/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3988552]

Is CIV II really the best strategy game of all time?

[Anonymous No.3988557]

>>3988552
I mean

prolly not

It's real good though. Loved me those advisors and wonder videos

[Anonymous No.3988561]

Second only to Alpha Centauri.

[Anonymous No.3988640]

I love this game. I've got a VM with Win XP only to run this game.

And the advisors ... I like them.

[Anonymous No.3988742]

>>3988552
Alpha Centauri called, a one-off game that crushed the Civ games into shitty paste.

[Anonymous No.3988776]

I like the comfy controls and simple elegance of Civ I on the SNES. The Graphics also are better, in my pinion. Less gritty western, more cartoonish-japanese, but it works great and makes it so much more appealing to look at. Especially when things got crowded. PC version got irritating then.

Sadly never released in PAL. ;__;

[Anonymous No.3988785]

>>3988640
>>3988742
I thought Master of Orion > Alpha Centauri?

Master of Orion sounded more appealing to me as a civ player, as the gameplay is more distinct. Alpha Centauri always just looked like a clone of Civ with new visuals and some minor new features. Have I been wrong?

[Anonymous No.3988821]

>>3988785
MoO and SMAC are roughly equal in gameplay quality. Both are great, but have egregious balance issues.

SMAC wins with absolutely no contest in lore and setting, though.

[Anonymous No.3988852]

>>3988821
I like the grand scale that MoO appears to be simulating compared to the stage size of SMAC. It's "only" a single planet you fight for in SMAC, ultimately. With MoO it's YET another Planet you just conquered every tenth turn or so.

It's just something that may neatly satisfy my overly grandiose greed for power after all the won games of Civ.

What is it about it that people dislike compared to SMAC? Is it too "sterile" in presentation, the way it looks?

[Anonymous No.3988903]

God this brings me back.

Family moved out to a farm house back in 2008 or something, and it didn't have internet access. We stayed out there for nearly 6 months with no internet and all I had to play at the time was Civ II. I played it at least several hours a day for that half year.

I think Civ 5 is the best in the series, but I still get nostalgia twinge to go back to Civ II every time I see it.

[Anonymous No.3989332]

I think I liked 3 the best. The graphics and music where a huge step up. But 2 had the crazy fun of playing the Fundamentalist government, which was broken.

[Anonymous No.3989384]

>>3988640
You don't need a VM for Civ II. You just need a 64-bit patch so it doesn't crash when naming cities.

[Anonymous No.3989386]

>>3988776
I played through that recently. The game is comfy... at first, but once your empire grows to any meaningful size it becomes a chore. You might also like Civ II on the PS1.

[Anonymous No.3989604]

>>3988552
Oh yes, brother

[Anonymous No.3989623]

>>3989386

It's a straight port of the PC version or it has some graphical differences?

[Anonymous No.3989665]

>>3989623
Slightly different graphics but overall it's the same exact gameplay tailored to work with a controller instead of KB+M.

[Anonymous No.3989685]

>>3989386
>You might also like Civ II on the PS1.

That was actually my introduction to Civ. Shame the throne room isn't a thing anymore.

[Anonymous No.3989698]

>>3989685
You can get a mod for Civ V that gives you the palace building from Civ I and throne room for Civ II. Not sure if Civ VI has something similar.

[Anonymous No.3989708]

>>3989665
and turn that can take 1 minute.
and save slot ogre.

[Anonymous No.3989748]

>>3989708
I didn't say it was great. I prefer the Windows version. But it's okay for couch and controller gaming.

[Anonymous No.3990119]

Civ II is the best in the series, definitely.

[Anonymous No.3990554]

>>3989623
>PSX Civ II
>unit limits
>can't customize random map

[Anonymous No.3990567]

>>3988852
MoO is grander in scale but more limited in what you can do. In SMAC, you have options like unit placement, city placement, terraforming, etc. which all can have a huge impact on the outcome of the game. With MoO, it feels more like spreadsheet management.

[Anonymous No.3992019]

>>3989748
Or for when you have cfw'ed psp. No way am I going to touch that Civ "Revolution" Crap.

Did the original Civ on PC also have the weird part in the beginning about the goddess, or did they just Jap up the SNES version because this is how they make terebi-gemu in nippon desu? The palace building was also absent, but I never missed it.

