I'd just like to take the opportunity to let out some steam.
1. Poor visibility of player colors
I find it rather annoying that some colors are all but invisible on the small world map which is displayed in the upper right corner. It means that when you want to be able to see your cities properly, you have to assign your civilization a lighter color by changing the rules.txt file before you start a new game.
Changes made after you've started the game, won't, strangely enough, affect the world map. They'll show only on the main map. An example: there was a game where my cities were displayed in all-but-invisible dark blue while one of the CP's the Celts were white. I didn't like that. I wanted my cities to be the ones best visible. So I edited the file rules.txt by changing my color to white and the Celts' to blue. When I loaded my saved game, the main map showed my cities in white and Celtic cities in blue, as it should, but on the world map the colors remained the way they had been before. Weird. From then on, I always make sure before each new game that my color is set to white or yellow the only two colors that are properly visible.
Which still leaves us with the problem that the white and yellow color are somewhat difficult to tell apart. The white and yellow cities are clearly distinguishable all right, but the enemy units that have crept up close to my territory sometimes escape my attention.
I don't suppose there is a way around that?
2. City names
The authors of the game have, firstly, failed miserably with their choice of cities, and, secondly, many names are incorrect. Like, they seem to believe that the only Celts are the Welsh, and that the Germans have cities like Munich and Nuremberg. And don't tell me to play the German version to have München instead of Munich. I don't want to play the German version. Even in the English version, a foreign civilization is supposed to use foreign names. There is no logical reason in the world why Romans would name a city "Rome" or Russians "Moscow".
What's even worse the city names are way too few. By the 20th century, usually all computer players have run out of their native city names, so you will see Zulus and Aztecs name their cities Cannae and Capua. What is even more absurd is that the AI doesn't check if a name is already in use, so you might well see four Cannaes in the world at the same time.
It is the definition of "mind-blowing". I mean, how is it possible that a large team of people which did such an immense work creating all the game's ingenious details couldn't be bothered to spend a few days in a library to make up a sufficient number of realistic placenames? I did that job for them and created my own city.txt file.
By the way, now that there's Wikipedia and Google Maps, it's great fun to do research to find placenames for the civilizations that aren't included in the original game like the Portuguese, or even the Bretons.
3. The human player and the computer players are not treated equally.
A few examples:
1) A CP can require that I pay him a specific amount of money or reveal a specific technology. I can't. All that I can do is to demand tribute. How much it's going to be is up to the CP.
2) A CP can send an emissary to me inamidst of my turn. I can never interfere with a CP's turn.
3) When I steal technology, I get declared war almost every time. When a CP steals technology from me, though, I am often not allowed to declare war on him without damaging my reputation.
On the other hand, the new feature of reputation is virtually meaningless anyway. After several games in which I saw to it carefully that I always kept my word, I came to the realization that it was pointless. When you have a bad reputation, you might unexpectedly get a notice like "Sneak attack by Indian forces" and the enemy attacks you unwarned. When your reputation is good, though, you are approached by an emissary out of the bright sky who tells you something like "Your civilization makes us laugh. We agree not to crush you if you pay us 500 gold." If you reply "We are not intimidated by threats," he gets mad and declares war on you, and you are still attacked before you can prepare your defenses. So what's the difference between having a good and a bad reputation? Beats me. Now I just laugh when I see a CP waste his resources on building the Eiffel Tower.
4. The diplomats' excessive arrogance
The diplomacy is supposed to be "the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock". In Civ II, it is the exact opposite the art of insulting your counterpart as much as you can, even when you are clearly to weak to afford to anger him. I understand that it was characteristical for primitive civilizations to have their envoys act haughtily, but the game of Civ II is really overdoing it. It is a kind of anti-diplomacy whose purpose seems to be to provoke the other country to war.
5. A few arithmetical flaws
The 50 percent growth in terrain stats is mostly useless, because it upgrades 1 to 1.5 which is rounded down to 1.
The Civilopedia lies about the improvement rates of certain city improvements. For instance, Bank is claimed to increase your tax income "by an additional 50% (cumulative with Marketplace)". So what would you expect when you were getting four coins, increased to six by Marketplace? Fifty percent of six is three, so you'd be getting nine, right? Wrong! You'll only get 50% of the original four, i.e. the tax income after you've built the Bank is eight coins. That's not 50% cumulative with Marketplace. It's the opposite what the Bank adds to your tax income is 50% of your original tax income, not counting the effects of the Marketplace.
