This Decade Long Civilization II Game Makes Me Hate Civ V

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/uxpil/ive_been_playing_the_same_game_of_civilization_ii/

Here's the thing if you just wanna read it:

"I've been playing the same game of Civ II for 10 years. Though long outdated, I grew fascinated with this particular game because by the time Civ III was released, I was already well into the distant future. I then thought that it might be interesting to see just how far into the future I could get and see what the ramifications would be. Naturally I play other games and have a life, but I often return to this game when I'm not doing anything and carry on. The results are as follows.

• The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation.

• There are 3 remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands.

-The ice caps have melted over 20 times (somehow) due primarily to the many nuclear wars. As a result, every inch of land in the world that isn't a mountain is inundated swamp land, useless to farming. Most of which is irradiated anyway.

-As a result, big cities are a thing of the distant past. Roughly 90% of the worlds population (at it's peak 2000 years ago) has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm. Engineers (late game worker units) are always busy continuously building roads so that new armies can reach the front lines. Roads that are destroyed the very next turn when the enemy goes. So there isn't any time to clear swamps or clean up the nuclear fallout.

-Only 3 super massive nations are left. The Celts (me), The Vikings, And the Americans. Between the three of us, we have conquered all the other nations that have ever existed and assimilated them into our respective empires.

-You've heard of the 100 year war? Try the 1700 year war. The three remaining nations have been locked in an eternal death struggle for almost 2000 years. Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons. Even when the U.N forces a peace treaty. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they're wiped out. It is this that perpetuates the war ad infinitum. Have any of you old Civ II players out there ever had this problem in the post-late game?

-Because of SDI, ICBMS are usually only used against armies outside of cities. Instead, cities are constantly attacked by spies who plant nuclear devices which then detonate (something I greatly miss from later civ games). Usually the down side to this is that every nation in the world declares war on you. But this is already the case so its no longer a deterrent to anyone. My self included.

-The only governments left are two theocracies and myself, a communist state. I wanted to stay a democracy, but the Senate would always over-rule me when I wanted to declare war before the Vikings did. This would delay my attack and render my turn and often my plans useless. And of course the Vikings would then break the cease fire like clockwork the very next turn. Something I also miss in later civ games is a little internal politics. Anyway, I was forced to do away with democracy roughly a thousand years ago because it was endangering my empire. But of course the people hate me now and every few years since then, there are massive guerrilla (late game barbarians) uprisings in the heart of my empire that I have to deal with which saps resources from the war effort.

-The military stalemate is air tight. The post-late game in civ II is perfectly balanced because all remaining nations already have all the technologies so there is no advantage. And there are so many units at once on the map that you could lose 20 tank units and not have your lines dented because you have a constant stream moving to the front. This also means that cities are not only tiny towns full of starving people, but that you can never improve the city. "So you want a granary so you can eat? Sorry; I have to build another tank instead. Maybe next time."

-My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world. But I'm not sure how. If any of you old Civ II players have any advice, I'm listening."

Honestly I love Civ V. It's my first experience in the Civ franchise since Alpha Centauri (which I still think I prefer) but man, there was so much ridiculous depth in the old Civ Games from the sound of it. And the idea of being able to push it this far is incredible. Now I want a modern one of THOSE games, with all of the things I think Civ does that are cooler than other similar games, but with all of the crazy stuff that is mentioned here, god. I want it. I want it so bad. I know it probably won't happen, but I'd love for Civ VI to be just a hardcore mean ass motherfucker. I'm looking forward to the upcoming Civ V expansion because of the added depth, but now it doesn't feel like enough.

Looks like I'll have to go play me some Civ II...

So you like a game you didn't play better than a game you say you love? I'm guessing the thread title is not your actual feelings?

That story sounds pretty nuts. although I'm sure someone somewhere has done something just as crazy.

That example given above is the 0.01%. It makes a lot more sense, considering the concessions and design choices made in Civ 5, to design for basically everyone, to make a better game for them, than to maintain certain aspects that could result in advanced situations no one will appreciate. The above story is a bit of a news item for a reason.

That being said, as a passionate player now with some experience, I can understand why you would feel the way you do after reading that.

