Civ II Gold Platimum

[dledgard]

I think Sid should bring out a Civ II Platinum Upgrade with new best-of-the-net scenarios and better AI. Some people just can’t get on with Call to Power and Civ III, myself included.

The AI should be able to:
-Send ships with a ground unit inside to occupy undefended coastal cities (this happens a lot)
-Alliances should be easier to negotiate, and powers should be more likely to attack weaker powers (including the human) before they hit Supreme.
-Railroad shouldn’t work in city squares i.e. you pay 1/3 MP for going through a city (changing trains, waiting for other trains to pass) and no +1 Shield for every 2 shields due to the amount of building in the area, and At present you can go from one side of a continent to another for 0 MP!
-Recycling Centres should increase shield production.
-You shouldn’t be able to ship an infinite number of trade units into a particular city, this is unrealistic.
-The AI shouldn’t be able to steal your squares you are cultivating next to neighbouring cities when at peace.
-Units in forts within your city radius shouldn’t be asked to withdraw by a neighbouring city.
-The discovery of computers should give +1 happiness: computer games!
-You should be able to select the city you’re going to trade with off the trade menu, then the trade unit can say which city it is ‘bound for …’ without you having to look it up again; the ‘supplies’ line in the city screen should say whether there is any demand for a particular item before you build a trade unit.
-You should be able to build improvements and units with caravans not just wonders.
-You should be to ‘move to top’ or ‘move to the bottom’ cities from the ‘city status’ list F1 e.g. if they have factories and power plants that don’t need buy orders so you can concentrate on newly conquered cities that need rebuilding.
-Bombers should be able to bomb city improvements.
-Don’t have powers switch to Republic early in the game, it is clearly cheating as the human player can’t sustain a Republic due to disorder and lack of shields.
-Make Communist charge only 1 Food per Engineer. This makes it a much more attractive and realistic government. You can change Communist and above to 1 Food, I do this but it mean other governments get it to which I don’t like.
-Trade routes should be halved for ceasefire, and 0 for at war with a power.
-The AI should build more Trade Units to trade with you and other powers.

Any other ideas?

 

[Stegyre]

-The discovery of computers should give +1 happiness: computer games!

I was thinking it should give a minus to productivity: too much computer games!

 

[dledgard]

Computer themselves do increase productivity though!

 

[The Person]

I think Sid should bring out a Civ II Platinum Upgrade with new best-of-the-net scenarios and better AI.

I just wonder if Sid thinks he should...

But don't get me wrong, I think your idea is good.

 

[Mercator]

I think Sid should bring out a Civ II Platinum Upgrade with new best-of-the-net scenarios and better AI. Some people just can’t get on with Call to Power and Civ III, myself included.

Why on Earth would he do that when he's working on Civ4?
Releasing a new Bestonet selection would be a waste of time. CivFanatics and the Spanish Civ2 Site have great collections, use them. If you want to be sure to have good ones, ask on the forums. Why would you expect Sid to have a better opinion on this when they've all obviously been out of touch with the civ2 community for years? Not to mention their bestonet collections on CiC and FW were crap anyway (oh, hmmm, weren't some of your scenarios in there too? ).

Obviously the AI could need some improvements, but some of the suggestions you're giving are highly debatable. If we'd start going down that road, we'd probably end up being just as satisfied with the platinum edition as we were satisfied with Civ3 after "The List" (i.e. the list of suggestions for Civ3 compiled on Apolyton and actually taken in consideration by Firaxis).

Of course, if this was just a generic AI shortcomings/suggestions thread, don't let me stop you. Be sure to sign the Civ2 Source Code petition, though. We'll need plenty of suggestions and we'll have plenty of opportunity to implement them when we can get the code.

 

[dledgard]

Well in my option Civ III was unplayable so what's to say Civ IV will be any better. It'll just be loads of 3D graphics and movement and no game play. Sid has used his name to get use to buy Call to Power and Civ III just to get our money without having gameplay or a easy to use interface.

I didn't like Fantastic Worlds but did like most C-in-C scenarios. I wrote alt_ww1 and alt_ww79 based on ww1 and ww79 to tackle some shortcomings in the scenarios. I enjoy playing my own scenarios. The Napoleanic wars one was quite interesting historically too.

alt_ww1 has faster battleships, transports and trade. How can you do Galipoli if it takes your fleet years to get there? Also I have new neutral cities for trade, Entante Powers (so Britain and France can't go to war) and no peace for the Germans on the Western Front. They also have custom city flags.

alt_ww79 has NATO, pro-soviet and pro-western cities. And engineers with 6 Defence so they don't all get destroyed cleaning up pollution trying to stop global warming.

