A few questions about CIV 2 from a newbie...

[Thranduil]

Hello! I'm new!

1. Do you always get 150 gold after attacking a Barb leader?

2. Is it a bug that any purple civ I'm playing against has an incredibly high GNP that it shouldn't be able to have?

3. Does J S Bach's Cathedral really only affect the cities on the same continent it's built on?

4. Is there some kind of list about the best CIV2 MP players, of all forums and leagues?

Thank you

[East Street Trader]

Welcome, Thranduil. Am I remembering correctly that you are a somewhat unfriendly mountain in Middle Earth?

Anyway some of the answers are: yes to 150g (always welcome). It is a while since I played on anything but Deity so forgive me if I am misremembering the rate on the other levels; yes to the purple civ bug - if you play on PC and with the standard version of the game you need the 2.42 patch which you can download from this site; no, that is a mistake in the game's literature, you get the benefit in all your cities; and no, I don't think that there is any composite list. I think I have seen reference to Gamesleague or some such site (there will be a link I expect) where a table was (or still is) maintained and the standing there was accorded respect on these boards and elsewhere too. But I play SP at present so you will likely get a better answer from the MP fraternity. Plenty of MP players post here but you will probably have seen that there is a specific MP forum so you might ask there too.

[finbar]

1. The gold you earn from creaming a barb leader is subject to the level of barbarian activity you choose to play. 150 gold comes with Raging Hordes and the figure drops as you descend the scale. It's so long since I've played other than Deity, I've forgotten what the other levels earn you.

4. No such official list exists on this site. Various players are widely acknowledged to be very, very good. Last year there was a round-robin competition, which, while not definitive, included a lot of very good players. Nappy finished up topping the list.

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[DaveV]

There are many problems with compiling a list of players. There are many fundamentally different games being played out there: various combinations of turn-based/simultaneous, 2x movement, 2x production, AI included or not, map size and settings, builder or conquest. As finbar said, you could come up with a consensus list of good players, but I'd bet nobody on that list has played everybody else. The games take so long that it's hard to have any sort of tournament - the last tournament lasted many months, and about half the field dropped out during its course.

I think one thing can be safely said: roughly one out of two of the people who post here believes, in his heart of hearts, that he/she is the best player in the world. And if not for bad luck, dumb game settings, or just the ignorance of the masses, he/she would be rightly recognized as such !

[Hueij]

quote: : roughly one out of two of the people who post here believes, in his heart of hearts, that he/she is the best player in the world.

I sure did, until I stumbled into Apolyton some two years ago. All the things I learned here made the game even better than I thought it was and, more important, made me realise that although Apolyton made me a better player than I ever was there are players out there that can beat me single-handed with closed eyes...