As a child I picked up some facts and ideas of the progression of history and development from playing these games. Not content with providing the means of writing virtual history, it acts like itвЂ™s teaching you real history. Each time you discover something you get a bit of written background to its real-life development.

It feels a bit stupid when the game lets you encounter a village of gifted mercenaries who will join you as cavalry but doesnвЂ™t let you just learn the secret of horse-riding from these people riding around on horses in your colours, but sure.ДЄside even from the toxic progress delusion built in to this mechanism, though, itвЂ™s the way it presents itself as an education and makes such a horrifically bad job of it that grates. It makes for very clear-cut decisions at regular intervals. To an extent, that goes for the technology tree, the way that the scientific advances that give you new options are made by your people working away in the background, one planned item at a time along a set path. That doesnвЂ™t mean there are no issues with those compromises, but there is a sensible explanation, at least. Many of the compromises to realism are clearly made in the name of providing a compelling game, not least your own dictatorial powers over everything your civilization does. The more Civilization II looks to be all-encompassing, though, the more glaring the gaps its assumptions leave. The little activities add up to writing a whole history in a more engrossing way than ever. If you are really focused on building up your cities and the happiness of your people, using the increased options for making the land better for them, you will get more feedback on that, too. There is more reward for different approaches in general.

The range of options for trade and diplomacy are particularly increased, meaning that it feels a little less like it is railroading you into genocidal imperialism as the best way to play the game, although the tweaks to combat still make it tempting (energy bars! вЂRepairвЂ™ your units who are apparently now Command & Conquer-style replicants!). Amid a lot of aesthetic changes that take the experience further away from the static board game that it sometimes still refers to itself like, there are more significant changes. There was a beauty in the perspective switch and in seeing complexity reduced down to simplicity, at the same time as seeing my actions written across a world scale.Д¬ivilization II, as is the way of things with sequels, ups the complexity a little further. At the end, after you play through thousands of years of history, making almost as many small moves and decisions, little victories and disappointments, you get to see how it all looked from miles up, as colours spreading across a map. In the game you take on a civilization and, from the first settlers founding a first city, work through technological developments, explorations, political change, war, peace and building the Great Pyramids of Canterbury. My favourite bit of Civilization, back when I had time to play entire games of it to the end, was the animation at the end that showed how that game had progressed. Sid MeierвЂ™s Civilization II (Microprose, PC, 1996)

Sid meier's civilization 2