Apolyton Civilization Site: Civilization II Section

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NEWS ARCHIVE

WHAT WAS NEW ON THE SITE

29.Sep Column #65 by Dracon, News archived
25.Sep Column #64 by CyberShy, ToT Page updated
23.Sep ToT patch v1.1 released
22.Sep Column #63; By James Cobb
21.Sep 3 New Viking Scribes
18.Sep Column #62; By Derek Barrett
15.Sep Column #61; By Roger Oepkes
11.Sep Column #60; By Kent Wang
8.Sep Column #59; By Roger Oepkes, ToT page updated, News archived
4.Sep Column #58; By David Emery
1.Sep Column #57; By Roger Oepkes

300 FILES, 50000 DOWNLOADS
(September 29, 1999) Today is a glorious day for our Civ2 file database. Sven added the 300th file, and some unkwown civer did the 50,000th download! Today's 12 new files are:

Modpacks: AGM 3 Gold, Blob Wars, Spanish Civil War, The Martian Scenario, Panzerblitz - White Russia, The Second World War, Patches: TOT Extended-Game-Fine-Tune, Star Trek, TOT Improved Backgrounds, Maps: Maztica, Lil Isles, and the West US War scenario. As always, more files are coming. By the way, please use the submition page to send us a file.

KICKING THE TIRES
(September 24, 1999) More gaming sites on the Web are starting to come out of the woodwork with their official stances on Civilization II: Test of Time, now nearing its two month birthday of being available within the public domain.
Here is another review that has recently come to light (excerpts only):

From GamePlayer (Overall Score: 7.5/10): "Well, what's new? Essentially, you have "microscoped time periods" for CivII. Everything looks really frickin' weird. On the plus side, some of the new tech is fairly cool...like Applied Hedonics. (Look up hedonism, and you figure out why it leads to the Holographic Arcade.)

I had hoped that there would be a now city overview, like they had in the original CivII, some sort of 3D rendering of what the city and all it's advancements looked like. No dice. Maybe some new Wonder movies? Wrong. Just new tiles, and new piece art. All in all I wasn't very impressed with the new piece art either.

One of the biggest disappointments for me was the fact that I can't tell what all the new Wonders do. You figure it'll pop up after the Wonder movie begins, except for the fact that there aren't any. At the very least there should be a pop up box that tells you what it does.

On the plus side, combat isn't weighed down by the clunky Acitivision [the C:CTP] interface. It takes place swiftly, either in just "simplified' combat, or with nifty dying animations with the health bar and firepower statistics. The units are also bigger and easier to see in CivII: ToT.

You still get that invigorating feeeling that every Civ game prior has given you, but yet, you don't really get anything more, and it's missing a few things. If there was some more time spent on the glitz and glamour parts of the game, then ToT might actually be cooler than it's ancestor. But it isn't. You're constantly reminded that it's sort of a knock off. It's like giving a Pepsi drinker RC Cola...he's going to know the difference, but it'll get the job done". -- Reviewer: Dr. Smooth

Thanks to SidGames for the news.

FIRST ToT PATCH IS HERE
(September 23, 1999) It has arrived. Less than two months after it was released, the first patch for Civilization II: Test of Time is now available to the public. Documentation is included.

To download, click here (3.4MB); the file is self-extracting so you needn't worry about having to install WinZip or any other compression utility on your PC if you have not already done so. If you're worried about having your download interrupted by being disconnected from your ISP without warning, try GoZilla! which enables you to resume d'loads from most HTTP (Web) sites.

If you would like to look at the README file before or while downloading the patch, you may do so by clicking here.

A WRONG TURN?
(September 17, 1999) Games Domain, a little late from everyone else (taking time to do a better review?), posted a review of Civ2: ToT. The author covers both the good and the bad of the game, but ends with a negative feeling: "the whole package feels a little like a fancy Gold edition of Civ 2: Fantastic Worlds without the editor"...
Let's see the Pros and the Cons according to David Finn
"Pros: Multimap feature, Updated graphics, New worlds to explore, Multiplayer, Great music
Cons: Navigating the multimaps, Many of the fun Civilization 2 frills have been dropped in this update, Unbelievable system hog, Some old problems, like pathfinding, still plague this title, Despite interesting tweaks and additions, very little new here"
Other than that, in the footnotes we see: "Appeal: Civilization 2 fans". Ok, then we shouldn't have any problems :)

CHECK THE SDC ENTRIES!
(September 9, 1999) The time given to scenario creators is over. The entries for the second Scenario Design Contest are finally here. It's now your duty to check them out and vote for them on September 17th. More information on Hodadian Award Central.

REGAINING SOME GROUND
(September 7, 1999) A certain Civilization title is back in the Top Ten listing for PC Games for the week of August 15-21, according to data collected and released by PCData today.

With a listed price of $28US, Civilization II: Test of Time took the #9 spot for the aforementioned period, just ahead of Microsoft Flight Simulator, and hot on the heels of Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2. This just goes to show that even with stiff competition from a newer and greater variety of games than was to be had even a year ago, let alone three, there is still a steady demand for a quick fix of CivII.

PRIZES AWAY
(September 1, 1999) Winners of both copies of Civilization II: Test of Time and the various consolation prizes should be receiving their parcels sometime in the next 1-2 weeks, depending upon where you live on the North American continent. They have been sent via the postal service over ground just today! As mentioned before, all shipping charges have been handled by us at ACS.

When you receive your prize, please notify us as soon as possible. This way we can keep a running tally on how many more folks we have to hear back from regarding their prizes, saying that it arrived safely etc. etc.

The following are specific notes to both "sets" of winners:

To ToT recipients: it has been decided to have the letter of authenticity sent via email as opposed to "snail mail"; the reasoning behind this is primarily based on the majority of you who would prefer to receive it electronically.

To consolation prize winners: there will be no exchanges on the product title that you receive, so don't think of sending it back to the return address on the package... if you do, it will not be shipped again, nor will a replacement title be sent in its place.

Finally, if you experience any technical problems with installing/running your game, first and foremost consult your manual. If problems persist, contact MicroProse (ToT copies only) or Hasbro Interactive (consolation prizes) directly. Our support is limited in this department -- of course, if you are a ToT winner you can always consult our ToT forum where you talk to not only other Civer's but members of the actual ToT team.

Thanks once again to all of those who participated, and Hasbro Interactive/MicroProse for making the contest possible in the first place!

A COLUMN ON WEDNESDAY?
(September 1, 1999) Yes, why not? As we explain in out note in the 57th Column, today begins a new era for the Column, as we will hopefully have two articles each week, one on Wednesday and one Saturday. The extra articles will come from the people of Apolyton but we hope that the great majority will be from you. Since last week we have a new page which you can use to submit an article as easily as possible. As for today, a series of articles called "A Bubba's Eye View" starts, written by Roger Oepkes. Check it out!

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