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Gamer Keeps Civilization II Game Going for 10 Years
Have you ever wondered what a game of Civilization 2 would look like after running for 10 years? According to one gamer it's a "hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation." "Lycerius" says that he's been playing the same game of Civ II off and on for over a decade. Some highlights of the marathon session include: 1700 years of war, the ice caps melting over 20 times, constant guerrilla uprisings, and "Roughly 90% of the world's population has died either from nuclear annihilation or famine caused by the global warming that has left absolutely zero arable land to farm." It's too bad you can't build the Hanging Gardens more than once.
He must be a pretty crappy gamer if, in all that time, there are still other civilizations in his way with which to have constant nuclear warfare. If he'd actually eliminated the other civilizations, he could easily rebuild everything.
Also, how on earth did he have so much global warming? That can really only be the effect of poor decisions or poorly waged nuclear war.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
It is pretty nerdy, and interesting!
I knew it! Those developers are damn liberal hippies! :)
Seriously though, life defining game series.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Go look at the front page of any news website /can't/ tell me that this is less interesting than whatever crap the media is trying to feed you today.
Now look at this article
You
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
As opposed to a couple of nerds crying about something on a new website because THEY have no life?
REALLY????
Must be a slow day for you guys.
Embrace it. This is what Slashdot has become.
If you want the good stuff with quality comments, see the "This day in history" posts from 2005 on the right side banner.
This is Idle. I don't know why weird stuff from it occasionally shows up on the main page, but there is a preference to get rid of Idle articles somewhere if you want to use it.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
I for one am sick of hearing about unemployment, the election and Syria. Want to hear about it? Go to News.google, cnn. USA Today, etc.
Absolutely nothing wrong with nerd news appearing on a nerd website. Just because it isn't exciting enough for YOU doesn't mean others won't like it... nor does it mean everyone watches Reddit Live.
This reminds me of 1984 actually, right down to there being three superpowers left in the world. For those who haven't read it, perpetual war is fought over border zones that constantly change hands, with each power too strong to ever be defeated.
Track IP - Remotely track the IP address of a machine via email or MySQL.
So that's what our future looks like...
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
The tagline isn't "stuff that's slightly more interesting than EW.com". It's "News for nerd, stuff that matters."
I realize the title of "nerd" has been redefined by some as "casual gamer". Beyond that, this is neither news for nerds nor stuff that matters.
Stay tuned for an update on the man that reaches a million kills in a single game of Call of Duty.
First, I thought this was about a continuously running game... And my fist thought was dang, I bet he wish he started it in a VM, because he could have kept moving it to new hardware, rateh than keeping that old Pentium IV around. But I guess there's a save-game feature.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
... boarded the ship for Alpha Centauri.
Now we know whom not to vote for in the next election. Such mismanagement never happens in my games...
Deny it exists and do nothing to stop it?
So that's what it leads to?
Disregard the fact the full tagline is "News for Nerds", I happen to enjoy living in a world where "news" isn't confined to what one persons thinks it should be.
No sig for you!!
This smells to me like someone trying to make a thinly-veiled political statement. I've played a lot of Civ, and I find it hard to believe that 3 civilizations could still exist after playing for that long.
NY Times:
2 articles on Spanish euro crisis and possibility spreading to Europe
1 article on Russian protests of the Kremlin
1 article on Mexican drug gangs laundering money in the US
I'd say that every single article is more interesting (and newsworthy) than some guy playing Civ2 for 10 years.
Probably a number of the advertisements are as well.
It also shows that Reddit nowadays is often much more interesting than /.
I would LOVE to have stories like this on Slashdot, but all we get is some pro-piracy, anti-microsoft circlejerking. The same goes for the comments, obviously. I remember when the John Carmack used to post here - he does not anymore, and you wonder why?
...casual gamer?
I'd say someone who plays a single Civ2 game save for 10 years is pretty hardcore.
sim city does not have war
over a couple decades .
