The problem with Civ 2 is its limited color palette with some strange color choices. I also don't like how the view is oriented, which makes it hard to move units accurately, although it's a general problem with such games (unlike Civ 1). It looked relatively good on small CRT monitors, but if you play it today on modern hardware you'll see it's visuals are not as robust.

I find Civ 3 gorgeous in comparison. It greatly benefits from running at higher resolutions and using many more colors. If only corruption was not such a pain in this game...

Civ 2 looks very good in newer systems and fits fine in modern screens. The game also can run in modern systems with workarounds already used in other old titles gog offers. The serious glitches civ 2 suffer is with 64 bit systems, problem that was solved with fan patches years ago, and could be adopted by gog, and the redbook audio that can be solved with the common wrapper gog uses in imperialism and other titles, for example (winmm.dll)

In the other side civnet or civ for windows looks terrible comparing to the dos version. Dos versions has better music and is more stable and looks as intended not looking like a visual basic app as the windows version. And being a windows 3.1 version the game can not be run in modern systems. Original dos civ is The true classic.

Greetings

It must be some kind of legal agreement or IP holder issue. I can't believe GOG would pass otherwise the chance to have some beast legends like the first Civs on the store.

I prefer the DOS version myself. The Windows one looks sharper, but more "artificial" and less charming.

Hmm. That must be why I thought Civ 2 was terrible while Civ 1 was amazing. I probably played the windows version of Civ 2.

I played Civ5 a few months ago just to test my new Linux configuration. It is a beautiful game. I believe anyone who is interested in strategy games should at least play Civ1 to see where it all started.

For me, Civ1 and Master of Orion are two of the few games that aged pretty well, like Sean Connery :)

Well. Civ 2 was windows version at launch. Not dos version exists if my memory does not fail me.

Aha, thank you. I was reading the messages fast and I've read wrong. :)

I always enjoyed the Microprose doc checks -- it helped you be better at the game usually! Learning train outlines made me recognize them better to play faster. Or knowing when the silver train or treasure fleet were in what town when was really helpful to getting rich...

Just curious, how would people be upset?
I enjoyed playing Civ1 DOS in high school library during breaks. The copy protection was easy to guess. It was basically Tech pictures, I believe. Civ could be a bit ugly with railroads on every land tile. Civ2 was better with railroads on mountains/hills bonuses.
I got Civ 2 when it first came out, lost hours immersed in it. It was fun trying out player made graphics and scenarios on the Internet. Few years later, found civ 2 gold edition shrink wrapped in a flea market for just 5 bucks. I loved the scenarios that came with it, but found the really hostile civ2gold ai offputting. You could probably edit it in some ini file. I didn't have the inclination to try it.

As to OP's question, good question. I guess maybe they're in a legal quagmire. There are different versions of civ 1 and 2. Sid Meier, Microprose, 2K all want a piece of the pie? I don't understand it much myself either.

We don't know why exactly but it always comes down to legal or technical issues. My guess would be there are unsolved legal issues; I think GOG and 2K are on good terms (of course Steam is always priority for big pubs but we've gotten nice stuff from 2K) but maybe 2K doesn't know if they have full rights to Civ 1 and 2, and maybe doesn't care enough to find out. Maybe it is also or instead technical, but I feel like at this point GOG can solve most tech issues (or work with DOSBox or ScummVM).

I don't know, just theorizing based on experience here in the forum.

Pretty sure that FIraxis doesn't want any competition to Civilization 6, especially from older Civilization games that are more feature complete than Civ6.

XCom —— my new favourite Gog game —— is from Firaxis.

Dunno , yeah civ4 is better , but why would it make competition? Imho those who bought civ4 bought civ 6 too.
Imho they are outdated , when they came out they were awesome i bet , but now they are just too old and the newer ones offer the same or more. Not like an adventure game where the story is the main part.

True, but the original 1996 version was 16-bit. It wasn't until the Multiplayer Gold Edition and Test of Time that it became 32-bit, and if any version would ever be re-released, it's either of those two, but they still need a custom patch to get working smoothly on 64-bit systems.