Strategic Considerations For "Age of Reptiles"
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Author: John Possidente
Strategic Comment: Cameron Hills
Date Submitted: 3/13/00

Few would argue that 'The Age of Reptiles' is one of the most aesthetically pleasing scenarios ever produced for Civ2. The unit images are almost unmatched, while city designs and icons are first class.

From a play perspective, the scenario does arguably suffer from game balance problems created by the early availability of units that offer considerable strength — either defensively or offensively, a potent form of government, and what effectively boils down to one large landmass (unless playing as the Aaluvians) full of goodie huts and very habitable terrain.

Early-game Expansion and Exploration

Expansion and exploration — traditional approaches to the Civ2 starting game are only magnified in importance with this scenario. There is plenty of available land, and the tribes in the early stages have been placed some distance from each other. The terrain is generally shield rich, so quick production of the Coelophysis (Warrior) unit is possible, and shield support is generally not a problem.

There are plenty of goodie huts spread across this early-Earth in the traditional linear NW-SE slant pattern. While your 'explorers' may be surrounded by barbarians from time to time, the ferocious expansion of your technology, funds, and military presence is well worth this occasional and unfortunate demise.

In the case of the Triceratops, their "Alpine" and "Ignore Zones of Control" flags, plus their considerable defense strength makes this unit a very potent and capable explorer as well as military unit. They can tear around the map at effectively triple pace and open up a large swag of the goodie huts available. Additionally, early contact can be made with other tribes for tech' exchange or demand, but if negotiations don't end up with amity, your unit can still defend itself competently.

On the other hand, the Brachiasauris makes an outstanding defensive unit, and again can open goodie huts with assurance, taking most early-game barbarian attacks in their stride. Shifting one of these back to fortify the capital (ideally having picked up veteran status along the way) will mean you won't loose the game outright for some time, even if all else looks hopeless — although it should never get to that!

Generally the terrain is pretty 'shield-rich', but comparatively 'food-poor' in the main, for instance, even ocean squares start with an extra shield (the effect of an offshore platform), and with a focus on an expansionary campaign, the World Bazaar (The Pyramids) is a very useful wonder to secure. Population growth through 'We Love the President Days' is not an option in this scenario.

Key Wonders need key Advances

As a first step, in order to secure the growth rate created by the World Bazaar, the Barter advance is a handy 'nil, nil' technology with which to kick the game off.

Past this initial pursuit, there are arguably two routes into the technology tree worth chasing.

One will lead you to the Oviraptor unit (Omophagia is the advance) — a unit that is cheap, mobile and strong. These are pretty tough to topple when fortified as veterans, and again, potent explorers. A pack of these may be seen akin to charging Dragoons while your enemies are still trapped in the Ancient Era. Along the way to Omophagia, there are some pretty useful military units that become available to maintain your tribe's battle-strength. Note, there are similarly named advances, namely Oviphagia and Oviviparity — these should not be confused.

The other technology path will lead you towards the alternate government form; Cooperation — desperately needed to get out of Despotism. Once this is secured, with enough balancing the whole empire can be even further bolstered in terms of trade by the 'We Love the Citizen Days'. In the pursuit of Cooperation, you will pick up the advances required for several key Wonders and city improvements: Volunteer Corps (Adam Smith's Trading Company), Great Crèche (Hanging Gardens), and Earthworks (The Great Wall).

The other Wonders recommended as important can be derived from short offshoots to the pursuit of Cooperation and Omophagia. Lysenko's Library (The Great Library) if this is sought is not far from Cooperation, while Darwin's Stadium (Sun Tzu) is generally obtained from an extension and coming together of these two recommended paths.

As a total war scenario, once expansion through settling has effectively taken place, and the new government form has been implemented, it's then "gloves off" and hunting down the enemy with units such as the infamous T-rex. Hunt in packs and produce a combination of defensively strong as well as offensive units to protect the new lands (i.e. sound Civ2 strategy).

You can't throw your normal Civ2 'strategy book' away however for this scenario. City management will still require careful planning, and at Deity level the usual happiness difficulties and so on will need to be borne in mind and accounted for.

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