Apolyton CS: Civilization III: The List v1: Game Atmosphere

GAME ATMOSPHERE
-Summarized by Yin-
namk26@hotmail.com

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When everything else is said and done, a game with a poor 'feeling' can potentially undermine an otherwise ingenious effort. In a world of increasingly able computer systems, this idea of 'atmosphere' should not be overlooked.

1. WORD CHOICE/WHAT'S IN A NAME OR A NUMBER?    TOP

1.1) "Nuclear missiles instead of nukes" (EnochF). "I feel more like a great ruler when I use Nuclear Missiles than when I play with 'nukes'" (Ecce Homo).

1.2) "Implement a generic dictionary from which the names of places, rivers, mountain ranges etc. are generated to give the game world a realistic touch."

1.3) "Let us give individual names to certain units" (Diodorus Sicilus).

1.4) "For those that would like it should be possible to name ships and units/stacks to add atmosphere. When a battle was won the computer could say: 'Prime Minister, the DREADNOUGHT or INVINCIBLE has won a great battle and has been promoted to veteran status!' or 'Mr. President, the 5TH ARMY has taken Midway Island!'" (Bubba.)

1.5) "I also like the ability to name mountains/rivers, special natural resources. Then when you discovered something the computer could say: 'My liege, we have discovered X, what should we name them?' These then could be used later for the end of game wrap-up, as was mentioned before" (Bubba).

1.6) "I'd also like to see city renaming after revolutions. St. Petersburg became Leningrad, then Stalingrad, then St. Petersburg again" (NotLikeTea).

1.7) "I believe that when a government changes (and I do agree that you should have to slowly do reforms before government can change), you should be able to change the name of the nation. There would be a default, but you could change it, much like you can currently do with city names. After all I would much prefer to play The Roman Imperium instead of Rome." (Cartagia the Great).

1.8) "Instead of 'The Chinese have built the Great Wall' let's have 'The Chinese Empire has built the Great Wall.' Instead of 'Spies report that the French and the Greeks have formed a pact,' let's have 'Spies report that the People's Republic of France and the Kingdom of Greece have signed a pact.' These should be customizable by the player in the .txt files, just as the leader titles are" (NotLikeTea).

1.9) "If Civilization III has a council like SMAC, I'd like to see the other civilization leaders refer to you by a special title when you are planetary governor, like 'Council President' or 'Secretary-General'" (Jimmy).

1.10) "Terrain Features to name as we discover them? This could be done several ways:

1.10a) Each map is generated with certain namable features: highest mountain, longest river, Great Falls, deserts, great bays or deltas, jungles, long mountain ranges, etc.
1.10b) You can pick (borrowed from the new Star Trek BotF game) whether to have none, some, or all of the nameable features on the map.
1.10c) Only the longest, highest, biggest of each type of feature would be nameable, OR all features above a certain size (X tiles of contiguous mountains, a river at least X tiles long, etc) would be nameable" (Diodorus Sicilus).

Many people expressed worry as to what conventions to follow when naming people, titles and places. I included the post below for your comic/intellectual consideration (it's a plea to remind us all that it's impossible to do everything). But EVERYBODY is in favor of the effort to reasonably match leaders, titles and places with their 'proper' identifications. This clearly adds to the atmosphere of the game.

1.11) "It's only when the linguists start getting involved that problems start cropping up. And all of a sudden 'Dung Zhaoping' is spelled 'Deng Qaopeng' but pronounced exactly the same. And poor Mao is reduced to a 'Zedong' to make sure nobody can find him in the encyclopedia. Fortunately, the linguists haven't convinced anybody to change Genghis Khan's name to 'Chinggis.' And don't even get me started on the five thousand spellings of Muomar Gaddafi ..." (EnochF).

1.12) THE NUMBERS: "Try to use credible numbers for population and time scale" (NotLikeTea).

2. IS WINNING EVERYTHING?    TOP

2.1) "De-emphasize the winning of the game, i.e. make 'endless' play possible and reward achievements, not single actions. A bustling civilization should be of the same worth as a flight to AC" (NotLikeTea).

