(Yesterday, 17:53)LKendter Wrote: I recall the diplomat exploit well. Getting lots of cash was so powerful. Even stealing small cities paid off over time.
The drawback is that if you're a big high-tech democracy, and you steal a border city with diplomats, they can just take the city back with chariots and then take a tech from you. So you do have to be a bit careful in *which* cities you steal that way...
Other miscellaneous thoughts on this game, in no particular order:
* the AI really is surprisingly competent. Most obvious is the warlike leaders with their chariot rushes, which are a serious danger on Emperor. But in that screenshot I showed, Abe Lincoln beat me to rifleman and landed two of them next to my capital. I was able to defend it but... there was a real chance I could have lost it if I hadn't rushed out a diplomat over railroads. Then he beat me to Hoover Dam, because he apparently skipped factories and went straight for the tech that gives Hoover Dam (a very powerful wonder, but it doesn't do anything if you don't have factories).
*everyone talks about spear defeating tank... but what about rifleman? They're 30 shields vs 100 for the tank, but have a strong defense that can be boosted by a lot of things. in the late game, it's pretty tough to get past an AI that's spamming rifleman. Unless you use nukes...
*other civ games tend to divide the late game into 2, one for WW2 and one for modern. For example, Civ2 has bombers based on the B-26 from WW2, and another for the stealth bomber from the 80s. Civ1 just has one, with an image that's clearly the B-52 from the 1950s. And bear in mind, this was from a company that for a long time made its living from hardcore niche military flight-sim games. They knew a lot about military aircraft, and they deliberately chose to simplify it all down to just one unit, because that was better for gameplay. And it works quite well, it's a powerful end-game unit but still feasable to reach in a normal game.
* the "one more turn" feeling is really strong. I just went back in to grab a screenshot and immediately felt the urge to play more turns. I had to force myself to stop. I think a big part of that is the seemless UI and lack of loading screens.
* Republic vs Democracy might not seem that different at first glance, but they actually are quite different. With Republic, you can only use "we love the consul day" on your core cities, because of the corruption penalty to more distant cities. And even then, only up to a certain size (about 10, which is also the limit where you need an aqueduct for further growth). Democracy takes away both those limits, but it *really* handicaps your ability to fight wars. And if you try to rush Democracy early with the pyramids, that's a *heavy* early investment, roughly the cost of 7 settlers. I've heard so much talk of how "the pyramids were so imbalanced," including from the civ2 game manual, but that actually seems pretty well balanced.
* Caravans, in my opinion, are also surprisingly well balanced. They don't produce a *huge* amount of trade for most cities. But they do provide *enough* trade to help cities stay happy enough for "We Love the Consul Day" instant growth. Each city can only support 3 trade routes, so you can't rely on one big city to trade with your whole empire. I've seen people say that they're imbalanced because of free money, and others say they're useless... I actually think they're very well balanced! They're very powerful, but they're almost the same price as a settler or chariot, so they *should* be powerful.
* Wonders are also... suprisingly well balanced. Bear in mind that in Civ1, the AI doesn't "build" wonders in a normal way, it just rolls RNG and gives itself a wonder whenever it feels like it. So there's no way to really guarantee that you'll get any wonder, especially the early ones, unless you hardcore beeline it. Most of them are quite powerful, but they come at the steep price of giving up potential settlers/chariots. Some people swear by the "super science city" strat, where you combine Collossus, Copernicus, and Shakespeare in the same city to max it out like crazy. Others say that's pointless (
https://lparchive.org/Civilization-2/Update%2009/). I say it depends on the map!
* City buildings, by contrast, are pretty weak. The granary is kind of a double-edge sword, making your cities grow faster than you can get happiness. All of them cost constant maintenance. But they're necessary if you want to play a big city Republic-type strategy.
* City Walls... surpisingly well balanced! They provide a huge defense bonus (3x defense, which multiplies all other defense bonuses). But at a huge cost- high production cost, ongoing high maintenance cost, and they do absolutely nothing of economic value. I like to skip them, rush buy them when a city is under threat, and sell them after the threat is over... but that comes with the threat that the enemy might capture the city anyway and use your own walls against you. Interesting choices!
* Research in general is also kind of weak. A lot of techs like Chemistry or Atomic Theory don't give anything at all, they just gatekeep further techs. Some techs obsolete the wonders from earlier techs (for everyone, not just for you). In between knights and armor there's *nothing* with high movement and higher attack. Most of the buildings are of questionable value until you have very large cities. You have to go all the way to Industrialization to get something to increase production. You don't need anything to unlock worker tile improvements. Etc. I think it kind of hurts the feeling of immersion, but from a pure gameplay perspective I like how the low-tech civs can still compete with higher-tech civs. It really helps the game balance avoid the snowball problem.
OK, that's a long list of things I like. Here's what I don't like:
* If you tell a unit to end turn, that's it, no way to reactive it. And it seems to jump around randomly across the map to different units. Makes running a large war feel dizzy.
* It's impossible to play peacefully. Pretty much every AI will eventually attack you, especially if they share your continent. Or they'll just wander over into your territory and block your tiles. A hostile AI next door is guaranteed to attack you. You cant even talk to them, unless they contact you first or you send a diplomat.
* You can't reload a save from within the game. You have to quit, start it again, then load. But maybe that's to prevent save scumming...?
* Too much micro. If you're about to lose a unit or suffer a revolt, there's no warning. It just happens. You have to constantly check info screens to prevent that.
* Loading/Unloading transports is a huge pain.
But that's really all the negatives I can think of! Good game would buy it again.
By the time I was playing Civ2 I had a better understanding of the 4X idea and usually won by spaceship.
