to answer your question better, I'd say either the first or second time I played it.

OCC because of Paul and the other players involved in the early Fortnights.Before I could win but only one way and not every time.

Multiplayer because of some hard lessons and some really good allies that played mentor for me.Learn fast or perish

The quality,experience and knowledge level of Apolyton on-topic posters is/was the biggest single factor though.By far

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Scouse Git[1]

*looks fondly back on the days of "losing" at warlord level when the game was fresh and new*

quote: I remember trying to kill a buffalo with a warrior for about two hours on my first night and becoming highly frustrated with the whole experience.

Ever finish that Capitolization wonder?
How come I can't finish it with freights?
I thought it was finished in 10 turns?
wtf is going on here?Where is that dam manual?

the hut and special pattern had me roaming endlessly for many millenium ..... took forever to figure that one out.

being a warmonger... it took forever for me to realize that gifting techs to the ai or er uhm.... making peace is highly exceptable......

fortresses ... never realize their power until i came to Apolyton..... in fact Apolyton ruined the game for me...... i was able to beat deity after a month of coming here..... never looked back since....

And this is just one example. There are dozens of scenario-laden sites on the web, w/every period, fantasy, and extrapolation you could think of. And if you can think of a new one, the scenario creation tools in Civ2 will allow you to create it!

I cut my teeth on the Super Nintendo version of Civilization I. I also broke more than one cartridge when the game frustrated me — that got expensive, though, so I had to master the learning/frustration curve quicker.

Once I got a Macintosh, it was only natural to add Civilization II to the computer package once it came out for the Mac. I haven't looked back since and still enjoy playing Civ to this day.

ALL HAIL SID MEIEIR! (I hope I spelled his last name right .)

quote: Originally posted by Disident on 03-29-2001 08:32 PMbuffalo with a warrior- I can't stip laughing at that

It's all very well for you to laugh but there was NOTHING in the manual about how to kill buffalo! I had to work it out through trial and error. In the end I realised that warriors weren't fast enough to catch buffalo and built horsemen to do the job, that sorted everything . Still won that game, my first, at prince, being playing emperor and diety ever since.

Anyway, my 2 cents worth is that finishing a game or two is good. There are two ways to win and they are rather different. You can build a spaceship, launch it and wait for it to arrive at Alpha Centauri or you can conquer every other civ by taking all their cities.

The two approaches have in common the need to build an industrial base capable of churning out either enough military units to accomplish the conquest or enough spaceship parts to build the space craft. And there are inbuilt happiness constraints that must be faced in every game.

Military wins can come quite quickly and I suggest you try that first. Choose a small map and a setting where civs which are destroyed don't restart. You will need to spend some time just getting cities down at first but at quite an early stage you might decide you can get half a dozen or more decent offensive units into the field and you then move on your nearest A1 opponent. the bigger picture resolves itself into balancing off the resources you are applying to keep up in the tech race to the resources you can manage to devote to building enough military units and getting them to each successive front.

Don't try the silly real time combat approach of just building up and building up until you have a huge force which can smash down all opposition. The guys who developed civ were WAAAYYY too savvy to let that work.

DaveV or Smash or War4ever or one of our numerous other war mongers will say if I'm talking out of my arse but you may well find that you have to set yourself intermediate objectives. Say, build up enough to wipe out the Mongels (who are near neighbours) but then go back to a period of development so that you can re-establish a tech and military advantage against the A1 civs who have not had a war to contend with while you were slugging it out with opponent 1. When you judge the time is ripe you go for A1 civ number 2. And so on.

Alpha Centauri is different. There is no short cut. Whatever setting you play on you must have all the necessary tech before you can build your spaceship. While taking steps to get the tech (a matter primarily of arrows) you must also build up your industrial base so as to have enough shields and money.

The tech tree is complex. Warrior Code is an early tech which does nothing for you as regards getting nearer the tech needed to start building the space ship so maybe you ignore it. But the balancing factor here is that the A1 civs are not about to just leave you unmolested. So you can't ignore military matters entirely. The trick is to devote enough resources to defence while putting the bulk of your efforts into research and developing a good economy.

Once you've had a go concentrating firmly on military victory I suggest you have a go concentrating firmly on the space ship route. Choose a large map for that one.

Once you see how you achieved your overall objectives in a couple of games you will start to ask yourself what wrong turnings you took and to speculate about whether it would all have been quicker and easier, or more secure, if you had adopted a slightly different approach.

