Civ 2 was my 1st introduction to the series then SMAC/X.
I think our projects are a bit different in methodology but definitely check out my
OpenSMACX repo.
Wow.. I post occasionally on the Alpha Centauri 2 forum but hadn't noticed your thread there about OpenSMACX. What an awesome project! You sir are a legend! Shall follow your thread there for now on.
Vanilla Civ 4 was quite mediocre ass. It's only redeeming quality was the legendary modding community. Even then Civ 2 arguably had better mods. Heck, even took Civ 4 two expansions to implement paratroopers, which was something Civ 2 launched with.
I doubt you ever even played Alpha Centauri, which should be a prerequisite to even posting in this sub-forum
Agreed. Civ2 was pretty amazing even at launch and yeah Civ4 is a great game but it took several addons and a whole lot of amazing mods to get there. Although in some ways the same applies to Civ2 as the second addon Fantastic Worlds was really a game changer in the modding community. Plenty of cool scenarios were coming out before that but the really good stuff came after!
In fact the same can even be said for Civ3 too. Like so many I was not a fan of Civ3 at launch, god it was bad. So many Civ2 features missing and some pretty bad bugs (anyone here remember the save game corruption bug at release? urgh). Addon packs made it into a pretty decent game but still not a Civ2 or 4 beater. However in the decades since some utterly insane mods have come out for it. For vanilla players there some great terrain mods that turn the world map into a almost fertile green tropical paradise compared to the dry brown clay cr*p we originally got. While for players looking for totally new experiences then there's all sorts of amazing total conversion mods eg fantasy mods based of Master of Magic, Heroes of Might & Magic, LOTR, Warhammer etc.. scifi mods based on Star Trek, Star Wars and more that convert Civ3 into a space game like addons & modders did with Civ2 & 4... Cool Fallout and Warhammer apocalypse desert wasteland scenarios.. huge historical scenarios on Colonization and all the great conflicts and wars.. all with completely new cool looking world graphics, GUIs, custom animating units, and cool music and ambient sounds. Plus everything was too zoomed in and big back in the day but the game looks quite nice in HD and when you zoom out you can see heaps of the world.
Eg. Zoomed out vanilla with terrain mod / MoM / HoMM / Fallout / Colonization / Star Trek / Star Wars
Probably the Civ3 mod that blew me away the most was the
Heroes of Might & Magic 3 mod by a fellow named Tom.. he friggin changed everything! Not just the world, units, techs and GUI, but also the city screen and the palace upgrade screens so you're actually building HoMM3 buildings in them. It's so immersive it actually feels like HoMM3 but with Civ's open sandbox experience. Something I dreamed about as a kid playing Civ and HoMM in the 90s.
Back on the main topic of Civilization 2 I was so inspired by the above Civ3 HoMM3 mod that I started thinking about how much fun it would be to create a total conversion
Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod for Civ2 and use DLL hacking and various other tricks to try and convert all parts of the game to look like HoMM2 eg not just the world, techs, buildings and units.. but also the GUI, the advisors, the throne room, the diplomacy screens, the city sky view screen, hell even the friggin wonder & dip herald videos lol! I went hunting to see if any HoMM mod existed for Civ2 and found an abandoned one (with the similar ambitions) by a German fellow named Metropolis who had similar ideas. He was still around so we teamed up and brought the project back to life! If it's of interest to anyone I've been doing Dev Diaries over on moddb...
.
HoMM2 Dev Diary 01 - Creating Cities For The Civilization 2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the first dev diary we look at importing HoMM2 castle/city graphics into Civ2.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-cities
.
HoMM2 Dev Diary 02 - Creating Nice Backgrounds For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In this second dev diary we look at ‘HoMMafying’ all those Civ 2 advisor, city and event screens.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-backgrounds
.
HoMM2 Dev Diary 03 - Creating Custom Leaders & Wonder Vids For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the third dev diary we look at changing Civ2’s leader portraits used for diplomacy with HoMM2 heroes and make a bold attempt at replacing Civ2’s original wonder videos.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-leaders-wonders
.
