[Civ2] Is Civilization 2 the most successful of the entire Franchise? And reasons why Open source civ games are based on Civ2

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Is Civilization 2 the most successful of the entire Franchise? And why are (at least) TWO fanmade opensource civ games are heavily based on Civ2 (even down to unit lists. while not neccessary a copycats, but ALMOST every units are verbatim copies, including capabilities! (Trireme, Caravek and Galleon are 'Combat and Transport' ships) ).. and this was in case of FreeCiv. while CivEvo systems is what baffles me more since AFAIK almost every units must be manually designed. (And unit nomination algorithms will give out names according to techs, sizes capabilities and so on,)

Technologies (and maybe Buildings) are also a carbon copy of what shown up in Civ2. with some tweaks and customizations to match later games in the same series.

And also same unit upgrades (and even medieval units can be skipped entirely to firepower units of the gunpowder age).

 

[magic9mushroom]

Most strategy games peaked around the turn of the millennium; they got developed enough (and computers got good enough) to be good. Since then, most sequels are basically just change-for-the-sake-of-change. Civ2 was basically just an improved version of Civ1 (and hence soaked up its fandom very easily); the later games largely couldn't be an improved version of Civ2, so they tried to change things around instead.

My (not-perfectly-researched) understanding is that there's an additional problem, more specific to the series, in the form of the Social Justice movement which took over the videogame industry in the late oughties to early tens. SJ has a very basic problem with the Civilisation series: the movement looks at media mostly through the lens of "does consuming this media involve thought patterns we approve of, or ones we disapprove of?" (under the very-shaky assumption that those thought patterns will transfer to real life), SJ hates fascism with the fire of a million suns, and the shortest good definition of fascism I've ever come up with is, well, "treating real life like a game of Civilisation". (The core conceit of fascism is the idea of optimising a society to succeed in competition against other societies; everything else commonly associated with the ideology is or was an attempt - correctly-reasoned or not - at fulfilling that goal.) This "problem" is so inherent to the idea of any grand strategy game, and especially one based on human history, that any attempt to "mitigate" it will cash out as "make a less-compelling game".

(TTBOMK, Civ2 was the only Civ game to have a "play as Adolf Hitler" option right there in the base game. My educated guess is that the absence of this in later games was also a matter of being politically-correct as proto-SJ started to nucleate and gain influence.)

 

[Rambo919]

I think you have to define here what exactly you mean by successful.

As for why the clones are of CIv2... it was the easiest/best one to clone at the time the clones were first started.

You get UnCiv which kinda tries to clone Civ5 but kinda leans towards CIv2, because it was simply easier to do with limited resources.

 

[Rambo919]

SJ hates fascism with the fire of a million suns,

Sure the hate is there.... but they struggle to actually define what they hate. It seems more like a free floating anxiety issue to me where someone pointed out "the devil" to them and they just went with it because it looked like everyone else went with it.

Corporations today that make games have no clue what they are doing, even when they listen they don't comprehend and misinterpret. It's like expecting a horse to know how to steer a ship. So they see "oh the kids don't like this, lets not do it, they like that lets do it".... and you get disasters like Civ7.

 

[average_communism_enjoyer]

If I go with success as persistent mass popularity... it pains me to say it here, but the obvious answer is Civ5; it's a 15 year old game that still has tens of thousands of daily players. In 2036 there will still be thousands of people playing it every day. I'd compare it a bit to the interia of Age Of Empires 2; Microsoft has had more success with rereleases of AOE2 than making new AOE games. I would not be surprised to see Firaxis make a "Civ V Definitive Edition" for Civ5's 20th anniversary, rather than develop a Civ8.

If you reject success as commercial success / popularity of the masses, and want something purer, you could maybe make an argument for Civ4 based on consensus among the "hardcore" strategy/4X community. (Obviously those of us in this particular sub-forum may have a different opinion, but there are only dozens of us !) As I see it, Civ4 nailed down a lot of the expanded gameplay elements introduced in Civ3, making it more complex than the earlier games without the disruptive changes of Civ5. Some people go so far as to say Civ5 isn't even a 4X since expansion is penalized at some stages of the game, it's not really the same games, the series ended with Civ4, you kids get off my lawn...

why are (at least) TWO fanmade opensource civ games are heavily based on Civ2 (even down to unit lists. while not neccessary a copycats, but ALMOST every units are verbatim copies, including capabilities! (Trireme, Caravek and Galleon are 'Combat and Transport' ships) ).. and this was in case of FreeCiv. while CivEvo systems is what baffles me more since AFAIK almost every units must be manually designed. (And unit nomination algorithms will give out names according to techs, sizes capabilities and so on,)

As for why the clones are of CIv2... it was the easiest/best one to clone at the time the clones were first started.

