Should I get it?

[Vazirov]

I know ToT has been around for awhile now, but I have never gotten around to getting it. I love Civilization and Test Of Time looks like a worthwhile addition to it, but I was just wondering whether it is worth buying it.
Thanks for any input.

Vazirov

[ghosh9]

Well, to be brutally honest, I was a tad disappointed when I first got TOT myself. I liked the High Council and sometimes watched the wonder movies. And I had gotten hooked by the windows based scenario building tools on the cheat menus. Plus, maybe its because my eyesight isn't all that great, but I also found the graphics dark and hard to see.

However, once I started playing TOT, it quickly grew on me. I don't think I could go back to playing on one map after the extended game. Especially since recently I made myself a quickie fun scenario (mainly for practice) on four maps with tons of units that can zip all over the place on them. You can blow raspberries at the Vikings on Map 3 when they threaten you because they can't come and get you, can they? Well, unless they get a Spelljammer boat that can cross between the spheres or a mage who can planeshift then they can come and visit you (these things are in my scenario, but there are comperable things in the games that come with the product).

Also, If you change your screen resolution to at least 1024x768, the graphics are much brighter and easier to see. I think Microprose should have put this warning in huge letters on the startup screen for install so people like me who have an aversion to readme files could see it. :-)

Also, as is great with a game like Civilization, there is a ton of "customer support" in the form of sites like this one, and there are new graphic patches out so you can get brighter graphics and ideas for new things for scenarios.

I guess basically, if you can find it for less than $30.00, buy it. I might have had less apprehension at the start if it wasn't quite so expensive as its just an improvement on Civilization II, not a new game. But, if you are a Civilization fan, you're going to have to get it sooner or later.

[Vazirov]

Okay, thanks for you advice. I'll see if I can get it. Sounds worthwhile.

Vazirov

[randomturn]

I bought it on the first day and played it extensively. It was fun for a while, but I don't really play it now. I like the graphics but find they slow the game down too much. I liked the linked maps, but have stopped using them; do you have any idea how lng a game with 4 maps in it is? It's crazy. Whether it was Midguard, Lalande, or extended original, you're always so dominant by the time the other maps really become relevant that for all intents and purposes, the game is over. I loved both the scenarios, but didn't finish either -- they're just too long.

And when I went back to play some good old Civ II, I found I could not launch the original program without re-installing it, which was kind of annoying. Sure, I could have launched from ToT and turned off the extra junk, but it still crashes, and I can't play it with 7 civs (which I always do) without the damned aliens. It really annoyed me that I had to reinstall Civ II, but that's what I did. I will probably just uninstall ToT altogether.

I have enough disposable income that I would probably have bought ToT even had I known all this -- but $50 initial list? That took a lot of nerve.

[randomturn]

I have not been able to run Civ II, either by my desktop shortcut, the start-up menu, ot the application itself on either my desktop or my lap-top. On both computers, I get the same error message and have had to reinstall it. It was easy to reinstall and did not delete any of my maps, saves, scenarios, etc. I think that's a key point in MP's defense. I suspect they thought that since you could play the original game (albeit with only 6 other civs) with ToT, that no one would want to start using the original program.

Since my two computers are different makes with very different configurations, it seems likely to me that other people would have this same problem. In both cases, though, ToT was installed in the CivII drive. I'm not surprised that McSweeney, who installed it totally separately on a diferent drive, has had no problems.

[ghosh9]

I can run my old copy of CIVII Classic as well. I recently got a new larger HD though and I can't remember if I copied my old Civ subdirectories from my second (old) HD to my new one and just made new links or reinstalled it. I think I just moved it. Of course, hearing of this problem now, I'm not going to delete it!

[Andromeda]

Randomturn, are you telling us that installation of CIV2TOT hoses our existing CIV2 installation ? If this is true, then I am horrified.
I have been playing CIV2TOT exclusively since I got it, because it takes quite a lot of time to get on top of all the new games and scenarios, but I have every intention of returning to CIV2, my first love, in the near future. No way would I consider abandoning CIV2 before the arrival of CIV3.
I naturally assumed that CIV2 and CIV2TOT were going to happily co-exist on my machine till then.
Please, John, tell us it ain't so !

[McSweeney]

Just a few days ago I found my old Civ 2 was still hidden in some directory on a long forgotten partition of my hard disk. I thought I had removed it long since. I had moved it to a different folder without reinstalling it, and I think I even reinstalled Windows in the mean time. But Civ 2 still runs! No problems at all! However, it is on different drive than ToT.

[tobyr]

if you like complexity:
- CIV2 has 23 types of land
- ToT's fantasy world has 93 (the sci fi world has lots also)

- toby robison


------------------
toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[Seeker]

Yeah, but how many of those 93 are just the same old lands with a different name and picture?

[Andromeda]

OK folks, I've checked out my CIV2 installation since my last post yesterday, and am delighted to report that both games (CIV2 and TOT) are working perfectly. They happen to be on different drives, but I can't see how that could make any difference, and I suspect that Randomturn's problem may be due to something else entirely.
Re some earlier comments on this thread regarding the merits of TOT, I feel I have to say how very glad I was to encounter again after a lapse of a few months, the beautifully clean, crisp and clear graphics of CIV2 after the gloomy fuzzy graphics of TOT. Like stepping into a brightly-lit room.
The gloom I could probably get used to, but what irritates me most about TOT graphics is the frequent need to use the right mouse button to find out :-
(1) what square a unit is actually on, and
(2) who owns the unit

I'm well aware that no game publisher wants to be accused of using 'dated graphics', but I fervently hope that the CIV3 designers will find a way to update CIV2 graphics without losing their essential value.

[Icedan]

Quick questions, wondering if I should get it to.

1. Are the wonder movies new? And how many are there?
2. The heralds, are they the same as from Civ2? or gone?
3. What is different about the High Council?
4. What is great about the extended game? (TTP)

[Icedan]

By the way Andromeda, Civ3 will be using state of the art computer graphics, so I read.
Also Firaxis and Microprose will be working on the project. And personaly, I think they're gonna need all the help they can get to make Civ3 unexpectantly brillant.

And not just "another game".

Look how well done Civ2 was made, they can do it again easily. They've got all the guys together on the project now!

Except good ol'e Bruce.

It's a good time to be alive.

[McSweeney]

1. The wonder movies are gone. It seems that nobody wanted to see them anyway, so Microprose removed them and the throne room as well.

2. The Heralds are the same as in the original version, I think.

3. High Council is gone as well.

4. Extended game is great, because once you get your spaceship to Alpha Centauri, you continue playing there. You'll meet an Alien race with some new units, you can research new advances. It's fun, but not as great as SciFi games.
Time Threat Paradox (TTP) is a scenario, which lets you travel through time. There are four different ages of the earth. I haven't played it yet, but it sounds interesting.