I maintain to this day that despite knowing about some of the absolute hex wizardry that made Gen 1 possible, Crystal was hands-down the most incredible ratio of content-to-bytes in any Pokemon game.
Which Civ is best Civ?
- Thread starter aimeeandbeatles
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Moriarte
Immortal
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To me V is the best, until a better one comes out. I didn’t care either way for the 1upt innovation, since that’s how I played previous iterations anyway - without stacks, mostly. Being a relatively modern era game, graphics aged well. Not a lot of graphical finesse required in a board game and the era civ V emerged from already had pretty advanced stuff, so it’s good to look at even today. It’s been shallow and broken for many years, iirc, until the Gods n Kings expansion hit. This is where it all came together at last. Especially the small bits - AI and diplomacy received an overhaul, city-states emerged. I don’t think many fully grasped the intricacies of the diplomatic system: I heard a lot of “AI is crazy aggressive on deity”, “dumb”, “senseless”. I considered it realistic, reasonably obscured mechanisms allowed for some nuanced edge of the razor diplomacy if you really knew what you were doing. If you were weak, they’d come after you just as in RL, they’ll even come up with a respectable reason, while crossing the seas to pillage your cities. AI was reasonable, what it lacked in “intelligence” it could gain in superior numbers, so that’s fair. I don’t expect chess-engine precision from the game of the era.
I could never get into VI, I tried.. Cartooney graphics totally not me. But I can get over it. The shallowness of the tech tree was mind-boggling (have they filled it with stuff yet?!) Most importantly, the movement costs have been basically doubled, so it felt like a builders game, instead of being a fine line between economy/warfare/diplomacy, such as most of the previous titles. I’m interested how VI fared since the release, if anyone can share a word or two. I still own a full version I got on release, but played 20 hours at most.
I could never get into VI, I tried.. Cartooney graphics totally not me. But I can get over it. The shallowness of the tech tree was mind-boggling (have they filled it with stuff yet?!) Most importantly, the movement costs have been basically doubled, so it felt like a builders game, instead of being a fine line between economy/warfare/diplomacy, such as most of the previous titles. I’m interested how VI fared since the release, if anyone can share a word or two. I still own a full version I got on release, but played 20 hours at most.
Civilization is about civilizations. The location doesn't matter. If it did, Civ II: ToT would not include Midgard (4-level map of the ocean floor, underground world, surface world, sky world), starting on Alpha Centauri, or having the orbital platforms, Naumachia, or Nona for places to build in the Lalande scenario (Naumachia is a moon where the craters and dust runs function as water tiles; Nona is a gas giant you can build on... if you can survive the extremely aggressive aliens).
Yep, I have fond memories of Pond World (I wanted to see what the minimum number of water tiles you needed to have to make a viable map). There was one pond, plus a scattering of rivers that started and ended basically nowhere. The rest of the map was grassland. If your starting point was too far from water, good luck. That map isn't as easy to play as it sounds, at least at first, unless your starting place happens to be near the pond or a river.
As for ToT... having 4 levels to deal with means a whole new military strategy is necessary, especially when you realize that the aliens have already discovered the tech necessary to reach Orbit and they're dropping in on you - literally, or you're minding your business on the surface world and then realize you have a Goblin or Stygian or Merfolk city close by, but one or two levels down, their units are teleporting up to harass and kill you, and you don't have any units that can occupy their cities once your Wizards have killed the defenders. I always kept at least two Wizards in each city, in addition to whatever other units I might have around. And I never started trying to build on Naumachia until I had the tech to build Kinecticores (one of the most useful units ever and sometimes I'd gift them to the aliens to keep them alive long enough for two of them to discover the tech needed to reach Nona; damn, they're stupid about trying to fight the barbarians with Bombuses (the aforementioned giant bumblebees).
There was one game where I searched the entire Midgard map and couldn't find the Gate to Hel. Then I realized the Goblins built a city on it. If you do that, either on the Surface or in the Underworld, the Gate will disappear on the other map.
Did Justinian ever sing? Did Theodora ever have an acting career on a soap opera? (Priscilla Presley played Jenna Wade on Dallas for a few seasons; she was one of the most boring characters that show ever had).the best Civ is Rome, but I also have a faible for Babylon, Korea and Nubia
emperor justinian would like to know your location
I still have a love for civ 2 but last time I tried it wouldn't run on Win 10
I also couldn't find any source to download the Scenarios pack I had on disc, and tbh I'm more nostalgia-hungry for that than the base game.
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I run it (test of time) on windows 10, but I had to install it to a direct file (not program files).
Zardnaar
Deity
How do I get this to work these days?
Is that a legit copy of ToT?
Is that a legit copy of ToT?
