By the way, one dude played Civilization 2 scenario for 10 real life years:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/06/decade-long-civ-ii-game-mired-in-1700-years-of-nuclear-war/


:D

I prefer Civ 3 to Civ 4 and I prefer Civ 5 to Civ 4 and I prefer Civ 2 to Civ 3 and I prefer Alpha Centauri when I am tired of spearmen and catapults.

Civ 4 never quite hit the mark with me. I never really liked how religion and culture was introduced into the game, and it all seemed strangely dumbed down to me. Oddly, though, Civ 5 feels like the realized vision of what Civ 4 wanted to be. So if you grok on Civ 5, keep playing Civ 5. It's just better.

But if you want a different gaming experience, Civ 2 is probably the best place to start... and while I prefer Civ 2 over Civ 2 Test of Time, in truth, Test of Time will give you pretty much the whole Civ 2 experience, only with a few (mostly cosmetic) differences.

Civ 3 is very good, but feels, to me, somewhat vanilla compared to both 2 and 5.

If you play Civ 2 (or any Civ, really), follow up with Alpha Centauri (available here on GOG) and now including the Alien Crossfire expansion. It is basically Civ in space, with the idea being that it picks up with the spaceship that you build in Civ finally reaching its destination and starting a new adventure there. Plus, it has a unique system to allow you to custom build your units based on how you want to assemble the things you gain from tech research. That feature is very cool.

OMG really?? 10 years?? Well I would love to read the time-line of the events from that game :))

I prefer Civ4 (civ 2 is cool, too). I like how the AI, trading, and diplomacy were much improved in Civ 4, spearman beating tanks is not something you'll see (Civ 3...), and religion is pretty cool. Make sure you get patched to 3.19 and check out the BUG mod. Also, things like blue marble and FfH2 are pretty sweet.

Civ 3 is enjoyable, good for a low-spec netbook.

SMAX is my favorite, though...

And what about Call to Power 2 that is sold here on GOG?

I'm interested in mostly how is it different from Civ games?

I have an original boxed copy of Civilization 2, how does it run on modern OS's like Windows 7 32bit?

PMed you :)

Personally, I bought Call To Power 2 when it was new and had a lot of technical issues with it that made it unenjoyable, and I abandoned it. Others seem to like it a lot.

What I recall that I liked a lot was the Public Works system, where instead of using workers to improve tiles, you had a Public Works budget and you designated tile improvements which would build themselves over time as long as there was sufficient money in the budget. It also had a system of setting up specific trade routes, and you could cut enemy trade routes, all making trade a bit more strategic in the game.

Some of the unique units, like slavers, added something to the game as well.

Still, however, I think Civ is the standard against which other games should be measured. I may decide, however, to get Call To Power here on GOG and take a fresh look at it. I liked its graphics and unique features, I just found it often unplayable at the time when it was new.

Thanks for the info :-)

i like both games, and continue to play both. i slightly prefer Civ3 because it is a more stable program. With Civ3 i can play huge maps with massive mods. With Civ4 i get the blasted MAF error on large maps, so can only play the small maps and that's not my thing. Though still Civ4 is the better game for mods. It sucks that 2k took over the franchise. i haven't even bothered with Civ5, though Civ+mods was once, pretty much the only game i played.

I've played both Civ3 and Civ4 extensively and would consider Civ4 to be superior. The way that Civ3 implemented certain mechanics (such as pollution and corruption/waste) resulted in the need for excessive micromanagement that didn't add anything to the game and just became annoying (and became especially bad in the late game with a large empire). Civ4 retained all the complexity of Civ3 but implemented some key mechanics differently enough to do away with most of the pointless micromanagement (there's still plenty of places to gain an advantage by micromanaging things, they just got rid of the pointless stuff). Civ4 also has some great mods available for it if you get tired of the base game (I'm personally partial to Fall From Heaven 2).

My preference:

1. Civ 3
2. Civ 2
3. Civ 5
4. Civ 1
5. Civ 4

I really think Civ 3 was the best. Sick of playing Civ 4 & 5, staring at just 4 or 5 cities. Give me EPIC.

Also wasn't 4 the one with the cartoon keaders? GTFO.

Better to play FreeCiv then. I personally preferred Civ 2 as it brought a lot of much needed tweaks and enhancements. FreeCiv does have Civ 1 rules as an option though.

Well I got Civ 1, 2 and I buyed 4 Complete. Thanks for help.

Sweet! I'm glad you got Civ 4. That's my favorite in the series (I haven' played 5 yet though). I really liked the culture and religion stuff. I'm sad they took that out in 5.