[Anonymous No.3992031]

>>3992019
Civ Revolution is okay once you get past the cheesy graphics. I like how it handles unit stacks.

PC Civ has an intro of planet Earth forming in space, no weeb goddess though.

[Anonymous No.3992112]

>>3988552
>>3990119
I love Civ2, but I've also kinda "solved" it at this point; it's quite easy to achieve a Deity victory in Civ2, as the AI is terrible at expansion and there really is an optimal tech route (all Civ games have it, but here it's more blatant; you *always* want to get rid of Despotism as soon as possible, Monotheism is a crucial tech for both peaceniks and warmongers (Michelangelo's Chapel powered Republics grow huge for the former, and Crusaders are a great unit for early-mid game conquest), etc.

Civ3 had most of the core mechanics of Civ2, but it also made sure to make Deity (/Demigod/Sid) more of a challenge. Granted, it often meant "turtling against braindead AI and buying their techs for gold and not doing any research yourself", but there was still quite a lot of finesse introduced into the formula.

Civ4 changed a lot about the mechanics and I would consider that one to be the best of the series. It has the best difficulty scaling, IMHO. The AI are still exploitable in many ways, but running circles around them is much harder, and some AI personalities *will* destroy you if left unchecked. A lot of people complain about "cheating AI": I don't care, but Civ2 had that in spades, Civ4 mostly cut it down. It got rid of a lot of terrible bulk, like replacing the Corruption system with Maintenance (cutting out lots of busywork and needless micromanagement) and introduced a lot of ease-of-use elements - one thing that always gets me snoring in Civ2 (and in 3 as well) is the Industrial Revolution - the need to get Engineers, the need to carefully Railroad every tile that needs it, upgrading Irrigations, establishing new routes, etc. gets old in a 40-80 city empire that Civ2 gameplay lends itself towards.

In Civs 1 to 3, I can just mindlessly spam cities with my Settlers. In Civ4, I need to think about that stuff more in-depth.

For pure challenge and strategic options, I like Civ4. Civ2 is still pretty damn good.

[Anonymous No.3992117]

>>3992112

Unfortunately, Civ. 4 is Win32 only.

That saddens me a great deal. This and AoE.

[Anonymous No.3992125]

>>3992112
I do have to admit though that if you pick a "Purple" civilization, so Mongols, Sioux or Indians, who are always put on the map last ("White" Romans, Russians and Celts get put on the map first), you are more likely to be dropped into a more barren corner of the map, and Civ2 does not normalize bad tiles, like Tundra or Glacier, nor does it give you special resources. I had once ended up being thrown with my Settler into the South Pole with no land in sight for days, and Poles are just tiny strips of land at the top and bottom of the map.

I ended up rushing Map Making, rush-buying a Trireme and plopping a Settler into the first habitable island, then proceeding to spam cities as normal. Missed out on most wonders and got slightly behind in tech, but wonder-cascading and strong Democracy always prevails in the end. No matter how much time you give to the AI, it won't expand for more than like 12 cities, which is a pittance.

Civ2 did have the best scenarios, though. Pic related, playing as French, Neutrals or Turks (or anyone, but those are the "challenge" factions) is good fun. And it was the only time Civ2 officially had Hitler as a leader.

[Anonymous No.3992171]

>>3992125
Nice tileset, where did you get that?

[Anonymous No.3992174]

>>3992171
It's a google graphics screenshot, I just wanted to get the pic of the WW2 scenario that's bundled with Civilization 2.

For tilesets I would honestly just look into Apolyton or CFC.

[Anonymous No.3992251]

>>3992117
>Unfortunately, Civ. 4 is Win32 only.
no?

[Anonymous No.3992256]

>>3992251
Civ 4 runs on 64-bit Windows. I don't know what that anon is talking about.

[Anonymous No.3992281]

>>3992256

I misspoke. It's Win only, is what I meant. I wish the series was more cross-plat.

[Anonymous No.3992306]

>>3992281
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=2514

[Anonymous No.3992791]

>>3988552
no Civ IV is

[Anonymous No.3992854]

Civ 6 is objectively better than 4.

[Anonymous No.3992863]

>>3992281
There is an official version of Civ IV for Mac. Also the game runs well under Linux with Wine.


