Civilization II — Browser Recreation

An independent, graphics-first browser recreation of Sid Meier's Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition. The project uses Vite, vanilla JavaScript, Canvas 2D rendering, and optional 2× sprite upscaling while preserving the original MGE interface, rules, proportions, music, and movies.

Ownership requirement: you must legally own or otherwise be licensed to use Civilization II Multiplayer Gold Edition before opening the game. The hosted version presents this attestation before any MGE-derived asset loads.

Play

Visit the project site and choose Open the game. The project page explains the recreation and the game page records the ownership attestation locally in your browser.

Status

• Complete original MGE movie library: 28 Wonders, 21 heralds, opening, victory, launch, defeat, anarchy, and High Council movies
• Original city, research, Civilopedia, throne-room, advisor, score, and map UI
• Save/load, scenarios, diplomacy, research, combat, AI, Wonders, spaceship, government, trade, and late-game mechanics
• 260+ Playwright browser regression tests
• Production build deployable beneath the GitHub Pages /civ2/ project path

This is a playable public beta, not a claim that every undocumented MGE edge case has been reproduced.

Local development

npm ci
npx playwright install chromium
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000/ for the project page or http://localhost:3000/game.html for the game.

Validation:

npm test          # complete browser suite
npm run build     # root-path production build
npm run build:pages
npm run preview:pages

Reporting bugs

Choose Game → Report Bug... inside a running game. The app creates one ZIP containing a screenshot, a restorable game-state snapshot, the current camera and open-screen state, browser/viewport diagnostics, and a local traceback of the last ten canvas clicks. Each traceback entry records the screen before and after the click, pointer and map-tile coordinates where applicable, the active unit/city context, and resolved menu action where available. It does not record typed city names or transmit anything automatically.

• Download ZIP saves the report locally.
• Share / Email uses the browser or operating system share sheet when file sharing is supported. Otherwise it downloads the ZIP and opens an email draft that tells you which file to attach.
• GitHub Issue downloads the same ZIP and opens a prepared issue. Attach the downloaded file before submitting it.

The static app never asks for or stores GitHub credentials. Bug-report ZIPs can contain original MGE artwork, so they should be shared only for diagnosis.

Repository layout

src/               game engine, renderers, data, audio, and site entry points
public/            browser-ready runtime files only
tests/             Playwright regression suite
tools/             documented extraction and conversion utilities
docs/              parity, provenance, asset, and architecture notes
reference-local/   local original installation; ignored and never published
reference/         local third-party reference checkout; ignored

public/ intentionally excludes the original Windows installation, executables, DLLs, saves, logs, source AVIs, duplicate sprite extractions, and development comparison files. See ASSET-NOTICE.md.

Reference and provenance

The primary behavioral reference is axx0/Civ2-clone, a GPL-3.0 C# project. It is used to understand observable MGE behavior, data, sprite coordinates, and file formats; its source is not included in this repository and this project's JavaScript implementation is independently written.

The running original Civilization II MGE game is authoritative when behavior or presentation differs. See docs/reference-data.md and docs/image-assets.md.

Licence

Original project code and documentation are licensed under the BSD 3-Clause Licence. That licence does not apply to original Civilization II assets, trademarks, or other third-party material. See ASSET-NOTICE.md for the ownership boundary and disclaimer.

This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MicroProse, 2K Games, Take-Two Interactive, or the original game's creators.