Civilization II | Hacker News Reader

Civilization II

abortretry.fail

69 pointsBirAdam55 comments

It 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.

https://youtu.be/neT7rGCzCoY

https://youtu.be/-jj6dttx2t0

https://youtu.be/eMW0VXa2UFA

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

I 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.

Very American indeed.

"Oh for a muse of fire..."

This 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.

Do 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.

The 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.

And 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.

Civ6 presentation is the best overall, but the core gameplay is awful. Easily the worst gameplay wise.

A shame because of how beautiful Civ6 is.

-----

Civ4 combat is worse IMO but Civ4 makes it up with a fun growth system and excellent city planning. And also CIV4 is by far the best music of the series, and best narrator Lenard Nemoy.

Civ6 is the one for me and my son. It’s a ton of fun, and his social studies grades have improved quite a bit. I knew I’d successfully infected him with “one more turn syndrome” when I caught him up at 3AM on a school night solo’ing one of our multiplayer saves. I didn’t know if I should be angry or proud. On one hand, I knew he’d be a zombie at school that day. On the other hand, he was playing a game that teaches things… these days, he’s a teenager and he’s more interested in what his friends want to do, but he still plays civ when his friends aren’t online, and he and I still play on rainy days.

I'm curious, how are you guys playing? 1vs1 or together playing single player?

I'm always impressed that people manage to start playing the series today, with Civ 6, considering how many mechanics and systems it's accumulated over the years.

My son and I play co-op vs computer opponents. I offer to 1v1 but he always says no.

Civ2 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.

I 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.

Alpha centauri

This is the next in the series that I plan to cover :-)

This 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.

I 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.

Civ6 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.

The 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.

For me it's Civ III. I love the more graphical details but still non-3D aesthetic.

I’m the same way, something about the graphics is just perfect. Similar to Factorio for me.

It takes years or decades for 3D to catch up to where the best 2D games were graphically.

That's a real hard question, but a much easier question is "Which Civ game had the best opening music?" Which is obviously Civ 4 with that absolute banger, Baba Yetu. I still get chills when I hear it.

So while my memories of each Civ game may not be terribly strong, I think I've probably played the most hours of 4, and again, that song. I think that's where my vote has to go.

Baba Yetu is great but opening of Civ 1 was so inspiring (if you had a good MIDI box, I don't remember it sounding this good tho https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrRGfHArMNA )

I don't think so. I played the original Civ on my Amiga, I love #6 but my favourite was probably #4. I'm not sure where that'd put my estimated age but likely lower than it is.

That seems likely. To me the original is still the best. Its killer feature is that you can play a game in a single sitting. Breaking up a game over multiple days kills that absolute immersion that is the hallmark of a Civilization game.

I agree. What revolutionized it was playing it on dial up with friends. My best friend lived a town over so it was a great way to hang out and conquer the world at the same time.

For me Civ iii has the most fleshed gameplay, dlc are coherent, and you get plenty mods. Civ iv had the best ux and ergonomic, but dlc don't really interoperate that well each other they just seem tackled to the game.

My 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.

Weird, the sky outside is turning blue...

Oh! It’s 5am!

Just one more turn and I’ll go to bed.

@7am: well, I’m now well into the day. Might as well just stay up. One more turn and I’ll go eat breakfast…

Yes, 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.

Yeah, 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.

I've played two games in my life with a similar fervor, Civ2 was one, the other was Factorio. Historians will remember these games.

I 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)?

Something 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.

That description feels too much like work to me.

Factorio as a game is basically software improvement/maintenance as a game.

In some ways it is, but the main difference for me is that things work. It's like only having the good parts of the job :)

It’s all the good dopamine hitting parts of work with none of the BS.

The 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.

Was it this game where as you progressed you could pimp up your throne room?

That 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.

It definitely was there in Civ 2, that's the only Civ I've played and I remember the throne room well.

Vanilla Civ 2 had the throne room, but it was removed in the Test of Time version.

Civ III had this feature as well, starting with the throne then out to the palace architecture and the wider palace complex

I remember this fondly. Too bad they took it out.

I definitely spent at least one or two winter vacations playing Civ II non-stop. Good times.

Same. It was also a game that I was “sick” and therefore couldn’t go to school and spent the day playing…

In case anyone here has missed, Civ 7 has recently been confirmed to be in the works.

I 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.

I played CivII more than any game since.

It’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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com