Civilization II is the best strategy and might be the best game of all time

[Storyfag]

Can do! I've been working over the last year to collect/rescue/restore long lost scenarios for the Civ series (mostly Civ2 and Civ3) with a particular focus on franchises that I love so I've got links to 'all the things' lol. In fact I'll probably post a thread here soon about my scenario hunting as I'm noticing there's quite a few Civ fans lurking around this place who either A - may be able to help me find something cool, and B - might find something awesome in my lists they didn't know about.

<palpatine> Do it! </palpatine>

Anyway that pic above was from Civ3 Star Wars The Mod Awakens. Super impressive! Only 2 years old too! There's a number of other cool SW Civ3 scenarios out there I can link you too however they are much older and 'planet based' instead of space based.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/star-wars-the-mod-awakens.631116/

Many thanks.
They even use the Heir to the Empire cover art to start their post with Pure incline.

 

[axx]

Yeah I used GifXtractor to get all dll GIFs. Then manually added them to resources. Not a good solution if you would want to automate this though within an open source project.

 

[Blake00]

<palpatine> Do it! </palpatine>

Lol it is done. Civ scenario/mod hunt thread created here:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/civilization-series-favourite-scifi-fantasy-tc-scenarios-mods-hunt.135601/

Thanks again to axx who's already seen it, searched and made some great suggestions I look forward to trying! Very very happy about him finding the Dune Civ2 scenario.

Yeah I used GifXtractor to get all dll GIFs. Then manually added them to resources. Not a good solution if you would want to automate this though within an open source project.

Hmm so presumably getting the source to one of these Civ2 dll viewers/extractors to see how they're accessing the images would be beneficial to you? As it would hint to how the main game is accessing the images too?

'GifXtractor' was made by a fellow named 'Rune Berge' in 1999 so god knows what happened to him and his source files lol. There's an email for him on the about screen in the GifX app if you're feeling lucky lol.

There's also 'Resource Hacker' that people use for Civ2 as well and consider it superior. I used it few times to solves problems I was having with GifX inserting custom graphics into the dlls. It's made by Angus Johnson and is far more recent (new version in 2019). Can't find any contact details but he's got a website here: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/

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If anyone is interested here's the next 3 Civilization 2 - Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod dev diaries made over the last few months...

HoMM2 Dev Diary 04 – New Throne Room, Intro, Dip & Wonder Videos For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the fourth dev diary we look at changing Civ2’s throne room with a HoMM2 castle jigsaw while completely replacing the title screen plus intro, diplomacy herald and wonder videos with cool HoMM2 content.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/new-throne-room-intro-dip-wonder-vids



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HoMM2 Dev Diary 05 – Creating Victory/Death & City Backgrounds For The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the fifth dev diary we look at adding new HoMM2 themed victory and death sequences plus custom city screen backgrounds.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/creating-victory-death-city-backgrounds



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HoMM2 Dev Diary 06 – Heroes, Units & City Buildings In The Civ2 Heroes Of Might & Magic 2 Mod:
In the sixth dev diary we answer fan demands to show units while also showing off all city buildings and some small touch-ups to the city sky view.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-heroes-of-might-and-magic-2-mod/news/heroes-units-city-buildings



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[BrotherFrank]

Since caveman 2 cosmos for civ 4 was mentioned, has anyone actually managed to play a full game of it?

For real I've tried several times since I was a wee lad, I think the furthest I got was the nano age after a week of playing and then bam, just couldn't continue past a certain point.
Just last month figured I'd give it another go now that I got a more modern computer and no doubt over the years they ironed out all the kinks...And bam, afrer a few hours, hard CTD, I simply can't get past a certain point.

So yeah my conclusion is on paper C2C is the epitome of civ gaming, but it's simply unplayable.

 

[Gamezor]

Last i played civ2 i got discouraged with caravan min max tedium—can that just be ignored? Not playing on hardest difficulty or anything. For some reason i’ve always been most attached to 3–i plan to check out some of these mods.

 

[Your Order Has Arrived]

Since caveman 2 cosmos for civ 4 was mentioned, has anyone actually managed to play a full game of it?

