hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3860.txt

Episode: 3860
Title: HPR3860: Civilization II
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3860/hpr3860.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 06:48:55

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3860 for Friday the 19th of May 2023.
Today's show is entitled Civilization 2.
It is hosted by Ahukar and is about 15 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, a game I spent the most time on Civilization 2.
Hello, this is Ahukar, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in the series on gaming that I have started and in this I want to take us to the next
version of Civ, which is referred to as Civilization 2.
Now, the story behind this one in the mid-90s, Doss was already becoming pretty ancient.
And Civilization had been extremely successful, so a new version was created to take the
franchise forward and that was in 1996.
And 2 was designed to run on Windows 95, so it can take advantage of more resources,
making for improvements in gameplay and in appearance.
Also a new lead developer made his appearance, a fellow named Brian Reynolds.
Now, although Sid Meier's name is plastered all over the game's company makes, the
fact is that it has a lot more to do with being a marketable brand than a statement of
authorship.
So I don't think of these like a series of books that have a single author.
I think of them more like a TV series like Doctor Who, where the actors, writers, directors
and producers change continually.
Sid was the lead developer for the very first version of Civilization, but since then
he has simply maintained some oversight, without being involved in nitty-gritty of producing
the games.
Each iteration of Civ has brought in a new lead developer.
Now, Brian Reynolds was a developer at MicroPros, the original studio that Sid Meier's helped
found with Bill Steeley, and had worked on previous titles there, such as Sid Meier's
colonization.
Following his work on Civ 2, he was also the lead designer on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri,
which we will discuss.
He left the company to become the CEO of Big Huge Games, where he created a game called
Rise of Nations.
So, I'd say he's pretty successful.
Now, on Paper Civ 2 is not all that different from the original civilization, and yet it
hooked me badly.
I spent so many hours playing Civ 2 that I'll never get back, but I had fun along the
way, and I still enjoy playing it 25 years later.
In true story, it will no longer, the last version of Windows that it would run on was
Windows XP.
Well, I had a copy, and I no longer had Windows XP, what was I going to do?
My wife had an old laptop that had Windows XP, and I've kept the laptop.
Now, actually, I could play it on my regular computer now, because it's in the civilization
chronicles, but I still kept the laptop, because, you know, it's something I can take with
me.
Anyway, Sid Meier says that he has a rule for new versions of Civ, which is one third
should stay the same.
One third should simply refine what was there before, and one third should be new things.
Now, what are some of the things he said will never change?
First, Civ will always be turn-based.
Now, interestingly, the very first version Civ wrote was real time, but he said it never
really worked right until he changed it to turn-based.
And all subsequent versions of Civ have kept the turn-based feature.
In fact, the phrase one more turn has become a featured part of the marketing.
Now, back when I played it in my younger days, I often witnessed the sun rising as a result.
Even now, I might think I will stop after this turn and make dinner, then realize 45 minutes
later, I still haven't stopped.
Multiple paths to victory.
Now, in early versions, there were only two paths.
It was either a science victory by landing your starship on Alpha Centauri with colonists
or conquer everyone.
Civ 2 maintains that when we get into further versions of Civ, and we're going to talk about
all of them, we start seeing other ways to get to victory, and that's part of the development.
Another thing, global warming, slash pollution, slash climate change.
This shows up in every game, though the mechanics might be different.
But there's something in there that just says, you know, you can't just produce, produce,
produce, and not think about the consequences.
Civ will always have a tech tree, and every version of Civ has a tech tree, you must navigate
to research technologies and to make advancement.
Now some of the changes were the refinements.
A few items got small changes, like the pyramids, which is an ancient wonder.
Now giving you a free granary in every city, or the Legion unit, getting stronger but
also a little more expensive.
A new difficulty level was added, the deity level, which made for even more of a challenge
for the player.
The number of Civs in the game increased from 14 to 21, and the number of wonders increased
from 21 to 28.
An interesting addition was the introduction of a new government called fundamentalism,
which could be pretty powerful for a military victory, but less useful for a science victory.
And another new introduction was scenarios that came included with the game, one for
Rome, and another for World War II.
Now Civ I had diplomats, but Civ II added spies, and a new metric for a reputation meant
that your past actions would influence how other Civs would interact with you.
In fact, the diplomacy aspect in general was beefed up deliberately to make peaceful strategies
more successful, including making alliances.
And if you were at peace with a neighbor, they could demand that you withdraw your units
from their territory.
But if war was in the cards, that was improved as well.
Units now had hit points, which made combat more tactically interesting, and pretty much eliminated
the rare, but possible in Civ, event of a spearman defeating a battleship.
And this made the era of the unit was from more important as well.
In the early game, a phalanx was a great defensive unit for your game, but you needed to upgrade
your military as time went on, going to pikemen for defense in the medieval era, and onto
mechanized infantry in the modern era.
But the most noticeable change was in the graphics.
