This tutorial will explain how to found a City-State. If you haven't yet, please read the Getting Started tutorial before trying to found a Civilization. You cannot found a Civilization if you are a member of another City-State or Civilization
In the Open Beta phase, everyone will spawn with a Found City-State flag. This means you won't have to gather any materials. It is recommended to start gaining money whenever you've settled your City-State.
Not all locations are created equal. The Biomes surrounding your new town are going to affect your Hammers, Beakers, Growth, and Happiness. To determine what your current location is likely to give you, use the '/town survey' command. You can also check out the Dynamic Map and click on the Culture Zone to see what base stats it gives to you.
For more information on which Biomes generate which attributes please read the Culture page.
Once you've found a place to settle, grab the Found City-State flag item in your hand and right click it. It asks you for your City-States' name, then your town's name. Be sure and pay close attention to the spelling and order, there is no option to rename your Civilization or Town.
Note, if you get a warning about your location needing to be more than 85% valid, this means that the location you're attempting to build your Town-Hall on doesn't have enough supporting blocks underneath it, and you'll need to either fill in that layer or find another location. For more details please read the Validation page. You also require to be at least 6 Culture Zones away from another town else you won't be able to found your city-state.
Finally, you'll be prompted to say 'yes' to confirm the location, civilization name and town name. If all goes well you'll begin constructing the modest Town-Hall structure. Congrats! you've founded a City-State!
- You are the Founder of the capital town, and have all the rights and responsibilities that brings.
- You are the only person able to give other players the "Leader" role.
- You and your Leaders and Advisers are responsible for researching technology for the City-State.
If you are the mayor of a town (Founder become mayor of the capital town) you must know how to manage it. This section goes over the various things you need to know about managing a town.
Initially, your town is only allowed to claim a small number of plots, and only allowed to build a limited number of tile improvements. As your town grows, you will want to increase the land your town owns as well as the number of tile improvements you want to build. Also, certain structures require that your town have certain upgrades before you are allowed to build them. Therefore once you have saved up enough money you may wish to upgrade your town. Using the "/town upgrade" command, you will are able to buy the following upgrades. Make sure you are aware and fully capable of paying the increased daily upkeep cost if you choose to upgrade your town. Upgrades also take time to research and upgrading the actual upgrade costs money and hammers as well. Factor the time it takes and plan out your town's upgrade path ahead of time.
The town treasury is the centralized bank account for the town. All of the town's upkeep, upgrade, tax profits, trade profits, cottage profits and construction fees are automatically deducted or added to this account. If your town cannot pay it's upkeep, the amount it was overdue will be paid by the Civilization it belongs to. If you cannot pay our upkeep the town will go up for sale. As long as you don't pay your debts the town will stay up for sale. If it takes too long for you to pay your debt, or no other Civilization buys your town, your town will be disbanded. So its best to keep paying the upkeep.
Anybody can deposit funds into the town's treasury, but only the Founder and Mayors can withdraw them. Assistants can spend money (by building structures and researching upgrades), but only the the Founder and mayors can take that money out of the treasury. Additionally, only the Founder, mayors, and Assistants to the town can see the town's treasury balance.
To put funds in the town treasury you can type the following commands
/town deposit – “Deposit Funds from Town Treasury”
/town info – “Shows the treasury if you are the mayor or assistant along with other town information.”
Structures are the backbone of town development. As Founder or mayor, it is your goal to create the perfect blend of town structures to maximize your town's output in trade, hammers(production), and beakers(science). Some structures provide active benefits to your town's residents such as the Bank, Trommel, Blacksmith and Library. Others provide passive benefits to things like your town's culture such as an Altar, Monument or a Temple. Others yet, can be used defensively such as the Cannon Tower, Arrow Tower or Scout Tower. Each of these structures comes with an upkeep cost and may offer your town new upgrades. It is your job to save up money to purchase these structures, and to balance the upkeep costs. The Founder and Leaders of a Civilization can build structures in your town without your permission, but the money will still come from the town's treasury.
To build a structure, use the "/build" command. Find a place where you'd like to build a structure. Use the "/build list" command with no arguments to see a list of available structures and their cost. Pick one, then build it by using it's name or pressing the icon in the build inventory. For example, to build a bank use "/build bank". The structure will begin to build itself based on where you were standing and will orient itself so that the structure's entrance faces you. If you did not like the position of the structure for some reason, use the "/build demolishnearest" command to revert the action. It won't give back any funds to your Town if you run this command, so be careful with placing structures! So position your structure correctly then let it finish building. All buildings center themselves around the chunk directly in front of you.
A Tile improvement is a special type of structure that centers itself around on a chunk. Tile improvements are used to give your town more coins, hammers, beakers, etc, and represent your town "working" the land around it. Your town has a limited number of tile improvements it can build based on the town's level, so as mayor you must decide based on your surroundings how best to configure your town to produce the maximum yield. Certain tile improvements such as the Trade Outpost can only be built on certain tiles (in this case a trade good).
You can find the list of structures in the reference table on the bottom of this page together with all the other pages.
Now you're ready to check out the other tutorials
Everyone starts with having a City-State when they found one, but you are limited in what you can do as a City-State. You cannot found extra towns, declare another City-State or Civilization war, study Civics, build Wonders or switch Governments.
The benefit is if you are a City-State and want to play casually you are allowed to, since other Civilizations are not able to declare war on you or destroy your structures during War-Time.
If you wish to upgrade to a Civilization to expand, you need to build a Capitol structure. This will cost quite some hammers and coins, but if you wish to expand your lands or adapt another government it's worth it. There are some requirements before you can switch to a Civilization:
Be careful though, since becoming a Civilization brings in lots of benefits, but other Civilizations can declare war on you as well and pillage your Towns and destroy your structures! Read more about it on the War-Time page.