For real I've tried several times since I was a wee lad, I think the furthest I got was the nano age after a week of playing and then bam, just couldn't continue past a certain point.
Just last month figured I'd give it another go now that I got a more modern computer and no doubt over the years they ironed out all the kinks...And bam, afrer a few hours, hard CTD, I simply can't get past a certain point.

So yeah my conclusion is on paper C2C is the epitome of civ gaming, but it's simply unplayable.

Last I played, it was pretty bloated and the turn times were a bit too much. Rise of Mankind AND was almost like a lite version of C2C and turns were a lot faster. Don't know if this changed recently though.

 

[Kalin]

For dedicated players I would strongly recommend the Civ2 Gold scenario "Seeds of Greatness - The Early Empires" by Paul "Kull" Cullivan. It is similar to his "Ancient Empires 1200 BC" scenario which we multi-LPed back in the day but covers a much greater time period and allows you to build your civilization from scratch. It makes ample use of events and barbarian units (subjugating lesser tribes yields slaves i.e. free settlers, gold and so forth). Each civilization also has its own unique event file and will receive special leaders. Definitely worth a try if you are looking for something to play, especially if you are a fan of ancient history.

 

[Corvinus]

I used to play Civ II a lot back in the day. And III and IV. Great games all. Never tried the first one though, and ...It's sad that V was such dumbed down shit.

 

[Farewell into the night]

Is Test of Time a right way to play civ2 or the original is superior?

 

[Blake00]

Is Test of Time a right way to play civ2 or the original is superior?

That's a dangerous question as I've seen it spark many a unfriendly debate at CivFinatics haha!

In the hardcore Civ fan community Test of Time (ToT) is considered to be far superior due to it's graphics capabilities, animation, multi linked world map systems, and advanced scripting, especially for scenario making. However outside of that in the world of a casual players the final 'Multiplayer Gold Edition' of classic Civ 2 (MGE) is loved more, mainly because ToT was a belated underutilized commercial failure (one of the final nails in the coffin for Microprose) whereas original version of Civ2 sold millions of copies all over the world meaning so many more people out there played and loved that one. When I say belated I mean ToT came out too late into Civ2's life and was up against stiff competition (SMAC & CTP1), and I when I say underutilized I mean it was too light on content (for it's high new game price), that content was buggy & sometimes unplayable, and graphic improvements alone were not enough to sway people as a lot of the Civ community hated the dark 'clay' green graphics used. Also a lot of fun features like throne room, wonder videos, grand advisory council, city sky view were removed and some idiot thought it was a good idea to make all units moving on railroads look like a happy choo choo train (regular) or a ball of light (in scifi/fantasy ones) lol. So it was such a failure that there's probably a lot of people out there who don't even know ToT exists, or they have negative memories from trying it on release.

However once again in the hardcore community its quite popular as modders have done amazing things to fix so many of those issues. The ToT Patch Project fixes a huge amount of scenario bugs (the scifi & fantasy scenarios are REALLY good now that they work properly lol), turns back on the wonders (if you provide video files), throne room and city sky view. There are numerous popular 'light/fertile' green terrain mods out there for all the scenarios that came with it and of course fans have made their own new huge scenarios taking advantage of ToT's multiple linked world maps systems, gorgeous graphical & animation capabilities, and advanced scripting that could even play event cutscenes during games.

However even with ToT Patch project there are still missing features in ToT that were in MGE, not to mention the hundreds of the amazing scenarios for MGE that won't work in ToT (unless fans have bothered to convert them using annoyingly hard to use 3rd party conversion programs), so some people just prefer MGE no matter what lol.

Personally I love both for different reasons and therefore have both installed. It's also why I'm designing scenarios for MGE but also for ToT.

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[octavius]

Heh, I bought ToT when it hit the bargain bin, but didn't play it for various reasons. Decades later I finally installed it, and it turned out that the CD didn't contain ToT, but MGE.

 

[axx]

There's also 'Resource Hacker' that people use for Civ2 as well and consider it superior. I used it few times to solves problems I was having with GifX inserting custom graphics into the dlls. It's made by Angus Johnson and is far more recent (new version in 2019). Can't find any contact details but he's got a website here: http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/

Thanks, had no idea this existed, it's very convenient. Looking at DLL files in hex editor, all the GIFs are just copied one a top of another and it's just a matter of extracting them (literally copying hex code of one gif, pasting it into a new file and renaming its extension gives you the image). It's a good starting point for my program.