Instead of dosque graphics, you had something a little easier on the eyes.
The top-down flat view of Civ 1 was replaced with a kind of a three-dimensional isometric
view, and all of the units got new graphics.
The wonders all got movies explaining their significance, and a new high council was created
to provide advice to the player, although the advice was mostly of use to newer players
after a while I just ignored its existence.
When high council you have various advisors who are actors filmed in costumes giving you
advice in their area.
There's a science advisor, a military advisor, an economics advisor, a diplomacy advisor,
and a happiness advisor.
Now the last requires a little explanation.
In Civ, keeping your citizens happy matters since they get unhappy they can revolt and bring
down your empire.
This is one of the things that continues to be true through following versions of Civ,
even though the mechanics of it might change.
Think about the council.
Basically your science advisor is always going to tell you you need to spend more on science.
Your military advisor is always going to tell you you need to build more units and so
on.
So, after a while it really doesn't make any sense to pay attention to them unless you
enjoy watching the movies.
The biggest advance came from the scenarios.
This was the start of the modding community around this game, as players could create
their own scenarios and share them around.
Modding has only increased in popularity and is actively encouraged by the developers
since it only increases interest in the game.
In fact, serious modding really takes off with Civ 4, which we'll talk about sometime
later.
These days when a game is popular, developers will release what is referred to as DLC.
In other words, downloadable content as expansions and they can be free or be sold as the developer
wishes.
But back when Civ 2 was released, we didn't have Steam, we didn't have a developed internet,
so expansions came in the form of CDs available for purchase.
And Civ 2 had a number of these.
Civ 2 scenarios, conflicts and civilization.
This had 20 added scenarios, 12 of which were created by the developers at MicroPose,
and 8 by fans of the game, and it shipped with an enhanced macro language for building
scenarios.
Civ 2 fantastic worlds.
This one had 19 additional scenarios of which 11 were by developers and 8 by fans of the
game.
Civ 2 multiplayer gold edition, usually abbreviated MGE.
Now this added multiplayer, something that Civ never had before, but it had some problems
and I never really cared to play against human players.
My gaming was when I happened to have some free time to spend, and trying to coordinate
with other players made no sense for me, so I never bought it.
Civ 2 test of time, I played this a lot.
At least as much, possibly more than the original Civ 2.
The main thing this did was expand the game by adding Alpha Centauri.
In Civ you always had the option of a science victory by being the first to land your
colonists on Alpha Centauri.
In this expansion, landing on Alpha Centauri did not end the game, there was an alien race
on the planet, and it competed with other Civs all through the game.
You could even play as the alien race, although it was never as interesting since you had
no other Civs to interact with, until very late in the game, when one or more of the Earth
Civs would land.
It also introduced the feature of multiple maps, since you had two plans to keep track of,
and there were ways when you develop the technology to move back and forth between the maps slash
planets.
There were some other minor changes in graphics, but in most respects it was Civ 2.
It also shipped with a couple of scenarios that took advantage of the multiple maps capability,
a fantasy scenario called the World of Midgard, and a science fiction scenario called the
Universe's La Land 21185 gameplay.
Once you've learned the relatively minor differences between Civ and Civ 2, the gameplay is really
just the same.
You begin to start out as a band of wandering nomads in 4000 BC.
You settle down and found your first city, you build military units, buildings, and more
settlers.
Others are still the ones to create roads, irrigation, and mines.
You still research technologies, you still try to win by either a science victory, i.e.
landing on Alpha Centauri, or a military victory, i.e. wiping out everyone else.
While it's not a print, you can possibly find the disks at places like eBay, but you
have other options.
Steam unfortunately does not have Civ 2, nor does good old games.
How much is too bad, those are two of my favorite spots for these things.
But you have other options.
Play classic games has both Civ 2 and the two expansions, scenarios, and fantastic worlds,
so you can play them online that way.
Unfortunately they do not have test of time.
Myabandonware.com, on the other hand, does have test of time in multiplayer Gold Edition.
I found a site, there's a link in the show notes for this, where some enterprising person
has packaged up the game for download, so you can run it on your computer pretty easily.
And I've tested it on Windows 10 and it works.
Now the original Civ 2 won't run on Windows 10, and the problem is that they use some funky
video drivers that you needed way back in the day, but which you don't need now, but
the game won't run without them, and they won't install on modern versions of Windows,
so I guess I mentioned last time I have an old laptop that has Windows XP around, so
I can play it when I want to.
And I'll keep that old laptop, because when I'm on the road, online games and Steam
are not convenient, but I can play my games using my CDs on this laptop.
One tip is that Civ and Civ 2 play a lot more easily using the number pad to move units
around, and since my laptop does not have a number pad, I bought a USB number pad that
plugs into it and gives me that capability.
So I've got a lot of links in the show notes that are going to help you to look into this
a little bit more, but for now this is a hookah for HackerPublic Radio, signing off and
encouraging you to support FreeSoftware.
Bye bye.
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