Building a Civ 2.5 Multiplayer Group

[Civ 2.5]

Hi, my name is Dan, I am currently in Seattle, Washington. I have played Civ in all its many forms and specifically Civ 2 multiplayer for many years, off and on, but lately I wanted to play MP again so I decided to put together a new playing group.

Of course I have played civ 2, 3 and 4 multiplayer as well, but I prefer 2's MP, for many reasons I won't go into detail here. In short, I simply find the quality of multiplayer gameplay to be superior in Civ 2 to the other iterations, all things considered. To be precise, I prefer a custom variation of Civ 2 which I designed and call Civ 2.5. It is basically an enhanced version of the original game. I am currently playtesting it one last time in order to fine-tune it even further before finally submitting it to Apolyton's download section, so that anybody I play with in the future can access it more easily without having to go through me for the file. However, it is all already complete and ready to play on at any time at a very high caliber of balance and fidelity, all future minor 'perfection' changes aside.

I included as an attachment the UNITS file just so you can get an idea of what Civ 2.5 looks like and encompasses.

Here is a glimpse of Civ 2.5 in summary;

- All new enhanced graphics, for absolutely everything. Very few things in the entire game have remained the same, and as a result it looks like a far better game graphically.

- Most of the rules for gameplay and unit stats have been improved for depth and balance.

- About 10 additional units added, and all previous units have been reworked. New units meticulously designed to improve/diversify gameplay and array of military choices, such as anti-air ground units, defensive escort fighter airplanes in addition to regular fighters which have a range of 2 like bombers and can stack to defend them, elite amphibious units for all historical ages, two gradations of tanks, among others. One example of the improvements is how all units now have a visually implied stealth value which basically determines how well exposed their unit shield and health bars are to plain view on the map. Most units have shields out in the open and easily seen, but about 15 fall into the stealth category at some range of the spectrum, and their shields are either partially or totally obscured from plain sight. Missiles and submarines, for example, are considered almost 100% stealth units and only their health bars are visible at any given time, no shield color/ nationality can be seen. Barbarian leaders, spies and diplomats don't even have visible health bars, only the graphic of the figure can be seen onscreen, to accentuate their slippery and low profile nature.

- About 10 new technologies added in strategically important areas of the tech tree, and the entire tech tree has also been tweaked to improve gameplay.

- About 6 or so of the unrealistic 'magical' wonders which in the original version cheapened and dumbed down the game have been removed, such as Leonardo's Workshop and the Great Library.

- Slower, more realistic and more intense pace: 1/3 the normal science research rate, food boxes doubled for 2X slower growth, settlers cost 60 shields to slow expansion rate early on. City improvements and wonders roughly 1.5X more expensive, with military improvements costing about 2X more to better reflect real-world values, such as barracks, city walls, etc. Settler and engineer land-improvements generally take 2X longer to complete. Units have all been kept at the same general price range, to make the game more tactical and unit-centric, but some units have been made much more expensive, such as engineers, carriers and nukes.

- Simultaneous play: by altering a civ system file, it is possible for all players to move at the same time in peacetime, which greatly speeds up the game. But when war breaks out, one-turn-at-a-time gameplay resumes between the fighting units of each warring faction, via a simple honor code that has the person who declared war or attacked first move all their battle units first, then the 'defending' player moves all their battle units, global turn after global turn, until a truce is declared or one player annihilated. After declaring a truce opponents can move simultaneously again and the turn-based system is reset for them until someone again decides to declare war or attack first. Only those enganged in an 'Alliance' may move their pieces at the same time during wartime. If you are a peaceful nation that is moving your units while a warring nation is moving theirs, and they tell you in advance to wait to move units in a certain region of the map until they do so, you must wait until they clear you to proceed moving. In other words, the movements of warring nations take precedence over those of peaceful nations, in order to avoid simultaneous-movement unit jumbling/ confusion at crucial times/ map regions. Other than that all regular rules apply.

- Custom designed maps designed for realism and optimal gameplay, including: believable continents with geographically realistic mountain ranges, deserts, jungles, etc. ~70% planet surface ocean coverage (large oceans and smaller continents in 'Large' maps, 75x120 squares). Dynamic rivers which are traversable by land but simultaneously navigable by boat along certain stretches. Balanced starting positions with minimized available inhabitable land for increased value of buildable-land and stretches of perpetually unoccupied terrain (large deserts, long mountain ranges, etc) such as occurs in reality. Only half the regular amount of 'goodie' huts. Barbarian 'nations' evenly dispersed across the world, composed of small, tight clusters of size 1, 2 or 3 'red' cities in inhospitable terrain not fit to build regular cities on. Small islands and archipelagos throughout the world, which the map randomizer typically omits, and many other unique design features. Additionally, in order that I don't remember any specific map being played on, being the map creator, we always play 10 maps behind the current queue. Meaning, I have to design 11 maps before we can play on the first, 12 before we can play on the 2nd, etc (each map takes about 1 hour to design in a creatively random way, and it's extremely difficult to remember old maps and starting locations even after designing a few new ones, let alone 10.)

- Some random examples of the rules changes: no tech from conquest, spaceship components are much more expensive, monarchies can support 4 units rather than 3; triremes do not founder in deep waters as easily; the AI is always set to Aggressive/ Militaristic/ Expansionist and starts with more cities/ settlers than humans in order to make them more powerful/ challenging, harder to manipulate diplomatically, and more unpredictable and hostile (when applicable, depending on the game). All units now ignore zones of control, much like in Civ 3. Many other larger and smaller changes as well.

