We have decided to rid the world of your worthless civilization. Prepare for WAR!
I have said it before, but I think it bears repeating every so often: I'm not entirely objective about my game reviews. While I absolutely focus on the quality of the games I play, I won't hide the fact that sometimes, I just like certain games for reasons beyond what I can explain.
Maybe it's a specific gameplay loop, or story beat, or even nostalgia, but some games just have that "greater than the sum of their parts" feeling. That is especially true of my 10s games, many of which I have deep seated relationships with. I myself categorize these games a lot of ways, but I definitely have, at leas in my head, a ranking on how much nostalgia or other intangible factors impacts these titles. And I have no shame in admiting that Civilization II is more influenced by those factors than any other game on that list. It might be the one I get the most pushback on when I talk to people, I get all sorts of different comments about how it's so much more basic than the rest of the series, just about all of its sequels are better games, on and on, etc. But there has always been something to Civ2 that I just can't find in its successors, even with better graphics, more paths to victory and more units. Perhaps it's just nostalgia. But that would make a ton of sense, because I could make a case that this game had more impact on my life, like, my actual real life, than any other title I have ever played.
Civilization II first arrived in my house soon after it's release in early 1996. It was a birthday gift...but not for me. You see, my father very quickly realized that our brand new family computer could, in fact, play games that weren't Doom. He had always had something of a strategic mind and a love of history, so this game seemed right up his alley. And sure enough, it was an instant hit for both of us. We spent a lot of time playing together, trying out all the different strategies and learning all the little nuances to the gameplay. We spent all sorts of time studying the different units, wonders and improvements, trying different strategies and seeing if we could beat the game. It felt so difficult at the time, even on the easiest difficulty levels. Both of us had quite a bit of experience with gaming, but this level of depth and strategy was unprecedented. It might seem ridiculous to say that now, but at the time there weren't too many readily available titles out there that had his much nuance.
I've talked before about my relative lack of experience with PC games, to the point that I almost decided to not consider them for the blog/podcast. But CIV2 is one of the major reasons I decided not to. Don't get me wrong, there are console ports of this game, but I'm not entirely sure you would want to actually play them. Part of the reason I can't get into PC gaming is that I'm just not comfortable with keyboard and mouse controls. I will stand by the fact that they are substantially worse than a controller for the majority of video game genres. I can respect that they are objectively better for FPS games, even if I personally would rather play with a controller. But if there's one genre even I absolutely can't play with anything other than a keyboard, it's strategy titles. I did play a little bit of the PlayStation version just for kicks, but the thought of completing a full, drawn out game of CIV2 with a controller made me ill. There is just so much to do and so many actions you can take that you really need a keyboard here. Besides, the controls are so fluid and the quick keys are so sensical that even console-first gamers will be right at home. Move with the arrows or by clicking and dragging, build cities with B, mine with M, irrigate with I and build roads with R. This may all seem like common sense, but I feel like it's a level simplifying something so complex that you just don't see too often in PC games.
While there is a lot to manage in Civilization 2, the premise of the game is simple: start with a single unit and build up the world's strongest civilization. You have two ways to win in CIV2, conquer the world or reach the moon before anyone else. The game can also end in a draw if neither of things can be accomplished by the year 2020. Your civilization starts in the stone age, with the ability to build small cities, create simple roads and comission weak units with shields and spears. But as your scientists conduct research, you will start to unlock more and more advances. Sometimes these will allow you to build better military units, with wooden spears giving way to bronze ones, blades to muskets and eventually, mounted calvarymen to tanks and missiles. Other times these will allow you to build improvements to your city, from marketplaces to defensive walls to nuclear power plants and computer stations. Staying on top of your technology is essential, as it allows you to stay one step ahead of your opponents. You have a lot of ways you can go here, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. You can focus on military might, but will that proclude you from reaching the moon? But if you focus too hard on the arts and sceinces, what happens when enemy ships carrying cannons and musketeers show up to invade and all you have are guys with spears? As ruler, it's up to you to decide.