In exactly the same way, the Civilopedia misleads the players about the gain from University.
As to the power stations, a Hydro Plant is supposed to "increase Factory output by 50 %", and Hoover Dam is supposed to count as a Hydro Plant in each city. In reality, though, Hoover Dam increases the number of shields by 1/3, that is, doubles the Factory output.
Darwin's Voyage is supposed to give you two free technologies. That is not quite the case. If you have already completed, like, 60% of the research for the next technology, and then build Darwin's Voyage, you'll get two technologies all right, but that 60% is lost you'll start researching the nect technology from zero. So you'll need to be very careful with your timing when building Darwin's Voyage.
6. CP airplanes not falling down
This seems to be a bug. I've seen it happen a few times how a CP's Stealth Fighter unit remains standing in the air after his turn, although it is supposed to run out of fuel. I haven't succeeded in finding out whether they fall down before the CP's next turn or return home, so I destroy them just to be on the safe side.
Anybody know about this?
7. I find it extremely annoying that whenever a Submarine leaves a city, it takes along the missiles that are there. A Transport takes only units which I have put to sleep, but missiles are loaded onto a Submarine automatically. How many times have I wasted one move for a missile because I moved a Submarine first and then noticed that the damned thing had dragged the missile along! I so hate it.
Is there any way around it??
8. A Stealth Bomber getting a defense bonus from a difficult terrain is absurd.
9. It is also rather unrealistic that Submarines are allowed to attack Helicopters.
10. Cities can be spynuked without any punishment.
Stealing technology is (most of the time) a casus belli, but murdering half of the city's population, destroying several military units and polluting the vicinity leaves the empires in peace. Even the Spy who did it comes home, whereas a Spy who has stolen a tech advance is usually captured. That is grossly out of proportion.
11. Striking stupidity of the CPs' military tactics
I fully understand that back in the 90's when Civ II was created, the computer speeds didn't allow for complicated cooperation strategies between CP military units. That is, however, no excuse for follies such as:
1) a Helicopter attacking a Battleship;
2) a Cruise Msl. attacking an AEGIS Cruiser;
3) a CP sending three Nuclear Msl. units against the same city (which has SDI Defense) during one turn. And that was the Emperor level!
Those actions have nothing to do with limited computer power, they're only manifestations of the game developers' sloppy work. I mean, it is understandable when I, only a human, forget that a city had an SDI and waste another Nuclear Msl., but shouldn't a computer with all its millions of bytes of memory be able to remember something as trivial as that? It would not have slowed the game down if they had made it check whether or not the CP had discovered an SDI Defense in the target city before sending out a Nuclear Msl.
12. CPs' half-assed attacks
There is this situation I'm sure many of you have observed. The enemy has built a fortress in the distance of two or three squares from a city of his, but, for some strange reason, left it unoccupied. I occupy it with two defensive units and one offensive unit. The enemy builds an offensive unit, attacks the fortress, one of my defensive units takes the attack and wins the battle. In the course of time, the enemy builds another offensive unit and the whole scenario is repeated. In case the enemy happens to build a new attacker faster than my defender recovers, I have another defender to take over, and meanwhile the first defender will be back at full strength. In case the attacker beats my defender, it loses its movement points, remains standing next to the fortress and is destroyed on the next turn by my offensive unit, who remains in the fortress, protected by the second defensive unit. While the next attacker is built, I have time to send another defensive into the fortress. Even in situations when I have no opportunity to replace the defenders, the three units in a fortress usually destroy ten or twenty units before they get destroyed themselves. Often even a single defender in a fortress can hold on for a long time and cause great damage simply by standing still and doing nothing. The CP hasn't been taught to build a larger group of units to attack me after the first unsuccessful attempts. He won't even simply leave me alone. No, he just keeps wasting his city's resources on building troops that get sent into pointless death. That is hilarious. Makes me feel like those legendary Finnish snipers in the Winter War.
Another example of the same kind: A much stronger enemy kept attacking my city from another continent with ships. He had immense numbers of ships, I have no idea how he managed to build so many. And he kept crushing them against my two Mech.Inf's supported by Coastal Fortress and Barracks. One attack wave followed another, ship after ship was destroyed. However, he never sent enough ships at the same time to destroy both defenders. He rarely even managed to kill one. Generally, by the next attack, my Mech.Inf's were back at full strength (thanks to Barracks) to take on another couple of ships. The enemy would routinely lose a score of ships against one of my Mech.Inf's.
