All Civilization II releases - Game Codes - http://maxpages.com/coolcheater/All_Civilization_II

REVIEW SECTION:
Civilization II; overall 92% rating

After the disappointing example set by X-COM 2, many gamers expected Civilization II to be nothing more than Sid Meier's original game with a few new graphics tacked on. Others were worried that the game's designers would stray too far from the path, and would ruin the spectacular play balance that made Civilization such a hit. In the end, the design team at Microprose managed to add a score of new play elements that help the aging strategy classic evolve - without sacrificing the game's addictive qualities.

Although players familiar with the original Civilization will probably be able to jump in and start playing right away, a swarm of new features definitely warrants a few minutes with the manual. What players will most likely notice first is the much greater number of races to choose from, including the Sioux, the Carthaginians, and the Chinese, as well as a customizing option that lets you create any personal favorites the designers may have missed. This time around, cultural variations are also represented onscreen by four different city growth patterns. The fantastic number of new combat units adds limitless possibilities, as players figure out new ways to use marines (who can attack from the sea), cruise missiles, paratroopers, and even religious fanatics to their best advantage. For those who grew tired of the chaotic battlegrounds of the original game (remember when that chariot took out your battleship?), there's a new warfare system that gives units a score in both firepower and hit points for more realistic combat results. All of these features combine to give the game a powerful depth, and enough variation to ensure that players will be loading this one up for months to come.

Plenty of little details in Civilization II are also worth noting: an improved graphics set featuring a three-quarters viewpoint similar to Syndicate or Crusader, entertaining sound effects that range from the trumpet of an elephant to the air raid sirens of an atomic attack, full-motion video clips for each of the civilization advances, and a full map editor that enables players to design their own fields of conquest. Although the game suffers from its lack of multiplayer options, there's really nothing available that can compete with its depth of play, subtlety of challenge, and pure addictive potential. The fact is, if you're a strategy fan, you've already bought this game, and if you're not, this title could turn you around.

Civilization II Gold Multiplayer; Overall 73% rating

Civilization II multiplay has finally arrived. Too bad it's a year late. What's more, despite the inclusion of the two previously released scenario packs in the Multiplayer Civilization II: Gold Edition, I can't help but think this game is too little, too late. If this is the best MicroProse can muster at this time to compete with Alpha Centauri and the upcoming Call to Power, then I'm worried about MicroProse's Civ franchise.

Multiplayer Civilization II's most obvious feature is multiplayer support. You can play Civ II games over a LAN, Internet, and hotseat. You can set various parameters to street games in any direction you want: huge worlds for long games, small worlds for quick ones. You can set the game to be open to dynamic joining, set respawn for a second chance at the game, and even double movement and production rates for a game. The last feature, doubling of movement and production, is a great feature as it can speed up games significantly.

For the most part, this game is well executed. It's stable, and the options are plentiful and helpful. But the question still remains: Should Civilization even be played as a multiplayer game? I love Civilization, and actually played Multiplayer Civilization II for hours, but I did so alone. It's hard enough to get people together to play multiplayer games, let alone ask them to stay for six hours so you can get a good night of Civ II going. And forget about organizing a return trip. I'm not saying it's impossible, just very difficult. The double movement and production definitely helps, but simultaneous turns would have helped immensely as well. Another feature that Multiplayer Civilization II could have used was a matching service.

Although the game plays well (it is Civilization after all), one feature of the multiplayer game was very annoying. During a hotseat game, the computer will take over for you if it's not your turn and start negotiating on your behalf! Let's say you end your turn and let your friend take the seat and start his. However, you left a unit near his territory. The minute he encounters this unit, the AI will ask for a meeting between your culture and his. You won't even be able to return to the game and start a negotiation. Instead, the computer will do it for you. When I played, it was shocking to suddenly see the AI trade away all my technology and then give typically stupid threats like "We tire of this conversation. Pay us 100 gold in tribute or we will crush you." I would never negotiate like that, let alone give my rival all my goods. Whoever decided to let the AI take over negotiations in a hotseat game must have lost his mind. I'm standing right next to my friend. If there was a split screen on the computer with diplomacy options, we could simply negotiate in person and then finalize it by clicking the proper buttons on the screen.

Aside from the dubious bonus of multiplayer support, the other features in Multiplayer Civilization II include the scenarios from the two Civilization II scenario packs: Conflicts in Civilization and Fantastic Worlds. These expansion packs offer a variety of engaging and clever scenarios, designed by MicroProse and by fans on the Internet. Some scenarios take historical conflicts, like the Mongol invasion or the Crusades, and turn them into fun, goal-oriented minigames, complete with new and unique units. Other scenarios, such as the fantasy and X-COM ones, are even more ambitious and completely overhaul the game with scores of new technologies and troops. For a Civilization II fan, the scenarios should provide great amounts of fun gameplay. However, something I had hoped MicroProse would fix in this game was the AI. Pathfinding is still a little sketchy, but I don't know why it couldn't have been improved. MicroProse spent nearly two years on this game, and it can't even patch the AI?