You get UnCiv which kinda tries to clone Civ5 but kinda leans towards CIv2, because it was simply easier to do with limited resources.

Agree with Rambo here, FreeCiv and C-Evo are very old projects, 1996 and 1999 respectively. It wasn't that the creators had the entire series to choose from and they chose Civ2, but rather Civ2 was the latest and greatest at the time. Unciv has some aspects of Civ5, but heavily simplified both in gameplay and aesthetics.

Why haven't we seen clones of Civ3+? These games started adding progressively more gameplay elements (strategic resources, civics, great people, religion, culture points...) and 3D graphics, so it's a much higher barrier-of-entry for a solo dev or small team.

 

[St. Leo]

I think the challenge is not just 3D but animation. Whether 2D or 3D, animation imposes a much higher graphics cost than static sprites. You might need hundreds of frames of animation to serve the same function that a single frame static sprite graphic serves in Civilization 2. The barrier of entry is enormously higher for an indie developer to try to clone anything more graphically sophisticated.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Sure the hate is there.... but they struggle to actually define what they hate. It seems more like a free floating anxiety issue to me where someone pointed out "the devil" to them and they just went with it because it looked like everyone else went with it.

Basically "Everyone I don't like is Hitler". Which isn't a new issue. Orwell noted that "the word was applied to an absurdly wide range of people and practices—including farmers, shopkeepers, fox-hunting, astrology, and even dogs—rendering it ineffective as a precise political descriptor".

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

Corporations today that make games have no clue what they are doing, even when they listen they don't comprehend and misinterpret

EA is notorious for this. They ruined the sports franchises by not listening to what players want.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I think the challenge is not just 3D but animation. Whether 2D or 3D, animation imposes a much higher graphics cost than static sprites. You might need hundreds of frames of animation to serve the same function that a single frame static sprite graphic serves in Civilization 2. The barrier of entry is enormously higher for an indie developer to try to clone anything more graphically sophisticated.

It's not that all. the entire gameplay metas chosen to be cloned are of Civ2. down to Wonders lists (Particularly those named after Great Persons), technology, unit lineups (including Musketeers shown up before Cannons).

 

[Rambo919]

Basically "Everyone I don't like is Hitler". Which isn't a new issue. Orwell noted that "the word was applied to an absurdly wide range of people and practices—including farmers, shopkeepers, fox-hunting, astrology, and even dogs—rendering it ineffective as a precise political descriptor".

It also seems to be oddly a generational problem, the newer the game subforum the more prevalent it is, and the more likely you are to be targeted for moderation for pointing out what's actually happening. Also the newer the game the more it panders to this, Civ6 being notorious for it.

I forget who exactly said it, might have been Dennis Prager, it's a new secular religion where instead of Jesus being the model everything reversed. Hitler is the devil so the model is being "not Hitler". All very stupid but stupidity is encouraged as virtue and mentioning Orwell is heresy.

 

[St. Leo]

I strongly disagree with the take that the real problem with Civilization 4 is that it makes Von Papen the leader of WW2 Germany in its WW2 scenario. The regular leaders of Germany in Civilization 2 are Frederick and Maria Theresa. Hitler only showed up in its WW2 scenario, and there as a name only -- no portrait.

Also, you should actually read George Orwell. The closest characters to Adolf Hitler in Orwell's writing are Big Brother in 1984 and Napoleon in Animal Farm.

 

[Rambo919]

Also, you should actually read George Orwell. The closest characters to Adolf Hitler in Orwell's writing are Big Brother in 1984 and Napoleon in Animal Farm.

Uhm.... You miss spelt Stalin......

 

[magic9mushroom]

Hitler does actually appear in Animal Farm, specifically as Mr. Frederick, owner of Pinchfield Farm.

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

The regular leaders of Germany in Civilization 2 are Frederick and Maria Theresa. Hitler only showed up in its WW2 scenario, and there as a name only -- no portrait.

There are plenty of problematic leaders in the regular game.

Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Mao, Stalin, Genghis Khan.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Mao and Stalin shown up to Civ3.
well Henry VIII Should return in Civ7 as well.

 

[Rambo919]

I vaguely remember a leader pack or something adding "evil" leaders to Civ4

 

[Bestbank Tiger]

In Civ 2 you could edit the mk.dll file to change the leader portrait and the txt files to change the name. You could even replace the civ itself. It was awesome.