Welcome newcomers!

[techumseh]

It's nice to see so many new faces around here. All seem keen on playing, making, and discussing scenarios. Welcome!

I admit to being a bit curious about people's history, civ wise. I'm guessing at least some of you started out with Civ 4 and found it too hard to modify or wanted real historical scenarios. Am I right?

[Jerec]

Wrong. At least up to a point. As a kid, I was a bookworm (and still am ) and I loved reading about strategy, tactics, warfare, etc. So one day my fourth grade teacher handed me this strange old computer game. He said, "Here. You would like this game, it's all about war and strategy. My high schooler can't make heads or tails of it and got very fustrated, so you might as well try it." And that is how I got hooked on this strange old game: Civ 2 MGE!

Of course, the vanilla game was great tutorial wise, but was way too long to get to modern times. Sooo...scenarios! I discovered the gold mine of scenarios originally on MGE, my favs including the WW I, Japan, Alexander the Great, Napoleanic Wars...you get the idea. The futuristic scens I found too easy or too long (start as one space city, sloowly expand).

A few years later, I was desperate. I had played all the historical scens until I could recite exactly what I should do and where to do it in my sleep. I tried the vanilla game again, and got too bored again. I actually made 2 mini scens, one on ancient Egypt (Upper vs Lower) and one on Rommel in Africa. Both were horrible by your standards. At this time, I got Civ 2 Call to Power. Tried that, found no scens whatsoever x10 and tried vanilla game, found it incomprehensible. I guess doing Civ 2 MGE engrained the basic rules into my mind permanently. Couldn't understand the changes in Call to Power. After that debacle, I discovered the Internet...

I found Mercator's site first. Was stunned by his collection of maps, etc. I was particularly awed by his small collection of scens, and downloaded a few, had an absolute ball. Some didn't work (didn't have the update patch). So, I figured, if there's one site there has to be more. And I found a little old site called Sleague...

Actually, I downloaded 1-2 scens on Sleague, then was blown away by CivFanatic's gigantic store of scens. Fortunately, the scens on CF were all types, some great, some with just the cities juggled and no new units at all. I wanted reviews to know what scens were good or bad. Noticed that the 2 scens I got from Sleague were great...

Went back to Sleague, was overjoyed to find reviews, or short descriptions. Downloade here and there again had a ball, for months this time. Then I stumbled on Eivind's beta Rommel scen... I love Rommel and tank warfare so...

I stumbled into this forum sniffing about for Eivind's beta. Played it, had a blast, desperately wanted to inform Eivind on pros/cons in a post. That got me to be a member, and from there I've been immersed ever since, making my first decent alien vs human scen (there's a thread on it) and happily playtesting Aeterna Civitas for McMonkey, who helped me a ton with my alien scen, answering basic questions like "how do I insert sound, how do I insert new pics, etc."

Hope you liked my story tech.

[Tuttle_77]

Hey, Techumseh, I don't know if you remember me, but back in the day, I had made some changes to your war of 1812 scenario, but then when I sent it to you, you couldn't get the thing running, cause you only had FW and I had made my changes on MGE. (Don't know if you remember that at all or if was a different Techumseh)


Anway when civ 3 game out I jumped on that, realized it sucked but just couldn't re-immerse myself into Civ2, the thing that prevented it was all your units getting killed from the stack, It seemed difficult to go back, and I had hopes for Civ 4. I think for Vanilla civ, civ 4 is great, but lacked any really good customization, anyway I just graduated university this year, and got an assignment overseas, my laptop is to weak to play the system hog civ4, so thought I'd give civ2 whirl again, (Still play Colonization all the time, now if only that game could be modded and have Multiplayer... alas) Anyway have finally been able to get over the hurdle of the entire stack dieing, so been getting back into the Great scenarios. The community is been fantastic still pumping out some really great scenarios. Seems Like I'll need to get TOT thought as theres lots of TOT exclusive scenarios around. But yep, plan on using a lot of time this year with civ.


Glad Apolyton has keep Civ2 alive. Even though it seems so many great Civ2 scenario creators have left, I'm reminded of Degaulle's words "The graveyards are full of indespinsible men"

There is also someone to carry on the torch.

[fairline]

Yep, welcome guys

It is good to see new faces in a forum devoted to a 10-year old game!

@Jerec: You've obviously found the CFC stash of scenarios. Here's some other good links:

The Spanish civ site. Great mix of scenarios under 'best of the net':

http://spanish.apolyton.net/

John Ellis' site. IMO one of the best designers:

http://pages.zoom.co.uk/netdesign/

Likewise Carl Fritz:

http://users.stargate.net/~harden/index.html

...and Paul Cullivan:

http://cullivan.com/civ/home.html

Some dude called Techumseh (ToT only):

http://www.tecumseh.150m.com/

Alex Mor's site:

http://karthago.chat.ru/

[curtsibling]

Yep!

A hearty welcome to all our new players and designers - What a team we have!

We are small, but we kick serious butt - The finest CIV2 modders on the net!

[McMonkey]

Designers come and designers go but Civilization always remains!

I agree that it is fantastic to see so many new people getting involved, I am fairly new myself, been here about a year now.

