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Quite possibly the world's most perfect game...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 28 / 30
Date: December 06, 2001
Author: Amazon User

So, you just read my title line...

Am I stetching the truth? No.

I have played this game for YEARS. I first began to play it in 1996.

The beauty of this game is that is is deep, yet easy to learn. It is fun, but not "arcade-like". There is strategy, but it is tempered with action.

You can be: diplomatic or iron-fisted, peaceful or war-like, science oriented or a land-grabber or even a money grubber.

This game has nearly every facet of enjoyment that you could hope for. The most amazing thing is that you can learn something new nearly everytime you play.

The key features to the game are as follows:
Build Cities and Improvements (like aqueducts, etc)
Build Wonders of the World (which give you special traits)
Build Armys
Establish trade routes
Conquer Enemies
Ally with friends
Expand your population
and finally...
Build and send a space ship to Alpha Centauri

Simply put, this game is stunning. You will lose many good hours of your life into it...and never feel an iota of guilt or regret.

This game works well on all PCs from a Pentium 90 and up, so if your machince is older, no worries.

This is unquestionably the best game I have ever played.

I realize Civ3 is out now and that game may be better (I have heard great things), but (for the price) you cannot do better than this game.

A truly classic game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 18 / 18
Date: November 17, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Newer strategy titles may have more advanced graphics, and the newer versions of this advance on it, but for sheer depth of gameplay and attention to detail this is unsurpassed at this price. With everything in 6000 years of a civilization at yoiur disposal, you'll be addicted for ages if you can get into it.

The great thing here is that tehre are so many different gameplay elements and they all intertwine so well. The scientific developmetn sees your tribe evolve from the early stages, where the only weapons you can have are chariots, phalanxes and the like, and all you can build in your cities are things like granaries and basic barracks, through to the latter stages where you can build dominant Howitzers and Nuclear Weapons, or begin constructing spaceships. The chain of scientific advances, as you decide which developments your society needs, the international diplomacy (sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword) and money management all add elements to the game. The way every single minute decision has so many consequences is great, like the butterfly phenomenon. The advisors also add some good light relief as well as useful advice.

Overall this type of game is much more engrossing than the COmmand & Conquer type titles. Here you can think through every move in as much detail as you like. The whole thing has much more depth, and I'd advise players used to those types of games to check this out as well. A true classic. Now I've reviewed this I feel like digging it out and playing it.

11 Hours Changed My Life

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 18
Date: March 29, 2001
Author: Amazon User

In 1992 on the original Sid Meier's Civilization came out, I played it for 11 hours.

And lost.

And then, I played it again for days. I've played other games since then, but none rival Civ in its mastery of presenting the complex as if it were simple, and its ability to combine seemingly unrelated functions (granary = increased food storage = faster population growth = larger cities and more cities = granary =...). Who knew that granaries built in 2000BC could make or break your existence in 1950AD? If you are interested in the grandaddy of all civilization-building games, you have to get CivII.

Not experiencing Civilization and calling yourself a strategy-game buff is like a sci-fi fanatic never reading Tolkien. Its inexcusable.

My favorite version of Civ...or, Rome on 64KB a day.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 17 / 18
Date: January 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Sid Meier's Civilization II may, perhaps, go down in history as the late and much lamented MicroProse's most popular and best computer game. (MicroProse, which also produced the F-15 Strike Eagle series of flight sims and the World War II submarine simulation, Silent Service II, changed hands several times, having been bought out by Activision, then Hasbro, then Atari before disappearing.)

SId Meier himself went on to design other, equally admirable games such as "Sid Meier's Gettysburg," but Civilization (and its sequels) will be remembered by gamers for decades. The first version of Civ (in 3.5 in. diskettes) was released over 12 years ago; this was the first version I ever played and drew me into its addictive web of military strategy, cultural development and technological advances.

Civilization II, released on the more versatile and multi-faceted CD-ROM format in 1996, is a vast improvement over the original Sid Meier-Bruce Shelley Civilization 1.0. The concept is the same: you are the long-lived leader of a major civilization (Rome, Greece, Egypt, just to name a few), equipped with one, sometimes two settler units, a few civilization advances (usually Irrigation, Road Building, and a randomly chosen one such as Alphabet or Bronze Working). Using terrain and resources on the mapboard (and usually the map is a sea of black except for the spaces your units are on), you find a suitable place to found your first city, then you start a 6,000 year process to create an empire that will either attempt to conquer the world or, for more points and a tougher challenge, win the game by gaining technological advances through research, building up a huge treasury via trade and taxation, and racing the other civilizations to be the first to reach Alpha Centauri before the scoring period ends in 2010 AD.

The 1996 version (since supplanted by Civilization II: The Test of Time and Civilization III) is a single-player edition, but even without multiplayer options it is still quite a challenge even in the basic Chieftain level. It still has those pesky barbarian tribes that old hands at Civ grew to hate in the first edition, but the graphics are way better -- even 8 years later they still hold up. New (at least in '96) features include one additional civilization per color group (Spanish, Sioux, Celts, Cartaginian, etc.), your choice of gender during leader selection (women like to play sims, too, and Civ 1 only had male leaders and titles), 3-D heralds to announce communications from the AI civilizations, multimedia presentations of Wonders of the World (with new Wonders added and new or revised Wonder-benefits), and new military units (Helicopter, Paratrooper).

To get the most out of Civilization II's features, particularly a stunning title sequence (by '96 standards) and multimedia presentations, it's best to play the game with the CD-ROM in the appropriate drive. You don't need to play the basic game with the disc, but you'll miss seeing and hearing the film clips that pop up when you build a Wonder or, if you are lucky, reach Alpha Centauri before the AI civilizations.

My favorite game when it was released

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: November 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Still worth buying if you can find it. Only surpassed by Civ III. This game actually increased my interest in history and made me set out to learn more about many historical discoveries

Classic game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 17, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a perfect turn based game. With out the "extras" that civ3 has. One of the most addictive games ever made.

Excellent Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: June 23, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Civilzations 2 was an outstanding game. It was by far the greatest strategic pc game i have ever expierienced. PERIOD!

One of the greatest games ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 17, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I played the original Civ as an undergrad and Civ 2 in graduate school. Just bought another copy of Civ 2 recently and remembered why I enjoyed it so much. As other descriptions note, you start out with a settler in the year 4000 BC and try to either colonize another planet or take over the world. Although you have the advantage of being familiar with the technologies you research along the way and how you'll be able to use them (something real civilizations didn't have), you play on a randomly generated map so every game is different. There are different levels of difficulty, a lot of options to customize the game to your liking, scenarios available on the Web to allow you to re-create historical wars, and even a Cheat Mode where you can pump up your defenses and crush your enemies when you're in the mood for revenge.

I can't sleep

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This game kept me up until 1:00am last night. It is so much fun building an army and attacking the neighbor countries/Cities. The price is dirt cheap for this gaming fun. The older games have to be made so much better because they can't woo you with fancy graphics. This game is FUN! Amazon is the only place I could find this game Ver. II, so you'd better buy it now before it's gone here too.

Fun, but you still need to eat and sleep!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 08, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I made the mistake of getting Civilization II this past weekend and sadly, spent nearly 12 hours over the last two days playing it. The game is very addictive as you nurture your people from a band of settlers to a complex empire sprawling across many cities. Game-play is simple but it takes a while to figure all the options and what to click on. I haven't gotten too deep yet but I can tell you it's a lot of fun, more complicated than Sim 2000 but less demanding (time-wise) than Command and Conquer. The game is turn-based so you can take your time. A definite buy and worth every penny!

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