By the way, the AI generally tends to build incredible amounts of ships that do little more than sit next to each other and move back and forth without destination, one ship going to the square were another ship just was and vice versa. I seriously don't understand how the CP's can afford to build literally dozens of ships to just hang around, while I find myself putting out fires most of the time, spread thin like the Germans in World War II. What a delight the CPs' ship fetish becomes after I have invented the Nuclear Msl. unit! I can routinely destroy several ships with one Nuclear, because the enemy ships are usually being kept so close to each other. And already one Battleship costs as much as a Nuclear Msl!
Those are the reasons why I am reluctant to refer to the CP's as "AI" the "I" seems rather inappropriate.
13. Unproportionally strong defenses
The most irritating flaw of Civ II is how it discourages war. The defense units are so strong that the attacker's losses are usually several times higher than the defender's. Once I happened to choose too difficult a level by accident. I couldn't handle the game and was very much behind in technology. Yet, they couldn't beat me militarily. The enemies managed to conquer about a fifth of my cities with rather big losses, but the rest held on and they gave up their offensives. Indeed, it is not difficult to end up in a stalemate where none of the empires can beat the others. Even when you get an obviously decisive advantage (like, you have five times more cities than the enemies), it usually takes an overlong campaign, during which you are bored stiff, waiting for your troops being built and then transporting them across the world on those slow ships. You'll spend many, many tedious hours moving scores of units closer to the enemy step by step, wishing to be finally done with that damned game and to be able to start a new one.
Another feature that discourages war is that the conqueror of a city automatically gets one tech advance (as long as there is one to rob). So you can't afford to lose a single city. Even when the enemy takes back his own city you conquered just a moment ago, he still gets a tech advance from you. That nonsense means you can only afford to attack when you have so massive an advantage that, after conquering a city, you can send in overkill defense forces. That, unfortunately, slows down your progress in the early stages of the game significantly. And by the time when everything has been discovered so that technology doesn't matter anymore, the defenses will be so strong that even when the enemy is hopelessly outnumbered, it takes an eternity to smoke him out of his shell.
As I really hated that, I used the opportunity generously offered by the programmers to create three civilization advances and three military units of my own, suitable for enforcing a relatively quick solution one way or another in the late stage of the game. Only then did Civ II become properly playable.
1. Poor visibility of player colors
I find it rather annoying that some colors are all but invisible on the small world map which is displayed in the upper right corner. It means that when you want to be able to see your cities properly, you have to assign your civilization a lighter color by changing the rules.txt file before you start a new game.
Changes made after you've started the game, won't, strangely enough, affect the world map. They'll show only on the main map. An example: there was a game where my cities were displayed in all-but-invisible dark blue while one of the CP's the Celts were white. I didn't like that. I wanted my cities to be the ones best visible. So I edited the file rules.txt by changing my color to white and the Celts' to blue. When I loaded my saved game, the main map showed my cities in white and Celtic cities in blue, as it should, but on the world map the colors remained the way they had been before. Weird. From then on, I always make sure before each new game that my color is set to white or yellow the only two colors that are properly visible.
Which still leaves us with the problem that the white and yellow color are somewhat difficult to tell apart. The white and yellow cities are clearly distinguishable all right, but the enemy units that have crept up close to my territory sometimes escape my attention.
I don't suppose there is a way around that?
2. City names
The authors of the game have, firstly, failed miserably with their choice of cities, and, secondly, many names are incorrect. Like, they seem to believe that the only Celts are the Welsh, and that the Germans have cities like Munich and Nuremberg. And don't tell me to play the German version to have München instead of Munich. I don't want to play the German version. Even in the English version, a foreign civilization is supposed to use foreign names. There is no logical reason in the world why Romans would name a city "Rome" or Russians "Moscow".
What's even worse the city names are way too few. By the 20th century, usually all computer players have run out of their native city names, so you will see Zulus and Aztecs name their cities Cannae and Capua. What is even more absurd is that the AI doesn't check if a name is already in use, so you might well see four Cannaes in the world at the same time.
It is the definition of "mind-blowing". I mean, how is it possible that a large team of people which did such an immense work creating all the game's ingenious details couldn't be bothered to spend a few days in a library to make up a sufficient number of realistic placenames? I did that job for them and created my own city.txt file.
By the way, now that there's Wikipedia and Google Maps, it's great fun to do research to find placenames for the civilizations that aren't included in the original game like the Portuguese, or even the Bretons.