Imagine looking away from your monitor for a moment and realizing you've been playing the same match in the same game for 10 years. Geez.

Even when the U.N forces a peace treaty.

How does the U.N. exist when there are only three warring countries left?

Also, this sounds like a hellish place to live.

I suppose the Civ games these days are rather streamlined to make it more accessible for a lot of new comers but at the same time the depth is still there except that they only add most of it through expansion packs and what not. Then again the same could be said for just about any series these days. As much as I enjoy them I still feel like they're just not as deep as I would've wanted them to be. Not to say that they're bad. Far from it, rather they feel a bit lacking sometimes.

Also I think Alpha Centauri is by far the best 4X game ever made and it's even better with the expansion pack. No other game comes close to how fun that is. It's surprising for the lack of a sequel.

I've tried to play the older Civ games but Civ V was the only one I was able to get into. I found the older interface and mechanics way too clunky to bother learning.

If it dose not have stacks of doom than its not a proper civ game.

if you want crazy stories like that, and know vaguely about history, the paradox games have that in spades.

Although it is kind of neat that Civ 2 can create a stalemate that perpetuates for years, I don't think that is a good design goal for any further Civilization games.

Is there any reason you can't do this in Civ 5? I remember once you hit "the end" there was an option to continue playing. It's been awhile since I last played, I'll have to fire that game up again and see what's what.

That sounds like a great setting for an RPG

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

I actually just found Civ 2 kind of frustrating. They never explain any of that stuff to you up front and it's pretty easy to just feel lost. And it's really common for me late game to get into a combat scenario similar to his where each Civ has become so powerful that it's impossible to for either one to actually gain any ground on the other. Also the AI simply isn't as good, the fact that the vikings will start a war with him every turn is a perfect example of the simple and annoying AI.

Although it is kind of neat that Civ 2 can create a stalemate that perpetuates for years, I don't think that is a good design goal for any further Civilization games.

@Kidavenger: First off, the game will literally slow to a crawl unless you have a gdlk computer. On my i7 computer with 8gb of memory, it could take upwards of 5 minutes between my turns. Also, there are a lot fewer options late game in Civ 5, politics boils down to buying off city states to win the UN, and there aren't any major consequences for mismanaging your populace (iirc, having an unhappy populace just reduces production and growth rate). The AIs is dumb as bricks tactically, which takes away from the fun of the new combat system.

@Anwar: Nah it's real, he posted the save game. Maybe it comes off a little more awesome than it probably is because that's the way it is with recounting tales, but yeah.

@Brendan said:

That example given above is the 0.01%. It makes a lot more sense, considering the concessions and design choices made in Civ 5, to design for basically everyone, to make a better game for them, than to maintain certain aspects that could result in advanced situations no one will appreciate. The above story is a bit of a news item for a reason.

That being said, as a passionate player now with some experience, I can understand why you would feel the way you do after reading that.

I think it's awesome that they made a Civ game that anyone can love. Alpha Centauri was one of my early gaming loves, and I think it's a damned noble goal to make a Civilization that more can appreciate, but it'd be cool if they made an advanced mode or expansion pack it up the yin-yang with new mechanics. I'd gladly pay another $60 to flesh out Civ V.

I think saying no one would appreciate a deeper more complex game is ridiculous, considering all of the crap Civ V got from Civ IV fans. Difficulty levels would also be a good way to curb that stuff off for more casual players.

@Hunter5024 said:

I actually just found Civ 2 kind of frustrating. They never explain any of that stuff to you up front and it's pretty easy to just feel lost. And it's really common for me late game to get into a combat scenario similar to his where each Civ has become so powerful that it's impossible to for either one to actually gain any ground on the other. Also the AI simply isn't as good, the fact that the vikings will start a war with him every turn is a perfect example of the simple and annoying AI.

Poorly taught mechanics can be good too. And I didn't say I wanted Civ 2, I want a new, modern game with the complexity and mechanics of those games. That it has flaws doesn't mean there isn't a lot of potential to make a new game or to add on to the existing Civ V in a way that would bring back the great ideas of those older games.

Also, AI always sucks. It's just the way games are. In Civ V, it's so easy to cheese the AI. Piss em off, get em to attack you, and eventually when you easily hold off of their assaults, they beg you and bribe you to get peace, and you end up with most of their wealth. But it's still an awesome game.