I find it amusing reading through old threads from 2003 and before where people are profisising the death of CivII . Now here we all are five years later still going strong. The community may be small but there is a wealth of communal knowledge and resources to draw on.

Civ Webring is also a hotbed of multiplayer activity and I have thoroughly enjoyed pitting my wits against the great bunch of players there.

The lasting appeal of Civ II must lie in its accessibility for designers. There are not many eras of history that cannot be represented. God only knows what the game will be like if we ever get our hands on the source code.

Viva Civ, viva Apolyton!

[Blue Lion]

Re: Welcome newcomers!

Originally posted by techumseh
It's nice to see so many new faces around here. All seem keen on playing, making, and discussing scenarios. Welcome!

I admit to being a bit curious about people's history, civ wise. I'm guessing at least some of you started out with Civ 4 and found it too hard to modify or wanted real historical scenarios. Am I right?

Thanks for the welcome and ... sorry, you are wrong.

After Civ 1and Civ Net I did all kinds of Civ2 versions and here i started to like modding. For Civ 2 ToT I did a funny space mod a lot of years ago, based on two connected reworked and enlarged Koby landterrain-starmaps with randomized starting positions. The galaxies Milky Way and Andromeda are connected by wormwholes and later adiitionally by spaceships with advanced spacedrives.



I included lot of Startrek civs, the Darksiders and the Rebell Alliance from Starwars, some civs from the Perry Rhodan SF-series, the Lost Colonies and Cylons from Battlestar Galactica and the Kilrathis from Wing Commander. I tried to give most of these civs their unique spaceships. Here is an early version of the techtree:



The techtree is now slightly reworked because when you have researched "The Force", you have to do a big decision. If you join the Dark Side of the Force, you get the mighty Darth Vader Superspy-units and the death star, but you can only win by a complete domination of the universe. If you join the Jedi Ordre you only get normal jedis (spys), but you can also win by leading your civ to the next level of evolution. Therefore the paths of both techs to future tech must be cut down.

When I have (simply) animated versions of the ToT units, may be I publish this mod.

I liked the nicely animated units of Civ 3 and moved to modding Civ 3. Under the name Civinator I did more than 1.000 posts at CFC, mostly concerning modding of Civ 3. I´m part of the SOE-team that works on the very big WW2 scenario Storm over Europe. I´m also working on a new epic game for C3C.

I never became a friend of Civ 4. I don´t like the boring game play, the way Civ 4 treats warfare and especially I don´t like that 3d engine that took away the freedom of easy modding civ-games. As it seems that Firaxis doesn´t move away from their 3d-path and additionally their 3d graphics are getting more and more cartoonish (in Civ Revolution even the globe is cartoonish), it seems I must stay with the both 2d civ games of the series: Civ 2 and Civ 3.

In Civ 3 I like the animated units, but in Civ 2 ToT I like the events and some other unique options. So I think it´s consequent, when I try to transfer Civ 3 units to Civ 2 ToT and Civ 2 graphics (cities and units) to Civ 3.

Civ 2 is simply a lot of fun for me.

[curtsibling]

Exellent - That is some serious design blueprinting!

[Mercator]

Originally posted by Jerec
I found Mercator's site first. Was stunned by his collection of maps, etc. I was particularly awed by his small collection of scens, and downloaded a few, had an absolute ball. (...)

Nice!

[civ2units]

I´m playing civ since 1997. It began with civilization 1, following civ2 with FW. Long time these are my favorite and only games I played on my computer. Especially civ2 was my favorite because of the easy changing of the files and creating scenarios.

When civ3 was released, I buyed the game but it wasn´t like civ2, so I got back to my favorite civ.
civ4 is nice to play but it´s extremly difficult to change anything. The game crashed on every time when I changed the flags graphics.

I think civ2 and TOT is the best civ ever.

[Jerec]

The lasting appeal of Civ II must lie in its accessibility for designers. There are not many eras of history that cannot be represented.

Especially civ2 was my favorite because of the easy changing of the files and creating scenarios.

found it too hard to modify or wanted real historical scenarios.

Come to think of it, that is why Civ 2 stands out. Scenarios, good ones, can be made by ordinary people, and this is doubly attractive in the fact that historical events can be duplicated in a game. You have to love it, especially if you love any part of history!

[curtsibling]

I love the wonderful feeling of antiquity that even CIV2 can
conjure up when playing a medieval or ancient scenario!

Especially when it is of an obscure area of the past!

[techumseh]

Well, sounds like I'm batting .500 anyway. Nice to hear everyone's story. And yes Tuttle_77, I do remember you. The War of 1812 was my very first scenario, I remember it fondly. I took my nick from it, although I ended up getting the spelling wrong.

I'm very happy to see all the new faces here. I guess I'm the oldest member still active, and this place has gone through lots of changes. But it still thrives due to a couple of things: the wonderful flexibility and ease of modification of the Civ2 MGE and ToT platforms, and the friendly and helpful people of the Scenario League. It's a pleasure to be part of this community.

[AGRICOLA]

Originally posted by techumseh
The War of 1812 was my very first scenario, I remember it fondly. I took my nick from it, although I ended up getting the spelling wrong.

That's unexpected. I've thought that you purposely gave Tecumseh's name a nice, more modern twist.

[Mercator]

Interesting... I thought so too.