Civilisation 2 - Microprose

             Reviewed by James Judge on a 486sx

Before we get this review underway, let's get the oh so boring
technical requirements out of the way. The box of the game states
that you need a minimum of a 486DX2 with 8megs of RAM running
either Windows 3.1 or 95 and a dual speed CD - oh, you must also
be able to support SVGA and a Soundblaster card would be good too.
I must say that I'm undercutting this minimum quite a bit by using
just a 4meg 486sx and I've found that it runs perfectly fine if
you don't use the CD which lets you have some .AVI files playing
and a few extra music tracks. With this sacrifice you can play the
game at a nice speed and the only things that slow down noticeably
are the Throne Room, City View, Spaceship View and Civilopedia.
None of them are a requirement to run the game, so if you're a Civ
fanatic (as <blush> I am) you don't need anything more than what
I've got to get a good game out of it.

Installation from the CD was painless enough, but the amount of
room everything took up was painful - nigh on 40megs and if you
want super-fast .AVI files you can also download those if you've
got a spare 300megs. As if!

One last thing - there are a couple of graphic sequences (called
Heralds, announcing the arrival of a king) which, when played
properly, need a jaw-dropping 16megs; so those with the "I can
crack walnuts with my I/O port" computer can have a super smooth,
super slick, herald inclusive game of Civilisation 2. Mere mortals
like me will have to do with the bare bones, but I'm not
complaining.

The game is a follow on from the hugely successful Civilisation.
Civ, for those readers who have had their head stuck in a
particularly dense piece of rock over the past four or so years,
is a game which involves you taking a small tribe of settlers
through the ages from the invention of the wheel through the
Bronze Age, Classical era, Medieval Times, Modern day and on to
the future. You succeeded at the game by forging your way ahead in
the world, exploring the map and increasing the size of your
civilisation by building cities. In these cities you could build a
huge number of buildings from simple granaries through to SDI
defence systems (in the later parts of the game) and you had to
manage the cost of these items as well as the happiness of your
ever-increasing population, as well as worrying about taxes,
feeding the masses and getting in enough production to support
your military as well as enough to enable you to continue to build
these city improvements. And that was only half the story.  Apart
from the economic side of things, you also had to launch extensive
military campaigns against the ravaging barbarian hordes and
opponent civilisations, either decimating them, reducing them to a
pitiful village, playing one off against the other or making chums
with them.

With a game of such scope there were three ways to complete the
game. The first was the boring way - just play until the time
limit ran out. Thrilling. The second way was for the blood thirsty
military man - destroy the other civilisations. The third way was
for the economic person - to create a thriving civilisation that
was happy and advanced enough to embark on colonising a new
planet.

At the end of the game you were given a percentage score and a
rating (ie on par with Dan Quayle... not very good). To achieve a
high rating you had to balance the military and economic sides of
the game, inventing new technologies as quickly as possible so
that you ended the game as early as possible with the largest
possible civilisation, as many Wonders of the World as possible,
as little pollution, as many happy people and a spaceship which
had colonised Alpha Centauri. All of this was damned hard work and
involved many hours of trial and tribulation.

That was the first effort. This is the second, so what's
different?

Well, when you first start a game the first obvious difference is
the graphics. To bring everything up-to-date Microprose have
decided to use an isometric view, familiar to those of us who have
played games such as Sim City 2000 and Transport Tycoon. This
means that all of the map looks far more like an actual chunk of
land, rather than a poorly drawn EGA map.  The grid is still there
(ie the whole map operates like a chessboard) but it has been
rotated 90 degrees. This led me to huge problems at the start
because I just couldn't get my head around which way was which
when I was trying to move a unit using the keyboard. This really
began to grate as time after time my valiant attack on an enemy
unit turned into yet another unannounced sojourn in the desert.
But this has gradually disappeared as I've finally got attuned to
the strange display. Yes, I still send my chariots off on a heroic
charge in the opposite direction of my enemy, but this only
happens rarely.

Despite the difficulties posed by the new viewpoint the new
graphics are pretty good. They aren't 3D studio affairs,
naturally, but when compared to the little counters you had in Civ
and the majority of other strategy games they are good - each icon
is nice and big and easily identifiable with great little touches
such as a whip in the charioteer's hand or guns clutched by the
spies. The information displays have also been tidied up, looking
far more presentable and the graphics accompanying the
Civilopedia, Kings and events such as "We Love The King" days are
really good, being a mixture of well drawn graphics, digitised
photos and paintings.

Apart from these new graphics, a quick play of Civ 2 won't show
much extra to the hardened Civ player as the aims of the game are
the same and the methods of reaching them are also the same. You
still start off with the lone settler placed in a blacked out map.
You still have the slow climb to supremacy (or failure) using
familiar methods such as entertainers, diplomats, nuclear
missiles, chariots and the whole rest of 'em.

Disappointed? Well, read the manual and play the game for a little
longer. It is only after a good session with this game that the
Civ player will start to notice the differences.  The basic game
is the same. As a matter of fact, I'd say 75% of the game
(excluding the graphics) is the same. It's that extra 25%, though,
that adds so much more to this game and it's that which sets this
apart (and above) from its forerunner.

To start with there are a host of new terrain squares from furs to
spice and silk. Each of these are only found in particular places
and can make or break the success of a city. The basic terrain are
still there, but this added variety makes the placing of cities
far more strategic.

