Sid Meier's Civilization II (1996)

This was my 1st civ game back in the day, and most likely the one I bought at the same time as Duke Nukem 3D where the store lady praised me for buying this but gave me scorn for Duke. Little did she know the untold billions that would suffer under my warmongering authoritarian communist rule. However I never looked back at this game once Civ 3 came out. The only things I really remember were the hilarious live actor advisors, and modding the game. I could not find the mod file even though I was sure I seem it in recent months. From memory, I tweaked some stats but don't remember how. I used the 3 custom units to make the samurai (a ground defender similar to pikeman but I forget exact stats), long ship (coming in between the trieme and caravel, maybe with bumping up the attack on later ships), and the airship (4 attack, ignored walls, functioned like a helicopter or bomber I forget which). I never had any of the expansions back then. Reading up they had custom scenarios with a lot of new art for units, in particular increasing the number of custom unit slots. Thinking about modding it now I would change a few attack values because 8 and 10 are too common. Give cavalry 7 attack, marines 9, armor 11. X2 defense vs mounted and air was underused so I would make new units. Anti tank infantry 4 attack 4 defense X2 vs mounted. SAM infantry attack 4 defense X2 vs air. Maybe something with 3 defense and x2 vs mounted to counter cavalry; machine gun?

Now I put the playstation version on my PSP to revisit this blast from the past. It lacked a few features from the PC version, like custom map size, cheat mode and scenarios, but ran pretty well. I had no trouble navigating the menus and issuing orders. L and R cycled through units which solved my biggest initial complaint of having to find a unit to select after de selecting a unit to get back into auto unit cycling. I often wanted to change city production after building a unit while I had it on screen with the new unit selected. R2 and L2 cycled between cities, which was less useful. With the graphics on screen I remember doing the ww2 scenario back in the day as Russia. I painfully conquered all of mainland Europe then turned Britain and America into radioactive wastelands. My strategy was bombers and spies using poison water supply to massacre city populations until they were low enough that my tanks could defeat city defenders without losses. This time I am playing as the Celts on King, large map, raging barbarians, full 7 factions. I began on the equivalent of west coast north America and surprised myself with how quickly I expanded. My strategy was to build a defender in each new city, then granary, then pump settlers until that city was no longer on the frontier. These settlers built roads and other terraforming on the way to make new cities. Many cities ended up sharing tiles due to the thin snakey shape of my continent. The 1st area I settled was east like the US, and that ended up being my core empire. North took a while to settle because the barbs liked to attack there. I made a few horses and chariots to manage that, and got a city from a goodie hut around Mexico very early on. Much further south was a single Zulu city at size 1. They were not doing well, probably because of the barbs. I sent my initial warrior scout, a horseman from a hut, and 2 chariots built in my far away city to wipe out the pathetic Zulu. I did not spread my cities as far as those ruins until the industrial era. I had a couple boats scouting and managed to find Americans and Indians on the eastern continent: like Africa and Europe. A was annoying me with claims to get out of their ancestral land and destroyed my newly founded undefended city, stealing gunpowder. Turned out they built 1 city on my continent, which I easily captured with cannons and muskets.