See: TFH, TFS, TFA
It is news. It's an unusual, not-normal occurrence. And it's game related. News for nerds. This is the most interesting thing posted ind ays.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
wouldn't you LIKE to think that this site is just a LITTLE above that?
Not really, and you're foolish to think otherwise.
Why should Slashdot stoop to THOSE levels?
You tell me, but as everyone complains on a daily basis, it seems to have done just that.
WHY are you comparing Slashdot to that?
See above.
This "well, it could be worse!" mentality has grown REALLY OLD.
When you get old, you tend take what you can get and chill the fuck out.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
It is cool as frig to see that someone went the distance on it. More often than not, I just said 'screw it' and restarted the game after I reached the main goal and won, or after it was apparent that I was toast. I only went long-term once, and that was only for a month (same schedule, off and on as time permitted). Got way too bored with it at that point, nuked the remaining cities, and restarted the game (or sometimes I'd just go all Anasazi on it and begin to dismantle all my cities to see what happened.)
I usually won it by being the American team up-front, since the game engineered that particular role to be even more aggressive than the real USA could ever hope to be.
Best bet though was to find and identify the aggressive mofos up-front, wipe them out post-haste, and then quickly surround the weaker nations with your stuff so that they didn't expand. Eventually, you could leave them with one city apiece, and you own the rest.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
THIS is why I stay in my mother's basement!
So basically this game looks like a mirror image of our future ?
You mean a media news website like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/06/12/man-plays-civilisation-ii_n_1589153.html
...casual gamer?
I'd say someone who plays a single Civ2 game save for 10 years is pretty hardcore.
If this place were really "news for someone who played a single Civ2 game save for 10 years" then we would ALL be out (that guy probably doesnt even post here).
Slahshdot I'm disappointed you just steal Reddit posts and try to create "news" with it. How about trying to have original content instead?
No 10 defends gay marriage plans
This is John Carmack. Stop being a bitch.
He should have used the infamous kinghit strategy.
Basically build one city, rush your tech, then overwhelm the enemy.
If I could find the page that documented it, I would post it, but Usenet is dead.
What it has "become"? People bragging about their uptime is pretty much how it /started/... I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
You can play a game of chess in 30 minutes or it could take you 6 months to play the game if you made one move a day and played someone via email. But that doesn't mean that the moves are any different in either game.
Therefore I don't see the relevance of playing Civilization II over 10 years here, apart from it being a notable but geeky thing to do.
I've not played Civ in a long time but from what I recall the number of physical game turns are fixed and apart from a couple of the variants ("Test Of Time" springs to mind), the game starts in 4000BC and ends at around 2000AD - so how long it takes you to play that fixed number of turns seems largely irrelevant.
Sure, if the guy had reported that he'd replayed the same game over and over again using different strategies and it *ALWAYS* finished up with the three civilizations at constant war in a nuclear wasteland, then that might be worthy of mention.
But otherwise I must be missing something here or it's just a slow Slashdot news day...
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
I agree, I saw this story on reddit way before it was on /. ; it is special to see reddit story published here...
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Touché good sir.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Can he share some screenshots? Or a saved game file?
That's what I was hoping to find anyway ;)
I'll admit it the HuffPost piece almost looks like an Onion article, if it makes you feel better.
7,338 tanks destroyed by phalanxes
When does this happen in the movie?
you're telling me you don't have Civ2 installed on your desktop? At the very least you must surely have MoO2 or Master of Magic.
No? Not even x-com on steam? Well... frankly I don't think YOU matter.
If you want "news for nerds" then you should be on specialized websites like reprap.org, cnczone.com, buildyourcnc.com, etc.
Screenshots here:
http://imgur.com/a/rAnZs
Um... This story is on Slashdot.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Wow, this guy has some serious management skillz! Maybe he should be running Spain or Greece or the US?