The biggest change has been in the technologies. I think all of
the old technologies are there, but now there have been about
twenty new additions, all of which have brought their own sets of
new military units and city improvements, along with new Wonders
and other fun stuff.

Unlike in Civ where the progression through the advancement chart
was very much a linear process with a few dead ends (such as
Chivalry and The Wheel) which provided questionable returns for
the time invested, the new chart is more a spaghetti junction than
anything else, and progression from advancement to advancement
seems more logical and far less linear - there is still only one
selection of advancements you need before you can progress onto a
new one, but the order in which you can research these
advancements is less structured.

The new advancements come in places where there seemed to be huge
gaps in the original flow of technology. So, instead of going
straight from Flight to Advanced Flight you must research the
Radio along the way (which has the prerequisite of Electricity) as
well as Machine Tools (which needs Tactics and Steel) and then
from Ad. Flight you can then move on to Rocketry, which needs the
invention of Electronics.

The new advancements also help to bridge the gaps, not only
between other advancements but between military units. Now there
are about fifty military units, and they all have their own uses.
Beforehand, in Civ, I found that my main offensive unit early on
in the game was the Chariot and that was followed quickly by the
Knight. Now there is a whole string of these mounted attackers,
each following on from another, picking up in strength with each
new advancement. So, to start with you can have a weak chariot
with an attack of 3, but through a logical set of technological
advancements you progress through to Knight, Crusader, Dragoon and
finally Cavalry with an attack of 8. If you want you can get these
troops through consecutive discoveries and this makes real sense
to me.

The next "Big Thing" is the newly restructured governments. In Civ
I found that I used just the two extremes of government -
Despotism and Democracy. Now, with the introduction of a funky new
Government (Fundamentalism), and a reworking of the power of
individual government types the progression through the different
types of government is both natural and necessary - you won't
survive long on Despotism.

In the political side of things the diplomatic side of the game
has also been fine tuned to the point of near perfection (well,
maybe not THAT far, but it is aeons ahead of Civ) with the ability
to enter three states of peace (ranging from cease fire through to
peace and the ultimate alliance) as well as the options to give
gifts, swap knowledge when YOU want to, swap world maps, suggest
wars to your friends as well as a few other things. You also have
a reputation, so if you treat a friend poorly then either friends
of that friends will come and beat you up, or you'll find it
harder to influence allies as word gets around of your despicable
behaviour - great! This doesn't play a large part in the lower
levels of play, but higher up alliances are meant to be kept and
if you're partners with a race which is way below you in the
technology stakes you have to keep on giving them little
sweeteners otherwise they'll start doing nasty things to your
cities.

On the military side of things there is a new combat system at
work. Each unit now has hit points as well as their attack and
defence scores, along with a new fire power score. When combat
is started the two units attack and defence scores are compared
and rolled against and the winner scores a hit against the
opponent - who then has the attacker's fire power taken away from
their hit points. This goes on until one unit dies. This is a more
complex procedure than that present in Civ, but it adds extra
depth to the fighting aspect and it also does away with the plain
ridiculous scenario I often found myself in - a chariot carving
its way through rank after rank of phalanxes and legions, not
suffering one iota. This is still possible but now thanks to hit
points, the chances are very remote. Also, due to the new fire
power, you won't have a half dead trireme go against a battle ship
and come out tops (as I once did...!). Damaged units are
repairable, of course, in a number of ways and this all adds to
the fun of the game. Of course, if this is too much like hard work
for you then you can have the option of turning this part of the
game off, reverting to the traditional style.

That is about all the major changes present in Civ 2. There are
loads of little extras which I could go on and on about for ages,
such as they way that you can get engineers who, later on in the
game, can change the landscape, how diplomats change to spies who
can infiltrate enemy cities poisoning their water supplies or
planting nuclear devices. I could talk about the way that all of
the Wonders now have a useful part to play in the game so, along
with the addition of seven new wonders, the building of these
items really can alter your position in the world. Heck, I could

even go on about the different zoom levels available to you on the
map screen.

Oh, and let's definitely not forget a really great addition to the
game, and that's the ability to change any aspect of the game that
you'd like. With a comprehensive cheat mode that lets you see the
map, destroy civilisations, gain advancements etc. etc.  you can
also access a number of text files held in the Civ2 directory to
change more intrinsic and esoteric areas of the game, such as the
city size which sparks off unrest, how many hit points a unit has
or how many shields a certain terrain type provides. You can even
construct three personalised units, altering their graphics and
attributes (in fact you can alter most of the graphics in the
game!).

Finally there are also a couple of scenarios provided for you to
try your hand at - World War 2 and a Rome conquest - as well as a
number of premade maps (three world maps, Europe, the
Mediterranean and Pacific), along with the option to customise any
part of the world generation process you want from the map size
through to the age of the world and its climate. You can also edit
some parts of the overall rules of the game.

One final thing - there is also a map editor provided with the
game which lets you build your own maps. You'll then be able to
alter parts of it in the actual Civ 2 game and then save it as a
scenario to send to your chummies. Cool.

So, with all of these improvements is it a good game? I would
think so. Anyone who has the slightest interest in strategy games
should seriously look at this game and anyone who enjoyed
Civilisation will love this game. With the balance between things
military and economic just right, Civ 2 still carries Civ's huge
heritage but is able to add so much more thanks to the tweaked
battle system, new trading, extra improvements, new units, better
advances etc. etc. Where can it go wrong?

Good? No - best damned game I've ever played, and that's saying
something!
                              - o -