Before I get into the war though, some domestic notes. The terrain that a city was built on mattered. I built 1 in swamp assuming the city tile yields were fixed like in civ 4, but that city only had 1 food and production. Cities on flat land had 2 food 1 prod, while forest and hill cities had 1 food 2 prod. So I should have removed that swamp but I found out later that you can terraform the city tile. Jungle was just as bad. Terraforming strategy was road everything, don't change terrain on bonus tiles (best tiles), irrigate grass shields (2nd best), do whatever to get the irrigation where it needs to go (cut forests and irrigate paths), try to not have forest adjacent to cities that invaders could use (especially those adjacent to both the city and ocean), get rid of swamp and jungle, then try to balance food and production by removing or planting forests. Hills and mountains got mines and railroad plus a network linking the cities. I did not put rail on unnecessary tiles but it could be worth adjusting rails to make auto pathing work. Later ice, tundra and desert could be made into plains. Grass farms + hills or forests were the best. Plains were a hybrid between food and production, and good enough to not bother changing to grass. Hills took longer to make than forest but were immune to drought. I ignored most of the wonders since I figured it was better to focus on expanding. The only 3 I built were Darwin, Copernicus and Leonardo, and both I had to rush with gold to beat the AI despite me leading in tech and often getting a head start. Darwin was a waste though because 1 of the free techs was what I was already nearly finished researching. Leo was incredibly powerful, automatically upgrading units for free when the game had no upgrade with gold feature. I did not like how wonders expired with tech. Looking at the wonders, the pyramids are maybe worth building. Free granary for every city with no obsolete means a little extra saved production for each city and 1 gold per city. Not very useful early but scales well for a large empire. Hanging gardens suck because railroad is 1 of the best techs that you want to bee line for. Colossus boosts gold for 1 city but debatable if that would be better than investing in new cities. Lighthouse is not too bad for naval movement but obsoletes fairly soon. Great library is good for the free techs. I hated seeing Ghandi get my techs for free after the 2nd place tech civ researched it. Oracle is like gardens for happiness but the obsolete tech is much less key. Great wall is not bad but expiring with cannons really limits the use. Sun Tzu is great because it lasts until tanks and allows pumping units in all cities without the cost of barracks. The crusade is awesome for making high production city but I failed to get it. I should have been pumping caravans to put into wonders. Marco Polo is lame because it expires so you have to send diplomats to embassy every faction anyway. Michelangelo is the super form of gardens and Oracle since it does not expire. Magellan is one of the best due to not expiring. Love the naval moves. Shakespeare is only good for 1 city and better for Democracy. Bach is similar to Michelangelo while Newton is upgraded Copernicus. Adam Smith is one of my favorites because it makes a lot of buildings free. The statue of liberty was good when I took it from Washington because it allowed me to switch from monarchy to communism early. I did try republic early on before the war but my income did not improve due to increasing the luxury % to replace military police. Eiffel tower can help avoid getting into war with everyone while suffrage is useless outside of Republic or Democracy. It seemed like I was prioritizing war tech and the AI got all of these.

Back to the war, I sent 2 caravels with 3 cannon and musket across the ocean and took a mid sized city. However the next city was their Capitol and I was reminded how much I hate the combat in this game and unmodded civ 4. The whole concept of having to suicide waves of troops against defenders and relying more on industry and logistics to get new units to the front instead of any kind of tactics. The massive advantage of the defender with no way to siege properly, no way to spend time to swing the odds in your favor so that you don't need absurd numerical advantage to win. Things like bombarding, bypassing city defenses and ranged attacks to soften defenders. My cannons should have fired at the city with each turn improving the odds of my muskets but instead I had to save scum for the seemingly less than 25% odds of a cannon killing a defender, for each cannon until I took the city with no losses. I was able to take another medium city after than then got stone walled on the next large city. The odds of winning were even worse this time. Things improved afterwards with more and more veteran cannons being pumped out at home. I still lost some but had little trouble taking the rest of America. India foolishly stole tech so their cities soon fell. Railroads just made it easier for my artillery to move up to enemy cities and attack without waiting. My tech was going modern era as my 1st fighter aircraft just missed the conquering of the last Indian city. I built Hoover dam and cure for cancer with freight rushes, and my expedition of a diplomat and freight discovered Spain. Much later I built seti. I traded for refining and combustion. Subs were decent but power plants were useless because hoover gave free hydro to all cities, not just the home continent. We also traded maps. Their home island was less than half the size of my long snakey land but they had several cities spread out over multiple other islands. Babylon was on a small island with a few cities, including the last of America. Many of my cities reached nothing to produce so I pumped out a lot of freight before going capital. From what I read freight works best when republic or Democracy from airport cities going to similar AI controlled cities. I did some hostile fright drops before capturing cities but the best I got was less than 200g. I moved my forces to Babylon to finish off America with plans to use this area as staging ground for the next war, and B foolishly attacked me. I should have put the warship and transport together but loading the save to land the troops only made me lose a couple cavalry rather than the full transport load. I rush bought airport to airlift troops there, and the transport full of freight that I sent to Spain was killed. I did not know it was so easy to provoke war, but I blame the inability to tell what units are hidden behind the top on a tile. They really should not have attacked a peaceful trade shipment.

