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REVIEWS

Sid Meier's Civilization was one of the greatest games of all time, appearing in the top three of every "Best Games Ever" listing I've ever seen. Civilization II, the worthy sequel, similarly won accolades from the gaming industry. Despite this, the history of the title has been a rocky one. Trademark issues with Avalon Hill were part of it, but probably the most damaging factor in the saga of Civ was the disheartening disintegration of the skilled programming team and the market confusion stemming from a shoddy release strategy. Simultaneous to the release of Civ2, Civ-Net hit the shelves, whetting the appetites of gamers for Internet play. But with the implosion of the staff, rumors began to circulate in the newsgroups that Civ2 would never have Internet support. It's been a long time coming, but Microprose has seen fit to correct that glaring omission from an otherwise great game with their release of Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition.

To briefly recap the essence of Civ, the player starts as one of several wandering tribes. After finding a good place to build a city (based on access to resources and location) the player busily manages his fledgling economy, balancing "guns" (units which expand, develop, or defend his cities) vs. "butter" (structures that improve the inherent qualities of the civilization, such as the rate of research or wealth gain). Typically, the map is obscured, so the player must also manage the exploration of the geography, never knowing where he may stumble across enemies, ruthless barbarians, or a windfall of wealth or technology. The goal of the game is to be the first Civ to successfully develop and build an interstellar starship (but of course, if you are the only Civ left in the game, that becomes a moot point).

It sounds straightforward and it is, basically. As you can tell, going from a stone-age tribe to interstellar travel is going to require a lot of time and technological advances. The main trouble for the player is that the game is so damn engrossing. Every phase of the game is interesting. The early "exploration" phase is a careful management of meager resources and cautious balance between expansion and growth. In the mid-game, you are managing the resources you’ve discovered and trying to maximize growth while not leaving yourself vulnerable to the enemies that surround you. Finally, the end game is either an all-out tech race or a slugfest, as those who are losing the tech contest decide that destroying you is the easiest way to make the world a better place.

Playing Civ2, it is all to frequent that "one-more-turn" left me a bleary eyed wreck, hurling myself into bed at 4 in the morning and praying to fall asleep quickly, to maximize the 90 minutes I have before I have to get up to go to work! Truly, this has happened too many times to count. Call it a lack of self-discipline, but it is a great game.

Microprose has a history of weak rehashes of popular games (Pirates Gold, Railroad Tycoon Deluxe, etc) but Civ2 Gold -- while it IS a rehash -- is worth it. Typical reworkings of MP titles have juiced the graphics a little, jazzed the sounds, and typically taken a great game and dragged it down to a bargain-bin loser (the two examples given above as strong examples). But Civ2 Gold really is worth the buy for anyone who enjoyed Civ2 - meaning just about anyone who played it.

Civ2 Gold brings a number of different features to the table. First is, of course, Internet multiplay. As the saying goes: If you haven't played against humans, you're only playing with yourself. Multiplayer is where the fun begins. No computer AI can match the perfidy and duplicity of humans. One game I played in had an opponent that constantly threw troops at me with no hope of eventual success, and ignored any blandishments (and later threats) to cease. He was a constant distraction and I have the sneaking suspicion that, despite his poor position in the game when we all threw in the towel, he had as much fun as anyone did. No AI will do irrational things just to tick you off, nor can an AI be reasoned with, intimidated, bluffed, or cajoled. Humans make deals that are many degrees of subtlety beyond anything on silicon. This feature alone - to the Civ grognard - is worth the price of admission.

Multiplayer games are available through the MS Zone. As is typical for that venue, there’s always a little wait while the Zone-required files are downloaded and installed (for Civ2MP, there was a 146k zone general D/L, a 550k Civ2-specific zone D/L, and a required D/L of the latest Civ2 patch 1.1 about 3.5 megs). So, unless you have some bandwidth, when you start it up, have something else to do for a while.

But beyond that D/L, the Zone really does make connecting to or hosting games only a few clicks away. Typically people don’t intend to spend 6 hours online playing a single game, so most multi games will have a multiplier to production, unit speed, or both. This is a simple but effective way to get the game moving more quickly – too bad it’s not an option in the regular game. Turns are timed – that is, you may have 1 or 2 minutes (for example) to complete your turn. This is conveniently indicated by a countdown timer at the top of the screen and by a status bar on the lower left (that flashes red when your turn is ending). Certain activities are allowed while others are playing their turns - changing production, checking status reports, but not unit movement – which goes a long way to mitigating the negative aspects of turn-based net play.

