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#97 Apolyton CHANGES THE PARADIGM Derek relays to us all the ways in which he sees Apolyton as being special. #98 WHAT IS WRONG WITH Apolyton ADDICTION? The debate continues: Imran demands to know what is so out of place of being an Apolyton addict. #99 AT EVERY LEVEL, IN EVERY WAY Creators still crave a half decent modification editor, Johan Palme laments. #100 BRIAN IS GONE BUT CIV3 IS STILL GOING STRONG Brian (Reynolds) may be gone, but don't anyone give up on Civ3, korn469 persists. #101 INTERNET COMMUNITIES Online communities are all over the place, CyberShy says, and all you have to do is look. COLUMN ARCHIVE

It seems like it has come down to one column per month for me. With my last two articles being posted on December 1st and January 1st, I guess the February one is a bit late :) But on to today's topic. As you might have noticed, one of my favorite subjects is CTP, and the announcement of CTP2, gave me the chance to write down some thoughts that have been circling in my mind over the last months. So, here are the things in my humble opinion that Activision should do to achieve better responses from fans and reviewers, something that will equal to a much better sales outcome. They are things that might be more important than the changes and improvements that were announced in the press release.

A) PRE-RELEASE DEMO=BUG FREE RELEASE
Don't know if this sounds strange to you, but I think it has some truth in it (always imho). The classic case for me is SMAC, but also seen it happening recently in with the Macintosh ports for CTP and SMAC. The SMAC demo came out on Christmas, people reported bugs, and it took Firaxis something like a month to fix them (about as much as it took Activision to make the first CTP patch, but this time after the release), builting a new demo, just a few days before the release. The result? SMAC is recalled as more or less bug free (yes, of course there will be many who will say that it still has plenty of them!), while CTP got a bad start in the eyes of the fans.

But there's another aspect in this. SMAC fans had something to talk about and actually play with while waiting for the release. Abit part of the CTP fans where making guesses on when the patch would be out. Which image looks better?

B) INCLUDED AND GOOD EARTH MAPS AND SCENARIOS
Yeap, that one looked ugly for CTP1 as well. I was one of those who where saying "I don't care, I can wait a month for it, or better yet, I'll do it myself (or someone else will)". The thing is though that I'm a civ addict with net access and didn't really mind about such stuff. I am more interested in the actual game, and not in a map which I got anyway after a couple of weeks. For better or worse I'm not like lots of civers, who influenced from the "civilization" part of CTP's title where comparing every little part of it, with how it was in civ2 (of course you can say that this was Activision's fault, since they should expect this kind of comparisons when they were naming CTP). The same attitude existed in many of the reviewers, the ones I like to call "one-hour reviewers"(cause the play the game for one hour and then write the review :)). No earth map? Give it a six... This suggestion includes a more logical and easy way to play with maps and scenarios. Start a new game with a pre-made map from the Load Game option?? Please no. Stuff like that led me to the next thing that Activision should do with CTP2

C) FULL AND EASY CUSTOMIZATION
Yes, CTP opened new ways in customization of civ games. Much more stuff that can be in a text file and is editable, than any other civ game before. The next step CTP should make is an included, easy to use, editor for all these text files, as well as a (windows of course!) editor for ALL graphics. Especially for text files, it's something a fan can and has done for CTP in a few days, why not Activision? And if you do a text and a graphics editor, shouldn't you have an improved scenario and map editor? There is also a wonderful fan-created program that converts bitmaps to a form which can be imported to CTP. Why not a feature like that? We'll be full of maps, mods and scenarios one month after the release if all this is done!

There are two possible questions you may ask, the first being: if the fans come out with such tools, why should the company care? Well, simply because a set of good included editors (with a decent manual as well of course) on every installation of CTP is completely different from a simple tool which is available on one web site. The other is: why should the company care about easy modification? I think a poster on forums with the login Kramdon said it perfectly: "If there was an excellent game editor, everyone could make their own modifications and be happy." The option for really easy modification to every single player will be the best answer to anyone having a dislike on how something works in the game.

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The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS or GameStats. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.