Zardnaar
Deity
I think the books will work regardless of age
Not even a crease on the spine
The disks don't look like mine, so it's doubtful. The books are plain Civ II. The ToT manual is completely different.
Gori the Grey
The Poster
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Civ II didn't turn out, as advertised, to be the "ultimate version" of the best selling strategy game.
When's VII on the horizon?
When's VII on the horizon?
Zardnaar
Deity
Different countries had different covers sometime.
I'm confident Civ2 is legit.
ToT not sure on bought the disk years ago.
What Civ2 had going for it was that it was massively better than Civ1. This never repeated with future titles - eg for some bizarre reason Civ3 didn't have an event file.
From an aesthetic viewpoint, I don't like full 3d games. At least in EuIII (which was far better than EuII) the camera move is restricted to some angles. Full 3d means you cannot realistically hope to have very artistic graphics (assuming you are just one modder, not a company), cause you aren't using any specific set of angles to watch them from - also you have to use skins, which is the enemy of style imo ^_^
From an aesthetic viewpoint, I don't like full 3d games. At least in EuIII (which was far better than EuII) the camera move is restricted to some angles. Full 3d means you cannot realistically hope to have very artistic graphics (assuming you are just one modder, not a company), cause you aren't using any specific set of angles to watch them from - also you have to use skins, which is the enemy of style imo ^_^
As a game, civ4, without a doubt in my mind, not perfect, but IMO better than all the previous versions of the game (that I loved too), AI and diplomacy still made sense at the time, and it's the last civ game to give me that great "build a Civilization to stand the test of time" feeling, the next iterations are just "yet another 4x game" and remind you so every turn.
I did, and was impressed by what you did with civ2, but hadn't tested it, I don't have version older than civ4 anymore.
Yet civ4 and civ5 have the gameplay DLL source available on top of scripting (python for civ4, Lua for civ5), so they can do anything done for civ2, but with absolutely no limits to what you want to make the AI do.
Personally as a modding platform, I'd answer civ5, but very close to civ4.
Yet I perfectly understand why most people will say civ4 is also better on that side, and its modding community (and its mods scale) back their claim, but SQL is so great to mass-configure the DB, it would be hard for me to go back to XML only. I also have a coding preference for Lua over Python for scripting, and it's faster when you don't want to use a custom DLL (civ6 Lua version is even faster)
civ6 had the potential to be the best modding platform IMO, with its assets editor (when it works...), its artdef system and its modifiers system, even if it's the hardest to start modding with.
But as it's still quite limited on the gameplay side with no DLL source code and a lack of exposed methods to scripting compared to civ4, 5 and maybe even 2. And with Firaxis not planning to release that code, it's sadly doomed to stay the "potential best" forever
I did, and was impressed by what you did with civ2, but hadn't tested it, I don't have version older than civ4 anymore.
Yet civ4 and civ5 have the gameplay DLL source available on top of scripting (python for civ4, Lua for civ5), so they can do anything done for civ2, but with absolutely no limits to what you want to make the AI do.
Personally as a modding platform, I'd answer civ5, but very close to civ4.
Yet I perfectly understand why most people will say civ4 is also better on that side, and its modding community (and its mods scale) back their claim, but SQL is so great to mass-configure the DB, it would be hard for me to go back to XML only. I also have a coding preference for Lua over Python for scripting, and it's faster when you don't want to use a custom DLL (civ6 Lua version is even faster)
civ6 had the potential to be the best modding platform IMO, with its assets editor (when it works...), its artdef system and its modifiers system, even if it's the hardest to start modding with.
But as it's still quite limited on the gameplay side with no DLL source code and a lack of exposed methods to scripting compared to civ4, 5 and maybe even 2. And with Firaxis not planning to release that code, it's sadly doomed to stay the "potential best" forever
Honestly, that is NOT the ToT manual. Civ II and Civ II: ToT aren't the same. Sure, you can play the "Original" game, but the graphics are different. ToT doesn't have the Advisors or Throne Room, and even the music is different.
The ToT tech tree for the "Original" version might be identical, but the tech trees for Midgard, Lalande, and the Original Extended are all different.
This is what my ToT disk looks like:
This is what the ToT manual looks like:
The boxed version comes with a double-sided tech tree for all the different scenarios. It's poster-sized, so I got mine laminated.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Civ4 is certainly massively better than Civ3.
Its graphics are rather lame - and I don't just mean the original ones ^_^
Anyway, I am against full 3d games, so I am biased.
Zardnaar
Deity
My box is original civ 2 with just the ToT disc.
I suspect the ToT is pirated I bought it years ago second hand.
Only other explaination I have is it's a cheaper reissue or different disk different art.
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Yes and no... ToT is basically a completely different game than Civ2/its scenario discs/MGE. They share a few files but much of them are different.
