Cassius Critzer
King
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2017
- Messages
- 918
I hardly expected it to be possible, but here is a general method by which any android capable tablet (even my old Nook HD which uses the oldest obsolete OS ice cream sandwich) can run Civ 2. I'm creating the topic as obviously many people have played Civ 2 (nearly a million in the fanbase) and would like to play it since it still is actually better than 99% of the current strategy games for the Android market. Which mean despite originally coming out in 1996, it is superior to strategy games today! Shocking,no?
Many techheads could use dos emulators as aps. This allows a base upon which to then load a free Windows 3.11 legacy OS. Then you load Civ 2 onto your system.
That has worked for several, but not for me.
The second way is to use one of the WINE emulators to create a windows environment, then load Civ 2. This was ridiculously simple to do. In ten minutes, I was playing a game, downloading new maps and scenarios, and using the built in editor to make my own scenario.
It is not necessary to "root" your android to do this. Even if you can't "sideload" aps, you still can do it. My Nook is a very low end device basically disabled from using anything outside of Google, but still I found free ways to make it work.
Additionally you can use a free Playstation 1 emulator and go that route too, but I have little knowledge on the methodology.
I have playing for two weeks, but along the way I had crashes. Recently I discovered that while the utilities on the forum don't work, you can use a memory ap to free up as much as possible, thus the system is now 99% stable. Looking around the forum, and elsewhere, it seems there are two culprits. First Civ 2 is a memory hog. Second, many old tablets had very little usable memory because they we designed to be running many basic aps in the background such that 75% of usable memory was already allocated.
If you do this as I have, you can even stream music while playing Civ 2 which makes up for the lack of music from the internet archive. You sacrifice five percent of stability doing this though.
Feel free to send me a pm if you want tips on how to do this for free. Civ 2 is now abandonware and even is hosted at the internet archive (but stripped down of music files).
The must frustrating thing is trying to what formerly was quite simple. There are lots of folks in the community who made unit graphics, and on a desktop or laptop system, it was easy to use Gimp and cut and paste from one unit.gif and into the original unit.gif...but this is very difficult in my opinion on an android tablet. I have not have any success getting any graphics programs to correctly cut and paste . Any ideas?
I created several units: a berserker from the Viking dark ages era, a samurai, a common early spearman in the early era, a spy satellite, and a nuclear sub capable of hauling around nukes (though I wonder if the AI will actually use it?). But the graphics are wrong since I'm using the original unit.gif file.
It was easy to adjust the tech tree, change the tech rate, create base cities for all the seven civs, add money, etc. It was no problem at all to make logical choices for unit stats, nor make the proper tech changes so units don't show up too early ( as the basic game is faulty).
Now if I could get the unit graphic correct, I would be quite happy.
Note by changing the rules.txt you can pick which seven civs show up, and I found the answer to configuring that right here on the forum as well as most of the details above.
If you do use a giant map, which I am for seven civilizations, then since they are quite isolated in the first several thousand years, then it may seem " glacial" in terms of genuine conflict, but allows the civs to get stronger eventually by building infrastructure. The biggest issue with giant map is there are only seven civilizations plus the barbarians (such as they are). Which means you could fill up continents with each civilization,but then their tech rate would be too fast from high income. Starting them with five or ten seems to work okay. I'm using the Sioux, the Aztecs, the Zulu, the Romans, the Vikings, the Chinese, and the Japanese. If you try putting them too close together then it doesn't work well for expansion, and futile conflict occurs due to the limited AI.
I would bet I have visited the forum every day for two weeks to download a map, look at other scenarios, look at tips on altering parameters in the rules.txt, to learn how to add additional city names, etc etc. The forum is very helpful. I never though I would playing such a venerable game on a tablet.
Note the download section for Civ 2 lacks a link from within the forum to Civ 2 modpacks. I tried to add those links but apparently lack enough access to add links yet even if they are from this very forum. Additionally I tried to link to Denis Kozhin's extra large map from this forum, but the system software thought it was spam. Too funny.