The fact that you think 2005 was the "good old days" is just adorable.
But don't worry, you'll get to say the same thing in five years or so when someone waxes all nostalgic for the golden age of Slashdot that was 2012.
/. effectively aggregates a lot of sites, via user moderation, in the same way that reddit does. It is just much slower, because editors (who sometimes do better than other times). It's always been that way - I've heard this thousands of times on /. - regarding TheVerge, for Engdaget, for Kokaku and perhaps the entire gawker blogging umbrella, for ThisIsMyNext before Topolsky moved, for every site, ever, that tries to post OC. This is not what /. does.
The problem with reddit is that its even more of an echo chamber because of the way they do moderation. Basically its all determined by the masses, like digg was. It used to be (circa 2006) that differing opinions were more visible. Now they are completely buried.
Also 95% of the stuff on there is memes, pictures of girls or animals, people complaining, or self aggrandizing (bestof, iama, TIL) and also constant reposts of the same crap from 10 years ago.
In short, its now a "community" as opposed to what it was when it started, a site which didn't require any email verification and was trying to be as anonymous as possible. Now they have karma, anniversaries (cake) and other "features" which make it more like a social networking site than a link agregator. They want people to build up their reputations, but this stifles independent thought. The delays on postings for non long term users is horrible now. Was much better when it was pseudo anonymous and not as popular. I blame the diggers who came over in 2008 or thereabouts.
all that said, i read it every day, but not usually the comments. Slashdot comments and moderation are far far far superior.
I wouldn't be at all surprised that if in 10 years we'll have some people playing the same Minecraft worlds as well. It would even be more interesting, since your "history" would be remembered as you moved from camp to camp.
I can guarantee you that the amount of time they spent making their posts was insignificant, while the amount of time the gamer has spent playing this game was very significant. I'm not making any judgement on the worth of the story here, mind... But your comparison is pretty flawed.
It also shows that Reddit nowadays is often much more interesting than /.
A few years ago, everyone was saying the same about Digg--and how Digg was the /. killer. Heard from them lately?
Reports of slashdot's demise are frequently exaggerated.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
It also shows that Reddit nowadays is often much more interesting than /.
I don't read Reddit regularly but when I checked it now, it seemed to just be a similar "random crap" pool much like Digg. :)
I would LOVE to have stories like this on Slashdot, but all we get is some pro-piracy, anti-microsoft circlejerking.
Totally agree. It's a shame how one-sided the discussion regarding those topics is. You get nearly automatically downmodded if you oppose piracy, Linux is some holy water which makes everything good and, there's almost never any article related to solving some problem using MS environment. That said, this is still an awesome website...
Except this isn't a case of uptime. Any computer can run for 10 years, on and off. Get 10 years uptime is a whole different story. If this guy actually ran Civ2 for ten years, rather than loading up a save file off an on for 10 years that would be a bit more impressive.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
What it has "become"? People bragging about their uptime is pretty much how it /started/... I really don't see what all the fuss is about.
That reminds me, talking about the uptime of a UNIX system has pretty much disappeared. Back in the day, it was some kind of pride (or maybe a pointless number) to have a long uptime -- months, even years. Not that much anymore. It's probably partly related to the OS and its updates being a more live and changing thing.
why does any of that matter to nerds?
This is John Carmack. Stop using my name, bitch.
The key to reddit is to trim your subscriptions. The default is of course a cesspool of trash.
But if you unsub some of the popular ones, and hone in on specific content/topics you're interested in, its a much better site.
It's an idle story.
Now push the little soap bar thingy up to make the arrow go over your name at the top of the screen, and click on Options.
What, you're an AC? Bad, baaaaad, AC.
But assuming you were smart enough to click on the "Post Anonymously" button, but too stupid to find the topic exclusion setting, now click on the "Exclusions" tab. Move the shiny scroll bar to the middle and click on "Idle". Then click on the cuddly little "Save" button. What a good AC you are!
