Episode: 3930
Title: HPR3930: Playing Civilization II Test of Time
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3930/hpr3930.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:32:17

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3930 for Friday the 25th of August 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Playing Civilization 2 Test of Time.
It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 12 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Some Hints for Playing Civilization 2 Test of Time.
Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in my series on
my history with strategy gaming.
What I want to talk about today is Civilization 2 Test of Time.
Now, I have noted that the various versions of Siv have each had expansions,
generally two of them, before a whole new version came out.
And that is true for Civilization too.
Normally, I don't cover them separately.
I prefer at this point to look back at the final version of each after all of the expansions.
But Test of Time is the exception.
Now, Siv 2 was developed by Brian Reynolds and Jeff Briggs with some help from Sid Meier at MicroPros.
But shortly after the game was released, all three of them left MicroPros.
And if you care, you can read all about it in, there's a book, Sid Meier's Road called Sid Meier's Memoir.
And I've got a link in the show notes if you want to check that book out.
And this involved MicroPros getting bought up by other companies, rights getting tossed around and such.
Meanwhile, the three main people from MicroPros founded a company called Fair Access, F-I-R-A-X-I-S.
So Test of Time did not directly involve Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, or Jeff Briggs.
They'd all gone.
Still, when the Civilization Chronicles was released, which I'm glad I have, Test of Time was included.
So it is still part of the family in some sense.
And I have spent many hours playing it and very happily.
The name of this Test of Time is a play on the original Siv opening screens,
which ask you if you could build a civilization to stand the Test of Time.
Now, there's two things that set Test of Time apart from Siv 2.
First, the artwork is different.
This is purely a visual thing which may or may not matter to you.
Siv 2 had very bright colors while Test of Time has more subdued colors.
And the unit icons are different and so on.
There are some other minor differences, but you might not even notice them.
The gameplay is really the same up to a point.
You have four possible game selections, plus a scenario.
When you start up Test of Time, the first is the original game,
which is just the Siv 2 you are used to, but with the new graphics.
But it is the other three options that make this game something different.
And all three hinge on a new game mechanic never used again to allow multiple maps within one game.
You should think of these as layers.
Each layer has to have the exact same dimensions,
so that when stacked, a tile on one layer matches up with a tile on another layer.
And of course, there has to be a way of moving from one layer to another.
Now, extended original game.
This is one of the new options.
And your first clue that something is different is when you see alien names for a few of the Sivs available.
You could even decide to play one of those alien Sivs, though I don't recommend it.
The alien Siv is there to provide an added challenge when you get to Alpha Centauri.
So if you actually play as the alien Siv, you'll have a very boring game,
since you won't have any opponents to play off of.
Still, there will be one alien Siv in the game, that is the point.
And you will see that the alien Siv may even build a wonderer too.
Now, this alien Siv resides at Alpha Centauri,
and you will ultimately meet it if you land colonists there.
But for most of the game, this doesn't matter other than occasional news notes of what the alien Siv has done.
As in the original Siv 2 game, you will build your cities, build your units, research technologies, and so on.
You could even go for a conquest victory, but that would make no sense.
The whole point of extended original is to get to Alpha Centauri.
I have played games where I conquered everything, but one lonely opposition city so that I could keep going to get to Alpha Centauri.
Now, this unlocks a whole new tech tree, and now you battle the Centaurians, as well as any other opponents still in the game.
So at this point, suddenly you have shifted to a conquest victory.
Now, you can unlock technologies that you move back and forth between the two planets,
but they only work on some tiles.
You'll eventually figure out that a land unit moving between the planets
cannot move to a forbidden tile on the other one like a sea tile.
So it's got to be land to land or sea to sea.
And of course, vice versa.
Victory happens when you've wiped out all the opposition.
Now, another new option is something they call the science fiction game, which is a scenario.
This game starts off with the scenario of an Earth Expedition to another star system that ends up in the Lalonde 21185 system
and crash lands on the second planet, Funestus.
