WHAT WE DID
Yeah, I think we did some cool things this year. First of all(and perhaps most significant), we updated(e.g. worked on) the site. And we updated it a lot, surpassing the outstanding(for a civ site) number of 100 headlines in a month. Headlines which were mostly news and not site updates. That was the second thing we did this year, we continued the "tradition" of UCIVIIS and a bit less of TFGC2S of having civ news beyond the usual "I added two mods today".

Speaking of mods, we did something "cool" in that area too. We created a searchable database for our files(initially the civ ones), with descriptions and even screenshots for each file. 9 Months after the opening of the civ2 database, we now store 250 civ2 files, a total of 400 files in all three databases(civ2, ctp, smac).

But for many, the most important part of Apolyton is the forums. Message boards were not something new for civ sites of course. But with nearly 100,000 posts in the last year(there currently about 73,000 but some 25,000 posts have been deleted through the year for maintainance reasons), this is something that just never happened before.

The success of the forums, and the gradually rising of Apolyton's visitors, brought something even "cooler", much better communication with the companies behind civ. We saw developers participating in the forums(others regurarly, others rarely of course), interviews, public chats, previews... Of course, this didnt just happen, it was at biger part a decision of the companies, and yes, a part of their marketing strategy :) but it resulted to more and better news coverage and information for civers. Isn't it?

Last, but not least, while some times being called monopolistic son of #$%@ :), we supported civ sites with good content and unique ideas, by giving the means and the public attention to grow. And in the last 3 months we gave the oppurtunity to other sites to send their news to almost 2000 people every week through our newsletter...

WHAT WE DIDN'T DO
All that sound very good, didnt it? :) Well, there are things we didn't do. We failed to include our entire civ2 file archive(only 1000 files) in the database, as we thought we would. We failed in creating a discussion mailing list. We also failed in learning civers to use Mirc :) and become regulars in our irc channels. There are several parts of the site which haven't been updated for months(civ2 hof, civ2 tournaments, smac encyclopedia to name a few). We should have covered more games in the Alternative Civs section, there are lots of them out there. Finally, we didn't create 4 off-topic forums(one for each game and one for everyone else) :)

Of course for all of the above, and for all the ones that I "forget", there are reasons. In most cases it was lack of time and helping (html-writing) hands(database, updates, etc), in others we just didn't do it right or it wasn't really needed.

THANKS TO....
my Mod and Dad who brought me to this world :) No, seriously, we owe many thanks to a lot of people. First of all to everyone who was or is a part of the Apolyton team: Jason Beaudoin(smac section), Kent Wang(db, poll scripts), Sven Muencheberg(civ2 db), Dustin Dunn(newsletter, civ2 db), Derek "Akula" Lande(chats), Pythagoras(smac db, hof), Thomas "Mentat" Mathison(crucial cgi help), as well as Cam Hills, Sam Baker, Derek Barrett, John Bell, Thomas Breivik, DarthVeda, Dracon, Monk, Reismark I, Rishenko, Jaspreet Shaheed and Stewart Spink, who worked in all sorts of things(news, page updating, civ2 db), and last, but not least, Ming(OT moderator).

And then, we have to thank all the people who sent those "keep up the good work" mails :) , the people who suggested ideas, the people who criticized wrong things, the people who submitted their files, their strategies, their writings, the people who mailed news to us, and all the people who made even on pageview :)

Ending, thanks to Gamestats for being the best host a gaming webmaster could wish for. Without them, I'm not sure where we would be.
And finally, thanks to the companies(the people who work for them actually), for making these great games we love, and for always being responsive to our questions and open to our ideas. Did I miss anyone? :)

SO, WHAT'S NEXT?
Yeah, ok, that was good start, but what's next? Well, we will first try to do what didnt do the first time :) Other than that, we have to be more organized, to allow for easier updates(=more updates), to find more people willing to work :) In our survey we've got lots of "5" but there's a lot of room for improvement, and, thank God, there are and will be alive civ games to cover :)

THE END(ACTUALLY, THE BEGINING!)
So, as said before, we've got a long way ahead. In the next year we'll have two challenges: one, making Apolyton even better, larger, more visited. And two, beyond ToT and SMACX, there is the challenge of Civ3. The development has only recently started and Firaxis is listening to civers. The challenge will be to continue what the first version of The List have started, paving a common road for developers and civers. Doesn't it sound dreamy? :)