@Kidavenger said:

Is there any reason you can't do this in Civ 5? I remember once you hit "the end" there was an option to continue playing. It's been awhile since I last played, I'll have to fire that game up again and see what's what.

You can keep going, yeah. Problem is the game tends to be so easy that by then, you've just obliterated everyone else anyway, especially with there not being much else to do other than go to war and build stuff.

@EXTomar said:

Although it is kind of neat that Civ 2 can create a stalemate that perpetuates for years, I don't think that is a good design goal for any further Civilization games.

I think there are ways to make both experience within one package. Maybe on harder difficulties, or maybe there could be an "ongoing" mode that's just designed to be played for as long as you want. It's one thing Civ does poorly these days: giving multiple experiences. As it is, you just kind of always get the same one. A constant ongoing mode would be really awesome, and I think the idea of that kind of game with the kinds of interactions described in the post (even when they were a bit janky because of older, less advanced AI) would be fascinating to play. Sort of like Day Z being so interesting because of the human interaction, for me.

@Animasta said:

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

FUCK

So this is the story of Video Game King, huh? Wow, the moon has gone through some shit.

Yeah, I saw that story and thought it was awesome, but the only part of that which really can't happen is the whole terrain deformation aspect of the polar ice caps melting. Damn, I wish *that* would be something they add to this upcoming expansion pack. They also don't have as deep of a system for world governments (there is a UN, but the vote options are limited and it's pretty much only something you want to mess with if you've bought the favor of all of the world's City-States).

Just turn off certain win conditions, and you'd be all set.

I could tell some awesome stories about my time with Civ V.

You lost me when reddit.

But I loved the hell out of Civ 5 and am looking to get some of the previous games in.

@Animasta said:

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

On the iPad version of Civilizations Revolution there's a scenario titled "Beta Centauri."

I jumped in on the Civilizations series with the third game so I have no recollection how the games were prior to that.

@ThePickle said:

You lost me when reddit.

But I loved the hell out of Civ 5 and am looking to get some of the previous games in.

I found this through Tested, or something. I don't care for Reddit myself but it was worth sharing.

@jerseyscum said:

@Animasta said:

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

FUCK

There's still hope brothers! All we have to do is go and kill everyone that works directly for either EA or Take Two, and give all of their dev manpower/IPs to the surviving faction.

@ZombiePie said:

@Animasta said:

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

On the iPad version of Civilizations Revolution there's a scenario titled "Beta Centauri."

I jumped in on the Civilizations series with the third game so I have no recollection how the games were prior to that.

It's on GOG games for like six bucks. It's well worth it. (Alpha Centuari)

Goddammit. Now I need to boot Civ 2 back up. I loved the shit out of that fucking game!

As cool as this news story is when I really think about it I would never get to that point in the game anyway so for my money I would rather a Civ V than one that allows for this absurdity since I would never see it anyway. And keep in mind this has happened once. I'm fairly certain if you played a Civ V game for the same amount of time you would find something interesting as well.

I find shit like this fascinating. I put in months of playing time into Civilization 3, primarily online against humans in quicker games that didn't make it past the middle ages. I love it.

@Animasta said:

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

Motherfucker! Is that why I can't get a new SMAC game? God dammit.

@triple07 said:

As cool as this news story is when I really think about it I would never get to that point in the game anyway so for my money I would rather a Civ V than one that allows for this absurdity since I would never see it anyway. And keep in mind this has happened once. I'm fairly certain if you played a Civ V game for the same amount of time you would find something interesting as well.

The interesting thing isn't the infinite play. That is possible in V. It's all of the complex mechanics, like sending a spy to plant a bomb in a city or needing congress to greenlight war, stuff like that. It's more systems that interest me.

@jerseyscum said:

@ZombiePie said:

@Animasta said:

@jerseyscum said:

MAKE ANOTHER FUCKING ALPHA CENTAURI GAME GODDAMNIT!

EA owns the rights and Take Two owns Firaxis

On the iPad version of Civilizations Revolution there's a scenario titled "Beta Centauri."

