OFF: Civ I vs. Civ II

[M Holmes]

Stephen Swann writes:

> Could someone fill me in on what are the actual differences between
> Civ II and Civ I?  Mike's description sounded to me exactly like the
> classic game.  The classic game that ate me, mind and soul, for about
> 6 months - before I finally emerged, blinking uncertainly like an
> unfrozen caveman, into the modern world again.
>
> Fortunately, I kicked the habit, and "classic" Civ finally lost
> it's unholy grip on me.  So, what's different about Civ II?

I could try:

Diplomacy

This has been changed to allow five levels of contact:

Alliance: where you might be called upon to help an ally and where civs
can move within each others zones of control

Peace Treaty: Where you are bound to remove units from each other's
zones of control and they can be expelled, or the treaty break down, if
you don't

Neutral: default for no contact and can continue if no agreements made.

Ceasefire: During a war you can agree to this. Again units must be
withdrawn from zones of control. These last around 16 turns.

War: business as usual.


Anyone can send heralds at any time for renegotiation if they have an
embassy. A new form of Diplomat called a spy is available at a certain
tech level. These can do fancier things including planting nuclear
devices. However, except for the new Fundamentalist government, every
civ will declare war if you do this.

Betraying treaties is now noted by all Civs and counts against you in
future negotiations.


War

New units have been introduced. There are two stealth aircraft and other
units available for modern sea and air warfare, including cruise
missiles. The new paratrooper unit can land and move from withing 10
squares of it's target, starting at a city, carrier, or the new airbase
equivalent of a fortress.

Combat also includes firepower and hitpoints so that units may be
damaged and requre rest rather than just emerge as victors. It also
makes it unlikely that musketeers will get a lucky destruction of a
destroyer rather than merely damage it.

Due to this there are now airbases and port facilities which can R&R air
and sea units back to strength. Barracks provide this service for land
units.

There have been slight alterations to terrain and the view of the game
has been altered to isometric. Some Wonders have changed in their powers
and 7 new Wonders have been added. Some minor changes to City
Improvements have been made and some new ones added.

Cheats

A lot of the Cheats for Civ 1 have been covered. Altering production
between the 3 types: Wonder/Unit/Improvement now has a 50% penalty.
Cities cannot be built next to one another, stopping the building of
long "canals" or the "City everything" strategy. New improvements allow
more populous cities. The need to railroad everything has disappeared
with the Railroad function being split between Railroads, the
Superhighways improvement, and the Supermarket improvement. The Senate
has more power to interfere with decisions (Doves always interfere in
Democracy and 50% of the time in Republic).

The Goto function has been much improved.

There is also an updated Settler, the Engineer, available at higher
tech, this works twice as fast, can work in teams of up to 3, and can
also "Transform" terrain given enough time, so you can eventually turn
glacier to plains or level mountains. The Freight unit is an advanced
version of the Caravan.


The technology tree is bigger, though there is a helper function built
in to give advice. Cities can be put on auto development (military,
civilian, or both) and there's a lot more control over killing specific
messages such as "We Love The King" or "Cities in Disorder" which need
suppressing during periods of Revolution or boosted growth.

And of course the sounds and graphics on the CD are much improved.



Basically it's Civ with a lot of the flaws corrected, the cheats
stopped, and the spectra of improvments, units, wonders and technology
fleshed out more fully. The improved diplomacy does add a significant
new dimension to the game. The changes in the various powers of
government mean that it's no longer a race to republic and democracy.
Communism, Monarchy, and even the new Fundamentalist (science research
halved) now have enough use to warrant switching to them at times.

The big new thing is the Scenario editing capabilities. Instead of
hoping for a neat random game which proves worth saving as a playable
scenario (though that's still an option and is improved by a Cheat menu
(usage marked on your score) which allows alteration of maps, units, and
pretty much anything else) you can build your own from scratch. This
allows:

1) Creation of any map including placement of cities, units, wonders,
   and improvements.
2) Specification of level of barbarian activity, distribution of goody
   huts and goody terrain.
3) A few user configurable units and alteration of specs of existing
   units.
4) Complete configurability of the Tech tree and dependencies for units
   and improvements.
5) An "events" macro which allows events to occur at intervals, at
   random or on the defeat of a unit or city by specific or any civilization.
   Events can be changes in dimplomatic status between civs, the
   appearance of "new" units at specified squares, or the order of units
   within an area to Goto somewhere.

Combined with the gif editors available on the Web, there'd be no
problem building a magical Tech tree, renaming city improvements to
things like "Weyr" and introducing units like "Dragons" with specified
destructive powers.

Basically Civ II is to Civ I as Warrior is to Yuri Gagarin.

FoFP