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Civilization II
- hypertexthero 4y agoWeird, the sky outside is turning blue... Oh! It’s 5am! Just one more turn and I’ll go to bed.
- BirAdam 4y ago@7am: well, I’m now well into the day. Might as well just stay up. One more turn and I’ll go eat breakfast…
- rapnie 4y agoYes, a continuous stream of civilization flowing from player to screen. I remember that. Cost me some points at university but took that bravely, with the satisfactory feeling I had a well over 100% civilised society running in my student dorm room.
- havblue 4y agoYeah, same here. It's the feeling of horror knowing that you pulled an all-nighter playing a video game when you planned the all-nighter for cramming for a final. On the plus side the American tank offensive was looking pretty good for conquering the remaining continent.
- Semaphor 4y agoMy former childhood room still has the Civilization II manual (in German), together with the Settlers III manual it’s being used as a monitor stand for my mom. Whenever I visit and see it, I have to smile and am happy about the fact that it’s still seeing use, even if not for the original purpose.
- dvh 4y agoWas it this game where as you progressed you could pimp up your throne room?
- sarnowski 4y agoThat was Civ 1. I think they dropped it in Civ 2. Edit: actually not sure. In Civ 1 you build up your palace, not the throne room per se.
- cal85 4y agoIt definitely was there in Civ 2, that's the only Civ I've played and I remember the throne room well.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 4y agoVanilla Civ 2 had the throne room, but it was removed in the Test of Time version.
- scanny 4y agoCiv III had this feature as well, starting with the throne then out to the palace architecture and the wider palace complex
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y agoI remember this fondly. Too bad they took it out.
- kzrdude 4y agoI wonder if you ask people which the best civ game was, that would be a good marker of age? I would say Civ II. But I've played freeciv now too.
- makeva 4y agoAlpha centauri
- BirAdam 4y agoThis is the next in the series that I plan to cover :-)
- forgotusername6 4y agoThis is definitely the best civ game. The depth of this game is incredible. So much more immersive, more creating than any of the other civ titles. I haven't played it in years but I can still remember the voices of the faction leaders.
- wsc981 4y agoI liked Civ II a lot, but I feel Civ V with all expansions was best. Still haven’t tried Civ VI though, waiting for a bargain with all expansions included.
- BirAdam 4y agoCiv6 took some time for me to get into. Changes to perspective and building bothered me quite a bit at first. Once I got the hang of the new systems, I didn’t mind those changes but the game felt shallower until the expansions started coming out. Those brought it up to par for me. I would still say 2, 3, and 4 were the best.
- philipov 4y agoThe original Colonization was my first "civ" game, but it was Civ 2 I have fond memories of playing when I stayed home from school sick with Flu.
- 4y ago
- Beltiras 4y agoI've played two games in my life with a similar fervor, Civ2 was one, the other was Factorio. Historians will remember these games.
- BirAdam 4y agoI have Factorio on Steam, but I have yet to give it more than a cursory play. What is the draw for you (if you don’t mind elaborating)?
- baq 4y agoThe game is one huge nerd snipe at software engineers. If you ever felt compelled to optimize something just a little bit more, this thing extracts and amplifies that part of you until it’s dawn.
- Beltiras 4y agoSomething extremely satisfying about building up some manual thing and then finding a way to automate it with the tools at hand. Plus there are layers to the automation. Then I installed Bobs&Angels mods and they just took the game to a whole other level. Figuring out petrochems was really fun to do.
- avidphantasm 4y agoI definitely spent at least one or two winter vacations playing Civ II non-stop. Good times.
- BirAdam 4y agoSame. It was also a game that I was “sick” and therefore couldn’t go to school and spent the day playing…
- AgentOrange1234 4y agoThis is both nostalgia and current events for me. Playing civ5 with my 12-year-old this year has been a blast. He keeps telling me about history class questions that he knows the answers to because of it. It opens up opportunities to talk about all kinds of historic leaders, events, cultures, etc. Highly recommended.
- SilverBirch 4y agoDo you find civ 5 way more complex than the original civs? I always try to pick up the newer ones and I’m always struck by how incredibly complex they’ve become. Civ 1/2 you could basically be on top of everything but cob 5 seems like an impossible task.
- BirAdam 4y agoThe tutorial system helps. Civ6 with expansions gets equally if not more complex. There’s def a learning curve involved. I think the complexity really comes from have more “systems” within the game to take into consideration. The good thing is, when you’re new to it you can just choose one to maximize and go for that win condition. Say you want to learn the religious side in civ6, just try to maximize that, ignore all other systems, and go for the religious win condition.
