Four years of Apolyton. Who could have imagined the unique position Apolyton holds in the Civilization community today four years ago? Although I have to admit I wasn't here myself when UCIVIIS and TFGC2S merged to become Apolyton back in July 1998. I first came to Apolyton in the first weeks of 1999. I had seen a feature on Civilization: Call to Power on a Dutch TV show and thought I would test out my recently-installed modem to see if I could find any more info on this interesting game on the Internet (I was already a long-time Civ1 and Civ2 fan but without Internet access at home had no knowledge of the incredible resources for these games on the Net). Thanks to Activision's website I soon ended up on Apolyton. Back then I was still a total newbie on the Internet so it took me a while to figure out what a huge site Apolyton already was. So originally I only checked out the news, (p)reviews, strategy book and things like that.

But in the summer of '99 -- once I had acquired C:CtP myself and had become and avid player - I discovered the huge amount of fascinating developments that had been taking place on the forums in the months in which I had been 'stuck' on the main site. So I used the next two or three months to read everything that have ever been posted on the CtP1 forums and after that kept up with current forum events. I started to download and play mods and, not much later, to mess around with the text files myself.

In late '99, I finally thought the time was right to register and start posting myself. Perhaps in part because I was one of only a few knowledgeable on SLIC (CtP's scripting language), it was only weeks until I had been accepted as a member of the modmaking community and was also an active participant of the C:CtP email rings which then existed next to the forums. I made myself useful wherever I could, mainly on the area of SLIC, so once Activision wanted to assemble a team of Apolyton modmakers to serve as testing group for Call to Power 2, I was asked as well. Although things didn't exactly work out as planned (but that's a different article ), the group, which became known as the A-team, made a small yet useful contribution to CtP2. Moreover, we had a significant advantage in terms of knowledge, tools and time for modding CtP2. So I continued my modmaking work on CtP2 in late 2000 and throughout 2001, the year in which Apolyton entered its fourth year of existence.

Although the first 3 years were very exciting and interesting, I personally think the 4th year was the best one yet. Of course it was above all the year of Civ3 - something which even an avid CtP fan like me can't deny. But it was also the year Apolyton cut its ties with GameStats and got its own server, the year the Apolyton Store was opened, the year all visitor records were broken (over and over again), the year of ACSR, Faces of Apolyton, the first interview with Sid Meier, Democracy Games, the Finnish invasion, Simgolf, RoN, Candle'Bre, the Apolyton Directory and many other interesting and exciting events - too many to mention. For me, the most important development was that the CtP community proved to be able to not only survive, but even revive in the face of Civ3. Not to mention it was the year that I became an Apolyton staff member.

Around the time when Apolyton celebrated its third birthday, things were starting to look rather bleak for the CtP community. In the CtP1 forums there was no longer a real community left and the Creation forum, the lifeblood of C:CtP, had been all but deserted. Only a few brave MP people continued their activities as if things had never been different. The CtP2 forums were gradually drying up as well. Although this was the time in which the CtP2 Apolyton Pack was assembled, the Cradle of Civilizations mod made almost revolutionary improvement's to the game's AI and gameplay, and TileEdit and similar powerful new modding tools were released, the number of people modding and playing was dwindling. I was the only really active A-team member left: all the others had either retired or greatly reduced their activities, mostly because of a combination of real-life developments and Civ3. Everyone else also seemed to have put all their hopes on Civ3.

Even I myself unintentionally ended up spending a fair amount of time in the Civ3 forums. Largely thanks to the impressive works of the historians in the CtP community, I had developed a larger-than-average interest in history myself. I had a particular interest in the history of civilizations and thus got involved in discussions about which civs were included in Civ3 (most notably the 'Civs included. Just the facts madam.' threads). Of course it was inevitable that this dragged me into other Civ3 discussions, chats, contests and other activities as well. I soon concluded that Civ3 was not the game I was looking for (I won't go into detail about the reasons why but let's just say I still use the Firaxis quote "conservative sequel" and the words 'scripting language' a lot when explaining my position), but I still continued to hang around the Civ3 forums for the interesting discussions, the CivTrivia and the exciting and thrilling atmosphere that hung over the Civ3 forums. I guess I was more or less hoping things would eventually work out better than I expected.

Once the list of civs in Civ3 was out, countless polls and threads sprung up all over the place, discussing which threads should have been in Civ3 but were left out, or which civs should be in a future expansion pack. I got annoyed by all these ten-options max polls and was actually stupid enough to start a thread of my own: the Expansion Pack Civs Poll, which eventually ended up being one of the longest running discussions on Apolyton history, spanning 4 'official' threads, 6 news items and about 14 weeks. And I'm not even mentioning the dozens of 'unofficial side-threads' and Apolyton ExtraCivs Pack discussions that spun off from it, the latter originally also organized by me. Eventually I grew more and more eager to spend more time on CtP2 and more and more disappointed in the various flaws of Civ3 and the attitude of Infogrames (and some extent Firaxis). So I eventually decided to leave the Civ3 community altogether, almost slamming the door in my @ss on my way out, as someone put it in my fare-well thread. I still come back from time to time to promote CtP2, to help out with the ExtraCivs Pack or to discuss history in the Civ3-Civilizations forum, but I have since then never seriously looked at Civ3 again.