Civ II is my favorite Civ, but I like the other Civs, too. (Civ II - Civ VI are installed on my PC)

[Anonymous No.3992864]

>>3992854
no

[Anonymous No.3992880]

>>3992112
>power gaming in civ games

[Anonymous No.3993717]

>>3992880
The high difficulties are there for a reason. So are factors like score and earliest conquest date. Setting up variant play is also a thing, has been for Civ since forever - just look at One City Challenge.

That doesn't change the fact that, at its core, Civ2 is much more shallow in terms of "correct" choices and Civ4 simply offers me more challenge and facilitiates more satisfaction from getting a high difficulty victory.

[Anonymous No.3993786]

>no steam release yet

i really want to replay this and relive the good old days

[Anonymous No.3993854]

>>3993786
No need for a Steam release. You can replay it now. I took a clean copy of the game and patched it with 64-bit support and the AI hostility bugfix.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/u9mbsg91bmrtupn/Civilization_II_%5B64-bit_and_AI_Fixes%5D.7z

[Anonymous No.3994357]

>>3988552
Civ 2 is a special kind of nostalgic for me.

Being a curious 90's kid with no internet, I'd bury my nose deep into those illustrated junior encyclopaedias at the library, picking up on biology, astronomy and history, the latter of which got me daydreaming of one day playing vidya about advancing a society through all the stuff covered. Lo and behold that wish came true when I downloaded Civ years later. (Remember when it was available on Abandonia?)

To this day every time I play it - often precisely because I felt like experiencing it all over again - I relive that optimistic sense of discovery from a time when 'puters started popping up everywhere and the information superhighway with all it's easily available multimedia would make everyone smarter... (Results have varied.)

Plus with the Civ series in general, being all about global human activity throughout the ages (with a fair bit of western-centric over-simplification) gives it a grand scale, no matter how simple the mechanics. They feel like games featuring everything and with the moddability of newer entries could as well be.

[Anonymous No.3994385]

>>3988552
Would that make Freeciv an honorary runner-up? No silly advisors, but you can customize a lot of settings (including running the Civ 2 ruleset on a hex map) and the AI is leagues ahead of the original.

>>3988776
MY N-WORD! That's where I go for my Civ 1 fix.
Though CivNet does have multiplayer and it's even uglier tileset can be modded.

[Anonymous No.3994469]

>>3994385
Too bad Freeciv is a user-unfriendly mess.

[Anonymous No.3994480]

>>3992306

>WINE

Nah. No game is worth dealing with that goddamned headache.

>>3992863

The port for Mac is garbage done in the dying days of Aspyre. Good luck ever completing a game on it; by the Middle Ages it'll be up to nearly 5 minutes a turn. I suspect they've just used Cider on it.

[Anonymous No.3994483]

>>3994469

FreeCiv is shite, m8. The only remaining Devs are *huge* Linux fags wedded to GTK and X11 for some unholy reason. It'll run on Windows with some hiccups, but don't expect it to perform well on anything other than your favorite Lunix.

[Anonymous No.3994484]

>>3994357

>Abandonia

God that site became worthless quick. I remember when you could go there and have a very good chance of getting full copies (not rips) of whatever the hell you wanted, provided it was old (at least Win9x).

[Anonymous No.3994486]

>>3993717

I like both 2 and 4. To me, 2 feels like the polish of 1 and 4 feels like the polish of 3. Then they went off into the wilderness with 5 and were never heard from again (eaten by the casual gaming jackals).

[Anonymous No.3994548]

Civ 2 was ok for its time but it's hopelessly antiquated today. Did you also know that Sid Meier had nothing to do with the development of and it was done by some outside studio.

[Anonymous No.3994554]

>>3989384
>You don't need a VM for Civ II
You do need a VM because the game executable is 16-bit (ie. Windows 3.x)

[Anonymous No.3994559]

>>3994554
The original version is 16-bit, I meant Civ II Gold. That one is 32-bit and adds some extra features, and it will run on modern Windows with a patch.

[Anonymous No.3994564]

>>3994548

It was done by Bruce Shelley, something of an understudy of Sid's. The same dude went on to create Age of Empires. Perhaps you've heard of it?

