Col2 Release Runup Gaming

[Verrucosus]

Whenever a game that I really look forward to is about to be released, I feel a need to play all those games that I am unlikely to play again while I will be getting acquainted to the new one. Fortunately, such releases are rare for me nowadays, the last one being Civ4 in late 2005, but I have fond memories of spending the eve of its release with an all-night game of Alpha Centauri.

Being a strategy gamer and all, I have decided that this time around, I need a plan:

With the Colonization II release date set tentatively for September 26th by Amazon, there are seven weekends left. One of them will be entirely Civ-free unless they decide to perform Baba Yetu at that wedding I will attend ... you never know these days. This leaves me with six weekends. I'm thinking:

Aug 9/10 Civilization
Aug 16/17 Colonization
Aug 23/24 Civilization II
Aug 30/31 Alpha Centauri
Sep 6/7 --
Sep 13/14 Civilization III
Sep 20/21 Civilization IV

The little weakness of this plan is that there is a good chance that I will have to wait months before I can actually play Colonization II (they just have to raise the system requirements a little bit above Civ4's), but that won't stop me from enjoying the anticipation.

Just in case anyone else is strange enough to make a conscious decision about this, how will you spend the last weeks before setting sails for the new world?

[snoopy369]

I've been playing on and off one game of Col for the last few weeks... I really suck at it, apparently But it's fun playing around with it.

I most certainly won't play any Civ3, though

[Verrucosus]

I don't know. I do not play it regularly any more, but now that it's just a part of history, I'm much more tolerant towards it.

[Verrucosus]

On second thought, you are absolutely right, snoopy. I guess I had to play Civ3 again to remember how boring it could be ... and I'm still in the Middle Ages, so the tedium of the Industrial Age is still ahead. Having played all of the older civish games in recent weeks and having had a blast with them more than a decade later, the contrast is quite striking. Civ3 may have been the first game to really put up a challenge, but the restraints put on the player both in terms of rules (tech tree) and in terms of viable strategies (expansion) were probably too high a price to pay. The older games had their own flaws, of course, but even the micromanagement hell of the original Colonization was (and still is) much more fun.

Anyway, just three more weeks to go before I'll find out how the new one will hold up.

[conmcb25]

Its amazing how quickly the CIV III sections of this forum died after the release of CIV IV. In contrast the CIV II Forums lasted much longer after the release of CIV III.

I haven't even looked at my CIV III disks in over a year and don't intend to