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149 lines
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149 lines
10 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 3930
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Title: HPR3930: Playing Civilization II Test of Time
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3930/hpr3930.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:32:17
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3930 for Friday the 25th of August 2023.
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Today's show is entitled, Playing Civilization 2 Test of Time.
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It is hosted by Ahukah and is about 12 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is, Some Hints for Playing Civilization 2 Test of Time.
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Hello and welcome to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode in my series on
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my history with strategy gaming.
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What I want to talk about today is Civilization 2 Test of Time.
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Now, I have noted that the various versions of Siv have each had expansions,
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generally two of them, before a whole new version came out.
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And that is true for Civilization too.
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Normally, I don't cover them separately.
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I prefer at this point to look back at the final version of each after all of the expansions.
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But Test of Time is the exception.
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Now, Siv 2 was developed by Brian Reynolds and Jeff Briggs with some help from Sid Meier at MicroPros.
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But shortly after the game was released, all three of them left MicroPros.
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And if you care, you can read all about it in, there's a book, Sid Meier's Road called Sid Meier's Memoir.
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And I've got a link in the show notes if you want to check that book out.
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And this involved MicroPros getting bought up by other companies, rights getting tossed around and such.
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Meanwhile, the three main people from MicroPros founded a company called Fair Access, F-I-R-A-X-I-S.
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So Test of Time did not directly involve Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, or Jeff Briggs.
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They'd all gone.
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Still, when the Civilization Chronicles was released, which I'm glad I have, Test of Time was included.
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So it is still part of the family in some sense.
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And I have spent many hours playing it and very happily.
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The name of this Test of Time is a play on the original Siv opening screens,
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which ask you if you could build a civilization to stand the Test of Time.
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Now, there's two things that set Test of Time apart from Siv 2.
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First, the artwork is different.
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This is purely a visual thing which may or may not matter to you.
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Siv 2 had very bright colors while Test of Time has more subdued colors.
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And the unit icons are different and so on.
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There are some other minor differences, but you might not even notice them.
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The gameplay is really the same up to a point.
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You have four possible game selections, plus a scenario.
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When you start up Test of Time, the first is the original game,
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which is just the Siv 2 you are used to, but with the new graphics.
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But it is the other three options that make this game something different.
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And all three hinge on a new game mechanic never used again to allow multiple maps within one game.
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You should think of these as layers.
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Each layer has to have the exact same dimensions,
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so that when stacked, a tile on one layer matches up with a tile on another layer.
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And of course, there has to be a way of moving from one layer to another.
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Now, extended original game.
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This is one of the new options.
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And your first clue that something is different is when you see alien names for a few of the Sivs available.
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You could even decide to play one of those alien Sivs, though I don't recommend it.
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The alien Siv is there to provide an added challenge when you get to Alpha Centauri.
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So if you actually play as the alien Siv, you'll have a very boring game,
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since you won't have any opponents to play off of.
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Still, there will be one alien Siv in the game, that is the point.
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And you will see that the alien Siv may even build a wonderer too.
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Now, this alien Siv resides at Alpha Centauri,
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and you will ultimately meet it if you land colonists there.
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But for most of the game, this doesn't matter other than occasional news notes of what the alien Siv has done.
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As in the original Siv 2 game, you will build your cities, build your units, research technologies, and so on.
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You could even go for a conquest victory, but that would make no sense.
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The whole point of extended original is to get to Alpha Centauri.
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I have played games where I conquered everything, but one lonely opposition city so that I could keep going to get to Alpha Centauri.
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Now, this unlocks a whole new tech tree, and now you battle the Centaurians, as well as any other opponents still in the game.
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So at this point, suddenly you have shifted to a conquest victory.
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Now, you can unlock technologies that you move back and forth between the two planets,
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but they only work on some tiles.
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You'll eventually figure out that a land unit moving between the planets
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cannot move to a forbidden tile on the other one like a sea tile.
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So it's got to be land to land or sea to sea.
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And of course, vice versa.
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Victory happens when you've wiped out all the opposition.
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Now, another new option is something they call the science fiction game, which is a scenario.
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This game starts off with the scenario of an Earth Expedition to another star system that ends up in the Lalonde 21185 system
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and crash lands on the second planet, Funestus.