As a Civilization fan, I am of two minds about Multiplayer Civilization II. I've always wanted to play Civilization with my friends, but it's hard to get enough people together and stay together to play a full game, and this edition doesn't go far enough to make multiplayer games quicker. I also already own Civilization II, so for me, there really is no benefit. However, if you don't already own Civilization II, I would recommend Multiplayer Civilization II because it not only has the original game, but also the two scenario packs. Just consider the multiplayer support a welcome bonus that will more than likely collect virtual dust on your hard drive.

Civilizaton II: Test of Time; overall 74% rating

Civilization is probably my all-time favorite game. It is elegantly simple but far-reaching in scope and has virtually limitless depth. Few games have ever come so close to perfection, let alone in their first attempt. Of course Civilization II improved on the original, but only by filling in a few blanks rather than by revolutionizing the concept. And now that the Civilization concept is so refined, there is no excuse for milking the franchise and gouging us for another $40 only to force us to play the same damn game again, only with new names for the units and technology advances. I already own Civilization and Civilization II. I don't want to buy a carbon copy.

The fact is I tried my best to play Test of Time. I really did. I tried the fantasy game. I tried the science fiction game. And I dabbled in the Midgard fantasy scenario. I think it was sort of clever for the designers to add quests in the game and restrict certain units to certain races. The Mermen are the only ones that get certain underwater units, the winged Buteo are the only ones that get key flying creatures, and the Goblins are the only ones with the larger, more brutish foot soldiers. There are also new worlds to explore and colonize. But rather than being pleased with these almost clever changes, I was exceedingly annoyed. The unit names and technological restrictions make no intuitive sense, and the new worlds just add to the tedium. They screwed around with Civilization and made it worse.

The worst part about this game is that you simply cannot play any of the nontraditional games without always having the massive technology poster open and at hand. The designers renamed practically everything, and nothing makes sense anymore. In Civilization, you made informed choices in research based on your strategy. You could go for warrior code for strong military units, or you could go for writing to get diplomats. Try for a granary to boost growth or a temple to stave off riots. But in Test of Time's fantasy and sci-fi games, you can't make such intuitive decisions. You are constantly hobbled by the game's naming conventions. Even the poster doesn't always help, because the military units themselves are also renamed. Sagas lead to Ideograms, and that naturally leads to Beast Dominion, right? Do you know what the sorcerer unit is? It's like an airplane or a nuclear missile, for it can float over terrain but crashes if it doesn't land in a city. That makes no sense, and in fact, few or none of these naming changes make the game the least bit better.

Yes, not all the new names are nonsensical, like warcraft and horse breeding. But why rename warrior code to warcraft anyway? Why change horseback riding to horse breeding? It's ridiculous. Why rename the granary, such a vital structure in the early game, to a storehouse? Why screw around with what gamers already know? I understand the desire to change things around in the interest of surprise and variety, but all that this effort achieves is needless frustration.

Of course, if the designers didn't rename all the technology and units, then the game would be exposed for what it truly is: Civilization II with absolutely nothing new. They didn't create any new technology trees and kept practically all the old units. The original Civilization II is now three years old. We waited three years for this?

Call to Power at least tried to create brand-new units and new wonders and even made new movies for the wonders. Here, the designers didn't even do that. Worse yet, when you meet with rival rulers in the fantasy or sci-fi games, there is no picture or herald. You just stare at a blank wall. The designers couldn't even draw simple 2D pictures for the new rulers of the fantasy and alien races.

There are many other little things that make this game seem hastily thrown together. Yet it's apparently been in development for two years. What took so long? Not the multiplayer game, since that was already done. And the new fantasy- and science fiction-themed games couldn't have taken that long to make, either; the designers just had to edit a text file in Civilization II. Besides, there have already been numerous expansions since the original game's release, including fantasy and sci-fi scenario packs. And speaking of which, excluding Midgard, there aren't even any new scenarios in Test of Time. So what did we wait for? New graphics and new names. That's just not worth $40 and two years'
time.

Civilization Call to Power; Overall 67% rating

The stakes don't get much higher than this. In Civilization: Call to Power, we have the answer to what some would call the single-most daunting challenge in PC gaming: to design the direct heir to Civilization II, widely regarded as the best turn-based strategy game of all time.

Whatever else you may think about Call to Power, you have to admire the ambition behind the effort. This is not a mere rehash of Civilization II. Rather, it is a bold step in a new and at times almost entirely different direction. The designers took the opportunity to revisit almost every major aspect of the Civ II experience - units, combat, interface, graphics, and more. While superficial similarities exist, in truth, Civilization: Call to Power bears less resemblance to Civilization II than Civilization II did to the original Civilization. Indeed, one could argue that Call to Power has less in common with its immediate predecessor than does this year's other turn-based strategy behemoth, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

The obvious question, then, is whether this uniqueness is good or bad. And the answer, of course, is that it's both. As for the natural follow-up question - Does the good outweigh the bad? - the answer is yes, but barely.

