Getting Started with Civs

Civs is a plugin that has been heavily modified and custom coded for use on Magna Terra. As such, it requires us to decreate our own documentation.

## First Steps

Most of the interactions of the plugin are done through the menu. You can open it with /cv menu or by opening the guide book you spawned on the server with. The items inside of the inventory are not collectable, instead, they are used as selectable icons to interact through the plugin menus, as a GUI (Graphic User Interface). You can see what each icon does by hovering your mouse over it. There are several sections, some are informative sections, and others let you interact by selecting icons instead of the way other plugins use typed console commands. All interactions are done through this menu.

As soon as you get to your preferred destination on the map, you will want to start making a basic income. This will help you kickstart your first settlement and start trading with other players. Open /cv menu, click on the emerald, this is the blueprint shop. Now select a shop structure blueprint of your choosing. We recommend the coal shop to start with. Once you select a structure in the shop, you can click the scaffolding to see the necessary materials for the building itself and in the case of factories the reagent (a tool or item that "unlocks" a higher rate of production, and is not consumed by the factory) and the materials it consumes. For example, an iron mine will need an iron pickaxe to extract a low rate of iron, and it will consume 4 stone pickaxes. If you replace the iron pickaxe with a higher tier pickaxe, the rate will be higher, and it will still just consume 4 stone pickaxes. Shops show the item it consumes on the left and the money it pays on the right.

You willbe able to purchase better shops and factories with time, but for now get one that fits with the resources you have. Once you own a blueprint it should be spawned in your inventory as a custom chest item. If it doesn't, for whatever reason, check inside the "blueprints" submenu in /cv menu. Once you find a definitive place to create your shop try placing it down without the required materials. You will see a window with the missing materials, and after closing it you will see temporary glass that works as a marker. If you don't, try placing the shop a few times until you see it. The blocks inside this glass structure are known as a "region". Regions are simply where the game thinks your structure is located, so if you place a required material outside of the glass structure, the plugin will not count it for the building requirements. Regions move if you place the region item in a different place so try to remember or mark down where it will go before building it. To sum up, you can place a blueprint down, see the needed materials, create a building inside of the region borders and place it again to found the region.

Some mines and factories can be automated, notably, miners can output to a minecart sationed in front of them. This way you can create an industrial mining production line.

To start making money, simply fill the coal shop chest with enough coal, and it will start selling it. You will automatically get money transferred to you. The first time you transfer consumable materials you will see the first batch decline almost instantly. This is because civs works through cycles. A cycle is simply how often a region outputs/produces a good/money. Each region has its own cycle, altho most of them have a 30 min cycle. Cycles are global, so if you start a region in the middle of one it will automatically produce the goods/money and then wait until the next scheduled cycle. You can see how long it takes for each cycle for every specific building in their shop entry or through the region submenu. The region submenu is accessible through the main /cv menu and its an informative section of the GUI in which you can get info about what region you are standing inside of or any of your owned regions.

To sum up: all structures in Civs function the same way. Buy the structure in the menu, build the structure with the required items, input the required items, and get something back. It can be money, like with the coal shop, or material items (which you'll find in the chest after an upkeep period), with factories.

## Making Money

In order to make money, player to player trade is the best bet to make a real buck. You can keep selling items to the server, sure, but the marginal profit you'll make will be minimized. A good thing to take into account is that railroads, and roads for horses are good ways to connect cities and create trade routes. In addition, there will be warps temporarily that work at a cost. When warps are deleted after vehicles are added, towns will be more connected, and a larger trade network will shape the server economy. Since resources are unevenly distributed, it is advised to plan industrial development.

## Making Food

As you can see in the blueprint shop submenu, there are farms. They will provide you with different sources of food based on the biome you are in. Animal farms will spawn animals and output food items in chest. Plant farms will harvest crops. These are the best sources of food, since autofarms are not allowed and animals spawn rarely on the map.

## Mining and Quarries

Structures that output items you can mine are also present for a cost. They work very slowly though, but are a reliable source of materials. For these regions you will need raw ore blocks. Mines can be automated and will output into an adjacent minecart as described when hovering the mouse over the region's icon.

Some mines use energy through coal to run. In the end, a factory is meant to create something out of energy and/or matter. In vanilla minecraft farms you can create things out of nothing. This makes it so geopolitics is less important and can break an economy. Therefore a key component of civs is how it makes the industrial production side of things more interesting and realistic.

## Going forward

Your goal in terms of civ, after this tutorial, is to continue building housing, farms, and utilities. These will in turn give money, power and materials. One should see civs as a tool for industrialization that replaces exploits that have become normalized into geopolitical servers by instead making them more balanced, realistic and engaging. Your goal should not be to become completely self reliant, but to aim for international interactions as technologies are implemented and nations grow.

Good luck!