 

[Azdul]

Change my mind

Civ 2 AI is weak, but what's even worse, really strong AI would make the game very schematic and not fun. Strong AI that understands implications of ICS, Leonardo Workshop or The Great Library would make the game unplayable.

In other words - it is fun as long as neither you nor AI really try to win, or neither you nor AI know and understand optimal strategies.

 

[Nutria]

In my opinion, Civ 2 is definitely the best of the Civ games. They took the original classic game (which is still quite playable today) and added some features that were missing from it and gave it more polish. That's it. They didn't try to expand further just for the sake of making it more complicated. So it's far better than the later sequels that just added on more and more stuff that didn't make any sense in terms of gameplay or history, like making different religions specific entities instead of leaving them abstract. And uh... whatever they did after Civ 4.

Also compare to that other "4X" games today. It's the opposite of the Paradox business model of releasing a game that kind of sucks and then making it more complicated with 10 DLCs to the point where they hope the player is so confused that they think they're enjoying it.

The one feature I wish it had from later games was the borders from SMAC. Give me Civ 2 with that and I wouldn't need anything else.

 

[Blake00]

The one feature I wish it had from later games was the borders from SMAC. Give me Civ 2 with that and I wouldn't need anything else.

Yeah that would be great.

FreeCiv is the closest we can get to Civ2 with SMAC & Civ3+ territory borders it would seem.

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[Blake00]

After months working on the huge Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Civ2 scenario I decided to turn my attention over to one of my other favourite franchises for some more fun Civ2 scenarios, the Command & Conquer and Red Alert universe! I started coming up with some pretty crazy ideas for huge Red Alert 2 Siege of New York scenario where you’ll be battling it out in city streets between huge sky scrapers however despite learning a lot from working on the HoMM2 scenario I wasn’t quite game enough to start that just yet. I’d also been thinking about a dark and moody scenario set in the C&C Tiberium universe and noticed that a fellow named Wonx2150 had already made a scenario in that universe but just hadn’t really done any proper graphics for it so I decided to take the easier route and remaster his scenario first to build up more experience before taking on the big Red Alert 2 scenario.

I created a ModDB page for the C&C project and have made a few dev diaries covering stages of development similar to the HoMM2 mod ones. Stay tuned for dev diaries for the Red Alert 2 scenario here in the future too!

C&C Dev Diary 01 - New terrain & units for the Civilization 2 - Command & Conquer Scenario
In this first dev diary I look at changing Civ2’s terrain and cities to look like C&C2 as well as importing some cool new units.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-command-conquer-scenario/news/new-terrain-units



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C&C Dev Diary 02 – Finishing all terrain & units for the Civilization 2 – Command & Conquer Scenario:
In the second dev diary I ask for some fan input and finish off importing all the new C&C unit graphics.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-command-conquer-scenario/news/finishing-all-terrain-units



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[Storyfag]

In this first dev diary I look at changing Civ2’s terrain and cities to look like C&C2 as well as importing some cool new units.

C&C Dev Diary 01 - New terrain & units for the Civilization 2 - Command & Conquer Scenario
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-command-conquer-scenario/news/new-terrain-units



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In the second dev diary I ask for some fan input and finish off importing all the new C&C unit graphics.

C&C Dev Diary 02 – Finishing all terrain & units for the Civilization 2 – Command & Conquer Scenario:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-command-conquer-scenario/news/finishing-all-terrain-units



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You are doing Kane's work, Brother. Peace through power.

 

[luj1]

Civ II was indeed the best game in the franchise

The only thing which comes close is SMAC

 

[Derringer]

From what I played of ToT Civ 2 it's pretty fun even with shitty ai, at least I prefer it to Civ 3, even with CCM2. Don't care for the irrigation system, it's just not enjoyable.

 

[Blake00]

In this first dev diary I look at changing Civ2’s terrain and cities to look like C&C2 as well as importing some cool new units.

C&C Dev Diary 01 - New terrain & units for the Civilization 2 - Command & Conquer Scenario
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-command-conquer-scenario/news/new-terrain-units



.

In the second dev diary I ask for some fan input and finish off importing all the new C&C unit graphics.

