Comments on: Civilization Through The Ages: Civilization 2

By: Vertigo

Vertigo — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 09:59:14 +0000

Best UI in the series, I think. Being designed to run in a window, you can see the full resolution while having other stuff going on in the toolbar (music, chat etc), making it the 1996 equivalent of playing Solitaire on your mobile while watching TV. The ease of multitasking made it more compulsive, more life-compatible.

And the Windows-style interface is extremely intuitive. You can find everything very easily, the workflow is great. Every subsequent game in the series (particularly 4 with its overreliance on icons) has muddied this and introduced a UI that gets in the way, hides information, or presents it unintuitively. I’d love for a future game to re-introduce Civ 2′s Civ-Windows.

Then again – I’d love to basically just play Civ 2 with the rough edges sanded off. Add territory borders, add city queues and tunable auto-governors, add unit upgrades without Leonardo’s Workshop, add requests for AI factions to make peace with each other, balance governments so they all remain useful, balance terrain so the endgame isn’t just a mass of hills/mines/airbases or resource-grassland/farms with railroads over the top.

But that’s basically Alpha Centauri, isn’t it? It does all of those things, and a lot more besides. Even if you take out the story mechanics and excellent sci-fi material, it would still be by far my favourite game in the series. Because mechanically at the core it’s Civ 2 with the rough edges sanded off.

By: Civilization: História, meta-história e história da História – Mutatis Mutandis

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 15:07:00 +0000

[…] como estratégia para sufocar os inimigos pela falta de espaço para expandir. Na análise do segundo ele mostra como a conversão para o ambiente do Windows 95 foi mais um fator para deixar o jogo […]

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 03:19:49 +0000

I’m not a fan of Civ6 in general but I have to say it has great scenarios. I liked them more than base game cause of their brevity and fresh design. E.g. there’s Vikings scenario. You chose one of Vikings factions and have a miniature game of Civ on a premade map. It has city founding and upgrading, some limited diplomacy, religion, culture, tech, war, exploration. You get points in a variety of ways and you win by having the most points. And each Viking faction has some uniqueness to them. There I didn’t care if AI understands victory conditions and all that jazz, it felt like a complex board game. And it didn’t have padding or baggage that came with the theme.

Civ5, I think, was a little worse in that regard. It had some nice scenarios but they felt more like modded base game. E.g. Conquest of the New World is similar to Civ6 vikings but it’s too big for its own good and has random map and the usual problem with AI. One that I admire was Empires of the Smoky Sky, Jules Verne style steampunk scenario. It was more of a mod than scenario as in it started you in industrial era but soon tech tree went highwire. It was essentially wargame and had interesting win conditions: there were several “achievements” like have the biggest fleet of airships and the one who had most of those achievements would win instantly. Again, those kind of mini-games allowed devs to be creative instead of remaking Civ with a little different mechanics again and again. And they were very serious about those scenarios even in Civ5, hear the OST written specifically for Empires of Smoky Skies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XZ1XKOwu-s

By: Bink

Bink — Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:25:49 +0000

One of the things I loved about Civ 2 was the different scenarios made for it. I have the ‘Classic Collection’ big box (and thanks for the link to the patch so I can play it again), and that included a couple of scenario disks – Fantastic Worlds and Conflicts in Civilization. Essentially, these were like Civ 2 total conversions with new graphics, tech trees and objectives (for some of them). These ranged from real conflicts – the civil war, the Mongol horde, etc; to fantasy – Jules Verne, Atlantis, etc; to official conversions based on Master of Magic, Master of Orion and X-Com! Anyway, as someone who loved those scenarios but is too lazy to type these words into Google, I was wondering if there are similar things available for later Civs? I keep intending to go back to Civ 2 and play through all of those scenarios. One day.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 10:46:12 +0000

The problem with purely iterative design is that you’re iterating towards a goal, and once you’re there there’s nowhere else for a series to go — or worse, you iterate off at a tangent and eventually create something that’s almost impenetrable to anyone who hasn’t played the entire series. A period of iteration should follow a title with revolutionary ideas, but you need both to make a series that lasts more than a decade without stagnating.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 28 Jan 2019 10:41:02 +0000

Agreed to both. It’s a classic, and still fun to play, and much friendlier than Civ 1, but that’s only because I prefer science victories over building out wide and conquering the world. Even with the 12-ish cities I built on my replays and a purely defensive military it was just on the cusp of being annoying.

By: Iain

Iain — Sat, 26 Jan 2019 11:36:37 +0000

Yep, it could be a real slog once you had 30+ cities. While 12 year old me seemed ok with it, I’m pretty sure I no longer have the patience to sit through a whole game. Civ IV was much better in this respect…

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 16:06:30 +0000

This is my second favorite in the series, and probably the one I have the most fond memories of. I played a ton of this in the couple of years after release, and it always felt so satisfying to finally have my empire crosshatched with rail lines. But it really did become a slog in the late game, all of them to to some extent, but this one was particularly bad from my recollection.

By: ilitarist

ilitarist — Fri, 25 Jan 2019 09:06:10 +0000

The only one I’ve never played. Heard a lot about it though. Many still regard this as the best one.

Maybe we’d have better games if iterative design wouldn’t be a slur.