There is so much to manage here, but I never felt overwhelmed by it. Every move you make matters and every action has a consequence, whether big or small. Something like placing your city may seem trivial, but the placement from one tile to the next can make a huge difference. Every tile on the map has properties, they all produce a resource for or limit the growth of your city. If you have a lot of resources but not a lot of food, your city might not grow. Place it too far away from other cities and it will be cut off, but place it too close and it will have to compete with others for resources. Building settlers, and later engineers, is essential, they can irrigate and build roads to help your civilization grow. But they also require a lot of resources to maintain and often prevent you from building more military units. You get to choose your government type, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. You can rule as a monarch if you want to, but this limits your ability to grow your economy and makes your civilization very inflexible. Democracy will allow you to create a booming economy while simultaneously enjoying unprecdedented scientific advances. But stay in a war too long, or enlist too many soldiers from one city and your people will revolt. You can avoid all of that with a fundamentalist government, but doing so will also slow your scientific growth to a halt. That just scratches the surface of all that you have to manage here, every city has it's own production, corruption, science and luxury scores, all of which can be altered with constructing buildings. You have to manage your relationships with other nations, whether friend, enemy or somewhere in between. We could go all day discussing these things...and that's kind of the point.
While there is a lot to manage, there are plenty of quirks to find and fun to be had. I have always loved interacting with the other civilizations and the different ways they interact depending on your actions. The trash talking from hostile nations is hysterical and it's especially funny coming from leaders that weren't necessarily hostile in the real world. I don't know what it is, every time I end up loading into a game against India I manage to find myself with Ghandi, which is weird. Maybe it's a programming error in his code? Or maybe I'm just that warlike. One of the most memorable parts of CIV 2, at least to me, were the high council meetings. You could convene meetings of your five advisors, one each for military, science, trade, foreign relations and attitude, who you could click on for advice. These were presented in full motion video, with the advisors often carrying on prolonged conversations and arguing with each other over policy. This was an especially huge deal to me as a predominately console gamer, who wasn't used to seeing live action like this in video games. It was also cool to see these guys change with the times, they start in togas before moving on to medieval garb and eventually modern clothing. They also have a surprising amount of dialogue options based on how you are doing, I especially like your military advisor's drunken rambling when he's happy. It's little touches like this that made CIV 2 stand out.
But honestly, I think the biggest thing CIV 2 did for me had absolutely nothing to with video games at all. Simply put, this is where my love of history started, I learned so much about world history because of how Civilization piqued my interest. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't historically acurate by any means (though you can download scenarios that allow you to play through historical events). You can allow for historically relevant starting locations, but that's about it. But just hearing about some of these different cultures, the Aztecs, the Persians, the Sioux, the Babylonians, had me running to my library to read up on them. I had absolutely no idea what or where Carthage was before I played this game. I've played a lot of games that have inspired me in tons of ways, but I don't know if I've ever played another that actually inspired me to turn it off to go educate myself.
While it's one of my all time favorites, I absolutely recognize CIV 2's flaws. I probably recognize them more than I do with any of my other 10s. But the biggest thing I hear when I rank this game so high is that most of its sequels are much better and render it obsolete. I can understand this thought process to a certain extent, I haven't played the whole series but I have put quite a bit of time into CIVs 3,4 and 5. I do miss some things from those titles when I go back and play CIV 2. I liked the additional paths to victory, the newer games allow for political and cultural victories in addition to scientific and conquest routes. I like the fact that each city has it's own cultural footprint and you can even take over cities by expanding your cultural influence rather than invading them. Perhaps the thing I miss the most are the unique units, each civilization has a special unit they will eventually be able to build. This actually adds some level of historical accuracy, the Aztecs or Inca get their special units early, allowing them to dominate the midgame, while the Americans and European civiliations tend to grow stronger in the mid and late game. But honestly, I think these games tended to overcomplicate the formula. There was already so much to manage in CIV 2, and the newer games in the series add even more on top of that. Maybe that's just a me problem, but I found it got to the point that it was overwhelming.
But while it definitely has a certain archaic feel to it, I still go back to CIV 2 frequently and I have a great time playing it every time. Yes, it's a deeply nostalgic and personally important game for me, but it's not nostalgia alone that carries it. CIV 2 offers just enough of the complexity and detail that it's challenging but also accessible. That's not especially easy to find in the straregy genre. Being honest, it's probably in the lower tier of my 10s. But it's a 10 nonetheless and a game that I believe everyone should experience.