Let's start with the good. Call to Power's graphics are beautiful, far superior to any previous Civ game and even to Alpha Centauri. The animations are wonderfully detailed, and the sound effects are first class (although at times I must admit I wished my units weren't quite so vocal in their response to being clicked on). And the inclusion of seamless multiplayer support right out of the box is a welcome feature, indeed.

But the single best aspect of Call to Power is that, for the first time in this series, it puts the concept of "empire" front and center. This might seem like an odd statement - after all, the Civ games are all about empire building, aren't they? Actually, they're not. They're really about city-level management - many cities and many levels to be sure - and with few exceptions, the Civ games' policy-management controls, support schemes, and even interfaces are oriented around individual cities rather than the empire as a whole.

Not so in Call to Power, which takes a global approach to empire building. A few key examples: Units no longer are supported by a specific city, but by the empire itself; city improvements (tile improvements) are no longer built by settlers, but financed and supported by the empire; and while city-specific management is allowed, it must always be done within the parameters of the empire's global fiscal and social policies.

These are just a few examples; this empirecentric orientation permeates the entire game, including the interface. Out are the city-specific screens and the associated subscreens of the old Civ games. In is a new universal command module that occupies the bottom right of the screen. Once you become acquainted with it, this command bar lets you easily monitor and quickly modify nearly every aspect of your civilization - production, research, wealth, social policies - and the cities within it, all at the click of a mouse and all without leaving the main map view. The net result is that you feel highly informed about what's happening in the game and can change strategic focus and react to events more rapidly than ever before. This is a refreshing change of pace from previous Civ games and is just the way this would-be emperor likes it.

But Activision's focus on the big picture costs the company dearly when it comes to the small details that made earlier Civ games so entrancing. Basic elements like an autosave function, a research goal assistant, and built-in scenarios are all inexplicably absent. And Call to Power's many innovations, while welcome in theory, are often poorly thought out or poorly implemented. The building queue system, for example, seems unnecessarily difficult to navigate and doesn't let you insert items into an existing queue. The autopathing feature is a great concept, but it's far too easy to accidentally send a unit in the wrong direction with an inadvertent click, and when he's heading the right direction, it's far too common for him to get lost along the way. The new combat system, which allows the use of multiple units in classic combined-arms fashion, seems promising at first but soon reveals itself to be both shallow and unrealistic (no way to control attack sequences or to retreat? a warrior taking down a SAM launcher? Come on!) and soon had me longing for the more simplified one-on-one combat of the earlier games.

The same criticism - trying to do too much and as a result not doing any of it particularly well - applies to several other aspects of the game. But it is most serious in terms of the "guts" of the game, namely the units, technologies, and wonders. For the most part, all these are new, and there are more (many more) of all of them than ever before. In fact, the sheer number of strategic possibilities available is so great that few players will ever have the time to explore them all, let alone master them.

And with so many options, it is almost inevitable that gameplay balance issues will result, and that in turn means you will be required to play a defensive game. There are so many potential threats, and their effects can be truly devastating - enough to wreck an entire game in a frighteningly short period of time. Disciplined players will spend much of their time with Call to Power preparing to face as many potential threats as possible (realizing all the time that the threats may never actually arise), while the more cavalier will have to deal with the reality that their entire game could be put in jeopardy at any moment. Either way, it's a dire situation.

To illustrate this point, consider the new "super" units introduced in Call to Power. With names like the slaver, the ecoterrorist, and the televangelist, these units generally represent the most depraved aspects of human civilization and have the ability to wreak absolute havoc on anyone who stands in their way. The ecoterrorist, for example, can single-handedly wipe out all the buildings in an entire city. All of them! Imagine the horror! Or consider the slaver, who can steal citizens from your cities literally right from under your nose, crippling you during the critical growth phase early in the game. Or how about the televangelist, who can divert money directly from your coffers to those of a rival empire, and who can only be stopped through a suit by the lawyer, yet another depraved superunit.

Once you've fallen prey to any of these scourges, you will not be able to play the game without worrying about defending against them. And that forces you to adopt strategies and expend resources in ways that you will likely find extremely frustrating. For example, to be assured of stopping the slaver, you have to build city walls for all your cities, the earlier the better. At a time when you're trying to expand your empire, and when the prospect of direct attack from rivals is unlikely, what a tragedy to be forced to build this expensive and time-consuming improvement! But in order to be secure, you absolutely must.

And this, ultimately, is the undoing of Civilization: Call to Power: The more you know about the game, the less freedom you will have in playing it. Civilization II succeeded because it was relatively simple, and a dedicated player could learn to use every unit, technology, improvement, and wonder in the game. As a result, it was (and is) almost endlessly replayable, inviting you to return time and again with new strategies and tactics.

In contrast, Call to Power discourages extended play, by repeatedly hammering home the fact that you don't know it all, and in all likelihood, never will. And so, despite the fact that it is a solid game and despite the fact that it takes the Civilization premise in an interesting new direction, Call to Power leaves a lot to be desired. The old adage is right: Sometimes, less is more.

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Page Updated Sun May 13, 2001 4:11pm EDT