Overall, Civ 2.5 was designed with both realism and gameplay in mind, especially by slowing the pace down and allowing for a depth of play simply impossible with regular civ. It is the result of a huge concerted effort to make the game more balanced in all respects, to enhance the overall experience and to provide players, especially in MP, with a much broader array of choices and considerations, especially regarding units and battle.


Additional Requirements:

- Civ 2 Multiplayer Gold Edition with the latest v1.3 patch, installed on a Windows-based PC, not a Mac, since we have tried before but they are incompatible to run scenarios in MP.

- The Civ 2.5 folder copied into the /Scenarios folder.

- Wippien VPN (virtual private network) program, which is free to download and relatively easy to install and set up. Just google "Wippien download". Ask me if you have trouble doing this, I will help guide you through the process, but most of it is straightforward. Basically this allows everyone who has it running and synched up to play online as though they were on the same LAN (We used to play with Hamachi VPN, but people started having trouble getting it to work so we abandoned it and switched to Wippien)

- (Not required, but ideal) Skype and a free account along with a headset (and webcam if you want), for open communication while we play.

- No dial-up connections, too much lag, must have broadband of some kind, at least DSL.

- A submitted schedule with a decent allotment of free 'windows' of time on a more or less regular and predictable basis, so that a compatibility window of gameplay time can be agreed upon and committed to week by week, as availabilities change. And hand in hand with this is required a generally agreeable and willful level of commitment to play and commit to agreed-upon play times. (Don't worry, all drawn up schedules will be flexible and reasonable, I have a life, a job and a girlfriend, among other things so most likely, just like you, I will only be able to play for a couple hours at a time a few times a week, at the most. In any case, schedules have to be agreed upon by everyone)

- Above all, the main requirements is honor. Players who are caught or detected cheating or trying to subvert the rules or quality of the game in any way will be ejected out of the group indefinitely. This cannot be tolerated even once due to certain specific 'honor rules' on which the core of the gameplay depends- especially as they pertain to simultaneous play- which require the willful and honest cooperation of all players involved. However, even without these additional rules it is always quite easy to cheat in regular Civ through the use of offline save files, hex editors, etc, so this pretty much goes without saying. Any player who suspects this is going on is to report it to everyone else, then we discuss it as a group to determine what is really going on and what to do about it.

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I am forwarding this exact text as well as posting it in several forums/ sites to all potential players I find. If all of the above sounds intriguing and acceptable to you, then email me back and we'll talk. If not, I appreciate your time in at least reading this and considering it, but there are plenty out there willing to participate, believe me. We used to regularly host games exactly as described above with the maximum of 7 human players on the same game, many times. It's been a couple years since the last such full game (I've played a few smaller ones since then with one or two other players), since life has disrupted those old routines and playing groups, but I want to achieve that level of gameplay again as soon as possible. I don't mind playing games with less than 7 humans at first, but I am dead-set on building up a new group, hopefully consisting of many more than 7 players for variety, redundancy and group-reliability, and maybe even multiple games running concurrently.

The rewards are great, trust me- there is no other game that I know of more satisfying or challenging than civ MP with a full roster of skilled human opponents, nothing even comes close. There are still plenty of civ players out there fond of Civ 2 multiplayer, I just have to put in the investigation/ browsing/ networking time and effort to compile a good number of them into one group.

If you can recommend anybody besides yourself that may be interested, forward them this email (with the UNITS attachment included so they can see what you saw), and have them reply to aux.account1@gmail.com or link them to this site/ page. I am just contacting people by email at this point but if you want to talk on an IM service let me know, I think I still have AIM or ICQ or one of those, I just never turn it on.

In addition to emailing me directly also post your contact info below (as much as your privacy deems prudent of course) so that other players can interconnect more easily. Eventually as we reach a critical mass of serious-enough players we'll coalesce on to the best and most efficient means of communication (most likely an IM program of some kind, such as ICQ or Trillian, etc)

Thanks, and Civ on

- Dan

(This thread has an identical sister thread at Civfanatics.com, which you can find here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=412368

But of course I am trying to get the most coverage possible to get as many good players as quickly as possible, and Apolyton seems to have a much livelier Civ 2 community than CFC.)

[Civ 2.5]

For those of you who may have glanced at this thread and thought there's no activity here, that might be partly because I also posted the same thread at all the multiplayer sections of different sites, as well as Civfanatics, CivLeague, Civ Webring, Steam, Facebook, you name it, and people have been replying in various places. The more exposure the better to spark up some interest and get thing going.

I'm talking to at least 7-8 players mostly all through email who are more or less serious about joining this group and playing regularly, and in other threads I have started very informative conversations where I talk more about the game, based mostly on their inquiries/ concerns about it.

Here's the link to the thread at Civfanatics (in the Civ 5 MP section... don't ask), where alot of that info has been stirred up:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=412372

And here's a link to Civforum.de where some more activity is abuzz:

http://www.civforum.de/showthread.php?t=72877

So take note, take in the info, and take a stab at Civ 2.5!
(shameless self-advertising )

[Civ 2.5]

And of course, the game itself.

I was just putting in a couple last finishing touches, even though it's already been good to go for the most part for quite some time. Once you unzip the folder there is a ReadMe inside explaining the rest.

But here it is, so check it out. Please give me any feedback/ comments/ questions about it, much appreciated!

(Unfortunately the file size was too big to upload here, but below is a link to the file over at CFC, just click and presto, download.)

Civ 2.5 Game Folder