Can we talk about CivNet?

sboog · December 27, 2001, 17:45

I have just bought CivNet from an auction, got the manual and
CD. And on playing it in single player mode, I am aware of how many graphic changes there are from Civ1. And there is more music. And the manual is more like Civ2's.

This is a Civ3 forum, but since there is not a Civ1 forum, I thought I would ask here to see if any of you would be willing to compare Civ1 to CivNet single player.

sboog

CaptainVW · December 28, 2001, 07:11

AFAIK, CivNet was exactly the same as Civ, save for the simultaneus movement feature, which I believe was an option in CivNet single-player games. For my money, this is the best mp Civ experience; my old house LAN hosted -and FINISHED!- 5- and 6-player games on several occasions, mainly because we could all play our turns at the same time. There was an independent MP hack for civ-2 (before the MGE) which would alter saved games and allow for turn-based movement network games, but these would take sooooo loooooong that we quickly moved back to CivNet. We had never heard of ICS, so more natural warmongering strategies faced off against peaceful isolationists more than once- and came to satisfying resolutions without everyone calling in sick to work when the sun came up! The way Civ MP should be! Occasionally, battles would be confusing, jerky messes of movement as the screen struggled to re-center on different players' combat moves (battles on multiple fronts were tough), but the tradeoff for overall game speed was well worth the occasional mess.

When Civ2 MPG was released, I bought it even though it lacked simultaneus movement. Having moved out of the Magical LAN Bachelor House, I tried to play a few games online- only to find that every one of them invariably ended a short time after 1500 BC, due to lack of patience or whatever.

It's probably too late in Civ3's development for a simul-move option; I believe that Civ1's engine had to be re-worked substantially for the feature to work, and it took a few patches to sort everything out.

But here's my idea for logical simul-movement that takes away the rush to click your combat units so you can attack your neighbor's tanks with yours before he does it first: DECLARE combat in the movement phase. RESOLVE combat after movement. This is done in several 4x space games, but not (as far as I've seen) in a civ game. Anyway, just daydreaming for Civ 4... whatever it may be called...

But back to CivNet.

Here's my advice: If you're young, single, and have flexible hours, buy 3 or 4 cheap old 486's or Pentium I's, a few $15 network cards, network 'em all up together, and call over a few friends. No matter how many times you've played whatever version of Civ, that old Civ magic returns everytime you beat your best friend to the Hoover Dam, or discover gunpowder first- ooohhh I miss the days of Civnet parties. Although I love living with my girlfriend- and be warned- the two are DEFINATELY mutually exclusive. Anyway- it's a great game- as far as SP is concerned, I think everything's identical to Civ1, but I could be wrong.

CapTVK · December 28, 2001, 07:52

Actually Civ2MP did have simultaneous movement. For some reason it was removed from the final game but you can still activate by adding the line "simul=1" to the civ.ini file in your windows directory. Trust me, it works like a charm, playing over the internet with heavy lag is a pain however. I guess this would work better over a local network.

It also works in ToT btw

Aqualung · December 28, 2001, 19:00

If I remember correctly, CivNet did not limit Civs to their "color", so you could have both Roman and Russian in the same game

sboog · January 5, 2002, 15:10

My friend and I just tried to play CivNet over the internet. Even though we both have cable connection, after we got to the connecting part, she kept getting an "error - program will shut down."

We never could connect. (And we were on the phone trying to resolve the problem.)

What a disappointment.

She bought her CD knowing it had a scratch on it. Would this cause the problem? She can play single play just fine.

Sorry to bring this up at a Civ3 forum, but I don't know where else to go.

The whole Civ series is wonderful.

Anyone know what we should do? She is trying to buy another CivNet CD at an auction.

sboog