TLDR

It's a site for viewing and analysing Civ 2 save files.

In the beginning...

When I was a kid, my dad installed a game called Civilization on our 386, and while I perhaps didn't quite understand the game, I enjoyed playing it.

Then, in 1996, came the news that my Uncle had got Civ II. I was hooked, and I loved it. I spent many hours playing it, and usually using the same strategy. I have played subseqent versions, but for me Civ 2 is the perfect balance of complexity v's fun, and as someone with some autistic traits I really enjoy playing the same games over and over and over...

The dark times came. 64bit CPUs and 64bit Windows meant that my copy of Civ 2 wouldn't work. I had to make do with Civ 3, which I enjoyed but I longed for the great Civ 2.

Enter the renaissance! Some clever bods published a patch for Civ 2 on the civfanatics forum. Hurrah! I was back in business, and house renovations were put on indefinite hold...

So... what is this site?

One thing about Civ 2 that has always frustrated me is the inability to easily see, sort and filter information about your cities. Which city has the best overall propduction? Which cities are not growing quickly? Where best to build Isaac Newton's College? and so on.

I've always known a bit of web tech, and here was a chance to really learn more about it. I would try to decode the .sav files, the information I seek must be in there???

I've spent a lot of time on this, further improving my skills in various technologies along the way (MariaDB, PHP, Python, Javascript and more).

While this site is all my own work, to decode the file I have been very much standing on the shouldvers of giants. I've sourced a lot of information from https://forums.civfanatics.com/ and https://civilization.fandom.com/, and a special shoutout needs to be made to this thread, which has a lot of information on the format of the game save file.

So please, try it out, let me know what works and what doesn't, and hopefully you'll find it useful.

Disclaimer

I have done limited testing on this site, as I only have my copy of Civ 2 (MGE) to play with. It may be that for other versions the format is slightly different, but I am willing to work on those in time.