One of the few common complaints about the otherwise excellent Civilization series is that, unlike in most other turn based strategy games, every culture in the game has exactly the same advantages and disadvantages. In Civilization Revolution Firaxis responded to these complaints by giving different advantages to each of the 16 unique cultures. This feature makes the play experience different for each culture and subsequently each culture requires different strategies to succeed. The following tips will help you win Civilization Revolution when playing as the Indians.
Early Game – The Indians are the one culture in the game that should not automatically settle in the starting location provided by the game. The reason for this is that the Indians start with the unique ability to harvest every type of resource, regardless of researched technologies. This benefit means that the Indians are best trying to find a location that has at least one or two adjacent resources, even if it takes an extra few turns.
Assuming you find such a location, you will have one of the best starting cities in the game and your resources will more than make up for the lost time. If you can’t find such a location, build your city at latest on turn 4. Either way, you should immediately focus your resources on building a warrior. Once the warrior is built, focus your city on growth. Use your warrior to scout and attack barbarian villages. Whenever you defeat a barbarian village or interact with a friendly village, a resource will appear where the village was. As soon as you find a location with two resources that are no more than two squares apart, build a settler and settle a square that lets you take advantage of those resources.
Mid Game – By the time you reach the medieval era, you probably won’t have a lot of cities, but all of your cities should produce and grow exceptionally well. Your medieval era benefit is knowledge of the Religion Technology which will allow you to build Cathedrals and to become a Fundamentalist government. Because you can switch governments without anarchy, you may want to take advantage of this to capture a few nearby cities and then switch back to a less aggressive government after you have the cities.
Alternately, due to the fact that your cities should be large and prosperous, you may want to build Temples and Cathedrals in all your cities. Build a few Spy units and destroy any City Walls in nearby cities. Your high culture should easily convert opponent cities, which is just as good for increasing the size of your civilization. If neither strategy is viable then simply research your way to the industrial era, switch your government to a Republic and make settlers at half cost.
End Game – The easiest victory for the Indians to achieve is a cultural victory. This is because about half the resources in the game provide food which means your cities should all be very large. Large cities produce culture very quickly. By this point in the game your expansion should be mostly complete. If any of your cities don’t have Courthouses, immediately build them when they are reduced to half cost in the modern era. Focus your entire infrastructure on culture production, which primarily means you want your cities to grow quickly and you want to build Temples, Cathedrals, and culture producing wonders. Given the size of your cities, any of them should be able to switch to a production city when you finally need to build the United Nations wonder.
If a cultural victory is out of reach, a military victory is your next best choice. Your ability to switch governments without anarchy means you can switch to Fundamentalism government while attacking and then switch to either Communism or Democracy between turns depending on whether you need production or science growth more. This makes your ability to produce military units and to fight more efficient than just about any other civilization. Remember that you only need to conquer the capitals and don’t get distracted by unimportant cities.
