Verrucosus
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2002
- Messages
- 210
The original Civilization had a random chance of disaster happening to a single city (famine, earthquake etc.) at the beginning of a turn. Most of these could be guarded against by building a city improvement or researching a technology. This feature is not included in Civilization II.
The change is not mentioned in the manual's faily comprehensive chapter about "Changes form Civilization to Civilization II". Oddly enough, the section about Global Warming in the Terrain & Movement section replaces the original manual's detailed description of global warming's consequences with the phrase "... environmental damage occurs, as detailed under Disasters." However, there is no section "Disasters". This might be a hint that the change happened at the last minute.
One possible reason for the removal of disasters is a design choice to make the game less random. This would fit with the Civ2's new combat system that reduced the randomness of combat by introducing hitpoints and rounds. On the other hand, I don't think there were as many (or any) complaints about the random disasters as there were about the famous phalanx-vs-battleship duels in Civ1. Also, they were cautious enough about the combat change to have players use the old all-or-nothing system with an optional rule. Such an option could have toggled disasters on and off as well ... that's how Alpha Centauri did it a few years later.
Anyway, all of this is speculation. Is there any information out there about why disasters were not included in Civilization II?
P.S.: It's amazing how much fun this game is after all these years.
The change is not mentioned in the manual's faily comprehensive chapter about "Changes form Civilization to Civilization II". Oddly enough, the section about Global Warming in the Terrain & Movement section replaces the original manual's detailed description of global warming's consequences with the phrase "... environmental damage occurs, as detailed under Disasters." However, there is no section "Disasters". This might be a hint that the change happened at the last minute.
One possible reason for the removal of disasters is a design choice to make the game less random. This would fit with the Civ2's new combat system that reduced the randomness of combat by introducing hitpoints and rounds. On the other hand, I don't think there were as many (or any) complaints about the random disasters as there were about the famous phalanx-vs-battleship duels in Civ1. Also, they were cautious enough about the combat change to have players use the old all-or-nothing system with an optional rule. Such an option could have toggled disasters on and off as well ... that's how Alpha Centauri did it a few years later.
Anyway, all of this is speculation. Is there any information out there about why disasters were not included in Civilization II?
P.S.: It's amazing how much fun this game is after all these years.