3. The human player and the computer players are not treated equally.
A few examples:
1) A CP can require that I pay him a specific amount of money or reveal a specific technology. I can't. All that I can do is to demand tribute. How much it's going to be is up to the CP.
2) A CP can send an emissary to me inamidst of my turn. I can never interfere with a CP's turn.
3) When I steal technology, I get declared war almost every time. When a CP steals technology from me, though, I am often not allowed to declare war on him without damaging my reputation.
On the other hand, the new feature of reputation is virtually meaningless anyway. After several games in which I saw to it carefully that I always kept my word, I came to the realization that it was pointless. When you have a bad reputation, you might unexpectedly get a notice like "Sneak attack by Indian forces" and the enemy attacks you unwarned. When your reputation is good, though, you are approached by an emissary out of the bright sky who tells you something like "Your civilization makes us laugh. We agree not to crush you if you pay us 500 gold." If you reply "We are not intimidated by threats," he gets mad and declares war on you, and you are still attacked before you can prepare your defenses. So what's the difference between having a good and a bad reputation? Beats me. Now I just laugh when I see a CP waste his resources on building the Eiffel Tower.
4. The diplomats' excessive arrogance
The diplomacy is supposed to be "the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock". In Civ II, it is the exact opposite the art of insulting your counterpart as much as you can, even when you are clearly to weak to afford to anger him. I understand that it was characteristical for primitive civilizations to have their envoys act haughtily, but the game of Civ II is really overdoing it. It is a kind of anti-diplomacy whose purpose seems to be to provoke the other country to war.
5. A few arithmetical flaws
The 50 percent growth in terrain stats is mostly useless, because it upgrades 1 to 1.5 which is rounded down to 1.
The Civilopedia lies about the improvement rates of certain city improvements. For instance, Bank is claimed to increase your tax income "by an additional 50% (cumulative with Marketplace)". So what would you expect when you were getting four coins, increased to six by Marketplace? Fifty percent of six is three, so you'd be getting nine, right? Wrong! You'll only get 50% of the original four, i.e. the tax income after you've built the Bank is eight coins. That's not 50% cumulative with Marketplace. It's the opposite what the Bank adds to your tax income is 50% of your original tax income, not counting the effects of the Marketplace.
In exactly the same way, the Civilopedia misleads the players about the gain from University.
As to the power stations, a Hydro Plant is supposed to "increase Factory output by 50 %", and Hoover Dam is supposed to count as a Hydro Plant in each city. In reality, though, Hoover Dam increases the number of shields by 1/3, that is, doubles the Factory output.
Darwin's Voyage is supposed to give you two free technologies. That is not quite the case. If you have already completed, like, 60% of the research for the next technology, and then build Darwin's Voyage, you'll get two technologies all right, but that 60% is lost you'll start researching the nect technology from zero. So you'll need to be very careful with your timing when building Darwin's Voyage.
6. CP airplanes not falling down
This seems to be a bug. I've seen it happen a few times how a CP's Stealth Fighter unit remains standing in the air after his turn, although it is supposed to run out of fuel. I haven't succeeded in finding out whether they fall down before the CP's next turn or return home, so I destroy them just to be on the safe side.
Anybody know about this?
7. I find it extremely annoying that whenever a Submarine leaves a city, it takes along the missiles that are there. A Transport takes only units which I have put to sleep, but missiles are loaded onto a Submarine automatically. How many times have I wasted one move for a missile because I moved a Submarine first and then noticed that the damned thing had dragged the missile along! I so hate it.
Is there any way around it??
8. A Stealth Bomber getting a defense bonus from a difficult terrain is absurd.
9. It is also rather unrealistic that Submarines are allowed to attack Helicopters.
10. Cities can be spynuked without any punishment.
Stealing technology is (most of the time) a casus belli, but murdering half of the city's population, destroying several military units and polluting the vicinity leaves the empires in peace. Even the Spy who did it comes home, whereas a Spy who has stolen a tech advance is usually captured. That is grossly out of proportion.
11. Striking stupidity of the CPs' military tactics
I fully understand that back in the 90's when Civ II was created, the computer speeds didn't allow for complicated cooperation strategies between CP military units. That is, however, no excuse for follies such as:
1) a Helicopter attacking a Battleship;
2) a Cruise Msl. attacking an AEGIS Cruiser;
3) a CP sending three Nuclear Msl. units against the same city (which has SDI Defense) during one turn. And that was the Emperor level!
