Earlier this year I played a big game of C-evo Distant Horizon as C-evo had been recommended to me a bunch of times of the years. In the end I had a lot of fun with as much like FreeCiv it's clearly styled after Civ2 however it's original creator Steffen Gerlach has made some interesting changes to the formula. The original C-evo finished up around a decade ago, however fans have taken its source and continued it firstly via @chronoscz 's C-evo New Horizons project leading to current day C-evo Distant Horizon project by @PeterBB who some here may know as the talented fellow who over 20 years ago created the excellent Civ2MapGen program that some people still use. Peter has a thread about C-evo here at CivFanatics over in the Civ like games forum with download links but I thought I'd make a bonus thread here in the Civ2 area for us Civ2 fans to discuss, debate, and compare C-evo with Civ2.
I've done a video tour on it that's meant to be a bonus episode to my big main Civ2 tour video but that's been so darn delayed that I decided to release this bonus vid early instead since I finished it months ago (& I'm worried people on my youtube channel will start asking if I'm dead again
). For those that don't have the time to watch it all I'll do a written comparison below...
VIDEO CONTENTS:
I'd always wanted to try C-evo but kept putting it off until late 2023 when over in Petes other C-evo thread @Dadais noticed the C-evo graphics files were clearly heavily styled off Civ2s and designed for easy asset transfer which caught my interest enough to finally give it a shot! Sure enough it's regular/small terrain size is similar to Civ2's at 66x33 however interestingly it also supports higher res terrain files at 96x48 Medium and 144x72 Large which you can easily toggle between in the game. Sadly the medium and large graphics are currently mostly just stretched versions of the small terrain however they could be easily replaced with better stuff by a talented artist. I've always hoped for something like that in a fan made (eg maybe in @axx 's Civ2 clone project) or an official Civ2 rebuild/remaster as it would be a modders dream being able to create mods for Civ2 or remaster old ones with everything double sized. ToT already gets us a fair way there thanks to it's larger sizes though but as the world transitions to 4K screens having assets 2, 3 or even 4 times the original size (kinda like what Petrograph did with the recent C&C and Red Alert Remasters) would be pretty cool and by keeping the sizes optional it means everyone can play how they wanna play. C-evo supports 3 city sizes too (66x33, 96x48, 144x72) and I thought the bigger sizes weren't working in-game however it turns out they just don't have source files for the ancient era cities yet and only have scaleable modern cities. Units however are less impressive in that they are only one size at 64x48 which is the same as Civ2 MGE but inferior to ToT's 64x64.
Obviously the above compatibility has allowed them to import and modify a lot of existing fan made Civ2 graphics (avoiding the copyright issues of using Microprose's graphics) and I can recognize a lot of the terrain from Tim Smith's HiRes pack from back in the day and most of the rest looks familiar too. No doubt gurus here can spot and name more of the sources. Many of the units are familiar too and I can see lots of old Civ2 modder names in their credits files. There's a number of old modpacks for C-evo using more Civ2 terrains as well such as Mars terrain and Mr Tembas Underdark terrain which is cool
(Click to expand)
So let's get into the thick of it.. Graphics/media wise it looks good and has the potential to look better (if the bigger asset sizes were used) but there's no videos or music, and there's not much sound effect variety. Gameplay wise C-evo first appears very similar to Civ2 but you quickly start to notice everything is a little bit different. The game comes with a map editor and a whole bunch of custom maps (including 2 earth maps) however it's pretty basic and doesn't allow placing non-player start cities. It supports up to 15 players giving you 14 adversaries (double what civ2 has) and there's no barbarians or goodie huts (according to the authors FAQ he really wanted to remove all the human rewards and cheating fluff and make it more of a simulation). The game prides itself on saying it's AIs are strong and don't cheat and from what I saw they are indeed pretty smart and don't cheat but were far from perfect as they fell way behind me, failed to get off small islands, had no idea what to do my with 1 square island cities, and did stupid things in diplomacy, but I was impressed with their custom unit designs and how they adapted to mine. The movement points system has changed to 1 for diagonal and 1.5 for straight vertical/horizontal moves with the slowest units having 1.5 moves to ensure they can do any direction once. The city screen is similar but handles people and resources a little bit different with some clever auto priority buttons (focus on food or trade or production etc) and while production is mostly similar the game supports multiple custom build queues. The tech tree is very Civ 2 like but has been rearranged to have a big 'era tech' that changes your GUI and unlocks all the techs in the next era however it can easily become unbalanced and easy to manipulate (eg I had SAM sites before I even discovered flight lol). Interestingly future techs actually have bonuses and benefits similar to satellites in SMAC in that the more you get the more your cities produce and the stronger your new units become. There's a full Civiliopedia that functions similar to Civ3's that they just call the manual. Speaking of Civ3 they appear to have heavily modified and reallocated Civ2's buildings and wonders to be more like Civ3's with 'mini wonders' that are pretty cool. The advisors and diplomacy screens are relatively similar and pretty good but nothing special. One of the best features is the custom