- usrusr 4y agoAnd yet at the same time the presentation is super focused on selling the "casual" angle, and because of multiplayer it's all "balanced" to the point that none of your actions seem to matter. And the ever-increasing number of parallel victory conditions makes losing an entirely unexpected pop-up that declares a seemingly random civ winner in some metric that you did not observe carefully enough on the gauges. In civ6 I either win because I set difficulty too low or I lose because some gauge value ran away. They completely lost me, after five good civs, two off-brand incarnations, 1.5 colonizations, the incredibly well written SMAC and the also-ran C:BE.
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- nickelpro 4y agoIt may be nostalgia, but CivII hit a perfect mix that enthralled in a way that the future games never quite reached for me. I think Civ IV was the mechanical peak for the series, but CivII will always be the "vibe" peak. The throne room, the live-action advisors, the wonder movies. Go watch CivII's wonder movies for the Oracle, the Great Lighthouse, the Manhattan Project, or the UN and tell me they didn't catch lightning in a bottle. In a pre-wikipedia age the "Civilopedia" was also a huge deal for me as a kid. I read every entry over and over again. Civilization II gave me a context for my place in history that served as a ground work for a lot of my future learning.
- totetsu 4y agohttps://youtu.be/neT7rGCzCoY https://youtu.be/neT7rGCzCoY https://youtu.be/-jj6dttx2t0 https://youtu.be/-jj6dttx2t0 https://youtu.be/eMW0VXa2UFA https://youtu.be/eMW0VXa2UFA https://youtu.be/32119Pqot_4 https://youtu.be/32119Pqot_4 maybe its just nostalgia? The manhattan project it pretty good. I like SMAC videos better. like the virual world project. https://youtu.be/sJlPr2KHSFo https://youtu.be/sJlPr2KHSFo
- ta1243 4y agoI have a soft spot for Civ 3. I actually installed Windows to play that one. I was playing as America one time, I tend to be quiet and keep myself to myself, enough army to defend but no interest in going to war. However along came oil, which I needed for modern units. And I didn't have any. But a nearby civ did. I was left with no choice but to invade and secure the resources.
- BirAdam 4y agoVery American indeed.
- triggercut 4y ago"Oh for a muse of fire..."
- canadianfella 4y ago[dead]
- insane_dreamer 4y agoI played CivII more than any game since.
- axpy906 4y agoIt’s crazy just remembering how I always played this one. Like the science paths and strategies. My favorite tactic was to go Monarchy -> Communism -> Fundamentalism. Yes, I was always at war.
- specproc 4y agoIn case anyone here has missed, Civ 7 has recently been confirmed to be in the works.
- dragontamer 4y agoCiv2 probably has the best combat out of all the Civs I've played (note: I've skipped Civ3, but I've played all others). It needs a few more tweaks, but I'm kinda sad that modern civilizations have moved away from this model. It sits at a nice local optimum. 1. Stacking: A wide variety of UI-reasons make stacking a good idea. There are no collisions to troop movements. You can assign troops to move 30+ turns away, and they arrive as appropriate, no bumping, no colliding, no micromanagement. 2. Anti-deathball / Stack-kills: Civ1 and Civ2 got it right. When stacking is allowed (as in Civ4), the optimal strategy degenerates into deathballs. Much like Starcraft2 devolved into a deathball game (despite all the area-of-effect damage), Civ4 degenerated into deathballs. Civ1 and Civ2 negaete the deathball by simply killing the _ENTIRE_ Deathball, even with a singular unit. Civ4's "collateral damage" was not strong enough to prevent the Deathball-style combat. 3. Zone of Control: Civ1 and Civ2 allows your units to effectively block enemy movement up to one space away. This creates battle-lines and chokepoints. Sure, this is a bit glitchy with Bombers (which will block enemy movement even though they're in the air), but it gets the job done. 4. When did they get rid of attack/defense ?? Civ4 and later is "just strength", which I feel removes a lot of the differences between unit types. Cannon being 8 attack / Defense 1 means that even an enemy Archer (3 attack / 2 defense) can take out a Cannon for example. Having a variety of attack options, and defense options, seemed to make Civ2's units really stick out in comparison to later games. ------------- I do think that Civilization should do a Civ2 combat system reboot. Something with the modern culture / religion / other features that have been added... but also with stacking, stack-kills, and zone of control again.
- vintermann 4y agoI couldn't get past how ugly Civilization II was compared to the first (which I loved). It used the native windows components and palette as I recall, which were definitively not things of beauty. So I never got into it.