[Anonymous No.3994576]

>>3994548
I think the word you're looking for is "classic". Sure, there's less features, but people still keep coming back for the intuitive simplicity.

And, yeah, it must've been "amusing" for the people who venerated Sid, but hated CivRev to find out it was the first game in the series he was fully involved with since the first.

[Anonymous No.3994583]

>>3994548
>hopelessly antiquated
Wrong.

>done by some outside studio
Irrelevant. They took everything great about the first game and made it better.

[Anonymous No.3994585]

>>3994554
Incorrect, at least if you're playing Civ II MGE which is 32-bit. You need a patch on 64-bit systems so that naming cities doesn't crash your game but otherwise it works.

[Anonymous No.3994609]

>>3994583
>hopelessly antiquated
>Wrong
Dude...the game is 21 years old.

[Anonymous No.3994618]

Running Windows 9x games on modern Windows has a disturbing tendency to do like 50% CPU usage because those things weren't designed to accommodate multicore CPUs.

[Anonymous No.3994620]

>>3990554
Civ2 on PS1 is the best version to emulate for smartphone. Neither too simple nor too complicated.

[Anonymous No.3994624]

That PS1 version of Civ2 was a tragic mistake.

>trying to navigate the menus with a PS1 controller
>need an entire goddamn memory card to save the game

[Anonymous No.3994628]

>>3994609
You seem to be lost.

[Anonymous No.3994635]

>>3994609
It was very outdated by the time Civ3 came out.

[Anonymous No.3994638]

>>3994635
Which also now looks very outdated especially that puke-inducing 2000s color palette.

[Anonymous No.3994643]

Civilization games were never impressive in terms of graphics, when released. (execpt for Civ 5, which was one of the first DX11 games)

[Anonymous No.3994646]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrVfY0c_qqo

[Anonymous No.3994732]

Getting rid of the ranged artillery in Civ4 was fucking bull.

[Anonymous No.3994771]

>>3992112
Civ2 made it insanely easy to win simply by having Fundamentalism as your government and churning out ultra-cheap troops to clobber everyone with. In fact Sid Meier explicitly said it was dropped from Civ3 for this reason.

[Anonymous No.3994775]

>>3994771

I never "got" the addition of Fundamentalism either, desu.

[Anonymous No.3994786]

The food resources in Civ4 were a little mixed up. Wheat and corn provide more food than rice, but IRL rice can produce a vastly bigger crop per acre which is why Asian countries are the most densely populated in the world.

[Anonymous No.3994793]

>>3992112
>In Civs 1 to 3, I can just mindlessly spam cities with my Settlers. In Civ4, I need to think about that stuff more in-depth.
In Civ4, unlike the previous games, you cannot get rid of a city once you build it except by giving it to another civilization, declaring war, capturing, and razing the city. This was apparently done to force the player to think about the locations of cities more carefully.

[Anonymous No.3994830]

>>3994775
Iran/Persia was a civ added to the game

[Anonymous No.3994831]

>>3988552
Civ II will always be my favorite, partially because of these guys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqPC08cPGJw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlTIk80uBPg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFQDeYXq_iw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCFLh372jOM

The later Civ games do have superior gameplay if I'm being honest, but I just don't get the same attachment to what's going on without some cheesy 90s production values thrown in there.

I'd really like to know whether any of those actors are still around, if they even were professional actors at all.

[Anonymous No.3994832]

>>3994830

So?

[Anonymous No.3994834]

>>3994793
Adding religions was nice but the devs pussied out and made all religions neutral in effect so as to not offend people. The way it should have worked was like this:

>Christianity
The basic everyman religion with no particular pluses or negatives.
>Judaism
Banks/marketplaces/stock exchanges are built twice as fast. If a German or Arab city has Judaism in it, the citizens will experience unhappiness.
>Islam
Reduced science rate, military units cost 50% less maintenance
>Hinduism
Reduced city maintenance. You cannot build a sewage system in your cities.
>Buddhism
Going to war causes double unhappiness in cities.
>Taoism
>Confucianism
Fuck do I know.

[Anonymous No.3994843]

Why they added fucking Sumeria but not Poland or Vietnam I don't know.

[Anonymous No.3994862]

Call to power 2 + The Apolyton mod/patch is pretty nice.

