THE MAKING OF CIVILIZATION II
When the original Civilization released back in 1991, there’s no doubting the novelty, innovation and, of course, the compulsive just-one-more-turn appeal that it brought to videogames. It might not have had the wow factor that many games of the era would go on to inspire, but for gamers who preferred their games a little less dextrous and a little more contemplative, Civ was a revelation. It’s with our rose-tinted view on the world of retro games that it’s easy to think of the original as the true innovator, with the sequel often being overlooked for later games in the series that arguably improved on the formula tenfold to refine what Civilization – and by extension the 4X genre – could really be. But that’s just it: Civilization may have given birth to Sid’s strategy empire, but it was the sequel – created with minimal input from the iconic designer – that set the standards, mechanics and expectations for what exactly made a Civilization game. Everything that came since has been built upon the foundation that Civ II laid, and not the original game.
Naturally after the release and ensuing phenomenal success of the original, Microprose had at some point realised that a sequel to the original would need to be on the cards. Technology had advanced enough that vast improvements to the graphics could be made, as well as a greater depth of strategy, computation and AI – all of which were essential. “I had been at Microprose I guess about four or five years,” says Doug Kaufman, who was originally working within the text adventure division of the company. “Brian Reynolds and I had been working on a game called and about three quarters of the way through the development of that, they offered him the chance to be a programmer/designer with Sid to do .”
