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If you have been around here before and partook in GOTMs in the past, you will definitely be able to do better than Lycerius. While his perseverance is admirable, his Civ2 playing skills are very elementary to say the least.

The real question is how much better? And that is what the GOTM competition is all about.

I haven't submitted a Civ2 GOTM since GOTM 20, I think, but I'll be back for this one. I'm not great at Civ2, and didn't consider myself up to par against the regulars, but how can I NOT come back for this.

-edit-

OR NOT. Dang it! Can't get my the CD drive on my old compy working to reinstall Civ II. No work arounds I know of on 32bit Vista like the computer I have now (don't laugh, it's paid for). Good luck to the rest of you lucky so & so's =D

Ali Ardavan said:

If you have been around here before and partook in GOTMs in the past, you will definitely be able to do better than Lycerius. While his perseverance is admirable, his Civ2 playing skills are very elementary to say the least.

The real question is how much better? And that is what the GOTM competition is all about.

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I agree, I have not played CivII for over 10 years, I think the last time was when I was in high school. I have made pretty good progress in the game I started and I am 50 turns in. Anyone who has played Civ II for any length of time and knows how the AI works can turn things around easily.

GOTM 136 based on the Lycerius game has just been posted. Please join us in the GOTM forum:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...8#post11575628

Ali Ardavan said:

GOTM 136 based on the Lycerius game has just been posted. Please join us in the GOTM forum:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...8#post11575628

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This link doesn't work at present. The link is here. I haven't played civ II in a while, and I never developed my skills to the point of the better players on this forum for sure... and still haven't figured out the logistics of getting it to run on my Windows 7 machine. I haven't looked at the save, but from what I recall of some screenshots, Lycerius didn't use the ICS, correct?

1. Would Lycerius's game have gone more smoothly and not even got close to this point, even with his playing style, had he used ICS spacing from the beginning?

2. Does this whole thing with the seemingly widespread media attention here seem blown out of proportion? I mean, some of the comments by skilled, experienced civ II players seem to indicate that they wouldn't get all too excited about his game for various reasons... I mean yes they would have interest in seeing his game and helping him, of course... but they probably have some other legendary games they think more interesting for various reasons... especially if they hadn't have known about how long he struggled with it and how a stalemate occurred with Lycerius's tactics. Would the internet journalists have done better to consult some of these experienced civ II players first? Or does the extra publicity matter more than anything else?

Spoonwood said:

This link doesn't work at present. The link is here.

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Thanks for the correction. I am not sure what happened. I copy pasted from the other response I made and that one works.

Spoonwood said:

Lycerius didn't use the ICS, correct?

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There is no way to tell. Many cities have been destroyed over time, including two holding wonders.

Spoonwood said:

Would Lycerius's game have gone more smoothly and not even got close to this point, even with his playing style, had he used ICS spacing from the beginning?

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As I mentioned earlier on the fourm, in one of his comments on Redditt, Lycerius says that he believes playing at levels above King is all but unplayable (his posted game is at Warlord level). That is a clear indication that his knowledge of Civ2 was elementary and immature. ICS is irrelevant; had he read the manual completely and applied the knowledge gained, his game would not have gotten to this point. If you play poorly, ICS is not much help.

Spoonwood said:

some of the comments by skilled, experienced civ II players seem to indicate that they wouldn't get all too excited about his game for various reasons... I mean yes they would have interest in seeing his game and helping him, of course... but they probably have some other legendary games they think more interesting for various reasons... especially if they hadn't have known about how long he struggled with it and how a stalemate occurred with Lycerius's tactics. Would the internet journalists have done better to consult some of these experienced civ II players first? Or does the extra publicity matter more than anything else?

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You are right on evey count. We have played some legendary games in the GOTM forum and the current one (GOTM 135) I believe is going to be among them. But as you correctly mentioned at the end, publicity matters. A lot of people including experienced players are excited about this. There is something about the fact that he played this for ten years that has struck a chord with everyone familiar with the game.

Publicity is more important in this case. Ten years of anything is remarkable, ten years in a game three generations out of date says a lot about both the guy and the game. It hardly matters that Lycerius has been making elementary mistakes all along; he's been living a future all sane people fear, a world of uncontrollable horrors we can only struggle against, never prevail upon.

Somebody ran the game with the computer in control of the Celts, and the Americans wiped them out in 50 years. Lycerius could have done much worse. That said, I'd be shocked if at least one of the experts here couldn't clean up the whole mess in 20 turns. See you in the GOTM!

The newsworthy aspect of this whole thing is the Reddit response (and, now, that it is actually newsworthy). Civ 2 simulates some things well, some things not so well, and some things badly. Civ 2 isn't a climate simulator, nor can it simulate the future very well because technology stops progressing -- so the results of this game give little or no insight to a potential reality. That said, describing a world like that makes for an interesting story compared to simply stating that an old game has generated a large response.

If you are looking for simulation and dedication in the civ 2 community, I would say that the Play by Email community (now located mostly on the German civ forum) is the place to look. Several people commit years to playing these games, and there has been lots of work put into making fantastic scenarios.

In the end, without the quantity of publicity, we'd be playing Lycerius' save on Emperor level in a few months time, if we even made it a GOTM at all.

From reading the game description, I dont get how the state of the game can be as 'unwinnable' as it is described, especially when its only on Warlord difficulty.

SDIs in Civ II completely nullify nuke attacks, on the higher difficulties the AI would get these built very quickly, making a nuclear wipeout very unfeasible.

I would like to download the save game though, but where is it?

You can find it here.

...... Now where the heck is my Civ II CD lol

Ah cool. I found it already

To all the people who say this would be impossible in Civ 5 I would like to point out that it would be next to impossible in Civ 4 as well thanks to global warming destroying absolutely everything beyond repair. So let's all hate Civ 4 and proclaim it worse than Civ 2 in every way imaginable!

Interesting.

Maybe...

bhavv said:

From reading the game description, I dont get how the state of the game can be as 'unwinnable' as it is described, especially when its only on Warlord difficulty.

SDIs in Civ II completely nullify nuke attacks, on the higher difficulties the AI would get these built very quickly, making a nuclear wipeout very unfeasible.

I would like to download the save game though, but where is it?

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He said he had a spy problem, with enemy spies planting nukes. This can happen if your treasury is too low, making mass-nuking-by-spy feasible. However, there are strategies to prevent this. Keep your treasury high, place a spy in each city, and place military units in strategic locations between cities so the spies can't use your rail lines to travel from place to place.

PS - I sign up.

Andulias said:

To all the people who say this would be impossible in Civ 5 I would like to point out that it would be next to impossible in Civ 4 as well thanks to global warming destroying absolutely everything beyond repair. So let's all hate Civ 4 and proclaim it worse than Civ 2 in every way imaginable!

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Hehe, well Civ IV IS worse than Civ II was in every way imaginable

Now how do I get this game working on windows 7 64 bit?

Edit - Lovely



I cant get it to detect the CD though, I had to copy the contents of the CD to the HDD, and then install it from there.

You can change the letter of the drive where civ2 cd should be. At the moment I play it without cd but mount a virtual cd which I made from the original.

Where can I get this saved game?
Haven't played Civ 2 since 2001 just want to see what I can do.

The GOTM save can be found here.

The original save can be found here or here.

How can you change difficulty in game?
What is ICS?

Cheers

You can save the game as a scenario. They when playing the scenario, you get to choose your difficulty level.

ICS is Infinite City Sprawl. There is a wealth of discussion on it if you care to look it up.