Of course, the humans are split into factions that operate as separate sives in this game,
much like Alpha Centauri, which was released around the same time by the original team from Micropros,
who had moved on to for access.
Now, there is also a non-human race crashed on the same planet.
By researching the appropriate technologies, the two races learned to communicate with each other
and then to move around the system.
The first layer you unlock that you visit orbiting platforms above the planet,
which were built and left there by the original Lalonde inhabitants,
then eventually to two other planets in the system.
One, Nomakia, is a rocky planet.
The other is a gas giant called Nona, which is the original home of the Lalondeans.
Again, you have the science versus conquest option for winning.
Wiping out all opposition in the Lalonde system will give you a conquest win,
or you have a couple of ways to get a science victory.
Either send a spaceship back to Earth or build a quantum gate back to Earth.
Next, we have the Midgard scenario.
Now, as a scenario, this is not intended to be something you play over and over,
though you can, if you like.
But it was a good sandbox for developing the fantasy game, which we'll discuss next.
Now, in the Midgard scenario, you have a story heavily based on Norse, Slavic, and Celtic mythology.
For example, Ragnarok appears in this scenario.
Now, you have seven races, elves, murfolk, goblins, humans, infidels,
who are also human, but a different faction.
Boutio, which is birds, and Stygians, who which are the undead.
The story in the scripted scenario revolves around an ancient evil wizard, Valsang,
who was locked away many centuries ago and now has been forgotten.
But he has growing in strength and has just started marshalling evil forces to attack the world.
You play one of the seven races and try to fight back.
In this scenario, there are four levels who are maps.
The surface world, the cloud world, the underground world, and the undersea world.
As you can imagine, different worlds are most suited to different races,
so your starting location will be determined by the race you choose to play.
Now, winning this scenario can happen in four ways.
You can build a siege engine that conquers all evil.
You can discover Bifrost from the Norse mists,
or complete ten quests, which will also reveal Bifrost, but without all the research.
Or you can just wipe out all the competition. That is always available.
And a note about the gameplay.
You might think from the scenario set up that the races will join together to defeat the forces
of evil, but that does not happen. You are in conflict to some degree with all of the others
in addition to battling Valsang's minions.
Then, the fantasy game itself. This builds upon the midguard scenario,
but removes the scripted element and the ten quests.
You have the same seven races, the same four layers, slash maps,
but it is now open-ended in terms of gameplay. Every race has its natural starting point.
For humans, infidels, which is a second human group, and elves, their natural place is the
surface world. Butios are a bird race, so the clouds is their natural home.
Murfolk, of course, thrive in the undersea world, while goblins and stigians are at home underground.
But from the beginning, every race has access to the surface world.
As you progress, you learn to access other worlds.
And this applies that if you pick the butios or the Murfolk, you will have a space all
to your own for a while. Whereas if you pick humans, infidels, or elves, you can expect a lot of
interaction conflict from the early stages. Victory conditions are building the sea
ginger, discovering by frost, or wiping out all opposition.
So in summary, a test of time is really just an expansion of the Civ 2 game, not a version in itself.
At one time I played out a lot, because the extended original offered even more playing time
in some additional challenge. But it's not a big advance. The one thing that set it apart was
the multiple maps feature. And while I enjoyed it, it has never been picked up in subsequent versions.
I think you can include that it is not a gameplay feature that other developers wanted to work with.
Now you can get test of time in a variety of ways. I have it in the Civilization Chronicles box set,
which I don't think is available for purchase in stores anymore, but you might be able to find
one on eBay or similar. And then of course there's the original CD-ROM version that again you
might be able to find on eBay or other used places. But also I put a link in the show notes,
you can find it at myabandonware.com. So you got some options. If anything I've said here,
strikes your fancy and you think you want to check it out. You can get it and you know maybe
you can have some fun with it. I certainly spent a lot of hours on this game and you might enjoy
it as well. So this is a hook up for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you
to support FreeSoftware. Bye-bye!
On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
Attribution 4.0 International License.