I jumped in on the Civilizations series with the third game so I have no recollection how the games were prior to that.

It's on GOG games for like six bucks. It's well worth it. (Alpha Centuari)

I still think that game is worth $60 even today. It's sooooooo good.

Sounds cool on paper but sounds like shit to play.

Isn't that the setup for 1984? Like, almost exactly?

?

The problem in that game is actually that the game lacks the depth to maintain the 'proper' play experience (and to be perfectly fair, there's no way to plan for that use case).

I played a lot of Civ2 and there was truly only two ways to play that game; the right way and the wrong way. If you didn't play with the one build order that always won, you were playing that game wrong. If you didn't rush Pyramids to Great Library to Invention, you were allowing yourself to lose.

@Brendan said:

That example given above is the 0.01%. It makes a lot more sense, considering the concessions and design choices made in Civ 5, to design for basically everyone, to make a better game for them, than to maintain certain aspects that could result in advanced situations no one will appreciate.

I appreciated that Firaxis was willing to try something different, but the game was just so broken. Diplomacy was a joke, the massive bugs in the game rendered it nearly unplayable in the first couple of months after launch. Removing espionage and religion further dumbed down the gameplay. Even after all the patches, the amount of time between turns is ridiculous, and I'm playing on a laptop with a Core i7, 14GB RAM, and 1GB DDR5 video card.

Though I applauded when I learned that the "Stack of Doom" strategy could no longer be used when unit stacking was taken away. Sadly, I think that was Civ V's only relevant contribution to the series.

Even though I do indeed love Civ V, I still find myself going back to Civ II a lot more often.

Been looking into this story yesterday, reading all he wrote about it and damn that sounds amazing!
 
I'm afraid the game will be too dated for me to get into, I also loathe RTS games and such so that ain't helping.
I do love the whole scenario that came out of it however, with the three countries fighting to a stalemate everytime for 1700 years!

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Been looking into this story yesterday, reading all he wrote about it and damn that sounds amazing! I'm afraid the game will be too dated for me to get into, I also loathe RTS games and such so that ain't helping. I do love the whole scenario that came out of it however, with the three countries fighting to a stalemate everytime for 1700 years!

Civ isn't an RTS. It's turn-based.

@VanillaPlant said:

@Kidavenger: First off, the game will literally slow to a crawl unless you have a gdlk computer. On my i7 computer with 8gb of memory, it could take upwards of 5 minutes between my turns. Also, there are a lot fewer options late game in Civ 5, politics boils down to buying off city states to win the UN, and there aren't any major consequences for mismanaging your populace (iirc, having an unhappy populace just reduces production and growth rate). The AIs is dumb as bricks tactically, which takes away from the fun of the new combat system.

What? I have an early i7 and 6gb ram and I've never had a problem.

Reading this thread inspired me to attempt to install Civ 3 and Civ 4 onto my laptop. Unfortunately, my 10-year-old Civ 3 disc was too worn out to even be read by my DVD drive and I kept receiving an error when trying to put in the second disc for installation of Civ 4. After searching for torrents, I tried downloading Civ 3 and it was taking too long. No epic strategy goodness for me :[

@McGhee said:

Sounds cool on paper but sounds like shit to play.

If you're just basing your opinions of how it plays on how it sounds like it plays, then you just said "It sounds cool on paper, but it sounds like shit on paper."

@Brodehouse said:

? The problem in that game is actually that the game lacks the depth to maintain the 'proper' play experience (and to be perfectly fair, there's no way to plan for that use case). I played a lot of Civ2 and there was truly only two ways to play that game; the right way and the wrong way. If you didn't play with the one build order that always won, you were playing that game wrong. If you didn't rush Pyramids to Great Library to Invention, you were allowing yourself to lose.

That was a problem a lot of games had at the time, and I don't think it had to do with how the game was designed in terms of mechanics and more in terms of how it was balanced. I mean, the only reason Civ V is any different is because it's so damn easy. But against other people, there are totally strategies that are wayyyy easier to win with than others.