And if you don't have an account, then either STFU and create one, or just simply STFU.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
No, *I* am Brian!
It is futile to ceaselessly yield to an AI that will never honor a treaty.
When Digg was about to implode, there was a sudden influx of high UIDs making positive comments on slashdot about digg too.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Crucify them all!
"Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
why does any of that matter to nerds?
It arguably is stuff that matters.
Are you seriously saying the comments on reddit are better? The comments are why I left reddit and came here.
haha the title on that article is a perfect example of sensationalist headlines.
`"Man Plays Civilisation II For 10 Years, World Disintegrates into 'Nightmare Of Suffering' (PHOTOS)"
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Agreed. As a news junkie, /. is just a little too slow with new stories, too.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
No.
The grandparent AC is an idiot, mind you. But he'd be just as much of an idiot with a login.
There's nothing wrong with posting AC, a post isn't made any worse (or better) by being made anonymously, and any claim to the contrary can only be a lie.
Just one more turn....
I've played it - as a despicable player (as the game describes me for doing it in cheat mode). Actually, under the more honorable scenario mode. What I do is create enough units, and beseige and blocade every one of my enemies, w/o killing them, and cheating and giving myself 30k of money (the limit in the game) and all the technologies. I then change my government to fundamentalist (where I'll be flush w/ both cash and stability, but my research suffers, which doesn't matter since I know everything), create as many settlers and build cities all over the place, making farmland and raillines everywhere. In each city, I usually start off w/ airports, mass transits, recycling plants before building factories, and after that, I put each city in domestic advisor autobuild.
Any time any square gets polluted, I go there, highlight it and alter the terrain. If my financial advisor tells me that I need more trade routes, I create freights near cities that I want to trade w/, set the home city and commodity of the freight, and viola! I make a windfall!. After playing for a while, this is more convenient than having plenty of engineers, b'cos when the entire map is fully developed, they just wander around aimlessly unless there is pollution somewhere, or something. They don't grow cities above size 8, and they become distracting when they have nowhere to go.
The main problem I run into is naming so many cities - that becomes a headache. Otherwise, before too long, they are into capitalization. Note that all this assumes that one ignores the target date of either 2020 or whatever date a scenario has as its target. Otherwise, the scoring ends at that point.
Another interesting mode to play in is what I call movie mode, where, in cheat mode, you set yourself as 'No human player'. Every civilization, including yours, is driven by the computer.
I use the open source 0 A.D. you insensitive clod.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
The concept of religion in Civ IV - is it there in Civ V and beyond as well? It seemed a neat way to head loyal allies, although it would seem to me that the largest 2 civilizations of the same religion would be fighting for control of who gets to be more influential amongst that religion's faithful, rather than be allies, as Civ IV designed.
No one has asked yet?
The guy should publish his saved game files. It'd be interesting to see the replay (if he's been auto-saving for forever) or at the very least to try the level out and see if there's a way to win.
I used to play Civ and Civ 2 a lot. I've never gotten into a long running stalemate. When I get that far I normally/always win. It's the early game I'm worst at.
No you're not, big nose.
Reports of slashdot's demise are frequently exaggerated.
Unless Netcraft confirms it...
A few years ago, everyone was saying the same about Digg--and how Digg was the /. killer.
Nobody said that.
Digg is for the masses. Reddit is for the masses.
Slashdot is for... guys who think that Bill Gates is an evil borg.
Bah! That's nothing come back with a story after someone spends 10 years in the world of DayZ. :)
The thing with reddit is that it can be tailored to your interests. Specially when you focus on small sized subreddits.
The majority vote system has its pros and cons but it's all around a very good site.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
He never said it was the good old days. You seem to not really understand what quotation marks are for.
Welcome to Idle.
Pull up a kitten and stay awhile!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
idle dot slashdot dot org
Is there anything you understand about this section of slashdot?
