Monday, July 15, 2013

A Blast From The Past

I used to play a complex strategic computer game called Civilization 2 (not an action/shooter game).  There would be a large map (unseen at the start) and you would slowly establish and improve cities with military, civil and science improvements.  You would discover the map as you moved slowly.  You started around 3,000 BC and very gradually moved to launching a spaceship to Alpha Centuri competing with up to 6? 8? other players.  The game took many hours to play.  I was obsessed by it.

But I quit when the new version (Civilization 3) of the game gave less and less control to the player and whole cities would switch sides to another player for no particular reason I understood ("through cultural influence").  And then I switched from Windows to Mac and my CD didn't work any more anyway.  So I moved on to blogging.

Well, I suddenly developed a great desire to play the game again.  I still had the old PC around and thought to have it cleaned and upgraded, but then decided that I liked internet multi-player competition, so I simply bought the Mac version of Civ 2.  The CD should arrive in a few days.

But I wanted to review some of the game strategies and looked at the current Civ 2 discussion board.  Its been 7-8 years since I played.

Imagine my surprise when the very first post I saw was advice FROM ME.  LOL!  And it was quoted by someone else as "from veteran player xxxxxxx", ME.

THUD!

It is going to take a while for me to get back into the details of the game.  This rejoining the game is going to be VERRRY INTERESTING...  I'm going to get KILLED at first until I remember the old strategies and catch up on the new ones.  But that's the kind of thing that keeps the brain working, you know?

I could die of many causes.  But brain boredom ISN'T going to be one of them.  LOL!

[Update:  The Civ 2 CD arrived today.  I am devastated.  The CD is too old to load on my up-to-date Mac...  My anticipated thrill at playing Civ 2 again is stomped by technology failure.  It looks like I will have to get the old Windows computer cleaned and working if I want to play Civ2. 

6 comments:

Megan said...

How do you manage to play for hours? Can you leave the game for periods and return?

I think I recall your saying that you also enjoyed playing backgammon online, although I don't remember which website you used. I've recently tried games.com and enjoy it when I get to play against humans, but I typically have to wait quite a while to find a partner, so I end up playing the computer. The computer isn't bad except it 'cheats' - I'm sure of it! LOL When it is behind and in dire straits, it almost invariably throws not one double 6 but two and sometimes three in a row. Grrrrr. I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the best online sites for person-to-person backgammon.

Megan
Sydney, Australia

Mark's Mews (Marley, Lori, Loki, and Binq) said...

Megan, I think you will get more player-to-player games at pogo.com. Pogo has many players; we might ever meet there.

Mark's Mews (Marley, Lori, Loki, and Binq) said...

Meant to mention: Yes I agree the computer usually cheats. But that occurs everywhere I play. It is VERY annoying. But try pogo.com. More humans...

Katie Isabella said...

INteresting. Did the description where you bought the CD's say what operating system they would work on? They sure SHOULD have. What a disappointment I can imagine.

I loved SIM City back in the day.

Katie Isabella said...

INteresting. Did the description where you bought the CD's say what operating system they would work on? They sure SHOULD have. What a disappointment I can imagine.

I loved SIM City back in the day.

Megan said...

Thanks Mark. I'll give pogo a whirl.

Frustrating about the CDs, but I agree with Katie that if they weren't going to work on your Mac the pbulisher should have provided that info.

Megan
Sydney, Australia

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