[Anonymous No.3994904]

>>3988552
It's not even the best turn-based strategy game

[Anonymous No.3994913]

>>3994834
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.3994985]

>>3994834
>Islam
>Reduced science rate

bro have you ever even opened a book on history

[Anonymous No.3995231]

>>3994985
erm, we know what eclipse are since antiquity.

[Anonymous No.3995365]

>>3995231
Oh yes, by choosing this image I meant to communicate the entirety of knowledge in the islamic world during the middle ages, which was of course limited exclusively to eclipses. Obviously. Nice job pointing it out. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.3995369]

played 1 2, 4, and 5; I think 4 is my favorite

2 is very very much like 1 mechanically

[Anonymous No.3995470]

>>3994834
This is literally the template of a first CivFanatics Center post by an edgy Eastern European teenager.

>>3994793
Frankly, I think it's good. It makes you think more about short term vs long term development.

[Anonymous No.3995485]

>>3995231
Think of every word you know that starts with "AL".

A massive chunk of those are derived from Arabic.

[Anonymous No.3995513]

>>3995485
All
Alphabet
Alps
Alright
Also
Almost
Almond
Almanac
Allure
Alleviate
Okay, that's all I can think of for now while both on my phone and the shitter. Which ones are Arab pls

[Anonymous No.3995524]

>>3995513
I think he was thinking more in science and math terms, like alchemy, algebra, alcohol, algorithm, alkali, etc.

[Anonymous No.3995597]

>>3994834
>Buddhism
>Going to war causes double unhappiness in cities.

fun fact: Buddhism was used to help justify the war effort and Kamikaze pilots in WWII, and today is used to justify ethnic cleansing against Rohingya in Myanmar.

>Fuck do I know.

not a fuck of a lot, but i guess /pol/ is fueled mostly by ignorance.

[Crabster !!v8XvMyjXilq No.3995641]

So how did the Call to Power series fare compared to the Civ series?

[Anonymous No.3995875]

>>3995485
>Think of every word you know that starts with "AL".
woah

[Anonymous No.3995881]

>>3995485
I remember learning about this as a child, it blew my mind.

They had some really really advanced tech for the time and pretty much kept science going during the dark ages.

[Anonymous No.3995887]

>>3995641
Namefags aren't entitled to ask questions. Try again without your persona showing, fag.

[Anonymous No.3995889]

>>3995485
>>3995485
>Think of every word you know that starts with "AL".
>A massive chunk of those are derived from Arabic.
So you're saying that Islam created allergies, allegories, the alt-right, almonds, and my brother Albert?
Jesus, no wonder everybody hates sandniggers.

[Crabster !!v8XvMyjXilq No.3995986]

>>3995887

Sorry to hear about your butthurt.

[Anonymous No.3996259]

The best unit in Civ 2 was the Crusader: 5 attack, 2 speed and costs only 30 production, perfect for spamming

[Anonymous No.3996272]

>>3995513
Oh god, lol.

[Anonymous No.3996871]

>>3994985
Muslims did a nice job utilizing the science and mathematics of classical Greece and India.

[Anonymous No.3996889]

Better still idea, you can build Auschwitz as a Wonder of the World. If built, it automatically causes all Judaism and Jewish temples to disappear from your cities. You get a massive gold boost due to all the wealth looted from the dead.

Negative effect: Causes all other civilizations to become angry with you, aside from Arabs who become pleased with you.

[Anonymous No.3996890]

>>3996871
Redpilled. I'm absolutely redpilled.

[Anonymous No.3996947]

>>3995597
>Buddhism was used to help justify the war effort and Kamikaze pilots in WWII
It really wasn't, that was more about the Shinto emperor cult.
>and today is used to justify ethnic cleansing against Rohingya in Myanmar
>removing Mudslimes from premises
>bad

[Anonymous No.3997224]

>>3988785

4X ranking:
MoM with A.I. Patch>>>>>>>>>SMAC>= MOO2=MOO1 > Colonization > Civ2

Honorable mention: Space Empires 3 or 4 (IMO better than Civ2)

Simply put Civ 2 is just an standard 4X game that is EZ to pick up and play.

[Anonymous No.3997263]

>>3997224
what does this MoO patch improve?

[Anonymous No.3997284]

>>3997263
Apparently not reading comprehension.

