Locutus: As I said earlier, it all boils down to personal preference. So yes, if your personal preference allows for you to like the concepts of both games and not dislike (too many) of either one, you can most certainly enjoy both games. It's never a black or white situation anyway, there are always gray areas: as I said, most Civ3ers will find at least some features in the CtP series that they will like and most CtPers will see plenty of interesting things in Civ3 as well. Just how much of the other game they like differs from person to person.

About complexity being responsible for a smaller audience, I think that may have something to do with it, although it's certainly not the only factor. Compared to chess or a FPS or whatever, Civ3 is a complex game. But as far as complex games go, Civ3 is probably one of the simpler ones. And since for the most part a lot of people don't look for too much complexity in their games (they find it too fatiguing, boring, gives them a head ache, etc), relativitely simple games are bound to have a larger potential audience than more complex games. On top of that is TBS to the average gamer a peculiar “old-fashioned and backwards' genre (as one of my friends who isn't a TBS fan once put it), so it's bound to be less appealing to them anyway. So the more complex a TBS game is, the harder it is for it to be appreciated by the mainstream gaming audience. Most TBS-fans will generally speaking appreciate complexity more though, and will certainly enjoy the complexities and depth that the CtP series offers.

Solver: The two expansions for Civ 3 added a lot of feautures to multiplayer, including faster game types that can be completed in an hour or two. What do you think about Civ MP in general, and do you think that fast games have a place in civ?

Locutus: About Civ MP in general, I'm not a big fan of it myself. It can be an interesting experience, especially the challenge of playing against an intelligent and unpredictable human opponent. I've played the occassional MP match in various Civ-games, but Civ doesn't lend itself well for MP play: it just takes far too much time. In online games and the like you constantly have to wait for each other which especially later on can get rather tiresome. And PBEM games often take many months, even years to complete -- if they're ever completed at all. That doesn't really work for me: also in my single-player games I like to play in a small number of long sessions, even a single session if possible. I want to finish my games in as little real-life time as possible, to stay in the spirit of the game and not let other affairs interrupt it too much. Once I'm out of a game, I often find it difficult to get back into it again and more than once I've just decided to abandon a good game if it was taking too much real-life time to complete. For me that's true with all things in life: if something takes too much time, I tend to loose interest (though how soon depends on how much I care for it) -- probably my worst character trait (or at least the one I'd like to change the most if I could). That's also the main reason why I play so little Civ these days: I often have an hour here and an hour there to play, but I can no longer afford to play 8 hours or more on a stretch like I used to and like I'd really want. Anyway, I digress (like that's a first ;))

Back to MP, specifically Civ3 MP. I didn't buy or play with either expansion pack yet, so I can't really comment on how those features work out. Unfortunately I don't know anyone in real life who owns either X-pack, so I can't borrow it to give it a try (like I did with the original Civ3 and SMAC and so many other games) and as I've noted before I find the X-packs too expensive to buy myself (especially considering I'd only be using them to see how the new features work and if some of them would be nice to have in CtP2 in some form -- I know almost for sure I wouldn't terribly enjoy playing the game).

The idea of fast games in itself sounds like a good plan to me, as the slow speed of the MP variants I'm familiar with is exactly what's keeping me away from them. However, if I had to speculate (and this is indeed pure speculation, not based on anything solid), I'm not convinced it would really work. Civ is supposed to take a long time. By creating fast MP games, you either have to change the game considerably, or you just don't capture the grandness and mangificance of the game. Doesn't mean it can't be fun, but I'm not sure it would still be Civ. But as I said, I have no experience with it whatsoever (the closest thing to it I guess is playing RoN, but that's too different from Civ to really be comparable) so I can't really judge. Given the opportunity, I would certainly give it a try though -- I'm always open to new ideas.

Solver: So, that gives us a pretty clear idea on how you feel about Civ 3. Recently, however, Civ 4 has been announced as one of the future games in Firaxis. While there still is virtually no ground for speculation, can you say what must Civ 4 include/exclude for you to buy it?

Locutus: Well, for one thing I will probably be much more inclined to buy Civ4 than I was to buy Civ3: even if Civ4 is only a 'conservative sequel' to Civ3, it will probably still be a major step forward from Civ2. And since I haven't played much Civ3, Civ2 will for me be the standard to which I'll hold Civ4. But of course, Firaxis will still have to make some improvements to the game, because I'm not gonna buy any sequel if it's still just Civ2 with another new (ugly) graphics engine. The most important things that will have to change are the things I mentioned earlier as the biggest problems of Civ3.

I expect that Civ4 will be bigger, larger, more, compared to Civ3. That was true for every Civ-game so far, so it can reasonably be expected from Civ4 as well. Though not strictly necessary, that's fine with me, but it does mean that if nothing is done, the problem of the mid/late game tedium will grow even worse: even more units to move, more workers to manage, more cities to control, etc. Considering that the tedium is already ruining the fun not just for me but for many other players as well, it will be absolutely pivotal for Firaxis to takes measures to deal with this problem. They will need to come up with new ways to move units around, new ways to build and maintain infrastructure, new UI screens and the like to macro-manage numerous cities and other objects at once, etc. I don't expect them to just steal all the good ideas from CtP and insert them into Civ3 -- in fact, I would be quite disappointed if they did -- but they'll need to add some major new concepts and methods to the present game. If they manage to come up with satisfying solutions to this problem, it's already 80% certain I will buy the game regardless of any other concerns.

Those other concerns are of course the other main weaknesses that Civ3 has for me. They will need to improve gameplay to at least bring it up-to-date with competing TBS games (a new combat engine is urgently needed, that's the absolute minimum I would ask for). They will need to make the game far more friendlier for mod and scenario makers, by adding powerful tools such as for example a scripting or events language. They could do with (re)introducing some more eye-candy and other features that make you feel like you're replaying history, such as wonder movies, news papers, random events, etc. It would also be nice if they could try and make the civ you're controlling feel a bit more like an empire. And if it would be a nice bonus if they could come up with a graphics engine that actually looks good for a change.