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#218 I HAD A WHALE OF A TIME Rasbelin reminisces about the days of MicroPROSE now all in the past. #217 "CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS": A PRESENTATION OF THE GAME Mark Everson motions for your attention to talk about a gaming project that he is currently leading. #216 THE FINAL FRONTIER Rasbelin runs through the Stella Polaris project on which he serves as Project Manager. #215 APOLYTON 2007 Rasbelin walks us through his predictions for five years time on the site of the name above. #214 THE COURTS OF CANDLE'BRE: AN INTRODUCTION Vel opens the door of the Candle'Brewing laboratory just for glimpse of what's happening in there... #213 A FREECIV FAN RESPONDS CapTVK responds to the "accusations" against Freeciv COLUMN ARCHIVE

During the years I have noticed that there's something special with Civilization II after all these years. CivII is still the most versatile game in the Civ series, if we exclude Activision's CtP and CtP2 games. CivIII hasn't yet managed to beat CivII when it comes to how verstatile the game is. I doubt that CivIII can ever beat CivII as a versatile game. So why do I think that CivII is versatile and CivIII can't beat it with that? First of all CivII has a much higher level of ability to be customised and modified, as the main graphics files are using common file standards and the rules and texts can be easily modified with i.e. Notepad. In general the ability to highly customise CivII with modification packs (AKA mods) and to make very sophisticated scenarios has been well exploited in a positive way, unlike CivIII that doesn't offer all these possibilities. This can of course be explained with CivIII's young age, but it's still a liability for those who want to provide content for CivIII.

However CivII is more easy to approach as the developer doesn't have to i.e. make 3D units, unlike in CivIII. CivII is also very versatile when it comes to system requirements. Compared to CivIII, there's currently almost no systems in daily use that couldn't run CivII. Unlike CivIII, CivII doesn't set too high requirements for all those Intel Pentium, AMD K5 and Cyrix 6x86 based PC's still in use. This is something I have been pleased for with an older PC using an AMD 5x86-P75 (120 MHz) CPU. The advantage is even greater on laptops as older laptops with less capacity are still common and as CivIII also sets certain requirements for the graphics chipset of the laptop. That limits further more the number of portable PC's that can run CivIII. This is caused much by the the fact that graphics chipsets used in laptops haven't developed as swiftly as for desktop systems, but during the last 2 years, things have begun to progress with a greater speed than previously.

Surfing the web, reading messages on ACS Forums, retrieving your e-mail and playing CivII simultaneously is possible, while you can't do that with CivIII. This is something what I have found enjoyable , comfortable and versatile compared to CivIII. This is possible as CivII is using a standard Windows program window and doesn't use that much system resources on a fairly modern desktop PC. My conclusion is that CivII will remain unbeaten when it comes to how versatile the game is. And like one Apolytoner recently said, CivII is like a pair of old comfortable slippers.

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About the author: Stella Polaris Development Team Manager -- website [project now on hold until further notice]

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This article was originally submitted on September 29, 2002.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.