[Anonymous No.3997501]

bump

[Anonymous No.3997568]

Good points about Civ4:

Religions (although it would be better if they weren't neutral)
Can have 16 players and no theoretical map size outside of the game's memory limit (3 GB)
Different ocean depths
Barbarians can capture cities again (missed from Civ2)
Resources are a little better and more detailed
You don't need a road to access a resource; it just needs to be in your borders
Can go in other guys' territory if you have an alliance with them
Forests sprouting on a tile if they're adjacent to another forest tile is a neat touch

Bad points:

Getting rid of ranged artillery/ability to capture artillery (my favorite Civ3 feature)
Resources have to be inside your borders to use
Galleys/caravels can't go into the ocean (seems like a cop-out to players who did this and complained that their ships would sink)
No straits/isthmuses anymore
Your units get automatically booted from enemy turf if you declare war (yeah I know they did this so you can't cheat, but it's still unrealistic and dumb)
The map zoom-in feature seems kinda useless

[Anonymous No.3997696]

>>3997568
>Bad points:
Can all be tracked down to imbalance problems in previous games.
>Getting rid of ranged artillery/ability to capture artillery (my favorite Civ3 feature)
Pic related.
>Resources have to be inside your borders to use
With cities actually now costing something, it means decisions like ancient/classical or even medieval rush are more meaningful; you have to plop a city on a resource, and if it's far away, you have to make amends otherwise.
>Galleys/caravels can't go into the ocean (seems like a cop-out to players who did this and complained that their ships would sink)
A good thing. Suicide galleys were an exploitative tactic to become a maritime powerhouse; if you sent enough cheap galleys, you would finally find a way to get into a different continent and settle there. Given how poor AI always fares on Archipelago maps in Civ history, the player doesn't need any more exploits like this that only he is smart enough to use (AI doesn't suicide galleys). Caravels are the first unit that goes into the ocean, BTW, but it can only carry Settlers/Explorers, not combat units (unless you're Portuguese).
>No straits/isthmuses anymore
I don't get this one.
>Your units get automatically booted from enemy turf if you declare war (yeah I know they did this so you can't cheat, but it's still unrealistic and dumb)
Right of Passage rape is just a boring way to wage war. I think it should be implied that the game uses retroactive logic - imagine if Open Borders meant that the entire German army was parked right outside of Warsaw right before 1st of September 1939. It would make no sense.
>The map zoom-in feature seems kinda useless
You can look at your city in zoom out! And thanks to Beyond the Sword, a modern Security Bureau looks amazing next to the Stonehenge!

[Anonymous No.3997716]

>>3997696
Yeah I know why they got rid of the ranged artillery--Sid Meier said it caused problems with the AI. Doesn't mean I have to like it though.
>No straits/isthmuses anymore
>I don't get this one
In Civ2/Civ3, if you had a block of four tiles and two of them were water, but the land tiles were not adjacent, the game would let you move a ship between them since they were presumed to form a strait (see pic).

[Anonymous No.3997719]

Civ2 also let you move three squares per tile down a river. That's a feature I miss.

[Anonymous No.3997729]

The wild animals in unsettled areas always seemed a little pointless to me.

[Anonymous No.3997885]

bump

[Anonymous No.3997894]

>>3997729

I loved that feature.

[Anonymous No.3997903]

>>3996871
And so do we. Breaking news: Wheel doesn't need to be reinvented! Scientific discoveries build on top of each other!

If it weren't for them, a lot of antique knowledge would have been lost.

[Anonymous No.3997952]

>>3997903
The Church in Europe preserved as much or more of classical Greek writings, so...

[Anonymous No.3997960]

>>3997952

Both religions were equally good at such things. Both were also equally good at destroying such knowledge too.

[Anonymous No.3997969]

>It is widely believed and taught, including in India, that there was a Golden Age of Islamic learning that made a major contribution to science and the arts. In India we are told that this ‘synthesis’ between Hindu and Muslim thought gave rise to a great ‘syncretic’ civilization that was suppressed and eventually destroyed by the British. However, this flies in the face of the fact that not a single name of a major scientist from the five-plus centuries of Islamic rule of India has come down to us. We have to go to pre-Islamic India to invoke names from the past— names like Aryabhata, Varahamihira and the like.

