My plan to defeat the other armies is:
1. Get the game: http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-II-Pc/dp/B0000...
2. Defeat the other armies
Civ II game a decade old
111–120 of 137 posts
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brave New World definately is a good pair for 1984. http://www.totalitariers.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Brave... (yes, the message of that image is debatable, but i found it intresting anyways)
I've read these types of posts hundreds of times, and they never seem truthful, but here is mine: I just want to say thank you for that image. I would like to hear your thoughts on your note, why do you find the message is debatable, and if you know where the image is from? It says the text is from "Amusing Ourselves to Death" which has just made it to #1 on my to-read list. I found the apt summary of Huxley's points…
I really agree with your point. It reminds me of an article written by The Atlantic some time ago with the provocative title "Is Google making us dumber?". It talked about how easy it is to find information using Google, but albeit that we're being bombarded by so much information that nothing really sticks. Sometimes I find myself spending hours and hours on Wikipedia and articles on the web that seem to only leave a faint impression in my mind.
The "create, not consume" mantra seems like a good way out of this endless cycle of "Amusing Ourselves to Death".
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#113Fascinating, and wonderful to see others are out there who are weird like me, and who will actually attempt to extend Civilization games over extremely long periods. I have a Civ4 game that I've been playing for about 4 straight years now, and admittedly the file has gotten so big that it periodically taxes my system resources to their limits (Unfortunately, Civ4 suffers from poor memory management and is fairly leak…
>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare. >Or that one possibly victory condition in a…
Fate of the World (http://fateoftheworld.net/) is an interesting indie strategy game. You play as a world organization and your goal in the main scenario is to prevent global warming. The problem is, as interesting as the theme is, the base game had serious issues with balance and simply understanding cause and effect, so it was difficult and not always fun (kind of like trying to solve global warming in real life! :)) I still suggest that everyone looking for an interesting take on 4x strategy games check it out.
In general board games tend to have much more varied themes and goals than video games, and often have limited direct conflict between players or none at all.
Paradox Games (www.paradoxplaza.com) are supposed to be historically accurate, if your main concern is realism. In practice they don't always achieve this goal but they do a better job at it than Civ.
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#114Fascinating, and wonderful to see others are out there who are weird like me, and who will actually attempt to extend Civilization games over extremely long periods. I have a Civ4 game that I've been playing for about 4 straight years now, and admittedly the file has gotten so big that it periodically taxes my system resources to their limits (Unfortunately, Civ4 suffers from poor memory management and is fairly leak…
>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare. >Or that one possibly victory condition in a…
In the board game Twilight Struggle, a game about the Cold War (& #1 on boardgamegeek.com), you lose if you escalate matters to defcon 1 and cause a nuclear war. A big part of the strategy, though, is knowing how to cause your opponent to inadvertently trigger defcon 1 (http://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/12/general-strategy-defc...).
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#115The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…
> If you haven't read 1984... I'd also recommend that you read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for a counterpoint. The sad part is that the way the world is going appears to be a mix of the worst elements of the two. Of course, the perpetual war in 1984 was a big part of the story, but because we only ever see the world from characters living in Airstrip One, for all we know the war could've been over years ago.
As long as we're throwing out reading recommendations, if you're into the dystopian-future sci-fi genre I'll point out C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength as an early prototype of that genre. It documents the fall of a nation into dystopia, specifically; George Orwell himself was fascinated by this, as evidenced by the book review he published. (However, his praise was qualified, it was apparently a bit too much C. S. Lewis for his style in the end. He went on to address the very objections he raised when he wrote 1984 not too very long afterward.)
It's the end of a trilogy but you can operate it as a standalone book (and if you must start with the other books, Out of the Silent Planet is a cute little homage, but don't let the dense and somewhat-dull Christian allegory in Perelandra get you down and make you skip Hideous.)
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare. >Or that one possibly victory condition in a…
In the board game Twilight Struggle, a game about the Cold War (& #1 on boardgamegeek.com), you lose if you escalate matters to defcon 1 and cause a nuclear war. A big part of the strategy, though, is knowing how to cause your opponent to inadvertently trigger defcon 1 ( http://twilightstrategy.com/2011/12/12/general-strategy-defc... ).
That game looks awesome. I'm going to play it with a certain relative who is a cold war geek. Thanks for informing me of its existence.
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#117The 3-way division of the world into "super-continents" and the constant war keeping the populace in a perpetual state of starvation and poverty, with the entire world in disrepair is so incredibly reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 it's scary. If you haven't read 1984, it's a startlingly bleak view of a potential future (from a historical perspective, but still applicable today, I think) particularly through technology an…
> Although I don't necessarily think it will be because of war, I can see a potential future where people/persons decide democracy is a less effective system because it's holding back the decision making process
That's something Darth Vader could have said.
Oh, wait, he did :-)
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#118In case anybody else is interested, here's a post with link to the save file:
http://www.reddit.com/r/theeternalwar/comments/uyswv/here_it...
Time to fire up Civ II and try to save the world!
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#119I'd love to see a similar report about a long-played FreeCiv game. (http://freeciv.org)
Re: Civ II game a decade old
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The other problem is that the AI fights total wars by default. It will never engage in a limited conflict. This is why I don't play civ. Total war AIs are a bizarre choice in a strategy game. I dislike it when games are setup in a way where I'm the only one thinking strategy and the AI opponents are there to give me a sense of action. Total war in the real world is rare. >Or that one possibly victory condition in a…
Balance of Power ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_of_Power_(video_game) ) The game for PC shipped with a MS Windows runtime environment, for an early version of Windows. (2.x?) I remember it being really hard. ( http://pc.ign.com/articles/090/090970p1.html ) Such a game made today could be brilliant.
The guy also wrote a book about how the game works, which has some good insights into real geopolitics. Can't find the link, unfortunately, but it was a really good read.