This is the first time that I find myself in the position of reflecting on the previous year of Apolyton Civilization Site's life. For the first three, Markos has had the privilege of composing the "open letter from the administration" and for a change of pace I have taken over the reigns this time around. This is change, a word that could also be used to characterize the latest year in the life of Apolyton but that would be both an understatement and a tiresome cliche... still, it fits.

Speaking of age, Apolyton is now 4 years old -- yep, it's a rambunctious toddler that is impossible to keep up with. In this instance, however, you will not find me complaining.

NUMBER CRUNCHING: 28 MILLION (68 MILLION To Date)
Let's do some hard and fast number crunching. First, some definitions: unique visitors refer to the number of individuals whereas pageviews refers to the number of pages those individuals browsed. Pageviews add another dimension to the figures because they give you an idea of how many pages on average a person is browsing on the site, an indicator into how long they stay after they arrive. In early fall of 2001, we broke into the Top 25 computer gaming site listing being tracked by popular hit statistics program HitBox. The release of Civilization III in October of that year drove Apolyton's traffic to unprecedented levels. As tracked by our said HitBox counter, a staggering 23,873 unique visitors visited the site on November 26th, 2001 -- an all-time high. Earlier in the month, November 5th, we set a record for the number of pageviews: more than 152,000. In the month of November, we logged more than 570,000 unique visitors and 3,500,000 pageviews. While this was an exceptional month and contributed greatly to an indeed exceptional year, the site showed persistent growth over the period July, 2001 through to the date of this writing.

Let's examine the first half of 2002 for a moment, shall we? During this period, unique visitors ranged in number from 175,275 in March to 233, 396 in May. In averaging these six figures, we come to an impressive 206,039. Sweet! Pageviews too offer a similar representation. From 1,380,160 in March to 1,747,602 in May, the six-figure average comes to a remarkable 1,568,131. Double sweet! In perspective: when there was a solitary candle on ACS' birthday cake, we recorded a little over 300,000 unique hits and a little shy of 6,000,000 pageviews over twelve months time [ reference ]. At this time last year, in looking at the period July, 2000 to July, 2001, we were heralding 22,000,000 pageviews [ reference ]. Since Apolyton's inception four short years ago, its growth of what is best described as leaps and bounds could not have been accomplished without our dedicated staff of volunteers over the years and you -- yes, you! -- the audience. To whom did you think this letter was directed to, anyway? One final bit of numerical trivia for you: for the year 2002 to date, 4PM (EST) is Apolyton's most trafficked hour on average (3PM (EST) is a close second). What does it all mean? Well, I think we may be able to pinpoint what is at the forefront of Apolytoners' minds at the end of their work day...

Now we get to the forums -- *whistle*. In recent months, the forums are averaging near or above the 3,000 post-a-day mark with 1,000 new accounts being registered every 5-6 weeks(!). At the time of this writing there are over 49,900 threads and 971,900 posts within them(!!). Depending upon the time of day, there are anywhere from 125-350 simultaneous connections on average; that is to say, at any particular second of every minute of every hour of every day. Apolyton, you've come a long way baby. The numbers are only one part of this indcredible chapter of the book of this fansite.

THE ROAD FROM THEN TO NOW...
A lot has happened since this time last year, both on Apolyton, in the Civilization community and elsewhere (September 11th, 2001: never forget the senseless tragedy). Rather then repeating what is already aptly covered in the "Year In Headlines" two-part article, I am going to pick one community and one (ok, two) Apolyton-related events to discuss here. First, the community itself: the release of Civilization III last fall was definitely the highlight. Things really started to kick into high gear following last year's E3 Conference where a number of official (and not so official) videos were leaked to the online gaming community. Once the game was released, a conflict raged as to whether or not the game lived up to its expectations reminiscent of the descent voiced following Civilization: Call To Power's release before it.

As for Apolyton itself, there's no contest in picking out the brightest highlight (although I will mention a second, although recent, revolutionary step). I am of course speaking of Apolyton leaving the GameStats News Network in January of this year after nearly 3 1/2 years. It was a tough decision. It was the only home Apolyton had ever known, and was the Ultimate CivII Site's (my CivII site's) home for the preceding seven months. As many of you know, I was also GameStats' Director of Operations from July, 2000 up to and including October, 2001. Apolyton's identity to that point was very much intertwined with GS', and on behalf of Markos and myself, we felt that the opposite was true too. Suffice to say that although it may have appeared our decision to move was sudden, we had been contemplating the move for some time before then. With the severe server problems over the Christmas, 2001 period, the process was simply expedited. We thank GameStats for their support over the years, but it the time was more than right to move on. From January until late April of this year we were hosted on a non-commercial server in Greece for free. Without their generous support of this site, at would surely not be in its present state of good health if not deceased completely. Then, we found RackShack who has been our gracious hosts since that time. Make no mistake: the only reason that Apolyton was able to go independent, that is separate from any other affiliation (i.e. to a gaming network), is because of the continued support of visitors such as yourself. And for that, we -- the Apolyton staff -- are grateful.

SUMMARIZATION AND ON THE HORIZON...
So what does the future hold for Apolyton and the community? I'll touch on the latter first. Master of Orion III is slatted for release later this year, and Rise of Nations in 2003. Galactic Civilizations is also nearing availability with the first betas just a week or so ago surfacing (that is, in relation to when this article was written). And of course, let's not forget the Civilization III expansion pack, Play The World. There is definitely a lot to look forward to here.

In looking back on our first year, I said in response to a question Markos asked me in an interview that the goal for Apolyton in looking towards the future was "to offer the most complete, up-to-date and comprehensive coverage of Civilization-related material on the Internet to create a virtual epicenter of information for anyone to access, share, learn from, and contribute to". I think that we, at ACS, have always and continue to adhere to this notion. Whether Apolytoners are at work, school, lounging at home or the in-laws. We, the staff and administration of Apolyton Civilization Site, provide the technical means and helpful guidance along the way. But it is you, fellow Apolytoners, that gives this place its soul. Together we have built an online community whose future shines brighter and brighter.

Keep On Civ'in!