@kmdrkul said:

Reading this thread inspired me to attempt to install Civ 3 and Civ 4 onto my laptop. Unfortunately, my 10-year-old Civ 3 disc was too worn out to even be read by my DVD drive and I kept receiving an error when trying to put in the second disc for installation of Civ 4. After searching for torrents, I tried downloading Civ 3 and it was taking too long. No epic strategy goodness for me :[

http://store.steampowered.com/app/3910/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4323/

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@kmdrkul said:

Reading this thread inspired me to attempt to install Civ 3 and Civ 4 onto my laptop. Unfortunately, my 10-year-old Civ 3 disc was too worn out to even be read by my DVD drive and I kept receiving an error when trying to put in the second disc for installation of Civ 4. After searching for torrents, I tried downloading Civ 3 and it was taking too long. No epic strategy goodness for me :[

http://store.steampowered.com/app/3910/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4323/

The only thing that is really keeping me from pulling the trigger on either of those is the Windows 7 compatibility. Can you confirm whether either of them will work SMOOTHLY after necessary patches?

@kmdrkul said:

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@kmdrkul said:

Reading this thread inspired me to attempt to install Civ 3 and Civ 4 onto my laptop. Unfortunately, my 10-year-old Civ 3 disc was too worn out to even be read by my DVD drive and I kept receiving an error when trying to put in the second disc for installation of Civ 4. After searching for torrents, I tried downloading Civ 3 and it was taking too long. No epic strategy goodness for me :[

http://store.steampowered.com/app/3910/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4323/

The only thing that is really keeping me from pulling the trigger on either of those is the Windows 7 compatibility. Can you confirm whether either of them will work SMOOTHLY after necessary patches?

Not sure. I'll let you know, I'll probably pick these up soon, assuming the paperwork allowing me to start work ever arrives at their office. I'd say these would probably be ok, maybe needing an unofficial patch. Fallout 2 did, but with that works fine.

I just remember the most perfect game of Civ i ever played, it was Civ 2, on the mediterranean map, I played as the baylonians and started in North Africa. I focused on science and got to gunpowder before everyone else, then made sure not to give it to anyone else. I built a handful of muksketeer units and some dragoons, moved clockwise around the Mediterranean wiping out every civilization on the map, completely wiping out their primitive armies with the power of the gun. In a dozen turns or so I had completely conquered the entire map.

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@kmdrkul said:

@MordeaniisChaos said:

@kmdrkul said:

Reading this thread inspired me to attempt to install Civ 3 and Civ 4 onto my laptop. Unfortunately, my 10-year-old Civ 3 disc was too worn out to even be read by my DVD drive and I kept receiving an error when trying to put in the second disc for installation of Civ 4. After searching for torrents, I tried downloading Civ 3 and it was taking too long. No epic strategy goodness for me :[

http://store.steampowered.com/app/3910/?snr=1_7_suggest__13

http://store.steampowered.com/sub/4323/

The only thing that is really keeping me from pulling the trigger on either of those is the Windows 7 compatibility. Can you confirm whether either of them will work SMOOTHLY after necessary patches?

Not sure. I'll let you know, I'll probably pick these up soon, assuming the paperwork allowing me to start work ever arrives at their office. I'd say these would probably be ok, maybe needing an unofficial patch. Fallout 2 did, but with that works fine.

I bought Civ 3 Complete off of Steam and it worked like a charm right out of downloading it :D

@kmdrkul: thats great to know, thanks

This 3 Supernations endless war and all three countries being brutal, oppressive reigmes remeinds me of 1984.
 
War is Peace brothers lol

This could happen in civ v. But it would be different. For one thing, nukes are so gosh-darn uneconomical in civ v that stealth bombers are much better in virtually every imagineable way. They have nigh infinite range, can be rebased quickly, can cross oceans to move and strike from the other side of a continent. They don't dissolve into a radioactive slop when they attack either, and logistics and air repair basically turn them into twostealth bombers, and with promotions, they can sometimes kill cities in a turn or two, and always annihilate anything short of a GDR in a similar period, usually less. No unit or city in sight would last a turn in a stealth bomber endgame. And with 6 tiles of sight, stealth bombers are their own spotters. A GDR vs. Fully anti-GDR stealth bombers would last about 2-5 attacks, with the most common being three. And stealth bombers never die except if placed in a city that gets captured by the enemy. They are like nuke factories that produce a nuke a turn.