If you got hooked on Sid Meier's Civilization series back when the graphics were primitive and the strategizing top-notch, you'll appreciate one man's revelation that he's been playing the same Civilization II game for nearly a decade and has reached an apocalyptic stalemate.

Earlier this week, Reddit user Lycerius posted a fascinating tale about a single Civ II game he's been playing off and on for years. It's 3991 AD and just three civilizations scratch out a living amidst a "hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation" where the polar ice caps have melted more than 20 times due to global warming, "dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands," and endless warfare makes it impossible to even begin rebuilding the poisoned lands around the remaining isolated and crippled cities.

Despite all this, Lycerius has not given up on healing his virtual world.

"My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world," he wrote in his original post. A commendable sentiment, though a glance at that devastated world in the image below (click to enlarge) doesn't offer much hope.

The post has sparked a rollicking discussion on Reddit, even spawning a sub-forum called MMMCMXCI: The Eternal War that celebrates Lycerius' game and is full of advice for how he should proceed from herenot to mention plenty of nostalgia for a turn-based strategy game that many dedicated Civ players feel is the best title in the series.

As one redditor put it, "What is amazing, is that that he, with the Civ AI, has recreated a scenario that has been created in fiction (1984, Warhammer) in which the world basically reverts into an endless dark age, in which basically the entire population live only to fuel a war effort."

(The uninitiated should check out this Reddit thread for an explanation of why Lycerius' 'Forever War' scenario has sparked such interest with people who've been playing Civilization since the early years.)

Civilization II was released for the PC in 1996 as a sequel to Sid Meier's original Civilization title released by MicroProse in 1991, though Meier himself was not part of the Civilization II development team (he has weighed in on Lycerius' instantly famous game, however.). Atari re-released Civ II in 2002 for Windows 2000 and Windows XPgiven the time frame of his game, it's likely Lycerius is playing this version.

A staple of dorm rooms in the 1990s, the Civilization series offered a slow-paced alternative to the reflex-based shoot-em-ups and sports-themed video games of the era. Players could take as little or as long as they liked between turns, pitting themselves against the computer (multiplayer wasn't added until 2006's Civilization II Gold Edition) in a race to either conquer all other civilizations or beat everyone else to launching a spaceship to Alpha Centauri.

The premise was amazingly addictive. A player starts with a lone settler and perhaps a scout to explore, bereft of any technology beyond basics like fire-building, alone on a tiny patch of land surrounded by unknown blackness. From those humble origins, it's possible to methodically build up cities and eventually empires, amass gold and discover new tech, all the while marching through the centuries towards the modern age of tanks and factories and stealth bombers.

The game technically ends in the year 2020 and a winner is declared, but there's an option to keep playing for as long as you like. It's a game that gives itself over to obsession. Lycerius has clearly taken that to the extreme, but in doing so he's served up scrumptious fodder for the community of Civ fanaticsand perhaps even offered a chilling glimpse of what dystopia might look like if we real-world denizens choose the wrong path to the future.