What to buy

[Tellius]

Hi there,

I've mainly been playing Call to Power 2 and of course the Ages of Man mod, but I never ever played Civilization 2 itself. I obviously thought it was time to set things straight and began searching ebay for a copy.

There are however, several editions out there. You have Civilization 2 the basic game, but also the Multiplayer box. Does the multiplayer box contain the complete game + multiplayer support, or do you still need the original game. Does it add anything else besides multiplayer support? I am NOT planning on playing multiplayer, but if this box contains any other extras, it might still be worth it.

Then there's the Collector's edition. There's just a photo on that auction page, no written info, I guess it's Civilization 2 + Test of Time.

And then I saw the Fantastic Worlds cd and the Scenarios cd. Can anyone recommend this?

I hope I'm making the right choice buying this one and not Civ3 - too many people have said or written here on apolyton, that Civ3 was a big suckfest, and Civ2 was still the measure of things (not my words, just remebered this from the forums).

Thanks for any info

Tellius

[Peaster]

Telius - I can only compare the editions I own:

a) Civ2 Mulitplayer Gold
b) Civ2 Classic (aka basic, aka version 2.42)
c) Civ3

I'd recommend a) because it gives you more options - eg multiplayer (including PBEMs) and the ability to play scenarios. The CD includes quite a few of those, but you can DL many more from the net. I also like the interface better than b). The AI is a bit more hostile in a) than b), so I still use b) in competitions. You can use a) to open games created/saved with b), but not the vice-versa.

I think there are a few slightly different versions of the "basic" game, and the most popular is version 2.42. But if you get a lesser version, you can probably patch it later. Not 100% sure about this.

FW supports scenarios - but I doubt it's 100% compatible with a), which came out later and is probably more popular. Actually, my CD for a) says it "includes FW" but I'm not sure exactly what that means.

I think ToT is also less popular. But it supports its own scenarios, which can have more complex structures ("events files") than a).

c) I have tried Civ3 a few times, and it doesn't seem so bad, but I never got hooked on it - never actually finished a single game. I guess it supports multiplay and fairly simple scenarios.

IIRC there is also some discussion of the various Civ2 versions in the Great Library (version 1) in the Strategy Forum here.

[Elephant]

Skip Civ3 - if you want the "new improved" Civ go directly to 4. If you want the "old experience" the most popular version is CivII MPG (BTW, all CivII versions are complete, you don't have to get Classic plus MPG or ToT). As Peaster mentioned, the "basic" game is called Classic and can be patched to version 2.42 (most copies I've seen for sale are that already, but there's still some on eBay that are older), they are single-player only but their AI is more "reasonable" than MPG or ToT. The last version of CivII that came out was Test of Time, which has the most extensive scenario/mod support but is not very backward compatible. Fantastic Worlds came between Classic and MPG but is not realy worth it except for a few extra fantasy scenarios.

[Peaster]

Here's a related thread at CFC, in which some people like ToT best - for the scenarios, I guess. But for some reason, you don't hear a whole lot about ToT in these forums.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=186248

[Tellius]

Thanks

Hi,

Thanks for the info guys, I'll go for CivII Multiplayer Gold, seems to be the best choice.

I'm pretty curious about this, especially since I've read so many threads of "civ vs ctp". Call to Power is the only game I know thoroughly, especially with the AOM mod on top of it, I love it, it's immersing, it's epic. I bet Civ2 will be epic too, I just need to experience it.

Thanks

Tellius