As computer strategy games go, the original Civilization and its successor Civilization II burned out many a monitor screen and players' optic nerves with its intense challenge to, well, build and defend a civilization. So what do companies do for an encore to extend the life and profits of products--they release a scenario disc.

Conflicts in Civilization is a CD-ROM (Windows 95 and 3.1 only, 8MB RAM) that provides 20 new scenarios, new music soundtrack, and an improved macro language to build your own scenarios. Of the 20 scenarios, 12 are from the minds of Microprose, but eight have been lifted from the Internet--"created by die-hard Civ II gamers" touts the press release.

The MP-generated scenarios are:

• Alexander the Great
• Jihad: The Rise of Islam (624-750 AD)
• The Crusades (1050-1250 AD)
• The Mongol Horde (1206-1340 AD)
• Age of Discovery (1492-1741 AD)
• The American War of Independence
• The Age of Napoleon
• American Civil War (includes new units)
• The Great War (WWI)
• World War 1979
• After the Apocalypse (post-nuke)
• Alien Invasion (presumably after you've rebuilt the post-nuke period)

The Web-lifted scenarios:

• Atolon (your guess is as good as any)
• The Cholera of Zeus (guessing Greek city states here)
• The Conquest of Britain (Roman? Viking? Norman? WWII Germans?)
• Cross and Crescent (sounds like crusades)
• The Fall of the Great Kesh (?)
• East Wind, Rain (wasn't there a wargame with a similar title?)
• Persian Gulf War
• Native Rebellion (colonial perhaps?)

It is somewhat interesting to note that 40% of a new product comes from the Web--and hopefully has been enhanced and any coding errors taken out (all those with bug-free computer games please raise your hands...thought so). Yet software companies are smart enough to know that allowing "die-hard gamers" to build-their-own is smart for long-term business...like the original DOOM.

Yet it is also a rule of thumb in the industry that expansion discs sell only 50% of the game/disk sales before it. According to Microprose, Civilization II sold 600,000 units. So, the company should do a brisk business, but I just wonder, good gaming aside, do you think these eight "die-hards" got paid?

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