unit designer which is very similar to SMAC's in that you can fully customize their attack, defense and abilities based on a weight/size limit (that gets better through research) and as mentioned earlier if I pushed in a certain direction the AI's appear to make counter designs to stop me. Many of the unit special abilities are familiar ones from Civ2 but there's some interesting new ones such as super powerful overweight units that can only move around on railroads and special mass production units that are expensive at first but get cheaper and cheaper if a city builds them continuously. Because you can apply these specials to nearly any unit you can create some real monstrosities lol! Which reminds me attack and defense values are way bigger in this in that I had units gets into the 100s of attack and defense points! There are also special units that can't be customized such as settlers, slaves, spys and engineers etc. There's no caravans or trade routes strangely but speaking of Engineers they can build water canals for your ships across land masses which is pretty cool. There are special resources just like in Civ2 however interestingly they also added some Civ3 like super resources that block your way to getting spaceship parts unless you find them all (& sure enough in my game I was forced to travel to another continent near enemy territory to find one of them). One of the more weirder changes is that there are no nukes in the game and the Manhattan project wonder brings on a cold war that prevents diplomacy for a while instead. Combat is interesting due to the crazy attack and defense values I mentioned earlier however there is a cool new ability where you can suicide attack a stronger unit to weaken it which presumably means a backwards player can ware down a technologically superior player somewhat whereas in Civ2 you'd have no chance. Spaceships are pretty similar except as mentioned earlier they require certain hard to find resources, and you win the game the moment it's finished so there's no launching and waiting for it to get offworld. Sadly there's no score system or option to play on so it's just game over when the ship launches. C-evo supports mods however it's too different for Civ2 mods to be easily ported over (other than graphics) and the map editor limitations & inability to rename your cities makes scenario design difficult, plus it appears to suffer what I call the 'FreeCiv effect' where any mod that is made for it is quickly broken and out of date on the next game version release resulting in a graveyard of old abandoned mods (which is why I chuckle whenever some smart ass on social media says "broooo just play freeciv and port the mods there!" when I complain about Civ2 not being on Steam & GoG lol).
Well I think that's everything I can think of.. overall I enjoyed it and I think it makes some pretty good improvements on the Civ2 formula (eg optional higher res assets, less micro city management, custom unit designer, mini wonders and future techs that mean something) however it takes away a number of fun things I like (eg videos, music, scores, barbs, villages, nukes and easy scenario creation) so it's a fun distraction for a little while but it's not really a viable long term alternative to our beloved Civ2. Bottom line it proves much like FreeCiv does that the Civ 2 formula is brilliant, stands the Test of Time (get it lol) and can even be improved upon, but when you take away all the extra fun novelty stuff (even if its silly & unbalanced) the game loses a bit of its soul.
EDIT:
- It turns out you can rename cities by right clicking on them in the City advisor list and you can also load earlier turns from a save file by clicking on the black line beneath the game year.
- Chronos has released a new version of New Horizons meaning Peter's Distant Horizon no longer supersedes it. So people are encouraged to try both variants (download links in Peter's thread here)
.
I've done a video tour on it that's meant to be a bonus episode to my big main Civ2 tour video but that's been so darn delayed that I decided to release this bonus vid early instead since I finished it months ago (& I'm worried people on my youtube channel will start asking if I'm dead again
). For those that don't have the time to watch it all I'll do a written comparison below...VIDEO CONTENTS:
Spoiler :
I'd always wanted to try C-evo but kept putting it off until late 2023 when over in Petes other C-evo thread @Dadais noticed the C-evo graphics files were clearly heavily styled off Civ2s and designed for easy asset transfer which caught my interest enough to finally give it a shot! Sure enough it's regular/small terrain size is similar to Civ2's at 66x33 however interestingly it also supports higher res terrain files at 96x48 Medium and 144x72 Large which you can easily toggle between in the game. Sadly the medium and large graphics are currently mostly just stretched versions of the small terrain however they could be easily replaced with better stuff by a talented artist. I've always hoped for something like that in a fan made (eg maybe in @axx 's Civ2 clone project) or an official Civ2 rebuild/remaster as it would be a modders dream being able to create mods for Civ2 or remaster old ones with everything double sized. ToT already gets us a fair way there thanks to it's larger sizes though but as the world transitions to 4K screens having assets 2, 3 or even 4 times the original size (kinda like what Petrograph did with the recent C&C and Red Alert Remasters) would be pretty cool and by keeping the sizes optional it means everyone can play how they wanna play. C-evo supports 3 city sizes too (66x33, 96x48, 144x72) and I thought the bigger sizes weren't working in-game however it turns out they just don't have source files for the ancient era cities yet and only have scaleable modern cities. Units however are less impressive in that they are only one size at 64x48 which is the same as Civ2 MGE but inferior to ToT's 64x64.