I have been off-line for a year or two due to a virus on my Computer. civfanatics don't seem to want to accept more scenarios due to workload.

A lot of people still like Civ II and would like to see it improved.

 

[The Person]

I would do as Mercator suggested, and sign the Civ2 source-code petition.

And I don't think that Sid will make any updates to Civ2 in near future, if ever. Right now he's too busy making Civ4. (Hopefully it won't be as big a letdown as Civ3... But it probably will. I'm too used to Civ2.)

It's sad to hear about that virus, though. But how could it put you offline for two years? Anyway, welcome back!

 

[Mercator]

Well in my option Civ III was unplayable so what's to say Civ IV will be any better.

But what's to say that an updated Civ2 won't be as much of a letdown if it's the same people working on that? If it's anything more than just a few bugfixes, an update on Civ2 will have exactly the same issues. Some will love it and some will hate it. If they happen to choose improvements not on your list you'll be just as ****ed.

And come on, seriously, the latest Civ2 release was in 1999 (Civ2: ToT). That's 6 years ago! Sid Meier hasn't been involved since 1996.

Sid has used his name to get use to buy Call to Power and Civ III just to get our money without having gameplay or a easy to use interface.

He had nothing to do with CtP. And as much as I dislike Civ3 myself, there are plenty of people who do like it. And Sid doesn't get anyone to buy his games. You're the one falling for it.

I didn't like Fantastic Worlds but did like most C-in-C scenarios.

But we were talking about the "bestonet" scenarios. The user-created scenarios that came with the add-ons, not the ones created by MicroProse.

 

[dledgard]

I've 'signed' the petition for what it's worth.

Are there many programmers who would know how to upgrade Civ 2 ?

David Ledgard

 

[dledgard]

I would do as Mercator suggested, and sign the Civ2 source-code petition.

And I don't think that Sid will make any updates to Civ2 in near future, if ever. Right now he's too busy making Civ4. (Hopefully it won't be as big a letdown as Civ3... But it probably will. I'm too used to Civ2.)

It's sad to hear about that virus, though. But how could it put you offline for two years? Anyway, welcome back!

The Email was returned when I tried to sign the petition.
Anyone got the correct Email.

I was offline until I got a new computer with virus checker. My Email kept getting SPAMMED with large Emails that took ages to download, so I didn't know it was a virus until I ran the checker.

David Ledgard

 

[ElephantU]

Are there many programmers who would know how to upgrade Civ 2?

Depends on the language it was written in, but I'd learn assembly if it allowed us to fix the DateLine and Dye/Copper bugs...

 

[Mercator]

The Email was returned when I tried to sign the petition.
Anyone got the correct Email.

Post it in the thread or send a PM to Harry Tuttle if you don't want the e-mail address in public.

Depends on the language it was written in, but I'd learn assembly if it allowed us to fix the DateLine and Dye/Copper bugs...

I'm pretty sure it's C++. There are very few programmers active in the Civ2 community, but we'd get plenty of attention (partly depending on the license, perhaps) from the Civ3, CtP1/2, FreeCiv and other crowds too.

 

[RedWolf]

Depends on the language it was written in, but I'd learn assembly if it allowed us to fix the DateLine and Dye/Copper bugs...

Dye/Copper bugs?

What's that about?

 

[ElephantU]

Ever notice how you start building roads and all the sudden Dye and Copper become your primary commodity supplies? Civ2 has a bug that overcalculates the supplies of Dye and Copper when roads are present in city radius.

 

[RedWolf]

Ever notice how you start building roads and all the sudden Dye and Copper become your primary commodity supplies? Civ2 has a bug that overcalculates the supplies of Dye and Copper when roads are present in city radius.

So essentially by building roads around all my cities (which i do) I'm vast;y increasing the amounts of copper and dye and mostly eliminating the other more valuable resources?

 

[Nylan]

Why on Earth would he do that when he's working on Civ4?

It would take much less than a day to make the upgrades, and one person could do it. It would not take that much time away from Civ4. However, it is pointless for him to do it because it would not sell well.