I was using the cash looted from conquest to run higher research and soon was building 2 sweet fleets to invade Spain. Each fleet had 1 carrier with 4 bombers and 3 fighters, 2 battleships, 1 aegis, 1 destroyer and a sub. Plus I was pumping armor and mech infantry. I first took out the various smaller islands before both fleets converged on their homeland. The weaker western fleet took the 1st city, which was weaker only because it had a single transport of armor and cavalry. The east fleet had like 4 transports worth of troops ranging from armor, spies, alpine, marines and even a couple partisans for their ignore zones of control. Spain could do little to stop my invasion, nor could France. At best they shot down a few bombers. I had some howitzers enter the war towards the end, and I reduced science spending in favor of gold. I later switched this when I got 30k gold and it seemed that was the max you could have. At some point the game glitched with my title changing to Japanese President, but the name at least eventually returned to normal. The other factions also had the wrong names. Some city graphics were corrupted and the camera refused to move automatically, which meant I had to manually reset the camera for each unit and to move a unit off screen. I also missed my forces being attacked unless I ended the turn on the screen. I heard the sound effects but did not know every battle that I won or units lots. The barbs even captured washinton because I had no idea it was under attack. This got me over a dozen free partisans who easily took back the city. The end was tedious as I had to conquer a few isolated island cities before the game counted a win. England was also a country with only 2 cities on the continent almost connected to mine. They were doing terribly and must have been unable to surpass the barbs. Before then more global warming happened and multiple cities were struggling with lost terraforming. I did not have near enough engineers to fix all the lost farms, desert, jungle and swamp.

End: 114 cities, 30k gold, 42 engineers, 16 partisans, 7 alpine, 88 rifles, 15 marines, 1 para, 35 mech, 4 cavalry, 10 armor, 14 artillery, 3 howitzers, 12 fighters, 16 bombers, 7 helicopters, 6 destroyers, 3 cruisers, 6 AEGIS, 6 battleships, 9 subs, 2 carriers, 8 transports, 2 spies, 20 freight.

Won 1916 with score of 1732, rating of 138% and the Mighty, 72 million population. I was building Apollo program, skipped Manhattan project, and was researching nuclear power. Only a few techs were left to get, including stealth for the best air units. There was plenty of room to build, in particular America and India had free space that kept spawning barbs.

Then I did Emperor as Vikings on standard size map. The map ended up being pangaea with me starting near the SW corner. I made a save right at the beginning and with only 2 save slots I wanted to keep my Celt save intact. I played until about gunpowder while exploring to my south to find it was a dead end. Meanwhile the Babylonians had 2 excellent cities next to my Capitol on a big river. I had to invest in walls and military, and was briefly at war with Chinese. It was clear that I would be playing catch up for the entire game and I should have had those sweet city spots. So I loaded from the beginning using my knowledge of the map to play much better.

