Please lecture me on Civ 2 versions and patches

[Sir_Lancelot]

Hi. I bought Civ2 before Christmas, with a price tag of just 2.80 Euros in a store it was too hard to resist.
I started out on Prince level at my first game and I've just begun building the spaceship. I'll win this, so beating the AI is not what I need help with (not yet anyway).

I need someone to fill me in on the different versions of Civ2, the version I got is probably the first one. Please don't use acronyms without explaining them.

Please list the versions in chronological order? I'd also appreciate if you said something about the different versions. I know nothing.

Patches and Updates: Which one of the do I want to install? I see that one of them will upgrade the game to a gold version. Is that good?

As the topic title says, please lecture me.

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Civilization 2 games can be divided into four categories:

"Classic" or "2.42"

"Fantastic Worlds" (FW)

"Multiplayer Gold Edition" (MGE)

"Test of Time" (ToT)

The term "Classic" refers to version 2.42 of the game, as well as all older versions of the game (which can be turned into 2.42 by applying a completely official patch). These versions offer no multiplayer capability, and no special tools for creating scenarios. This version supports special editing that allow for about 5 difficulty levels above deity and an extra level of barbarian activity known as "Barbarian Wrath" which produces barbarian stacks of 99 units.

"Fantastic Worlds" is the next improvement of Civilization 2 (there is also another expansion called Conflicts in Civilization, of which I know no specific details). This version offers tools that make editing units, terrain and many other things substantially easier when making scenarios, but does not include multiplayer capability.

"Multiplayer Gold Edition" keeps the scenario making tools of Fantastic Worlds and also gives the option to play versus other humans. The major downside to this version is that the Artificial Intelligence was made very hostile compared to earlier versions, essentially removing diplomacy as an aspect of the game.

I don't know much more about "Test of Time" than the fact that it exists and allows even more extensive scenario options than Multiplayer Gold Edition.

This site has the official patch for upgrading any earlier version of the game to 2.42. It also has unofficial patches for upgrading 2.42 to Fantastic Worlds and to Multiplayer Gold Edition. If you have Multiplayer Gold Edition, we have a way to downgrade to Classic (at least, as far as I can tell, in all important respects) in the Stories and Tales Forum.

 

[Sir_Lancelot]

Thank you!

As I understand it, all the versions mentioned are stand-alone games and not just expansion packs that requires that you already own the game.

I appreciate the diplomacy aspect so I'll definately not upgrade to MGE! I think the AI is more than hostile enough in the vanilla version. All the other four nations have allied against me in spite that I played peacefully. Their alliance have lasted for about 2000 years with only short periods of cease-fire that the AI always breaks a bit later.

I don't care much for scenarios and I have no-one to multiplay with, so 2.42 is perhaps the best version for me? Unless FW and ToT was improved also for standard single-player?