Obviously the above compatibility has allowed them to import and modify a lot of existing fan made Civ2 graphics (avoiding the copyright issues of using Microprose's graphics) and I can recognize a lot of the terrain from Tim Smith's HiRes pack from back in the day and most of the rest looks familiar too. No doubt gurus here can spot and name more of the sources. Many of the units are familiar too and I can see lots of old Civ2 modder names in their credits files. There's a number of old modpacks for C-evo using more Civ2 terrains as well such as Mars terrain and Mr Tembas Underdark terrain which is cool
(Click to expand)
So let's get into the thick of it.. Graphics/media wise it looks good and has the potential to look better (if the bigger asset sizes were used) but there's no videos or music, and there's not much sound effect variety. Gameplay wise C-evo first appears very similar to Civ2 but you quickly start to notice everything is a little bit different. The game comes with a map editor and a whole bunch of custom maps (including 2 earth maps) however it's pretty basic and doesn't allow placing non-player start cities. It supports up to 15 players giving you 14 adversaries (double what civ2 has) and there's no barbarians or goodie huts (according to the authors FAQ he really wanted to remove all the human rewards and cheating fluff and make it more of a simulation). The game prides itself on saying it's AIs are strong and don't cheat and from what I saw they are indeed pretty smart and don't cheat but were far from perfect as they fell way behind me, failed to get off small islands, had no idea what to do my with 1 square island cities, and did stupid things in diplomacy, but I was impressed with their custom unit designs and how they adapted to mine. The movement points system has changed to 1 for diagonal and 1.5 for straight vertical/horizontal moves with the slowest units having 1.5 moves to ensure they can do any direction once. The city screen is similar but handles people and resources a little bit different with some clever auto priority buttons (focus on food or trade or production etc) and while production is mostly similar the game supports multiple custom build queues. The tech tree is very Civ 2 like but has been rearranged to have a big 'era tech' that changes your GUI and unlocks all the techs in the next era however it can easily become unbalanced and easy to manipulate (eg I had SAM sites before I even discovered flight lol). Interestingly future techs actually have bonuses and benefits similar to satellites in SMAC in that the more you get the more your cities produce and the stronger your new units become. There's a full Civiliopedia that functions similar to Civ3's that they just call the manual. Speaking of Civ3 they appear to have heavily modified and reallocated Civ2's buildings and wonders to be more like Civ3's with 'mini wonders' that are pretty cool. The advisors and diplomacy screens are relatively similar and pretty good but nothing special. One of the best features is the custom unit designer which is very similar to SMAC's in that you can fully customize their attack, defense and abilities based on a weight/size limit (that gets better through research) and as mentioned earlier if I pushed in a certain direction the AI's appear to make counter designs to stop me. Many of the unit special abilities are familiar ones from Civ2 but there's some interesting new ones such as super powerful overweight units that can only move around on railroads and special mass production units that are expensive at first but get cheaper and cheaper if a city builds them continuously. Because you can apply these specials to nearly any unit you can create some real monstrosities lol! Which reminds me attack and defense values are way bigger in this in that I had units gets into the 100s of attack and defense points! There are also special units that can't be customized such as settlers, slaves, spys and engineers etc. There's no caravans or trade routes strangely but speaking of Engineers they can build water canals for your ships across land masses which is pretty cool. There are special resources just like in Civ2 however interestingly they also added some Civ3 like super resources that block your way to getting spaceship parts unless you find them all (& sure enough in my game I was forced to travel to another continent near enemy territory to find one of them). One of the more weirder changes is that there are no nukes in the game and the Manhattan project wonder brings on a cold war that prevents diplomacy for a while instead. Combat is interesting due to the crazy attack and defense values I mentioned earlier however there is a cool new ability where you can suicide attack a stronger unit to weaken it which presumably means a backwards player can ware down a technologically superior player somewhat whereas in Civ2 you'd have no chance. Spaceships are pretty similar except as mentioned earlier they require certain hard to find resources, and you win the game the moment it's finished so there's no launching and waiting for it to get offworld. Sadly there's no score system or option to play on so it's just game over when the ship launches. C-evo supports mods however it's too different for Civ2 mods to be easily ported over (other than graphics) and the map editor limitations & inability to rename your cities makes scenario design difficult, plus it appears to suffer what I call the 'FreeCiv effect' where any mod that is made for it is quickly broken and out of date on the next game version release resulting in a graveyard of old abandoned mods (which is why I chuckle whenever some smart ass on social media says "broooo just play freeciv and port the mods there!" when I complain about Civ2 not being on Steam & GoG lol).
Well I think that's everything I can think of.. overall I enjoyed it and I think it makes some pretty good improvements on the Civ2 formula (eg optional higher res assets, less micro city management, custom unit designer, mini wonders and future techs that mean something) however it takes away a number of fun things I like (eg videos, music, scores, barbs, villages, nukes and easy scenario creation) so it's a fun distraction for a little while but it's not really a viable long term alternative to our beloved Civ2. Bottom line it proves much like FreeCiv does that the Civ 2 formula is brilliant, stands the Test of Time (get it lol) and can even be improved upon, but when you take away all the extra fun novelty stuff (even if its silly & unbalanced) the game loses a bit of its soul.
EDIT:
- It turns out you can rename cities by right clicking on them in the City advisor list and you can also load earlier turns from a save file by clicking on the black line beneath the game year.
- Chronos has released a new version of New Horizons meaning Peter's Distant Horizon no longer supersedes it. So people are encouraged to try both variants (download links in Peter's thread here)
.
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