Civilization II was a commercial hit, with sales of around three million units by 2001, and has won numerous awards and placements on "best games of all time" lists.

The following civilizations appear in the game: Americans, Aztecs, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Celts, English, Egyptians, French, Germans, Greeks, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Mongols, Persians, Romans, Russians, Sioux, Spaniards, Vikings and Zulus.

Grouped by eras from ancient to modern, civilization advances, both scientific and societal, offer numerous advantages.

There are three paths to victory: conquering all other civilizations, building a spaceship that reaches the Alpha Centauri star system using advanced technology, and otherwise surviving until 2020 AD.

[8] Asked about Sid Meier's involvement in the project, Reynolds replied, "We sat down and brainstormed about it and hashed out ideas, that's about it.

Fantastic Worlds also contains a new scenario editor that allowed users to edit the statistics and icons used for units, city improvements, terrain, and technologies, as well as creating event triggers and other enhancements to the game.

Test of Time has a new palette and user interface, and new features such as animated units, a playable Alpha Centauri to settle and new campaign modes.

Civilization II placed second on PC Data's monthly computer game sales chart for April 1996.

[17][18][19] In the United States, Civilization II was the third-best-selling computer game of the first six months of 1996,[20] and the fifth-highest seller of the year as a whole.

[26] It finished 20th on PC Data's monthly chart for March,[27] and was the United States' 17th-highest-selling computer game of the year's first half.

[30] Civilization II reached 1.2 million units sold by April 1998; Terry Coleman of Computer Gaming World wrote that sales were "still going strong" at that time.

[32] It also received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) in August 1998,[33] for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

He especially praised the added depth of the combat, diplomatic relations, and trade over the original Civilization, which he said was one of the best games ever released for PC.

"[50] In 2007, Civilization II was ranked as third in IGN's list of the 100 greatest video games of all time,[61] having previously rated it at number 15 in 2003.

[64] The journal article "Theoretical Frameworks for Analysing Turn-Based Computer Strategy Games" deemed it "significant and influential".

[66] Computer Shopper deemed it a "worthy successor" to Civilization,[67] and "arguably the finest multiplayer game ever created".

"[74] In 1998, PC Gamer declared it the 2nd-best computer game ever released, and the editors called it "intelligent, engrossing and entertaining beyond compare, it's one of the finest artistic achievements of the last decade".

In 2011, researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the University College London published the results of a machine learning system playing Civilization II, in its Freeciv implementation, which used the text from its official game manual to guide its strategy.

[78][79] The linguistically informed player outperformed its language-unaware counterpart, winning over 78% of games when playing against the built-in AI, a 27% absolute improvement.

[81] In June 2012, the Reddit user "Lycerius" posted details of his decade-long Civilization II game,[82] since dubbed "The Eternal War".

The game closely mimicked social conditions in the dystopian novel 1984 of George Orwell, with three superpowers engaged in perpetual multiple-front total warfare.