2.2) "I sometimes get an 'empty' sort of feeling after I have finished off the last civilization in my games. It roughly feels like all the hard work put into my empire is wasted, and to play I have to start over again. Some games are not meant to be open-ended (i.e. never ending), but I feel Civilization is one of those games that really should be" (Shah of Persia).

2.3) "It can be rather hollow feeling when the last city falls under the sword. Legend has it that Alexander the Great died of a broken heart because there were no worlds left to conquer" (EnochF).

3. SPEED OR BEAUTY?    TOP

3.1) "The game should be FAST since even the cutest graphics utterly destroy the whole game atmosphere when they make the game slow to load/to play. Most people could accept less advanced graphics or non-animated units if the gameplay would be as swift as in Civilization II."

3.2) "The majority of people in this world look for cool graphics, animations and movies. [Civilization 3] has to be enhanced in all the areas if it is to live up to standards" (Icedan).

3.3) "Fact is that most 'addicted' players don't care too much for how cute the graphics are, but in order to GET many people so far as to be addicted there has to be some eye candy" (Dominique).

3.4) War and graphics: "I would like to see some improvements to the atmospherics of warfare. The game would be improved if it reflected the damaging effects of warfare better. Some suggestions:

3.5) When a city is conquered, it gives off a pall of smoke for a set period. This could be linked to a period in which the city is unproductive, possibly even until some reconstruction cost is paid or work is done.

3.6) Pillaging doesn't just remove improvements, it leaves a scar upon the land. This could be represented by a symbol similar that for pollution in civilization I, or smoking ruins. To bring the land back to full production, the war damage would have to be removed first in the same way as pollution. Nuclear pollution should have permanent effects until a technology is developed (a future technology, not much we can do about it with current technology - witness Chernobyl, that part of the Ukraine is still unusable).

3.7) Cities that are destroyed in gameplay are marked by ruins.

3.8) Major land battles are marked by 'trophies' (the Greek idea), a flag on the site or possibly war grave icons. Possession these sites may give a points bonus" (Alexander's Horse).

3.9) "I don't think the look of the city should change to your own when a city is taken over. Also when a city has been nuked, shouldn't it LOOK nuked?" (Icedan).

3.10) "I second the notion of renaming cities, adding graphics for War Damage, and especially the idea that doing well or poorly in a war should affect the Happiness/Contentment levels of your citizens" (Diodorus Sicilus).

3.11) "COLOR COLOR COLOR! More than two or three, at least. Easily the worst turn off for SMAC for me was the downer feeling I got playing it. I much prefer the bright feel of Civilization 1,2 and C:CtP. Of course, this needs to be done carefully" (wheathin).

3.12) Movies: Most people have strong feelings about the movies in a game. These feelings vary from wanting movies cut in order to save Firaxis time and money (since the movies are only watched once or twice anyway) to arguing that well-done movies build hype for the game and add to an overall sense of immersion (though for this to work, the movies must relate well to the concept and flow of the game itself).

4. SOUND    TOP

4.1) "Sounds should be implemented, especially in the city view, to indicate the overall atmosphere and / or special events in the city view, but be careful NOT to overdo the sounds as they can become irritating" (EnochF).

4.2) "When I'm playing in the Nuclear Age, I want rock and roll! No more of this chanting and panpipes in 2003! In fact, with Civilization 2, you could actually play the game with one of your own music CDs playing. Let's redesign the game so that you can 'Play With Music CD' and it will give you real random play" (EnochF).

4.3) "If any voice files, like a person saying 'We have been stabbed in the back by the evil Greeks' or something, please add captions. This goes for any talkovers during WoW movies or High Council videos. Captions are necessary, not only for Deaf players, but for those who play into the wee hours of morning and don't want to wake up their parents. Captions aren't needed for sound events like 'ka-boom' when you attack someone, but it would be a nice touch" (LordStone1).

5. MAPS    TOP

5.1) Bird's eye view of empire: "Give us maps where we can have a decent look at our empire, like old historic maps" (Asgeir).

5.2) Realism: "Computer-generated maps should look 'like in the real world' with continents and large oceans" (NotLikeTea).

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