Playing Civ II game for 10 years!

Read this today and thought that I’d share it.

Apparently, this guy posted on Redditthat he has been playing the same Civilization II game for 10 years, not full-time but as a time killer. He is at almost 4000 AD and has been at almost a stalemate for 1000 years.
You have to admire his persistence and dedication because this is long past the point where I would become either bored to death or give up and/or go on a suicide mission to entertain myself.

ETA Since his world has been decimated by the ongoing war, he is now taking suggestions on how to end the war and save his world, if anybody want to help.

I find it fascinating that his ultimate plan for world peace is to wipe out the Vikings.

I didn’t read the article, but it surprises me a little that he still has a computer still able to play Civ II. Sadly I gave my copy away years ago.

I still play Civ 2 on Vista and Win7 machines… the game works fine.

Does it? I had an Age of Empires which was made for Windows 98 (I think) and the visuals were so bad on newer machines it was unplayable.

(I still have old machines which I could have used but to drag them out and set them up…well not worth the effort).

I would love to have the money to move us from our microscopic house to a huge rambling victorian so I could have a computer room with the space to set up all my computers [2 amigas, my first custom built PC, a 386 running 3.1, my compaq running win95, the custom built running ME, my XP machine and my current win7 desktop and all the monitors I need for them all.]

I still have all 5 CIV, pyramids with the cleopatra expansion, caeser, age of empires, world of warcraft 1, 2 and online, eq and lords of eq, eye of the beholder 1,2 and 3 for both amiga and pc [i have most of my games still, including a leisure suit larry 1 on disc for amiga]

Including CtP? That’s the computer game I’ve probably played the second most beside Medieval 2: Total War. I like it the best because it’s a good mix of possibilities versus balance. Unfortunately the AI is so bad that I literally have never lost a city to an enemy in CtP. If they were a bit more aggressive it would have been my favorite grand strategy video game ever.

Well, I only have an average size house but there is only the two of us and the loon of a cat. Quite a large games room which I want to turn into a library (never use the pool table) but at the moment it is full of books and my 8 computers. One has ME on it but I don’t quite go back to Amigas.

Every few years I will drag the old desk tops out and hook them up to the Internet, although that is getting more difficult. The connections I have aren’t suited to the more modern screens and even things like connections for keyboards and a mouse are difficult to locate. (I do clean out my junk every now and then).

What I can’t fathom is how he can build up that much experience at the game, and still not be able to break the stalemate. It sounds to me like he’s allowed himself to simply become a copy of the AI, using the same futile and obsolete strategies over and over without ever learning from them. Although, I guess those futile strategies have become pretty ingrained habit, after 10 years.

Maybe, but I think due to his opponents not honouring their treaties for long he has spent most of the time merely surviving.

He’s noted that this has taken so long because he refuses to switch to a Fundamentalist government, which is clearly the best choice for his situation, for story and/or political reasons. He’s not using that powerful tool. If he did, he’d win.

My favorite news story in a while. I still play CivII every once in a while.

Does a lot of stuff not work on Windows 7/Vista? It runs on XP quite well.

From memory, it played okay on XP. Vista not so well. And then when I upgraded to Windows 7 it was horrible.

I liked the game. I would love to see a compilation pack of all Civ games released that would play on Windows 7 as well. Just as a grab bag.

I wasn’t referring only to diplomatic strategies. If he’s always at war, that just means that his military strategies aren’t enough to beat them.

Funny, last week, while cleaning out the basement for a garage sale, I found all my old PC games. I suddenly had an urge to play Starcraft but alas, the disk was not in the case!?

At some point I am going to try to get some of the old ones to run, when I do I’ll be sure to post something and/or beg for help.
Some of my favorites were Return to Zork, Beyond Zork, Club Dead, The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour, Myst, Dragon’s Gate, Civilization, Sim City, and a few others.

7th Guest is available on Ipad and Iphone. It was actually free briefly a few weeks ago.

A lot of those are on Good Old Games for very, very little. All should work on Windows 7 as well.

It sounds like he plays much in the same way I used to play Civ. Once the national boundardies have sort of stabalized, I tend to play more to maintain the global status quo than to actually conquer the entire world. Not for ten years though.
4000 AD doesn’t sound that far into the future in game time.

Your basic game of Civ II is only about 500 turns to get to 2000 A.D., if memory serves. So he’s been playing for about five times longer than an average game won by a space-race.

With regards to Age of Empires 2 killing explorer.exe in the task manager will solve the weird colour problems in the game. Click ‘new task’ in the task manager and type ‘explorer’exe’ to restart it when you’re finished playing.

I’ve pretty much given up trying to get old games to work now though. It’s too much work for not much reward. I’ll just wait for them to appear on GoG instead.