I actually don't advocate studying these boards to improve until you've played a dozen games or more. Many threads assume a HUGE amount of background grip on all sorts of aspects of the game; some are about grand overall strategies and some are about really tiny points.

So play first, post later.

But, such is the comradeship on offer here, that this is hard to do - and maybe truly duff advice if you want to have fun first and get better at Civ2 second.

And in that spirit, welcome rwprice, I say.

quote: Originally posted by CYBERAmazon on 03-30-2001 01:01 AM ALL HAIL SID MEIEIR! (I hope I spelled his last name right .) CYBERAmazon

I love the guy, but he owes me a life.

Anyway,Civ 2 was fairly easy to comprehend, since I had Civ 1 for many years before...Unfortunately, I have a hard time doing as well in Civ 2 as I do in SMAC. I've beaten Emperor a handful of times, but have never come close to beating Deity.

--Teeks

However I've finally learned something of what East Street Trader was talking about so learnedly above -- i.e., balancing military and tech advance. It's taken me the better part of 6 years, tho'! The thing to come to terms with is that you can't win either by pure militarism, or by pure technology. (From time to time during my 'military years' I would try pursuing JUST tech in the pitiful hope that I might finally discover how to win peacefully...) But at last I've realised that whatever happens you're going to have to do some fighting; and whatever happens, you're going to have to do some research (if you want to win, that is).

It's probably still not ideal (and I'm sure many of the masters on these forums would be able to describe 'better' ways of winning), but the strategy I most often use now is to adopt a militaristic approach early on in the game (while not totally ignoring the peaceful technologies), defeating or severely weakening as many as possible of my most powerful opponents; and then in the end game with only a few weaker civs remaining, I'm free to really forge ahead with technology and can finally win by 'spacequest'. For me at least, this gives the best scores.

Oh, and I should probably add that I have managed to win at Deity using this strategy -- but usually only after 4 or 5 false starts (not cheating, just abandoning a game when I realised I was on a downward spiral...).

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Ilkuul

I don´t trade yet and always that I try to reach Alpha Centauri I finish conquering the ai cities

right now i´m playing scenario that are way better

quote: Originally posted by johnmcd on 03-29-2001 08:57 AM I remember trying to kill a buffalo with a warrior for about two hours on my first night and becoming highly frustrated with the whole experience. Later I built a Great Library in a city as I thought it would be pointless to build a normal one only to have to upgrade to a great one later.

This could be its own thread titled "stupid stuff we did before we read the manual." Like you I tried to kill/capture specials. But my stupidest had to be continually building palaces and then wondering why they went away.

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

Another things I got after a long - too long time (I had no manual):

Wow! The city size is affected by the food box? Who would have though! I never had an idea...

It took me some time to understand the purpose of micromanagin the 21 squares box. I was playing civ2 a long time without it.

I often wanted to create cool specialists. However I did not know how. I went to the civilopedia and read that to do that you can do it easily by clicking. So I clicked on the 21 box. No use. I went to read about workers which said they could be easily converted to specialists. i went to read about specialsts. This again stated that creating specialists is very easy. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!

It took me a long time to get that the heads on top of the 21 box are not just to represent city size and occupation but are also clickable!!

Only a week ago did I first met the black (really mad) population units. I always wondered what are they for. I thought maybe for a barbaric city, but then, how would I take a peek in a barbaric city? maybe in cheat mode? naaah..

THIS is just TOO FUNNY!

Until I found Apolyton and discovered how much I don't know.

So... I haven't finished my learning experience with civ yet!

I can't remember when I got the grasp of the game. It was so long ago.

After that it was a couple of years before I got a copy of Civ 2 MPGE!! By that time I had found this site and learned some startegies that boosted my starting difficulty level to about prince or king, or even emperor.

Seriously?
Within a couple of weeks and a few sleepless nights, i managed to step up to deity's levels; only to find out that even more challenges were waiting for me in scenarios.

But; the most satisfying element of all those games is to remember the very first try...

Founded a city; only to have it demolished by Barbs!!
That was such a mess then, now that i "know" how to play.
But i guess, i still don't!

When I read here posts which say they grasped the game when they were in the 7th grade, it gives me hope. On the other hand, I have been out of the 7th grade a loooonnng time, and it's just not coming together for me.

So, ask me again in about a month.