>It is a similar story when we look at universities or centers of learning. Pre-Islamic India was renowned for its universities: Takshashila, Vikramashila, Nalanda, Ujjain and other places attracted students and scholars alike from far and wide, much like the United States of today.

>After the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate, not a single center of learning (other than Islamic seminaries) was established for over seven centuries. The first modern universities came to be established only during the British rule.

[Anonymous No.3997972]

>>3997969
>[N.S Rajaram: Indians invented algebra, calling it bija-ganita. Greeks considered some special cases in number theory like Diophantine Equations, also known to the Indians. The cumbersome letter-based notation (like the later Roman numerals) did not lend itself to problems in algebra. The major Greek contributions were the concept of proof (known also to Indians) and above all the axiomatic method at which they excelled. The Arabs themselves never denied their indebtedness to the Hindus in astronomy, medicine and mathematics. They called their numbers ‘Hindu numerals’. As noted in the Editor’s Introduction, much of this took place in pre-Islamic Iran, especially under Khusro I.]

>Most of these works were available to the West during the 12th century when the first Renaissance was taking place. Although Western scholars did travel to Spain to study Arabic versions of classical Greek thought, they soon found out that better versions of original texts in Greek were also available in the libraries of the ancient Greek city of Byzantium….

[Anonymous No.3997978]

>First, the Muslim world benefited greatly from the Greek sciences, which were translated for them by dhimmi Christians and Jews. To their credit, Muslims did a better job of preserving Greek text than did the Europeans of the time, and this became the foundation for their own knowledge. (Although one large reason is that access by Christians to this part of their world was cut off by Muslim slave ships and coastal raids that dominated the Mediterranean during this period).

>Secondly, many of the scientific advances credited to Islam were actually “borrowed” from other cultures conquered by the Muslims. The algebraic concept of “zero”, for example, is erroneously attributed to Islam when it was, in fact, a Hindu discovery that was merely introduced to the West by Muslims.

>In truth, conquered populations contributed greatly to the history of “Muslim" science until gradually being decimated by conversion to Islam (under the pressures of dhimmitude). As Mark Steyn puts it, "When admirers talk up Islam and the great innovations and rich culture of its heyday, they forget that even at its height Muslims were never more than a minority in the Muslim world, and they were in large part living off the energy of others."

[Anonymous No.3997983]

>>3997972

Better in what way?

[Anonymous No.3997993]

>>3997983
Texts were in the original Greek as opposed to sloppy Arabic translations.

[Anonymous No.3998006]

>>3997952
Ah, yes, the roman catholic church, keepers of knowledge and agents of scientific progress. Who could forget how they wholeheartedly embraced the teachings of geniuses such as Galileo Galilei or Giordano Bruno?

[Anonymous No.3998010]

>>3998006

Keep in mind the Muslims finished off what was left of the Great Library, so....Both religions have a fairly mixed record on such things.

[Anonymous No.3998016]

>>3998010
Sure.

It just irks me when somebody boils it down to "christians! GOOD! mudslimes! BAD!".

Both played important parts in advancing civilization as well as in holding it back. It's the /pol/-tier reductionist views which I despise.

[Anonymous No.3998089]

>>3998016
There isn't a single democratic, livable majority Muslim country in the world.

[Anonymous No.3998091]

>>3994834
>Implying Christianity has no negatives
Nigga have you even heard the crap that retards on Fox news spout?

[Anonymous No.3998095]

>>3998089

Turkey.

[Anonymous No.3998118]

>>3998095
>Turkey
>democracy
>livable
Outside the tourist areas of Istanbul...sorry. Besides, the founder of modern Turkey was a fedora who detested Islam.

[Anonymous No.3998127]

>>3998118

They're as democratic as the US right now. And the founder should have fuckall to do with your criteria, so...

>moving the goalposts

[Anonymous No.3998151]

>>3998089
This is a very complicated matter and again, you are the kind to oversimplify things.

There isn't a single sub-Saharan African country that's doing particularly well, and they are all majority Christian.

Have you been to Dubai or Qatar? It's very livable there, provided you have cash.