Chatting is accomplished through a moderately functional popup window, with the ability to selectively mute individuals. A feature I’m not sure of yet is the dynamic player list – if you haven’t contacted a player physically in the game, you can’t send them a message. I think I don’t like that, despite the in-game logic that argues in its favor. Of course, I suppose you can always leave ICQ running for side conversations anyway…

The multiplayer is fun, but there are some aspects that give the impression of a hasty implementation. First, as far as I could tell there is no way to tell the turn order. This is a little confusing to a new player – I just finished my turn, can I go get a soda pop? Am I going to be up next? A player order iconography (ala Warlords III) would be much appreciated. Additionally, units fly out from obscurity, into your spotting area, and then back beyond the veil of darkness – this is a pain. You have to literally be watching everywhere to spot the odd enemy unit. There should be some sort of report or replay available (as an option; 1 minute turns don’t leave a lot of room for analysis in a large game!) to get spotting reports from your outlying units.

But if you think multiplayer is all the Civ2MPG is about, wait -there's more! Included are 40-some scenarios from Conflicts in Civilization, Fantastic Worlds, and two loads of "best of the net" giving the player a serious variety of challenges from the American Civil War to homebuilt "junior" versions of Master of Magic and Master of Orion.

These scenarios are not simply reworkings of the standard Civ2. These are serious products that are supported by a very flexible engine. In most cases they have different units and different icons, but in many they also have different background music, different terrain icons, and different tech trees. In some games (the Civil War scenarios) technical advance is almost irrelevant and it becomes "Civ2 the Wargame". In MOO Jr. tech advance is accelerated and the focus changes again.

In any cases, the scenario bundle is great. Certainly the "Best of Net" offerings are available elsewhere, but short of buying each of the two expansions separately there is a lot here that is worth playing, and at a bargain price.

But wait - there's more! Because the Civ2 system is so easy to manipulate, the resources on this disk in terms of examples for anyone interested in designing their own scenarios and game are also a gold mine. I've always wanted to do some major things myself with the rules and tech trees, but never really had the time to dig all the examples off the net - now they are here in one easy place. Now I have no excuse....

I do have a couple of issues with Civ2MPG, however. Clearly, despite the accolades it deserves, it IS a rehash. There are code issues that could (should) have been fixed had a serious effort been made, but wasn't. The pathfinding AI in the original Civ2 was not great, and it seems that this could have been an opportunity to improve that. How many triremes have sunk because the AI was too stupid to remember to keep them near a coast? How many positions have been weakened or lost when a crucial reinforcement gets "lost" for multiple turns in a loop in the mountains?

Another example is the resource distribution during scenario editing. It doesn't appear that this has changed at all from the original mapedit.exe that came with Civ2 1.0. The engine uses a random seed for distribution of "special resources" - handy, but many designers would like to control this, making a certain region "richer" or "poorer". Perhaps the resourceful folks who designed all the super scenarios figured out a way to modify that, but is certainly isn't evident in the scenario editing tools as I looked at them.

In sum, Civilization 2 Gold is really worth buying. I've referred to Civ2 as "electronic crack", and as I sit here in the phosphor glow allegedly "testing" scenarios I feel that old familiar tug again. What time do I have to go to work again?

Reviewed by Steve Lieb

Summary
Pros: MULTIPLAYER! VARIETY! First, this is stretching the Civ2 engine in ways it should be stretched, and does credit to Brian Reynold's programming talents that the code is this versatile, and this accessible. Second, if Civ2 had a weak point, it was in replayability – there was little variety from one game to the next. 40 scenarios solve this for even the most dedicated Civ2 player for some long time. Cons: Narrow audience. If you didn't like Civ2, you have no use for this. If you did, you'll like it. Dated graphics, could have improved helper AI.
Interface : 6	Gameplay : 10	Graphics : 6
Audio : 6	Multiplayer : 7	Overall : 8.2

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