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#101 INTERNET COMMUNITIES Online communities are all over the place, CyberShy says, and all you have to do is look. #102 THE ESSENTIAL CTP2: BEYOND THE PR STUFF (PART 1) MarkG hopes that fans and reviewers alike will better receive Activision's next CTP project. #103 THE ESSENTIAL CTP2: BEYOND THE PR STUFF (PART 2) MarkG takes one more day to say his peace on the attitude Activision should take towards CTP2. #104 MICRO FOCUS IN CIVILIZATION KILLING CIVILIZATION III Jason Beaudion surfaces to share his thoughts on micromanaging in Civilization. #105 PORTRAIT OF A WEBMASTER DanQ responds to eight of the most sought-after answers from the Apolyton administration. COLUMN ARCHIVE

The first few times I played Civilization I, it was a great experience. I had no idea what roads did besides making movement faster. Never irrigated or mined. Didn't really care what the units were. But I explored the world with my warriors and phalanx and legions (I actually left my cities un fortified. Oh, the horror). I crushed other civilizations (well duh, I played chieftain level) and didn't understand their attitudes. I couldn't stop. My parents were angry since I've stopped eating, drinking and sleeping. I wasn't responding to any verbal communication. I had shown no life signs except yelling at the computer every once in a while.

Then Civ II came. It promised to make the experience more rich, as it did, but it had flaws. I had to sit infront for hours since the AI turns were very long and I couldn't leave since sometimes messages would popup and the game halted waiting for me to click ok. I don't care that the Americans had paradropped into Berlin. I really don't.

Then I found out about CTP. It had promised to make the civ experience more bug free. more flowing. more fun. And also futuristic. I waited and waited. I played it once. But somehow it was boring. It took me great efforts to make it come up. THe game itself was boring. And although it contained everything promised, it was not good. My expectations weren't fulfilled. It had everything I wanted, but there was a little offset in every feature. That made the game not very good.

The point is, that every game up until now, has tried to immitate the great civ experience. The thing is, it can't be done. They all should innovate. Alot. I can't have the same experience in any other game. So why don't you create a whole new experience? I trust Firaxis and Activision to do that now. I believe CTP 2 will be all that CTP wanted to be, and had the potencial to be, but wasn't. I hope that Civ 3 will have a very new and perspective on the civ game type.

And here is some advice:

1. Don't expand the time too much. CTP had I think the same number of units as Civ 2, but it covered a twice bigger time span. Result: It was very unpleasant. A small choise for each period.

2. If you plan to make stacked combat - make it very balanced or give it up. Not that the traditional civ combat doesn't have it's flaws, but most can be fixed by changing rules.txt.

3. Make the game very easy to costumise and have an option for scenarios. If not for scenarios, civ 2 would not have lasted that much time as it did. People still play it. The scenarios give an option to recreate major events in history. I think that a big part of the civ type games fans are in it because of the history. I don't like the Civ2: ToT things. I don't like the SMAC story. And I think many more people have been discouraged by that.

4. Make good costumisation. Weren't good Civ 2 scenarios rare? and why? because the editor sucked. You had no switches, no programmed events. No good map editor. I want to create a map with reasonable landscape. Based on geographic rules. This happened in a way in the new game option, but it was not as good as it should be. No graphics editor. I have a copy of Paint Shop Pro. Many others don't.

VERY IMPORTANT: Do not follow Civ2: ToT. Do not make a lousy editor for editing the graphics pixel by pixel and a simple editor of different fields for rules.txt. Do you know how fun it is to draw a simple road in the cheats menu? You have to choose every tile you want to have road and check the road option on. The editor should be more like ceasar 3 / simcity 3000. I want to draw a road. I want to click on a city to change many things. I want to have a stand alone program to do that. I don't wanna run the game with all it's RAM heavy resources every time (assuming Civ 3 will need a healthy amount of RAM). Also, the keyboard shortcuts sucked. Because all the good ones were used for unit movement.

A big problem is that the editors are often very bad. Because they are created only to make fans happy by saying: "A full level editor is included". fans find out that the editor is unable to create anything more than a crude landscape. Because the game creators don't use it. Make an editor the game creators would use for creating levels. Then you know it will be good. I have seen the dreadfull editors for Age of Kings, Red Alert and such. The creators did not used the editors for creating scenarios. They programmed them. In another way. and in civ, to create a scenario as good as the WWII supplied with civ 2 would take a month of non stop boring work on the civ 2 editor. I know this point was a bit long, but it's a painful spot in almost all games.

5. More realistic but with a taste of sence. Do not make it very realistic. It can not immitate life. Never. Make it a good game similar to reality. Don't insert very realistic stupid features as well as unrealistic stupid features.

6. Don't make it all too complicated. I've mentioned it in a post in the Civ III forums. Remember Stratego? Remember Risc? and remember Diplomacy? Dplomacy is a VERY simple game with a simple gameplay. Yet the gaming is based on human creativity. It puts almost no limits on my creativity. That is why it is so fun. The best example for this however is chess. So simple, yet so good. If Civ 3 or CTP 2 will limit my creativity a lot, like many games today do, I won't like to play it. Good examples for computer games that try to open up towards the players creativity are: Simcity3000 and one of the most expected games this year - The sims. There are so many options! You can do what ever you like. No script! That's what I want in Civ!

7. Make updates and keep in touch. Keep in touch with the comunity. Release patches if needed. Test very well so only one or two patches are needed. Better delay the game so no patches are needed (yeah, like that's ever gonna happen with computer software).

Updates: again, the sim series are a good example: both the company and the fans create new objects, graphics charachter and modifications for the simcity and The sims games. This makes the game more fun and long lasting.

Well, that's it for now. I've expressed the basics of my philosophy regarding Civ games. Now I shall retire to rest my mind while seeking more things to be improved and implied. Good luck both Activision and Firaxis. May all of our wishes come true in the form of the next games.
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About the author: "I'm a bit new to the Apolyton community but I've been browsing Apolyton for 2 years now".

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