by Mark W. Frantz

Considered by many to be the quintessential strategy game and certainly a top contender for the greatest game of all time so far, Sid Meier's Civilization offers it all. War, peace, social unrest, strategy, tough decisions; in short, a lot. Many have tried, but none have come close to recreating what Civilization was all about. So when, a few years back, the announcement and subsequent arrival of a multiplayer version to be known as CivNet came along, hordes of fans were ready to do something they had always wanted; play with the cunning and devious humans, rather than the same old computer AI they had learned to trick.

So CivNet was well-received, right? Sort of. Certainly the multiplayer aspect was there, but there were many problems that arose when the port was made. For instance, play over the Internet was still largely in its infancy at that stage, and the technology had not been as refined as it is today. So performance suffered. A game that was played straight through with no crashes became somewhat of a rarity. Another reason for the mixed success of the game was the subsequent release of Civ II, only a few months later. Most gamers chose to buy that instead.

So why am I doing an article about this game that wasn't well received, nor a very recent release? A few reasons. Number one, you can now purchase the game somewhere in the vicinity of $10 to $20 at your local Kaybee Toystore or Electronics Boutique bargain rack. And number two; this is CIVILIZATION, dagnamit, and its multiplayer! Sure it's old, and has performance problems. But if you want to play Civilization with other humans, this is the ONLY way to do it over the Internet.

So I fired up CivNet on Saturday night at about eight o'clock. With Dr Quinn in the background endlessly drolling on about Scully, I set about, along with three other people to take my lone settler and turn it into a national powerhouse. My customized nation, the Western Samoans, were destined for greatness (or so I thought). I established base quickly, with two cities within the first millennium. A lone militia was my scout; this turned out to be a bad move later.

About this time my lone scout ran into my first human opponent near a mountain range south of my capitol. A cordial exchange ensued. The usual pleasantries were exchanged.

"Western Samoans: We wish to talk!"

"English: What?"

"Western Samoans: How is it going?"

"English: What?"

"Western Samoans: We should be peaceful cohabitants of this landmass."

"English: Don't go further south or we will beat the crap out of you. Look..."

At this point in the conversation two catapults and a chariot, technologies didn't have and units I couldn't afford to build even if I did, arrived at the border.

"English: Peace?"

"Western Samoans: YES PLEASE."

And with that, the exchange concluded. I was satisfied, at the time, figuring that I had plenty of room to expand and plenty of time to plot against my powerful neighbor.

Unfortunately, I had no room to expand. I was on a peninsula, and I had made the mistake of agreeing to boundaries without scouting out my territory completely. Nor was my small territory rich in trade, so my research was suffering. It was a struggle to get to mapmaking, although I did finally make it by 2000 BC. I also was able to squeeze one more city out of my territory.

I routinely tested the border between my powerful neighbor to the south and myself. As soon as I even set near the DMZ, I received a cordial message inviting me to back off or die. I developed an alternate plan.

My idea was to load a trireme with settlers and settle beyond the border, in a blind spot I has scouted near the bottom of his territory. And so I devoted about 1000 years to this pursuit, and with much fanfare, launched the mission at the change of histories, in 0 AD. Things were finally looking up for Western Samoa.

In 20 AD, the first of the new millennia, a single knight approached the border. I responded as I had before, demanding its immediate removal. Oddly, my demands received no response, and he declared war on me with the destruction of my meager border force. Without any units nearby, I could not see the hordes of knights pouring into my territory. My diplomatic protests went unheeded. Within two turns, my southernmost city was captured.

The ship laden with settlers now became first priority. Cities must be setup to allow the Western Samoan nation to survive. I changed direction and headed for shore.

Meanwhile, my second city fell to the hordes. I consolidated what little strength I had left in my capitol, selling off my palace to buy more units. Its fall was inevitable, but any time that could be bought would help those settlers get landed.

But as the hordes encircled my capitol, the death knoll for Western Samoa was signaled. An unknown civilization's sail encountered and ruthlessly sank my last hope for the nation. Despite heated battle and diplomatic pleading, English knights entered Apia (my capitol) in 120 AD. The great Western Samoan civilization was destroyed, and left for the history books.

The game took the course of about two hours, and did not crash once. A rarity, but when it happens, it makes the game so very enjoyable. I loved this particular game because it was so realistic. I mean, DMZ's, non aggression pacts, zones of control, diplomatic pomp and circumstance. Any game that can even begin to mimic these processes has got to be a winner.

So, when it works, CivNet, for $10-$20, can be a great deal. And if you do decide to buy, you can find opponents at http://www.wizweb.com/arena/civnet/board/getciv.cgi Several patches have been released by Microprose to improve performance. You can pick those up at Microprose's Website, www.microprose.com.

Back to MultiPlayer Mayhem Main Page.

Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.