There's no real need for that either, for the CtP series has in the past months made an incredible comeback. Where the forums threatened to dry up right before Civ3's release, the activity soared up in the months after its release. Some were disappointed with how many of CtP's good features were ignored in Civ3's development and returned to their old game, others found that the game was too buggy or too conservative, had heard many good things about modded CtP and decided to give this game (another) try. In the period around Civ3's release, the pageviews for the main CtP2 section were back at the level they had a few months after the game's own release, in spite of the fact that all activities were taking place in the forums rather than on the website. The forums themselves were quite crowded again as well, although the level of activity that they had in the time around the release of CtP2 have not quite been repeated.

This also resulted in a frenzy of modmaking, sometimes because people had good ideas of their own, sometimes because concepts from Civ3 inspired them. Strategic resources, colonies, improved diplomacy, wonders that are visible on the world map, minor civs, all examples of concepts that were first seen in the Civ3 (although not all of them actually made into the final release) but that are now either already in a CtP2 mod or that are currently being implemented (the other way around is also often the case: things that have long since been part of (modded) CtP1/2 can now in some form or another be found back in (modded) Civ3). Also, the idea of cities expanding over multiple tiles as they grow was revived, as well as a new economic model. Even more improvements were made to the AI, a new religion model has been proposed, once again a revolutionary mod (called World at War!) was released with a very aggressive and quick-paced gameplay, numerous new scenarios (including a space scenario with a complete makeover of the game's graphics) were announced and released, new graphics, tools, manuals and other modmaking resources became available - the modmaking community was (and still is) buzzing with activity again. Although the number of active modmakers is still relatively low, the quality of the work done is higher than ever before. One could argue that modded Call to Power 2 has almost reached a standard where it should be renamed Call to Power 3. But it's not just the modmakers that are active. All kinds of interesting things were happening in the rest of the community as well: succession games were started, strategy discussions revived, countless newcomers needed help in setting up the game or its mods, more news was posted on the website, the multiplayer community grew in numbers, a multiplayer registry was set up to make it easier for MP players to contact each other, both singleplayer and multiplayer tournaments were and are being organized and played (on Apolyton and on various clan websites), etc. Contrary to the months before Civ3's release, there is now once again a true CtP2 player community on Apolyton. Many people, newbies and veteran, prominent Apolytoners and less well known ones, all are posting on the forums again and discussing all aspects of the game. At present, it seems more likely for the community to grow rather than to shrink.

The revival of the C:CtP occurred later than CtP2's revival. The release of Civ3 had only a small and temporary effect on the visitor numbers of the main C:CtP section. For a long time, the number of pageviews of this section had been stable at 7,000-8,000 per month. In the months around Civ3's release this grew to around 10,000 but in January it had already dropped again, to about 5,000. However, in the months after that this number soared up to almost 20,000 pageviews per month where it seems to have stabilized in the last few months. More importantly, the forums, particularly the CtP1-Multiplayer forum, are also buzzing with activity again. Several ladders are running and a World Cup tournament is being played at the moment. The General forum and the Strategy Book are picking up activity again and even the Creation forum is showing some life-signs, with the release of CityMod2 and the development of the Mars Mod and an American Civil War scenario.

It was around the time in which this rise in activities in the CtP forums began that I left the Civ3 community and fully devoted myself to CtP2 again. I knew however that noone of the Apolyton staff of that time was actively following the CtP community, while I myself saw it as something that was of vital importance to the community: someone was needed to moderate the forums, post news items, maintain a file database and generally organize activities. What use would all our potentially mind-blowing mods have if noone was playing them? Although I really only wanted to make mods myself and leave it to others to take care of these things, I realized that if I didn't do anything, noone would. So I started to harass first Markos and later also Ming and Dan to help me out. I asked for dead links to be fixed, threads to be topped/moved/closed, news to be posted, kept whining about the database which needed to be fixed. Eventually Markos, Dan and I worked out an arrangement: I (as LNA: Locutus News Agency) would send them news items and that they would post them for me. Also, they promised that I would eventually become a database manager once a new database had been implemented. Ming has always been more than happy to help out anytime I ask for the topping/moving/closing of a thread in the CtP1/2 forums. After a while Markos got fed up with me constantly sending him news items and gave me access to the news script. Also, only days later, Apolyton moved to a new server and the owners gave me FTP space so I could set up a temporary CtP2 file database. And last but not least, they instated me as a full staff member, with all accompanying rights and responsibilities.

Now, three months later, a new database has been just been opened (the Apolyton Registry), making my job as file database manager much easier. I have been writing news for about 8 months now, 5 of which as official 'News Agent'. After a six-month adventure in the Civ3 forums I've spend another eight fully devoted to C:CtP and CtP2. A time in which I - first as regular poster and later as staff member - set up succession games, organized SP and MP tournaments, maintained a FAQ, a link section and a temporary file database, pointed out threads for Ming to moderate - generally tried to organize whatever the community needed. And last but certainly not least, I continued my regular forum discussions, helped out newbies wherever I could and worked on various mods and scenarios, as I have always done.

So the past year has been an especially busy one for me but when looking back I can be satisfied. Although I would prefer to spend all my time making mods, I can't say I hate being a staff member either (the diversity in activities is certainly nice). I would to thank Apolyton, specifically Markos and Dan, for doing a fantastic job in providing this great platform to fans of the entire Civilization genre (from Civ1/2/3 to CtP1/2 to SMAC and Freeciv and Clash and all those other games) and for giving the CtP community what's required to survive and prosper. Hopefully the next years ahead of us will be just as great as the ones behind us.

Thanks and keep on civing!
Locutus