C&C Dev Diary 02 – Finishing all terrain & units for the Civilization 2 – Command & Conquer Scenario:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/civilization-2-command-conquer-scenario/news/finishing-all-terrain-units



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You are doing Kane's work, Brother. Peace through power.

Yes! The Technology of Peace!

From what I played of ToT Civ 2 it's pretty fun even with shitty ai, at least I prefer it to Civ 3, even with CCM2. Don't care for the irrigation system, it's just not enjoyable.

You should try original style Civ2 MGE as well. Same lousy AI haha but it gives a bit of a different experience to ToT. ToT added a number of cool features (eg 24bit colours, better GUI, multiple worlds in one game, more advanced event systems) but it also took away some fun ones like the grand council (video advisors who argue with each other lol), wonder videos, throne room upgrades, and city sky view. Although some of those have been reactivated in ToT by modders these days, but still Civ2 MGE has a fun classic feel to it and literally has thousands of fan scenarios made for it. I go more into their differences in my post above but in the end I have both MGE and ToT installed and jump between depending on what I'm doing.

 

[axx]

The AI in MGE. Years ago I positioned myself on a secluded island and observed what other civs were doing on the mainland. Late in the game they stop expanding, stop building cities and stop building units. They become completely static.
On the other hand their relationship towards you is highly aggressive and the concept of alliances is badly done (broken).
There's a clone (C-evo) which apparently tries to improve the AI, I tried it long ago but can't give any impressions.

 

[Storyfag]

ToT added a number of cool features (eg 24bit colours, better GUI, multiple worlds in one game, more advanced event systems)

And the soundtrack.

Don't forget the soundtrack.


(starts at my fave track)

 

[Blake00]

The AI in MGE. Years ago I positioned myself on a secluded island and observed what other civs were doing on the mainland. Late in the game they stop expanding, stop building cities and stop building units. They become completely static.
On the other hand their relationship towards you is highly aggressive and the concept of alliances is badly done (broken).
There's a clone (C-evo) which apparently tries to improve the AI, I tried it long ago but can't give any impressions.

Yeah trying C-Evo is on my to do list.. will probably trubite it in my big Civ video series I'm working on. It seemed dead for years but some people appear to be working on it again..

ToT added a number of cool features (eg 24bit colours, better GUI, multiple worlds in one game, more advanced event systems)

And the soundtrack.

Don't forget the soundtrack.


(starts at my fave track)

Well the ToT soundtrack was just the MGE soundtrack with 2 or 3 crap songs traded out for some new ones (which I liked) for their big new scifi & fantasy scenarios. Your favourite song there (good choice BTW) was actually the soundtrack for the 'After the Apocalypse' scenario which came with the old Civ2 Conflicts in Civilization addon. I always enjoyed that scenario as one of the factions started in Australia, so me being Australian I couldn't resist playing as them and going full 'Mad Max Fury Road' on the world haha. Tough one though as there's pollution everywhere (due to the nuclear war) so global warming kicks off fast and the whole world starts turning into useless terrain starving your cities. Real fight for survival..

 

[Storyfag]

ToT added a number of cool features (eg 24bit colours, better GUI, multiple worlds in one game, more advanced event systems)

And the soundtrack.

Don't forget the soundtrack.


(starts at my fave track)

Well the ToT soundtrack was just the MGE soundtrack with 2 or 3 crap songs traded out for some new ones (which I liked) for their big new scifi & fantasy scenarios. Your favourite song there (good choice BTW) was actually the soundtrack for the 'After the Apocalypse' scenario which came with the old Civ2 Conflicts in Civilization addon. I always enjoyed that scenario as one of the factions started in Australia, so me being Australian I couldn't resist playing as them and going full 'Mad Max Fury Road' on the world haha. Tough one though as there's pollution everywhere (due to the nuclear war) so global warming kicks off fast and the whole world starts turning into useless terrain starving your cities. Real fight for survival..

Fair enough. Admittedly I was too young to remember MGE's soundtrack and thought most of it came with ToT.

 

[axx]

Dang I wish I could make units like these. A fine piece of art on a 64x48 pixel frame. Years ago I tried to make a dinosaur scenario, in the spirit of the officially released one in FW, but my artwork wasn't up to the standards.