Games section

12. Mac corner review: Civilization II

The idea of Civilization should be known by most of you, because on one hand the first part has been available for the Amiga and is a reference product for the class of strategy games. The second part is a successor of the classic - old bugs have been removed, some parts addes, other ones improved.

The target of this round based strategy game is to establish a civilization on an unexplored world and to let it climb the levels of civilization higher and higher. In the beginnings there are only one or two settlers available, with which you can build the first cities. These can produce units and city expansions or a Wonder of the World. In addition they produce, according to their size, more or less taxes, Knowledge or luxury goods. While time goes by, the own civilization and with it the technology knowledge grows, to more inventions, like the alphabet in the beginning to space travelling and genetic technology in the end of the game are waiting to be discovered by your scientists. But the most interesting is the interaction with up to six other computer controlled civilizations, which try to expand their power. It is possible to try to coexist with them in peace and to build alliances or you try the hard way, which can lead from a kind of "cold war" to the total destruction of one side.

In opposition to CivilizationAGA, which is quite slow on my computer, you don't notice, that Civilization II runs on an emulation. It is quite fast, even the nice ingame animations, if you build a Wonder of the World, don't run smooth, but without problems. I even think, that the game might run smooth on a naked 030/xxx. If you run Civilization II on such a configuration, please send me a mail.

Conclusion: Who runs a Mac emulator and liked Civilization, will like the successor. Everything, that was wrong with the first part, has been improved. It plays fine smooth and keeps you for days and weeks at the screen.

And those of you, who don't have a Mac emulator: Get one! It is worth it, anyway!

Further comments or test results on other systems are welcome!