Population Growth

While the citizens go about their business, take a closer look at the administrative headquarters. Left-clicking on the building reveals more details in the lower part of the screen (Figure 6). There, as with any building, you will see the units you created in that building in the top right pane. In the case of a Gallic administrative headquarters, these are a citizen, a spearman (for close combat), a spear thrower (for long-range combat), and a mounted citizen soldier.

Figure 6: Administrative headquarters are where you create new citizens and research technologies.

In the lower area you will see the technologies that you are researching in this building. Right-click on a unit or technology icon to learn more about its capabilities or importance, and the resources you need in order to create or research it.

Before you can create more citizens via your administrative headquarters, you first need to build homes. The population limit is set at the beginning, which is 300 people by default. This is the absolute upper limit. The actual population size within this limit is a function of the number of houses.

You can dispatch a currently idle citizen soldier to build new houses. The bar at the top of the screen shows you the population count on the left. After building a few new houses, create more citizens, who can then be dispatched to forage for more resources.

Exploring the Map

A colored line marks the settlement area you control. You can see only what lies within this area. To explore the map, you need to create some mounted citizen soldiers and send them out to explore. In this way, you can see where there are more resources and where the enemy has settled. Areas outside your area that have not yet been explored will be displayed in black. Previously explored areas outside your area are covered by a fog of war: You will see them in the condition that existed when one of your units (for example, the mounted explorer) last went there.

As the game progresses, you will need to expand your settlement area. You can do this by constructing new buildings. Each building has a certain radius that it occupies for your settlement area. If you build on the edge of your area, your settlement area increases. Most buildings can only be erected within your own settlement area, with the exception of the administrative headquarters. You can also build this on neutral territory, as it has the largest radius of influence.

To expand your settlement area, it is advisable to build more administrative headquarters. But be careful: Because of their importance, your enemies will also attack these headquarters frequently.

Exploring Technologies

With your population growing and your barns filling up with resources, you now need to research new technologies to push forward your civilization's development. This is what goes on in the buildings. For example, at the administrative headquarters you can research cartography, and at the stores you can develop tools for mining resources.

Now is also a good time to construct more buildings. A marketplace lets you trade with allies. And you can exchange resources there to keep your barns full. At the forge, you'll develop techniques for metalworking. You can train healers at the temple and improve their skills there (Figure 7). If your settlement area is located near a body of water, you can construct a harbor and build fishing boats or merchant and war ships (Figure 8).

Figure 7: The Druids are the Gallic healers. They heal wounded units that are within the colored circle around the druid.

Figure 8: If your settlement area is located by the sea, you can build a harbor and everything a seafaring nation needs, from fishing boats to warships.

Once you have enough resources in your storehouse and have constructed enough buildings and researched enough technology, you can advance from the village phase to the city phase by clicking on the appropriate button in the administration center, and then from the city phase to the metropolis phase as you progress.