I have said it before, but I think it bears repeating every so often: I'm not entirely objective about my game reviews. While I absolutely focus on the quality of the games I play, I won't hide the fact that sometimes, I just like certain games for reasons beyond what I can explain.
Maybe it's a specific gameplay loop, or story beat, or even nostalgia, but some games just have that "greater than the sum of their parts" feeling. That is especially true of my 10s games, many of which I have deep seated relationships with. I myself categorize these games a lot of ways, but I definitely have, at leas in my head, a ranking on how much nostalgia or other intangible factors impacts these titles. And I have no shame in admiting that Civilization II is more influenced by those factors than any other game on that list. It might be the one I get the most pushback on when I talk to people, I get all sorts of different comments about how it's so much more basic than the rest of the series, just about all of its sequels are better games, on and on, etc. But there has always been something to Civ2 that I just can't find in its successors, even with better graphics, more paths to victory and more units. Perhaps it's just nostalgia. But that would make a ton of sense, because I could make a case that this game had more impact on my life, like, my actual real life, than any other title I have ever played.
Civilization II first arrived in my house soon after it's release in early 1996. It was a birthday gift...but not for me. You see, my father very quickly realized that our brand new family computer could, in fact, play games that weren't Doom. He had always had something of a strategic mind and a love of history, so this game seemed right up his alley. And sure enough, it was an instant hit for both of us. We spent a lot of time playing together, trying out all the different strategies and learning all the little nuances to the gameplay. We spent all sorts of time studying the different units, wonders and improvements, trying different strategies and seeing if we could beat the game. It felt so difficult at the time, even on the easiest difficulty levels. Both of us had quite a bit of experience with gaming, but this level of depth and strategy was unprecedented. It might seem ridiculous to say that now, but at the time there weren't too many readily available titles out there that had his much nuance.
I've talked before about my relative lack of experience with PC games, to the point that I almost decided to not consider them for the blog/podcast. But CIV2 is one of the major reasons I decided not to. Don't get me wrong, there are console ports of this game, but I'm not entirely sure you would want to actually play them. Part of the reason I can't get into PC gaming is that I'm just not comfortable with keyboard and mouse controls. I will stand by the fact that they are substantially worse than a controller for the majority of video game genres. I can respect that they are objectively better for FPS games, even if I personally would rather play with a controller. But if there's one genre even I absolutely can't play with anything other than a keyboard, it's strategy titles. I did play a little bit of the PlayStation version just for kicks, but the thought of completing a full, drawn out game of CIV2 with a controller made me ill. There is just so much to do and so many actions you can take that you really need a keyboard here. Besides, the controls are so fluid and the quick keys are so sensical that even console-first gamers will be right at home. Move with the arrows or by clicking and dragging, build cities with B, mine with M, irrigate with I and build roads with R. This may all seem like common sense, but I feel like it's a level simplifying something so complex that you just don't see too often in PC games.
While there is a lot to manage in Civilization 2, the premise of the game is simple: start with a single unit and build up the world's strongest civilization. You have two ways to win in CIV2, conquer the world or reach the moon before anyone else. The game can also end in a draw if neither of things can be accomplished by the year 2020. Your civilization starts in the stone age, with the ability to build small cities, create simple roads and comission weak units with shields and spears. But as your scientists conduct research, you will start to unlock more and more advances. Sometimes these will allow you to build better military units, with wooden spears giving way to bronze ones, blades to muskets and eventually, mounted calvarymen to tanks and missiles. Other times these will allow you to build improvements to your city, from marketplaces to defensive walls to nuclear power plants and computer stations. Staying on top of your technology is essential, as it allows you to stay one step ahead of your opponents. You have a lot of ways you can go here, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. You can focus on military might, but will that proclude you from reaching the moon? But if you focus too hard on the arts and sceinces, what happens when enemy ships carrying cannons and musketeers show up to invade and all you have are guys with spears? As ruler, it's up to you to decide.
