Did Civ2 have this kind of criticism when it came out?

[EyesOfNight]

I really don't remember hearing anything bad about civ2 when it came out. THere were no rantings of bugs or horrible game flaws. Compare the release of civ2 to the release of civ3. When civ2 came out it was so clean and polished. There were no bugs that I know of, at least not until the MP portion came out. And the original civ2 had 1 patch for its entire game life. Compare that to civ3 which now needs a patch the day it was released, and I can assume it will be periodically patched for the next few months. That is of course if they don't give up on it like they did with CTP2. Compare the way this game was handled and developed to that of other games such of Age Of Kings. Ensemble studios should be the model for other game companies, especially Firaxis who doesn't seem to understand what testing is. ES hires real players who have played the games for years and are the best players out there. For example AOM (Age Of Mythology) is being tested by Swinger, The_Sheriff, Maimin_Matty, and a few others (For those of you who don't know those players were experts in AOK and AOE). When a ES game comes out, there are virtually no bugs and all patches that come out are usually geared towards playing features or civ balances. I can't help but think if Firaxis had hired expert players of Civ2, AC, and CTP2, we wouldn't be having this problem right now. And I won't even go in to the management differences in ES and Firaxis. Comparing the two is like comparing a Major League baseball team to the little league you see playing at your local park.

[Seeker]

These were the first criticisms I heard of Civ 2 vs 1:

-silly yellow units (first thing edited out)
-the Alpine Troop (also editable)
-Bad AI; not asking for Deep Blue here but AI could not use aircraft carriers period, lone destroyers appearing and committing suicide one by one.
-generally the AI tended to hurl units suicidally one by one
-Missing some of the cool stuff like replay, march into city, animated waves.
-Isometric view annoyed some people.
-No big amphibious invasions! Civ 1 AI could occasionally pull this off.


After it was out for a while:

-That we were offered so many Microprose expansions with very crappy scenarios. FW was quite good though.

-It was difficult to appropriately edit tech and alliances for scenarios

-As time wore on people found the caravan to be an unbalanced unit. If you are good, trade effectively allows you to easily build most or all wonders and rack up incredible amounts of money.

-The railroad/howitzer paradigm was a bit silly. In the modern age there was often no real need to build units besides howitzers and transports.

[Zanzin]

Well, when civ2 came out, it was, what, 1996? Hardly any people had the internet then (at least compared to the number that do now!)

Community sites like this were few and far between....which basically means, there wasn't an avenue for gamers to get together and meet and criticise like this!!

Maybe if the internet had been in full force back then, it would have been heavily flamed. But we don't know, because the internet simply didn't exist on the level it does now.

Hope that answers your question!

[TCO]

They were criticised for releasing Civnet, when they were alreaddy secretly working on Civ2. They were also criticized for not enabling MP code in Civ2 and for charging for MP in the Civ2 MGE expansion.

sound familiar??

[Robert]

The more people gather together, the more they'll complain.
That's because people addopt each other's complains.

[Jason]

Yep. It used to be comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic for a "community," lots of great folks posted, Brian Reynolds, Alan Emrich etc.

I remember the isometric view messing with a lot of people, and some (including me) had sound card troubles for a while that caused random crashing. Also the victory lap stuff ticked people off... No nice replay with the map, no text file generated with your glorious conquests, and so on.

My feeling is that serious, dedicated fans tend to get a bit possessive of a game franchise, and feel betrayed if it doesn't go in the directions they want - this is true of any game with "fanatic" fans. When you have a message board community with a bunch of disputative regulars, what's happened is pretty predictable.

Anyway, nothing to stress over. When you get right down to it, the valuable information is either in specific forums (strategy or civilizations or mod forums for example) or in the threads of reputable posters. You only have to read stupid rants if you are a sucker for punishment or like wasting time

[Hoek]

We were expecting more this time around

[TCO]

Originally posted by Hoek
We were expecting more this time around

Perfect example of Jason's point. Well, at least I whine about the server, while Andy whines about the games...

[Comrade Tribune]

Re: Did Civ2 have this kind of criticism when it came out?

Originally posted by EnigmaticGod
And the original civ2 had 1 patch for its entire game life.
...
Ensemble studios should be the model for other game companies, especially Firaxis who doesn't seem to understand what testing is.
...
I can't help but think if Firaxis had hired expert players of Civ2, AC, and CTP2, we wouldn't be having this problem right now.

On the money!!!

(The game is still great, but its shortcomings are unnecessary and embarassing.)

[Ming]

One might think from reading these forums that Civ II was the "perfect" game... and that it was released in perfect condition. HA HA HA HA... many people must have very short memories. Even after all the patches... the release of MP... FW... it still has many flaws and problems. We have just gotten used to the problems because overall, it's a great game. Civ III will fall into that category eventually... or at least I hope so

[TCO]

Originally posted by Ming
One might think from reading these forums that Civ II was the "perfect" game... and that it was released in perfect condition. HA HA HA HA... many people must have very short memories. Even after all the patches... the release of MP... FW... it still has many flaws and problems. We have just gotten used to the problems because overall, it's a great game. Civ III will fall into that category eventually... or at least I hope so

Can't you tell by know? Is it that hard to tell?

[techumseh]

But in terms of the scale and intensity of the complaints...not even close!

[PMLF]

Now there are a lot more people with internet access than when Civ2 was released. IMO, this is the reason for more complaints now than in Civ2's release.

[Kc7mxo]

Ahhh. But, in civ 2, tanks did not lose to cavalry on a regular basis. hah.

waaaaaa i want my firepower back!

[TCO]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
Ahhh. But, in civ 2, tanks did not lose to cavalry on a regular basis. hah.

waaaaaa i want my firepower back!

Well...you also had a hard time with deity as I recall from the Aol boards...even when you were a more senior board poster. So maybe you're just not good at taking on the AI? Why not give yourslef some help by tweaking the modern units to higher A/D levels?