Sadly, while it is possible to run Civ 3 on some high end tablets, that is not free and would require buying a new tablet for me as well. So that is within the realm of possibility but 90% of folks would probably forego attempting this.
Many techheads could use dos emulators as aps. This allows a base upon which to then load a free Windows 3.11 legacy OS. Then you load Civ 2 onto your system.
That has worked for several, but not for me.
The second way is to use one of the WINE emulators to create a windows environment, then load Civ 2. This was ridiculously simple to do. In ten minutes, I was playing a game, downloading new maps and scenarios, and using the built in editor to make my own scenario.
It is not necessary to "root" your android to do this. Even if you can't "sideload" aps, you still can do it. My Nook is a very low end device basically disabled from using anything outside of Google, but still I found free ways to make it work.
Additionally you can use a free Playstation 1 emulator and go that route too, but I have little knowledge on the methodology.
I have playing for two weeks, but along the way I had crashes. Recently I discovered that while the utilities on the forum don't work, you can use a memory ap to free up as much as possible, thus the system is now 99% stable. Looking around the forum, and elsewhere, it seems there are two culprits. First Civ 2 is a memory hog. Second, many old tablets had very little usable memory because they we designed to be running many basic aps in the background such that 75% of usable memory was already allocated.
If you do this as I have, you can even stream music while playing Civ 2 which makes up for the lack of music from the internet archive. You sacrifice five percent of stability doing this though.
Feel free to send me a pm if you want tips on how to do this for free. Civ 2 is now abandonware and even is hosted at the internet archive (but stripped down of music files).
The must frustrating thing is trying to what formerly was quite simple. There are lots of folks in the community who made unit graphics, and on a desktop or laptop system, it was easy to use Gimp and cut and paste from one unit.gif and into the original unit.gif...but this is very difficult in my opinion on an android tablet. I have not have any success getting any graphics programs to correctly cut and paste . Any ideas?
I created several units: a berserker from the Viking dark ages era, a samurai, a common early spearman in the early era, a spy satellite, and a nuclear sub capable of hauling around nukes (though I wonder if the AI will actually use it?). But the graphics are wrong since I'm using the original unit.gif file.
It was easy to adjust the tech tree, change the tech rate, create base cities for all the seven civs, add money, etc. It was no problem at all to make logical choices for unit stats, nor make the proper tech changes so units don't show up too early ( as the basic game is faulty).
Now if I could get the unit graphic correct, I would be quite happy.
Note by changing the rules.txt you can pick which seven civs show up, and I found the answer to configuring that right here on the forum as well as most of the details above.
If you do use a giant map, which I am for seven civilizations, then since they are quite isolated in the first several thousand years, then it may seem " glacial" in terms of genuine conflict, but allows the civs to get stronger eventually by building infrastructure. The biggest issue with giant map is there are only seven civilizations plus the barbarians (such as they are). Which means you could fill up continents with each civilization,but then their tech rate would be too fast from high income. Starting them with five or ten seems to work okay. I'm using the Sioux, the Aztecs, the Zulu, the Romans, the Vikings, the Chinese, and the Japanese. If you try putting them too close together then it doesn't work well for expansion, and futile conflict occurs due to the limited AI.
I would bet I have visited the forum every day for two weeks to download a map, look at other scenarios, look at tips on altering parameters in the rules.txt, to learn how to add additional city names, etc etc. The forum is very helpful. I never though I would playing such a venerable game on a tablet.
Note the download section for Civ 2 lacks a link from within the forum to Civ 2 modpacks. I tried to add those links but apparently lack enough access to add links yet even if they are from this very forum. Additionally I tried to link to Denis Kozhin's extra large map from this forum, but the system software thought it was spam. Too funny.
Sadly, while it is possible to run Civ 3 on some high end tablets, that is not free and would require buying a new tablet for me as well. So that is within the realm of possibility but 90% of folks would probably forego attempting this.
Last edited: