Lord_Hill
Prince
Based on a discussion in the civ discord, I thought this was an interesting topic of discussion as not many people have touched this oddball release. There are good reasons for that. It was released way too close to Civ 2 and people were understandably way more excited about a new civ game rather than a repackaging of a now 3 year old game. And also, the big selling point, multiplayer gaming, was always (in hindsight) going to be a tough sell. Not enough people had a fast stable connection to make it viable, and it ended up being a very buggy experience. It was also only ever released as a 16 bit EXE meaning it will not work out of the box on modern windows, so no modern nostalgia driven return either.
But CivNet did innovate in other areas, and as we'll see, quite a few of those innovations ended up coming over into Civ 2!
First of all, here's a list of features that were NOT introduced in CivNet (because they were actually introduced in the Windows/Mac port first)
-Double resolution graphics with all new art (16x16 pixel tiles instead of 8x8), although a lot of people, myself included, question the colour scheme and artistic direction!
-Visible part of the map scales with resolution. This is very nice for modern solutions, the larger your screen, the more of the map you get to see. A big improvement over DOS
-The status window and minimap are now separate windows that can be moved around and hidden.
-Sound is now wav file based rather than using custom sound card specific drivers or MIDI
-The city status window was simplified and a bunch of functionality moved to the menu bar. I didn't like this change, you can use keyboard shortcuts but you shouldn't be hiding core functionality away in a menu.
-City governor. This wasn't massively obvious in DOS but shift+a (or just 'a' in windows) would automate your build queue.
So here we go, what did CivNet give us?
A lot more window customisation options
-Building on CivWin, everything is now a moveable window (including the city status screen and advisor screens), and you can spawn as many new main map windows as you want and drag them around.
-Zoom levels! Instead of a fixed map, there are 5 different zoom levels to use. There are also shortcuts to zoom in the top left of the window, and also...
-Unit visibility toggles, in the top left of the map window next to the zoom options, you can choose whether you see only your own units, enemy units or everything.
This should all sound quite familiar, as all of these features were bought over and further enhanced in civ 2
CDDA Sound Track
-After the big downgrade of going from glorious DOS soundblaster/MIDI to low quality wav files in CivWin. CivNet hits on a middle ground of CDDA tracks, no new tunes though.
Civ 2 obviously went in this direction too but there's a big enhancement in that we finally get proper background music.
Revamped City Screen
-Clearly stung by the criticism of the menu bar, Microprose found a way to get (almost) everything back into the city screen by using classic windows grey buttons to toggle the different views and options.
-Also introduced are arrows to jump between different cities whilst staying in the city screen.
Civ 2 gave the city screen another big revamp, but it still has those big grey buttons, and the arrows to jump between cities. You can see the influence
Customised build queue/governor profiles
-The CivDOS/Win governor (aka 'auto') got an enhancement. You can either tell the governor to focus on military or peaceful builds, or do a fully custom build queue.
Civ 2 keeps this, although you can now also ask for a mix of military/domestic.
Automatic Settlers
The civ classic. Here on their debut, they are called 'smart settlers'. You can give them specific jobs to focus on which is pretty cool for 1993! Automated settlers made it into civ 2 and every civ since.
Custom Leader Creator
This is an unusual one. It's always been possible to rename your leader and your tribe, but CivNet experimented with custom leader graphics based on various set graphical templates. It doesn't appear to have been very popular as I don't believe it has ever made a return.
Tribe no longer tied to specific colour
You can now choose any colour slot you want for your tribe and the game will just swap it out with the tribe that was previously that colour. The AI will always use the default colours. Civ 2 actually went back on this and once again had fixed colour slots for tribes like CivDOS.
You can contact other civs at any time from the menu bar
In fact on chieftan, you can contact all civs at all times even if you've never met them! I assume this was done to simplify multiplayer, but it's there in the single player game too.
You cannot play past the 'final turn' where your score is tallied
This is a deeply unpopular 'feature'. Again, presumably added to simplify multiplayer, but it takes away one of the great joys of civ. Just playing on and seeing where things go. Civ 2 obviously did not keep this (thank goodness!)
End Turn was inexplicably mapped to E (not Enter!)
A baffling choice, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to hit enter for next turn, but nope. Not here.
You can change things up every time you load a save
Every time you load a save in CivNet, you are given the choice of changing which civ the human is playing at. Another multiplayer inspired feature, it lets players rejoin as another civ if they are destroyed.
