Civilization games are famous for taking a long time to complete, but even your most hardcore marathon doesn’t compare to Reddit user Lycerius’s ten year slugging match between his communist Celtics and the Vikings and Americans.
In the year 3991 A.D., the remaining super-powers have weathered over 1700 years of war and are huddled in dilapitated cities surrounded by infertile marshes and radioactive wastelands.
The stalemate comes from the fact that Civ 2’s late game is perfectly balanced and the Vikings attack every round regardless of cease-fires. Every nation is 100% comitted to war manufacturing as any attempt at peaceful rebuilding means that your nation will be crushed by the other armies. Late-game building units are used only to build roads that take units to the front lines and then rebuild them when the infrastructure is destroyed.
While it’s cool that this guy managed to keep a save file for ten years, The Eternal War is also an awesome post-apocalytpic tale. Commie Celts? Spies slipping nukes into cities? Ice caps melting and reforming 20 times? Sounds like a recipe for a good novel.
A whole fandom has sprung up around this man’s tale and there’s a subreddit dedicated to finding a way to end the war. What do you guys think of this?
Source – Reddit
At one point I wonder whether the stalemate is either a programming error or simply magic and wonder seeping itself into an old CD-ROM.
They actually made a subreddit for it? Wow.
My friends and I were talking about this yesterday and some of us were very close to or succeeded in buying or reinstalling a Civ game. I didn’t bother buying it now that Shogun 2 has clicked with me but I may still get around to it some day.
The Day Z creator’s comments come to mind about how games don’t always need stories: We can just make our own.
As a longtime Civ fan, I love this story so much.
This article inspired me to play some Civ II today…until I discovered Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri. I downloaded the demo for Alpha Centauri and now I want the full version. It’s seriously the best Civ I’ve played!
I love the Civilization series for being able to let the player craft unique large-scale experiences every time.
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
Food for Thought: Will there ever come a day when these virtual Celts, Vikings and Americans rise up against the Users, delete Tron, and achieve world peace?