Solver: What was the Civ 2 community like in the old days of 1997?

DanQ: You know how much I like to talk, so you should know that asking me these open-ended questions is a dangerous proposition at every turn. :)) I'm not certain where to begin or where to end on this one, but what I am going to say may sound like a philosophical or English class you would rather skip.  

Based on my own experience, the CivII community in 1997 was flying high. The game's popularity seemend unabounding and because of the Internet's exponential growth at the same time it was a fertile feeding ground for unprecendented amounts of discussion and creation. This statement is by no means meant to belittle the creation efforts afterwards -- rather, it was unprecedented in its simplicity (see what I mean by skipping this part, heh heh heh). For example, there was no CtP pre-release debates about the game's place or lack thereof in the Civilization line, or the post-release debates of the same nature and whether or not it had lived up to the series' namesake. At the same time, however, it wasn't all peaches and cream.  

Competition was fierce and plentiful between CivII sites then with a lot of name calling and backstabbing that was clouded in shadows and misdirection. There was hardly any noticable acknowledgement of the community beyond its own borders in other gaming circles, and certainly none from the mainstream media or the public at large (and to an extent, the latter is still true today in my opinion but on the bright side would like to think that it is improving). This, coupled with sites coming/going as demonstrated by "UCIVII"'s adventure on the lively hosting circuit, equated instability. Uncertainty. Friction. Division. 

From my perspective, things began to improve in the last quarter of the year and by 1998 things were considerably more stable across the board.

Solver: Did UC2S have to suffer from any hostilities by other sites?

DanQ: Unfortunately, yes. Shortly after taking over “UCIVII”’s webmastering duties I discovered that I had inherited a few nasty flame wars that The Overlord had been engaged in with several other webmasters in the CivII community. Fortunately, I was able to squelch all but one within a couple of months of my taking over the ‘top job’.  

The last piece of correspondence I had with the owner of the site in question here was regarding my adding his email address to “UCIVII”’s mailing list without his prior permission. I admitted my error from the start and promptly removed his address from the list (I manually managed the list with a Hotmail account at the time). However, my addressing his concerns seemed only to serve to enrage him just as much as whatever discussion he and The Overlord had carried on previously – heck, even more so. Clearly, the circumstances of the original argument that had brokered this flame war had been long forgotten and this individual was only interested in exchanging insults, more often then not personal as opposed to ‘professional’ in nature. 

This person is no longer involved in the Civilization community and has been since long forgotten by even those who frequented his site during its lifespan. Surprise, surprise…

Solver: Now let's get on with the merger... who originally initiated the merger idea?

DanQ: I did.

Solver: How was the merger discussion proceeding?

DanQ: For the answer to this question, I am going to refer you to ACSR's homepage to listen to the audio interview of myself on the now defunct Shattered Star Confederation Radio (in actual fact, it was its only broadcast). Although it is dated in other respected, I believe that it addressed this point quite nicely.

Solver: Did UC2S have any business with MarkG's site before the merger? 

DanQ: Beyond the occasional news item exchange or reciprocal link, no.

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