The beginnings of scenarios and customisation
Civ 2 took this to a glorious extreme, but CivNet started the trend towards customisation of the game. For the first time, an official map editor was bundled in. It's very limited in that it can only do terrain (although it can load CivWin saves and extract terrain from them too), and there's a new option to start a new game on a terrain you have made. There's also a new cheat menu with features not a million miles away from civ 2's debug/scenario mode (including right click to add a new unit anywhere on the map).
But CivNet did innovate in other areas, and as we'll see, quite a few of those innovations ended up coming over into Civ 2!
First of all, here's a list of features that were NOT introduced in CivNet (because they were actually introduced in the Windows/Mac port first)
-Double resolution graphics with all new art (16x16 pixel tiles instead of 8x8), although a lot of people, myself included, question the colour scheme and artistic direction!
-Visible part of the map scales with resolution. This is very nice for modern solutions, the larger your screen, the more of the map you get to see. A big improvement over DOS
-The status window and minimap are now separate windows that can be moved around and hidden.
-Sound is now wav file based rather than using custom sound card specific drivers or MIDI
-The city status window was simplified and a bunch of functionality moved to the menu bar. I didn't like this change, you can use keyboard shortcuts but you shouldn't be hiding core functionality away in a menu.
-City governor. This wasn't massively obvious in DOS but shift+a (or just 'a' in windows) would automate your build queue.
So here we go, what did CivNet give us?
A lot more window customisation options
-Building on CivWin, everything is now a moveable window (including the city status screen and advisor screens), and you can spawn as many new main map windows as you want and drag them around.
-Zoom levels! Instead of a fixed map, there are 5 different zoom levels to use. There are also shortcuts to zoom in the top left of the window, and also...
-Unit visibility toggles, in the top left of the map window next to the zoom options, you can choose whether you see only your own units, enemy units or everything.
This should all sound quite familiar, as all of these features were bought over and further enhanced in civ 2
CDDA Sound Track
-After the big downgrade of going from glorious DOS soundblaster/MIDI to low quality wav files in CivWin. CivNet hits on a middle ground of CDDA tracks, no new tunes though.
Civ 2 obviously went in this direction too but there's a big enhancement in that we finally get proper background music.
Revamped City Screen
-Clearly stung by the criticism of the menu bar, Microprose found a way to get (almost) everything back into the city screen by using classic windows grey buttons to toggle the different views and options.
-Also introduced are arrows to jump between different cities whilst staying in the city screen.
Civ 2 gave the city screen another big revamp, but it still has those big grey buttons, and the arrows to jump between cities. You can see the influence
Customised build queue/governor profiles
-The CivDOS/Win governor (aka 'auto') got an enhancement. You can either tell the governor to focus on military or peaceful builds, or do a fully custom build queue.
Civ 2 keeps this, although you can now also ask for a mix of military/domestic.
Automatic Settlers
The civ classic. Here on their debut, they are called 'smart settlers'. You can give them specific jobs to focus on which is pretty cool for 1993! Automated settlers made it into civ 2 and every civ since.
Custom Leader Creator
This is an unusual one. It's always been possible to rename your leader and your tribe, but CivNet experimented with custom leader graphics based on various set graphical templates. It doesn't appear to have been very popular as I don't believe it has ever made a return.
Tribe no longer tied to specific colour
You can now choose any colour slot you want for your tribe and the game will just swap it out with the tribe that was previously that colour. The AI will always use the default colours. Civ 2 actually went back on this and once again had fixed colour slots for tribes like CivDOS.
You can contact other civs at any time from the menu bar
In fact on chieftan, you can contact all civs at all times even if you've never met them! I assume this was done to simplify multiplayer, but it's there in the single player game too.
You cannot play past the 'final turn' where your score is tallied
This is a deeply unpopular 'feature'. Again, presumably added to simplify multiplayer, but it takes away one of the great joys of civ. Just playing on and seeing where things go. Civ 2 obviously did not keep this (thank goodness!)
End Turn was inexplicably mapped to E (not Enter!)
A baffling choice, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to hit enter for next turn, but nope. Not here.
You can change things up every time you load a save
Every time you load a save in CivNet, you are given the choice of changing which civ the human is playing at. Another multiplayer inspired feature, it lets players rejoin as another civ if they are destroyed.
The beginnings of scenarios and customisation
Civ 2 took this to a glorious extreme, but CivNet started the trend towards customisation of the game. For the first time, an official map editor was bundled in. It's very limited in that it can only do terrain (although it can load CivWin saves and extract terrain from them too), and there's a new option to start a new game on a terrain you have made. There's also a new cheat menu with features not a million miles away from civ 2's debug/scenario mode (including right click to add a new unit anywhere on the map).
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Also like the fact it looks like you're using my terrain pack in the Civ2 screenshots haha. 