[Anonymous No.3998161]

>>3998151
Dubai is just rich Arab oil sheiks who use slave labor from Africa and India to maintain the infrastructure therel

[Anonymous No.3998218]

>>3998095
>>3998118
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJX4beXKwpg

[Anonymous No.3998231]

>>3998218

>Milo

Into the trash he blows.

[Anonymous No.3998245]

>>3994638
Civ 3 objectively looks better than Civ 4. And subjectively looks better than 5. It certainly plays better than 5, where 1 unit occupies an enormous hex.

[Anonymous No.3998332]

>>3998161
Of course. Still it's as livable for the natives as it is in the first world (if not more), which owes its high standard of living to historic exploitation of the third world. Where's your point?

>>3998218
>Milo
There goes the last bit of credibility the /pol/-poster had.

[Anonymous No.3998651]

>>3998245
>And subjectively looks better than 5
This is objectively wrong.

>1 unit occupies an enormous hex.
As opposed to 32,000 units occupying a tiny square.

[Anonymous No.3998726]

>>3998651
A tiny square is the size of a city. If Civ 5 had 4-5 times as many hexes, I wouldn't mind the single unit. But it doesn't, the hexes are enormous.

[Anonymous No.3998759]

>>3994638
I think that looks great.

>>3994834
lol you're an idiot.

[Anonymous No.3998957]

I really liked Imperivm

[Anonymous No.3999435]

>>3998332
>which owes its high standard of living to historic exploitation of the third world

[Anonymous No.4000673]

>> 3998726
>As opposed to 32,000 units occupying a tiny square.

And that's why I love Civ 2: When a unit loses while defending, the whole stack is lost at once (except in citys and fortresses). This and the fact that the upkeep of units costing production does prevents the stack of doom, which was awful in Civ 3 and 4.

[Anonymous No.4000931]

>>4000673
>This and the fact that the upkeep of units costing production does prevents the stack of doom, which was awful in Civ 3 and 4.

I never minded SoD as an abstraction. The AI was always stupidly easy to exploit in combat, and Civ4 Multiplayer had the best longevity of all the games in spite of the SoDs, because SoDs still had a counter, and it was siege.

The CiVian hex approach didn't work that well because the AI still had no way of defending itself and was even more vulnerable than ever to choke points. CVI made it even worse.

[Anonymous No.4002538]

>>3988776
I loved it. By the time I played this one I had already been playing 2, but had fun nevertheless.


I have to say that I enjoyed all the games but 3. Probably because I never played it that much.
I played 4 and 2 the most.
Never played Colonization (can it be put in here?) and Revolution.

[Anonymous No.4002643]

>>4002538
3 was a massive let-down after having enjoyed 2 so much.

[Anonymous No.4002674]

>>3998332
>>Milo
>There goes the last bit of credibility the /pol/-poster had.

pol hates milo but even then, discrediting an argument based on a subjective dislike of the person delivering it is a very stupid way to build a rebuttal of any worth.

[Anonymous No.4002750]

My main problem with Civ 3 was the fact, that corruption was such a problem in that game.
My outer citys had most of the time only 1 production and 1 trade per turn.

In Civ 2, corruption was never so strong (even in despotism) and could be elimated with democracy and communism (defnitly not realistic).

[Anonymous No.4002759]

>>4000931
SoDs were a bigger problem in Civ 3 than Civ 4, because there is collateral damage in Civ 4.
In Civ 3 a SoD of obsolete units could kill a little army of more advanced units (I never liked the fact, that units in Civ 3 have 2 - 5 HP).

And one final question: Was the battle-AI in any Civ good? I personally don't think so.

[Anonymous No.4002830]

>>4002674
>discrediting an argument based on a subjective dislike of the person
Milo is very objectively trash, though.

[Anonymous No.4004521]

Just fired up Test of Time for the first time in ages. It's the definitive version of Civ II.

[Anonymous No.4004629]

Why does no one ever talk about Civ 3? People talk about 2 and 4 regularly.

[Anonymous No.4004740]

>>4004629
I didn't like Civ III when it was new and I don't like it still. Can't put a finger on why, but I've enjoyed every other Civ aside from VI which I haven't yet played.

[Anonymous No.4006624]

bump

[Anonymous No.4006774]

>>4004629
3 had a huge RealmsBeyond community and some reports on Sullla.com are still alive if you'd like to delve into those. It was pretty damn popular, as I recall.