By most people, the Civilization name was highly revered and some even thought it held some magical properties with the fans. Anxious to ride on the coattails of success, other companies launched their own adaptations, which ranged from the majestic to the disastrous.
It's also fairly common knowledge that Civilization and Civilization 2 have managed to break most of the conventional rules that the industry held so dear when those games were released. Fortunately these rip-offs are usually easily identifiable as they rarely carry the name of the original success but often go through great pains to tout just how much they are like the game they are attempting to clone.
One of the inevitable facts of today's computer gaming industry is that success breeds clones.lots of them! It's also true that most of these efforts result in poor knock-offs of the original, rarely risking making attempts at offering anything that resembles originality or inventiveness.