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PREVIOUS ARTICLES

#126 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADDICTION Kent Wang divulges in his receipe on the elements needed for a truly addictive gaming experience. #125 CIV TO CIVII: LESSONS OF THE PAST FOR CIVIII Father Beast examines three key points that he feels are a must for inclusion in Civilization III. #124 CIVILIZATION III Tim Bromige gets right to his point: what was wrong in CivII can be fixed in CivIII. #123 TPOD & ROACSG: THE PHYSICS OF SUGGESTION In the third and final installment of this article, TheLimey evaluates Firaxis' and Activision's response to Civer input-suggestions on upcoming titles. #122 TPOD & ROACSG: THE RISE & FALL In his article's second installment, TheLimey picks apart the pieces of Civilization: Call To Power. COLUMN ARCHIVE

I am a frequent visitor of the Civ III General/Suggestions forum and I have seen many people say how they think that the difference between Civ II and Civ III should be just as subtle as the difference between Civ and Civ III. I believe that there was never a difference between Civ and Civ II. Civilization was a trailblazing game, the first computer strategy game ever to be based on world history. This game, still, was the norm of every trailblazer, it had annoying bugs and things that seemed stupid.

So Microprose decided to fix these bugs and stupid mistakes and with some new improvements and called it Civilization II. With the minor improvements that Civilization II sports it mostly resembles a Civilization 1.5, Not good enough to be a true sequel but not bad enough to be exactly the same. I shouldn't call it bad but maybe not just a modpack away from Civ 1.0. So now Civ II is hailed as the greatest computer strategy game ever. Microprose was happy and I decided to let it sit awhile. During this time newer, flashier games came along and drew fans away from Civ II. Microprose got concerned but not worried. Civ II was still #1.

So Microprose decided to make civ better by making new features to add on to its champion. These add-ons made CivII 1.5 into CivII 1.75, improved greatly but still not a new game. If Microprose wanted to make a new game they would have fused their add-ons onto a newer, advanced interfaces with revised graphics. But there was no advanced interface or revised graphics to make. Civ II was the pinnacle of turn-based strategy games.

How do you improve perfection? So they let it sit. And sit it did. Newer games came out until you could only remember a Civ game in the top 5, 10, 50, 100. Impostors, trying to cash in on a good name, came about which were ignored. Now the latest detour away from Civilization III, Alpha Centauri, was loved by the Civers only for its vastly improved AI and its new ideas like Social Engineering and the Unit Workshop.

We call for a real Civilization II and not still another improvement to Civilization. Now you have to recycle the empty bottle but when it is done it must function at least as good as the first.

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About the author (self-quote): "I am just a simple civer who likes to talk".

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