AI does get boring after a while. They become amazingly predictable. So ofcourse Multiplayer games are much more worthwhile. I personally have my own style of playing the game. I start by jacking up the science rates to maximum while in the despot government, and try to get as many technology advances as possible. I first work towards getting the important governments, leading up to Democracy.
Then I work on being able to build the Great Wall/United Nations, so enemies hesitate to declare war. From there it's smooth sailing. Don't give any of the enemies any technologies unless it's a good trade, build as many wonders as possible, and raise the tax rate moderately to cover the cost of the cities. Ofcourse... If you go ballistic and build tons of cities, you'll get a pretty nice return on your tax rates. From there, either just kill everyone, if theres not that many players, or simply do the Space Race thing.
I don't know if anyone else plays this way though.
To answer some questions...
"A problem. My spies will not go in enemy cities. Anyone with the idea why is that the case? I can bribe enemy units but can't touch the cities ."
You need to be quick. Whenever a Spy or Diplomat gets close enough to a city, sometimes the target will send a unit out to engage the Spy/Diplomat indoing so your unit is sent back to the nearest city for being caught. The key is getting just two squares away from the city, and then rushing for it before the units turn is completely over. From there a list of items is avaliable to do with the city as you wish. Hope thats the problem.
"I have tried to download and play this game on my work and private PC, which both run XP. I had to download
aemon.dll from an external source as the one in the zip file was incomplete. Now when trying to run the game both PC's now tell me Civ2 had to close and sorry for the inconveinence.
I really want to be able to play this game again can anyone help?"
Thats more a hardware issue. I have XP, and Civ 2 runs perfectly for me. I suggest just doing some fixing like removing any Spyware, Viruses, and junk. Re-downloading Civ 2, as I have downloaded it recently and the files work. Extract and then just run the Registry entries (titled Vfwfix) and run the Civ 2 exe. If that doesn't solve the problem I don't know what will.
Edit by punch: compiled I hate sephs double post into one post