This time I explored towards my 2 neighbors and got 2 free cities from huts. I sent a warrior and free archer to block a choke point towards B, while pumping cities to box in Chinese. C only managed to get 3 cities built while I built 1 behind them (which later led to Aztecs) and filled in the entire area west of my Capitol. Unfortunately I had allied with B and C, which allowed them to bypass my blocks and try to settle the vast dead end east. Loading the save was before the alliance with B, but not C. Instead I blocked my roads and got my settlers in place first to claim the last few locations west of my Capitol, and a few more east. I used a wall of new cities, settlers, legion, and caravans to block off the entire unsettled area. It was hilarious seeing like 5 Chinese settlers stuck in my land unable to do anything. Prior to this I was pumping out caravans to rush wonders, as usual focusing on land grabbing and building up instead of getting the early ones. I got crusade in my Capitol then used that production to get Copernicus and Oracle. As the game progressed I also got newton, sun tzu, Magellan, Darwin and Liberty in the Capitol. This time I put research to 0 to get the most out of Darwin free techs. As I spread south I discovered that the Romans were eliminated and the Celts were newly spawned in my future land. So of course that meant war. I used a few legion to wipe them out but only 1 city survived, which spent a long time as a distant outpost before my empire spread that far. At one point I almost lost it due to barbarian elephants. 1 killed my phalanx, while another was killed by my horse. If the 3rd elephant attacked instead of guarding their leader I would have lost. As it was the horse barely managed to kill both elephants in 1 turn. B, England and Aztec all eventually declared war. A large part of that was the alliance with China, because after I made peace with 1 they made me go back to war due to the alliance, which triggered the protection pacts they all signed against me. Soon I got sick of the alliance, as C were uncooperative and kept demanding tech to keep it going. When they demanded something that only I had, I refused and not long after I declared war. They were better off as my province anyway. My army was lots of muskets supported by catapults. I attacked the closest B city with about 8 catapults and almost twice that in muskets. With a bit of save scumming I managed to kill everything in the city with only 3 of my muskets surviving to capture it next turn. Absolutely ridiculous, but that city had Leo's workshop and colossus. I did not bother building up enough military to attack more cities, instead focusing on infrastructure, new cities and wonders. I set my rail network, made a fort to hold off Aztecs, and built a city on the flank of Babylon, both cutting them off from a lot of wilderness and allowing my ships to get through to their main cities. I stole tech repeatedly to keep the lead, and got Bach, Adam Smith, Hoover Dam, and UN in the city that was the original border with B. I later got the all the late game wonders in China, which had some of my highest production, up to 80+ shields. The UN made all the bastards agree to peace and refuse to attack me even when I demanded tribute. Never got anything though, except if they had no troops to withdraw they often declared war. The only other interesting thing to happen was repeat massive barbarian uprisings with 50+ units close to my cities but land access would have gone through Babylon and my lone city. The barbs instead tried to cross the water. The AI did that too and I killed a shocking amount of their troops using naval units.

The AI did a good job keeping up with tech so it was a little interesting fighting enemies that were on par. I gave each of my good cities 1 of barracks, port or airport to pump out vet units and overwhelmed Babylon, then India then finally Aztecs just 1 turn before the end date 2020. The Russians were the only surviving rival with a few cities on an island. There were a couple hiccups while putting down railroad to link into enemy lands as I lost a few engineers before my artillery could roll in. Later I was using howitzers to attack cities, usually 1 attack then take cover inside a city. Armor and artillery then killed the partisans while my defenders guarded cities and wounded units. Bombers lost a lot of value as they lost when the city had SAM. I made sure to rush SAMs in many cities as fighters most often lost when defending a city from a bomber. India took a few cities with espionage but that was just a minor setback. Then I pumped spies to garrison front line cities. The AI completely failed to make proper use of the railroads connecting their cities and mine, never reinforcing cities, doing concentrated attacks, or sneaking spies deep into my territory. The only good thing they did was pummel battleships and my 1 carrier with missiles, though I was astounded by how many missiles a veteran AEGIS could survive. The border with Aztec was rural and it was easy to wipe out their attack force before it could even attack my city. I used battleships and para drops to take their city not on the border then forced peace to give me time to reinforce that city with a rushed airport for airlifting and a transport ferrying troops over. Pollution was very bad with several new instances popping up every turn and 2 major droughts. I did complete the tech tree and 1 future tech but my 1 stealth bomber never had a chance to fight.

End: 109 cities, 9k gold, 35 engineers, 3 fanatics (from bribing cities), 2 partisans, 11 alpine, 92 rifles, 16 marines, 2 para, 50 mech, 2 cavalry, 13 armor, 10 artillery, 26 howitzers, 19 fighters, 9 bombers, 3 helicopters, 2 destroyers, 12 cruisers, 10 AEGIS, 9 battleships, 7 subs, 3 transports, 4 missiles, 9 spies, 54 freight. Never bothered with trade at all.

Score: 1700, 170%, 102 million pop, Augustus rank.

I preferred the large map over standard because of the vast oceans. It seemed like the land mass was about the same on both map sizes. The PC version was clearly better but it is very cool to be able to play some 4X on PSP. I would have to offload the save files to play again though. 1 save per memory card is ridiculous. It is more tedious to play without mouse and keyboard hotkeys but it still might be fun to play again in the future, even try diety. I also might download the pc gold version and try the scenarios I never had back in the day.