note: This is The Column, a part of Apolyton where primarily Markos and Dan write whatever we want :). Well, not just the two of us. The Column is open to everyone. If you feel like writing submit your article to civ2@gamestats.com

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#24 CENTAURIAN THOUGHTS II Concluding his thoughts from last week, Markos discusses the good, bad, and the crazy of SMAC. #25 WHY I DON'T LIKE SCENARIOS A man whose eyes have seen lots of files in the last two months, proposes a different style of scenarios. COLUMN ARCHIVE

I know that much of the time, Civ 2 is a very straightforward game, with well-defined approaches to victory. However, on occasion, each of us has conducted a whirlwind series of maneuvers, whether political, economic, or diplomatic, that paid off really big- or led to catastrophic defeat. Here's my story:

I was playing a scenario, I don't remember the name of it, with standard units and a fictional map. Anyways, that's not the point. The point was that my nation was tiny, having started out that way. The huge cyan civilization was to my north, aggressively blocking the way to the even larger and more aggressive orange civ. A few civs had been eliminated already.

So, everything's going fine-I'm picking on my smaller neighbors, as usual, when I get word that the huge orange civ has relocated its capital to a size-5, unwalled city, deep in the bowels of the cyan civ, a short distance from my border! So, immediately, I cancelled my peace treaty with the oranges and the cyans, gathered up all my military strength, and seized the two cyan cities standing in the way.

Oh, ****, no railroad! Never mind, just pull together all the engineers from every corner of the realm, and build one. Then, send my military in, kill all the units in the way, and take the city. Bam! The French split away from the cyans. ****, was I laughing, or what. The best thing was, that I got just enough money to get peace with the still-huge new civs. So, I turn what remains of my army south, and after a brief fight (still in the same turn), seize the cyan capital, whose defences I had greatly overestimated. Bam! They split into cyans and greens.

Man, was that funny or what! Then, after selling a few improvements, I scraped together enough cash to get every new civ fighting with every other one, e&c., starting a war that lasted for centuries and was the most bloody I have ever seen by far. Nothing can match the thrill of killing a stack and getting a "32 units destroyed" message.

Meanwhile, I kept shifting alliances, and fighting both friend and foe. After 50 years, yep, you guessed it. I split the purple civilization, and colonized every single island. The big civs' navies were engaged in the largest naval battle I had ever witnessed, in the straits between their continents. So, after I had established my colonial empire, I built about 20 battleships, and bombarded everybody into submission, pillaged their homeland, and crushed their armies.

All because of that one original city. Civ 2 can still be fun, at times. I wish every game was as fun as that, my last one.

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS or GameStats. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.