Every time I read one of your suggestions on what to play in ToT it seems like a lot of fun, especially the fantasy game. Beforehand, the science fiction and extended games also sound interesting. Linked maps, cities in the air and so on...

So, what can I do to get into the game?

- Are there even better graphics now somewhere to download? Which are the best ones? If I download the "standard" civ II ones, which of the games can they be used in?

- What about the various bugs (like the Ultrastring theory or whatever it was called) that were constantly brought up in the ToT forum, are they still there?

- If so, what do I have to do to fix them on my own? I have the patch already.

Any suggestions and tips are appreciated.

I have Kestrel's lightened graphics set up in the original game, but I have been editing them to make the rivers the width of roads instead of 80% of the width of a tile. The black city interface I changed to plain green, and that helped.

Is there a way to 'gamma?' adjust the game to lighten it up in general like you could do with the old first person shooters??

Having to learn a graphics editor is probably a good thing, but it would be nice if it weren't necessary. Scenario Leagues tips are helpful, but the learning curve has been pretty steep for an old fart like me.

One of the stumbling blocks to getting into the fantasy game is the renaming of the wonders. I recommend going into the text file that describes the fantasy wonders and adding little notes about their equivalents in civ2, so that you don't have to keep looking these up.

The wonders are in most cases not quite the same, usually because of where they come on the tech tree, or how they expire. The equivalent of leo's workshop is refreshingly unimportant, and the equivalent of great wall sometime expires right after you get it. Commune(ism) is terrific as usual, but it takes a LONG time to research all the prereqs. Etc.

Another stumbling block is that neither the game, nor the books written about it, tell you clearly about which creatures can move between which maps and how. Learning to read the rules.txt file gets you comfortable with the new unit capabilities.

The first time I tried to play the fantasy game, I choose goblins, and got really confused by their peculiar underground terrain. If you find underground terrain confusing, try mermen instead.

Be prepared to spend time studying the new terrain types (there are LOTS of them). If you have a set of pragmatic rules for building cities near certain types of land, these will only help you on map 0.

It takes some brainstraining to get used to the multimap stuff, but that's really fun to learn.

The other real pleasure in the map game is discovering that the civ2 strategies for protecting the perimeters of your land areas are usually useless, as attackers pop up from other maps.

- toby

quote: Originally posted by tobyr on 08-25-2000 11:33 AM You can certainly load the large graphics images that contain the terrain squares, and gamma-correct the entire sheets. I did that to lighten maps 1, 2 and 3 in the fantasy world.

Gamma-correct entire "sheets"? Can you please eloborate on how this is done? Is this done with the original graphics or with downloaded ones? Speaking about the graphics, which ones should I download? I've been over at Kestrel's site, but there are a lot of files. Any ones that are particulary easy on the eyes?

quote: One of the stumbling blocks to getting into the fantasy game is the renaming of the wonders. I recommend going into the text file that describes the fantasy wonders and adding little notes about their equivalents in civ2, so that you don't have to keep looking these up.

The thought has crossed my mind. When I play scenarios in Civ II I always find myself trying to figure out what the techs, improvements and wonders correspond to in the original game.

Thanks for your extensive reply!

BBro just posted this in the scenario league forum and I have installed the files - They look great.
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