The Game of Civilization II That Has Lasted 10 Years



Redditor Lycerius has been playing the same game of Civilization II for ten years. It's now the year 3991 A.D., the entire planet is irradiated, 90% of the planet's population from a peak number 2000 years ago is dead, and there appears to be a permanent military stalemate:

You've heard of the 100 year war? Try the 1700 year war. The three remaining nations have been locked in an eternal death struggle for almost 2000 years. Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons. Even when the U.N forces a peace treaty. So I can only assume that peace will come only when they're wiped out. It is this that perpetuates the war ad infinitum. [...]

The military stalemate is air tight. The post-late game in civ II is perfectly balanced because all remaining nations already have all the technologies so there is no advantage. And there are so many units at once on the map that you could lose 20 tank units and not have your lines dented because you have a constant stream moving to the front. This also means that cities are not only tiny towns full of starving people, but that you can never improve the city. "So you want a granary so you can eat? Sorry; I have to build another tank instead. Maybe next time."


Link -via Kottke

@noah - I find it ironic that redditors expect credit but don't give any. I never see via links on reddit, and rarely see direct links to artists' sites (ahem, imgur).
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I think it would be fun to get a copy of the save game. Maybe some of us can try out hand at saving the world? I still have my computer from 2000 and I still have my original CD. I can pull them out in the name of binary peace.

A thought I am having it making use of spies to protect the cities. I remember that having spies in your cities made it harder for enemy spies to infiltrate but something I did was make enough spies to create a ring around the city. You did not have to pay maintenance costs for spies. They could occupy space around your city and not disrupt production. You could create as many as you wanted. You create a ring around the city and a trespassing spy cannot get past them. In fact, if it was a time of peace and the computer tried to bring units to your city to start a war they were stopped by the spies. They could not attack the spies in a time of peace. Once you have some cities protected by spies you can fix up the cities. Once you have that you can increase production. Once you have that you can start to go after enemy cities.

Another tactic I used would be to park my units around a city but not actually attack. I would try to take up every single city space. This chokes out the city. They eventually starve until they are next to nothing. Then attack. I believe this is called a siege.
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Noah, reddit is the original link. Where it says "Link." That's the source of information, the place you should go to find out more from the original poster, the person who plays this game. Via is Kottke, where it says "via Kottke," because that's where John found out about it. The word "via" means "by way of," which wouldn't make sense for the original source.
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