There is so much to manage here, but I never felt overwhelmed by it. Every move you make matters and every action has a consequence, whether big or small. Something like placing your city may seem trivial, but the placement from one tile to the next can make a huge difference. Every tile on the map has properties, they all produce a resource for or limit the growth of your city. If you have a lot of resources but not a lot of food, your city might not grow. Place it too far away from other cities and it will be cut off, but place it too close and it will have to compete with others for resources. Building settlers, and later engineers, is essential, they can irrigate and build roads to help your civilization grow. But they also require a lot of resources to maintain and often prevent you from building more military units. You get to choose your government type, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. You can rule as a monarch if you want to, but this limits your ability to grow your economy and makes your civilization very inflexible. Democracy will allow you to create a booming economy while simultaneously enjoying unprecdedented scientific advances. But stay in a war too long, or enlist too many soldiers from one city and your people will revolt. You can avoid all of that with a fundamentalist government, but doing so will also slow your scientific growth to a halt. That just scratches the surface of all that you have to manage here, every city has it's own production, corruption, science and luxury scores, all of which can be altered with constructing buildings. You have to manage your relationships with other nations, whether friend, enemy or somewhere in between. We could go all day discussing these things...and that's kind of the point.
While there is a lot to manage, there are plenty of quirks to find and fun to be had. I have always loved interacting with the other civilizations and the different ways they interact depending on your actions. The trash talking from hostile nations is hysterical and it's especially funny coming from leaders that weren't necessarily hostile in the real world. I don't know what it is, every time I end up loading into a game against India I manage to find myself with Ghandi, which is weird. Maybe it's a programming error in his code? Or maybe I'm just that warlike. One of the most memorable parts of CIV 2, at least to me, were the high council meetings. You could convene meetings of your five advisors, one each for military, science, trade, foreign relations and attitude, who you could click on for advice. These were presented in full motion video, with the advisors often carrying on prolonged conversations and arguing with each other over policy. This was an especially huge deal to me as a predominately console gamer, who wasn't used to seeing live action like this in video games. It was also cool to see these guys change with the times, they start in togas before moving on to medieval garb and eventually modern clothing. They also have a surprising amount of dialogue options based on how you are doing, I especially like your military advisor's drunken rambling when he's happy. It's little touches like this that made CIV 2 stand out.
But honestly, I think the biggest thing CIV 2 did for me had absolutely nothing to with video games at all. Simply put, this is where my love of history started, I learned so much about world history because of how Civilization piqued my interest. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't historically acurate by any means (though you can download scenarios that allow you to play through historical events). You can allow for historically relevant starting locations, but that's about it. But just hearing about some of these different cultures, the Aztecs, the Persians, the Sioux, the Babylonians, had me running to my library to read up on them. I had absolutely no idea what or where Carthage was before I played this game. I've played a lot of games that have inspired me in tons of ways, but I don't know if I've ever played another that actually inspired me to turn it off to go educate myself.
While it's one of my all time favorites, I absolutely recognize CIV 2's flaws. I probably recognize them more than I do with any of my other 10s. But the biggest thing I hear when I rank this game so high is that most of its sequels are much better and render it obsolete. I can understand this thought process to a certain extent, I haven't played the whole series but I have put quite a bit of time into CIVs 3,4 and 5. I do miss some things from those titles when I go back and play CIV 2. I liked the additional paths to victory, the newer games allow for political and cultural victories in addition to scientific and conquest routes. I like the fact that each city has it's own cultural footprint and you can even take over cities by expanding your cultural influence rather than invading them. Perhaps the thing I miss the most are the unique units, each civilization has a special unit they will eventually be able to build. This actually adds some level of historical accuracy, the Aztecs or Inca get their special units early, allowing them to dominate the midgame, while the Americans and European civiliations tend to grow stronger in the mid and late game. But honestly, I think these games tended to overcomplicate the formula. There was already so much to manage in CIV 2, and the newer games in the series add even more on top of that. Maybe that's just a me problem, but I found it got to the point that it was overwhelming.
But while it definitely has a certain archaic feel to it, I still go back to CIV 2 frequently and I have a great time playing it every time. Yes, it's a deeply nostalgic and personally important game for me, but it's not nostalgia alone that carries it. CIV 2 offers just enough of the complexity and detail that it's challenging but also accessible. That's not especially easy to find in the straregy genre. Being honest, it's probably in the lower tier of my 10s. But it's a 10 nonetheless and a game that I believe everyone should experience.
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