Those actions have nothing to do with limited computer power, they're only manifestations of the game developers' sloppy work. I mean, it is understandable when I, only a human, forget that a city had an SDI and waste another Nuclear Msl., but shouldn't a computer with all its millions of bytes of memory be able to remember something as trivial as that? It would not have slowed the game down if they had made it check whether or not the CP had discovered an SDI Defense in the target city before sending out a Nuclear Msl.
12. CPs' half-assed attacks
There is this situation I'm sure many of you have observed. The enemy has built a fortress in the distance of two or three squares from a city of his, but, for some strange reason, left it unoccupied. I occupy it with two defensive units and one offensive unit. The enemy builds an offensive unit, attacks the fortress, one of my defensive units takes the attack and wins the battle. In the course of time, the enemy builds another offensive unit and the whole scenario is repeated. In case the enemy happens to build a new attacker faster than my defender recovers, I have another defender to take over, and meanwhile the first defender will be back at full strength. In case the attacker beats my defender, it loses its movement points, remains standing next to the fortress and is destroyed on the next turn by my offensive unit, who remains in the fortress, protected by the second defensive unit. While the next attacker is built, I have time to send another defensive into the fortress. Even in situations when I have no opportunity to replace the defenders, the three units in a fortress usually destroy ten or twenty units before they get destroyed themselves. Often even a single defender in a fortress can hold on for a long time and cause great damage simply by standing still and doing nothing. The CP hasn't been taught to build a larger group of units to attack me after the first unsuccessful attempts. He won't even simply leave me alone. No, he just keeps wasting his city's resources on building troops that get sent into pointless death. That is hilarious. Makes me feel like those legendary Finnish snipers in the Winter War.
Another example of the same kind: A much stronger enemy kept attacking my city from another continent with ships. He had immense numbers of ships, I have no idea how he managed to build so many. And he kept crushing them against my two Mech.Inf's supported by Coastal Fortress and Barracks. One attack wave followed another, ship after ship was destroyed. However, he never sent enough ships at the same time to destroy both defenders. He rarely even managed to kill one. Generally, by the next attack, my Mech.Inf's were back at full strength (thanks to Barracks) to take on another couple of ships. The enemy would routinely lose a score of ships against one of my Mech.Inf's.
By the way, the AI generally tends to build incredible amounts of ships that do little more than sit next to each other and move back and forth without destination, one ship going to the square were another ship just was and vice versa. I seriously don't understand how the CP's can afford to build literally dozens of ships to just hang around, while I find myself putting out fires most of the time, spread thin like the Germans in World War II. What a delight the CPs' ship fetish becomes after I have invented the Nuclear Msl. unit! I can routinely destroy several ships with one Nuclear, because the enemy ships are usually being kept so close to each other. And already one Battleship costs as much as a Nuclear Msl!
Those are the reasons why I am reluctant to refer to the CP's as "AI" the "I" seems rather inappropriate.
13. Unproportionally strong defenses
The most irritating flaw of Civ II is how it discourages war. The defense units are so strong that the attacker's losses are usually several times higher than the defender's. Once I happened to choose too difficult a level by accident. I couldn't handle the game and was very much behind in technology. Yet, they couldn't beat me militarily. The enemies managed to conquer about a fifth of my cities with rather big losses, but the rest held on and they gave up their offensives. Indeed, it is not difficult to end up in a stalemate where none of the empires can beat the others. Even when you get an obviously decisive advantage (like, you have five times more cities than the enemies), it usually takes an overlong campaign, during which you are bored stiff, waiting for your troops being built and then transporting them across the world on those slow ships. You'll spend many, many tedious hours moving scores of units closer to the enemy step by step, wishing to be finally done with that damned game and to be able to start a new one.
Another feature that discourages war is that the conqueror of a city automatically gets one tech advance (as long as there is one to rob). So you can't afford to lose a single city. Even when the enemy takes back his own city you conquered just a moment ago, he still gets a tech advance from you. That nonsense means you can only afford to attack when you have so massive an advantage that, after conquering a city, you can send in overkill defense forces. That, unfortunately, slows down your progress in the early stages of the game significantly. And by the time when everything has been discovered so that technology doesn't matter anymore, the defenses will be so strong that even when the enemy is hopelessly outnumbered, it takes an eternity to smoke him out of his shell.
As I really hated that, I used the opportunity generously offered by the programmers to create three civilization advances and three military units of my own, suitable for enforcing a relatively quick solution one way or another in the late stage of the game. Only then did Civ II become properly playable.