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Of course, the humans are split into factions that operate as separate sives in this game,
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much like Alpha Centauri, which was released around the same time by the original team from Micropros,
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who had moved on to for access.
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Now, there is also a non-human race crashed on the same planet.
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By researching the appropriate technologies, the two races learned to communicate with each other
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and then to move around the system.
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The first layer you unlock that you visit orbiting platforms above the planet,
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which were built and left there by the original Lalonde inhabitants,
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then eventually to two other planets in the system.
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One, Nomakia, is a rocky planet.
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The other is a gas giant called Nona, which is the original home of the Lalondeans.
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Again, you have the science versus conquest option for winning.
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Wiping out all opposition in the Lalonde system will give you a conquest win,
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or you have a couple of ways to get a science victory.
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Either send a spaceship back to Earth or build a quantum gate back to Earth.
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Next, we have the Midgard scenario.
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Now, as a scenario, this is not intended to be something you play over and over,
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though you can, if you like.
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But it was a good sandbox for developing the fantasy game, which we'll discuss next.
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Now, in the Midgard scenario, you have a story heavily based on Norse, Slavic, and Celtic mythology.
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For example, Ragnarok appears in this scenario.
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Now, you have seven races, elves, murfolk, goblins, humans, infidels,
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who are also human, but a different faction.
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Boutio, which is birds, and Stygians, who which are the undead.
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The story in the scripted scenario revolves around an ancient evil wizard, Valsang,
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who was locked away many centuries ago and now has been forgotten.
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But he has growing in strength and has just started marshalling evil forces to attack the world.
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You play one of the seven races and try to fight back.
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In this scenario, there are four levels who are maps.
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The surface world, the cloud world, the underground world, and the undersea world.
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As you can imagine, different worlds are most suited to different races,
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so your starting location will be determined by the race you choose to play.
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Now, winning this scenario can happen in four ways.
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You can build a siege engine that conquers all evil.
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You can discover Bifrost from the Norse mists,
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or complete ten quests, which will also reveal Bifrost, but without all the research.
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Or you can just wipe out all the competition. That is always available.
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And a note about the gameplay.
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You might think from the scenario set up that the races will join together to defeat the forces
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of evil, but that does not happen. You are in conflict to some degree with all of the others
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in addition to battling Valsang's minions.
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Then, the fantasy game itself. This builds upon the midguard scenario,
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but removes the scripted element and the ten quests.
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You have the same seven races, the same four layers, slash maps,
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but it is now open-ended in terms of gameplay. Every race has its natural starting point.
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For humans, infidels, which is a second human group, and elves, their natural place is the
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surface world. Butios are a bird race, so the clouds is their natural home.
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Murfolk, of course, thrive in the undersea world, while goblins and stigians are at home underground.
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But from the beginning, every race has access to the surface world.
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As you progress, you learn to access other worlds.
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And this applies that if you pick the butios or the Murfolk, you will have a space all
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to your own for a while. Whereas if you pick humans, infidels, or elves, you can expect a lot of
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interaction conflict from the early stages. Victory conditions are building the sea
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ginger, discovering by frost, or wiping out all opposition.
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So in summary, a test of time is really just an expansion of the Civ 2 game, not a version in itself.
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At one time I played out a lot, because the extended original offered even more playing time
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in some additional challenge. But it's not a big advance. The one thing that set it apart was
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the multiple maps feature. And while I enjoyed it, it has never been picked up in subsequent versions.
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I think you can include that it is not a gameplay feature that other developers wanted to work with.
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Now you can get test of time in a variety of ways. I have it in the Civilization Chronicles box set,
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which I don't think is available for purchase in stores anymore, but you might be able to find
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one on eBay or similar. And then of course there's the original CD-ROM version that again you
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might be able to find on eBay or other used places. But also I put a link in the show notes,
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you can find it at myabandonware.com. So you got some options. If anything I've said here,
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strikes your fancy and you think you want to check it out. You can get it and you know maybe
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you can have some fun with it. I certainly spent a lot of hours on this game and you might enjoy
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it as well. So this is a hook up for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you
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to support FreeSoftware. Bye-bye!
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On the Sadois status, today's show is released under Creative Commons,
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Attribution 4.0 International License.
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