NO SIG
I understand it fine. Despite the name, their proper use is not limited solely to exact quotations.
He didn't use that exact phrase, but he did express that exact sentiment, and therefore my response to him is absolutely and irrefutably correct, as you have already admitted.
At the very least you must surely have MoO2 or Master of Magic.
Whelp. There goes my next few weeks.
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
I used to play Civ 1 on a monochrome screen. The first objective was to find the nation with units of the same shade of gray as your own and completely wipe them out.
We now know what happens when a politician from the certain states tries to play civilized, I mean Civilization..
Civ2 doesn't work in Wine (that I can manage anyway) or in Windows after XP. I have to run it in an XP VM... but mostly I play Civ4 these days, since it finally got super cheap with all the expansions when Civ5 came out, and I am a cheap bastard who never cared for Civ3. Anyway, it is entirely possible these days to have a computer that won't run it. (It doesn't work in XP Mode, either.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
As are reports that comments are even vaguely attached to their articles anymore.
Just type "Apple likes black holes" into an article about black holes and watch the next 200 comment careen into a pro vs. con Apple debate, which will spin off into iOS vs. Android, etc.
Trying to find any informative comments on an article now is just a waste of time.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Nice try, Romero...
there does seem a lot of people who don't care who care enough to both read and post about this story. Who was the Moron again? And yes, it actually is a very interesting story, and techy, and nerdy. now tell us again why euro crisis, kremlin protests, drug running is techy and nerdy?
This is primarily an OSS site, not a Microsoft site. If you want articles on problem solving in an MS environment, Slashdot is not for you. I suggest you start a site called Cee Colon Backslash Dot for Microsoft stuff.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Once on the Mediterranean map I controlled the south and southern Italy and one other civ controlled the rest. No matter what I did I couldn't get anywhere; it was perpetual stalemate. It is possible in this game but only if you're outnumbered but still fairly strong, which seems to be what happened to him.
They made a Civilization 2? Holy crap! I'm going to stop playing the Civilization game that I've been playing for 20 years on my IBM PC and go get myself a copy! Or...does anyone know a good Fido-Net BBS that I could download it from using my Hayes 2400 baud modem? I think I can still hack calling cards to call toll-free.
Actually, if memory serves correctly. Reddit was started partly because /. did not want to moderate submissions.
In fact moderating of submissions is relatively new in my usage of /., and I'm not so olde head.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Note, I think my reddit founding was actually digg...
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
What'smore boring than playing Civilization II for 10 years.....
Reading about it in /.
Your memory serves incorrectly. I am old head, this account's email is the only one I remembered after a 3 year hiatus.
/. - I believe they were trying to do what digg and StumbleUpon were going for, just effectively and dynamically, with enough in the front-end that you can see response in real time. They succeeded, obviously.
/. has always had editors deciding what hits the front page, based on user response, and thus your RSS feed, with the result being the time-to-publish being subtantially higher or more delayed [than other aggregating sites that don't need a mod's stamp-of-approval] as a result. It's an aggregating news site with mods deciding what hits the front page - /. does not (historically, although the powers that be try to do something like the /.TV thing going on now, every now and then) provide much Original Content. This is not a bad thing, IMO - but means you wait an extra ~24-72 hours over a multitude of other sites. It's relatively longer, now that CmdrTaco no longer runs the show, but still effectively the same.
I don't recall reddit's founding to be a response to anything done here on
Although the firehose was a relatively new form of moderation,
**Seeing your response to yourself now. I believe that to be true.
Slashdot is indeed quite slow, but the comments on ./ are SO much more interesting that it's worth the wait for me.
I don't understand why ./'ers refer to reddit as the new ./. Reddit looks like 4chan to me.
It was Digg I meant.
I swear I read somewhere something like:
"why can't users mod stories"
"we don't want that feature"
"Imma make digg"
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
dotslash
Um, woosh? The point of creating an account is so that you can use the filters?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
dotslash