific Goodies:
C recenters on the currently selected unit, as will clicking on the unit box itself.
Click and hold in a square to goto. Or push G. Or click and drag for the unit itself. Combine with Z to zoom out.
Fortifying a damaged unit will reactivate it once fully healed.
General Tips:
Units gain +1 sight range on top of hills or mountains. Mountains block line of sight.
Rivers give +1 commerce to all adjacent squares.
Flood plains look similar to rivers - they have extra green on the shore. Don't miss them.
Access to fresh water (rivers or lakes) is required to irrigate, but remember you can build a long chain of irrigation through your empire from even one source.
Cities do not need an aqueduct if they are built by fresh water.
Resources must be a) within your borders or have a colony built on them (B from a worker, or Ctrl-B to road to and then build colony) b) connected to your trade network via roads, harbors, and airports.
Resources can expire. New resources can pop up. There are ALWAYS enough resources for all civs. But they aren't always in the right place for you... Trade or go to war for critical resources, or pay the consequences.
Many diplomatic events last for 20 turns - trade agreements, embargos, mutual protection pacts, etc.
Many diplomatic tools cannot be used until you have acquired writing. Other advances give other diplomatic options. (Ctrl-C!)
Completing a project with the whip under Despotism or Communism kills citizens and creates an unhappy citizen for 20 turns.
edit: changed layout
Oh, why don't Sid Meier live in norway!
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