Solver: July 26th, 1998, the day when Apolyton spawned -- tell us your memories about >that day.

DanQ: I remember finalizing the press release the night before and running it by Markos. He agreed with the wording from the get-go based on the nearly week long discussion on the details of the merger -- as I believe has been mentioned in the past, the name of the site was the most contentious issue. I believe that out of the six days of negotiation, nearly half were spent on bouncing idea names back and forth. {lol}

 As for the day itself, I believe it was the evening hours (EST) that I posted it on the "UCIVII Site"; Markos and I worked out a system where the announcements would be more or less simultaneous on "UCIVII" and "TFGC2S". I was working in Gananoque that summer, about 45 minutes west of my stomping grounds, and after the drive there, back and my working day in between I was exhausted. I posted the press release, fired off a few emails to other Civilization sites to reflect this announcement in their news sections and then sat back and listened to some music. The emails/message board postings trickled within the first hour, but after that it just ballooned. Markos and I quickly compiled and posted an FAQ within 24hrs. to elaborate on some of the points of the press release. Heck, there were some issues we discussed and decided nearly on the spot based on inquiries on finite details that we had not to that point resolved (an example of this, I believe, is which site's chat channel we were going to use for Apolyton).

Solver: Did you then feel that Apolyton is much different from UC2S?

DanQ: That's a good question. It's not something that I have been asked before nor have I ever really thought that much about until now.  

I did feel that Apolyton was different from "UCIVII", but nothing beyond 'the obvious'. That is to say that suddenly there was another person with just as much say in the site's short and long-term options as myself which, even when keeping the advantages of distributing the workload in mind, was also a bit boggling. I was only beginning to see how different ACS was from "UCIVIIS" as before then it was all hypothetical and then 'put on paper' but just then coming into practice. I did not know at the outset if the merger would last, but at the same time assured myself that even if it was different it would be for the better.

Little did I know then how much different and beneficial this agreement would turn out to be.

Solver: Early on, were there any problems associated with another site owner being there :)?

DanQ: If I said no, you would say that I was lying and you would be right. Even today we disagree about this, that and the other thing but as it has been from the beginning we have never brought in anything irrelevant to the discussions nor has it ever escalated beyond perhaps excessive use of exclamation points in the most serious cases. :D

Solver: Originally, Apolyton's sections were Civ 1, Civ 2 and CtP. How did you come to >have other sections, like SMAC and Alt. Civs?

DanQ: When Markos and I decided that Apolyton would be hosted by GameStats as was "UCIVII" before it, we knew that we could not cover Alpha Centauri (SMAC) because an existing GS affiliate, "Beyond AC", already did. In December of that year, "BAC" owner and webmaster Jason Beaudion approached us about merging BAC's content and identity into Apolyton's. He said that he had other things going on in his life that required more and more of his attention and felt he could no longer maintain BAC the way he had in the past. His discussion reminded me very much of what Mike had approached me with nearly two-and-a-half years prior.

 We accepted Jason's offer and he became for a time an inactive yet standing member of the Apolyton staff. I cannot remember when Jason left permanently, but it was within a year of ACS absorbing BAC 'officially' on January 6th, 1999. As for how the Alternate Civilizations section came to be, Markos and I ran across a couple of fan-driven, open-source projects 'in the spirit of Civilization' called Manifest Destiny and Slick-6 (the latter of which has since been discontinued). Today, the section covers everything from Clash of Civilizations (the official site of which we also host) to Freeciv. I believe that it is in part and under developed but by the same token an under appreciated section of the site that has I hope will soon live up to its potential. It deserves more attention not only from the community but from us, the Apolyton staff/administration. Clearly where the section stands today is beyond what was envisioned for it at the time of its birth but this should not relegate it to complacency.

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