John Possidente, a member of the ToT team, has been very active in our forums answering all questions regarding the product from numerous Civ fans. Here are just six responses from the ever-growing number of discussions John has had on various issues regarding ToT in the little over a week our ToT forum has been in existence!

Some of the responses may even surprise you!

PRODUCTION QUEUES: "I'm afraid we didn't add a production queue. There is one in Civ II, however; it's a bit kludgey and limited in scope. You can create a file called 'citypref.txt' in your Civ II root folder or a scenario folder and put the names of city improvements into the file. Then, whenever you put your Interior Minister (or whatever he's called) in charge of Autoproduction in a city, he will follow that list religiously".

CUSTOMIZATION: "Everything that you can customize in Civ II, you can also customize in Test of Time...BUT there are a few differences.
Some are good: the scenario macro language is expanded (more event triggers and actions, some bugs fixed); there's lots more stuff in the rules.txt file (new unit abilities, 4 sets of terrain, etc.); there are more slots for units and advances...
Some are bad: there's no map editor in Test of Time, but maps created with the Civ II Map Editor work just fine; there is no Editors menu, either (gotta go back to doing it the hard way); you can still create static icons for your own terrain and units, but you can't easily create animations to match (you can turn off the units animations, at least)".

SCENARIOS: "We've include one scenario in Test of Time, an awesome remake/upgrade of the Midgard scenario from Fantastic Worlds. Of course, this one is a complex, difficult, four map super-scenario. I hate it when those rampaging dragons toast one of my cities, then just wander away. Then the Barrow Wights start popping up, and..."

OLD SAVES/SCENARIOS: "Playing the mod packs and existing scenarios in ToT will not be possible until someone remakes the scenario/pack using ToT. Unfortunately, adding all the new features meant some radical changes to the format of both save files and scenario files. Scenarios created with earlier Civ II games won't load into Test of Time. You can still use the maps, though, so recreating the scenarios won't be as big a job as it might otherwise have been".

SCENARIO RANDOMNESS: "The new games that we've created for ToT -- the Fantasy and Science Fiction games and the Extended Game--are random start games. They started out as ideas for random start scenarios and just grew. So the final accounting is that you can still create random start scenarios the old way--by editing the files that the random start games use (after you save off the original, of course), but we haven't put in a feature to specifically allow random start scenarios".

TECHS AND WONDERS: "Wonders of the World without correlates, no [in science fiction and/or fantasy worlds have that are not 'native' to the original CivII. Although we've renamed them, created cool new art, and rearranged their prerequisites and obsolescence, we haven't changed the actual function of any of the wonders. Bottom line, the gameplay mix of wonders was pretty well balanced (except for maybe the Great Wall), and we didn't mess with it.

Technologies, yes. We've added several new advances for ToT. the extended game takes advantage of all of them. The techs in the fantasy game are similar to those in the original, but don't be fooled by that; their strategic usefulness is very different. In the sf game, all the techs are new and the tree is completely rearranged. You will see some familiar functions ("Allows Roads Over Rivers", for example), but that's because those functions are essential to Civ".

We encourage every Civer out there to register on our forums, if you have not already done so (it's free), and let your voice be heard and questions answered regarding the latest addition to the Civilization genre lineup.