Hello,
The number six edition of the Faces of Apolyton interview series offers you a conversation with Xin Yu, the master analyst of Civ 2 strategy and one of the Apolyton forum veterans.

Next time, we will be interviewing Ming, everyone's favorite moderator, Man with a Thousand Guns.

Enjoy,
ACS Interview Chief - Solver.

Solver: Let's begin with the now traditional question - how did you find Apolyton?
Xin-Yu: I started posting in another forum a couple of years ago (several other people like Ming and Rah also were active there). When that site was down we switched to Apolyton.

Solver: When did you start playing Civ, and what was it that addicted you to the game?
Xin-Yu: It's a chess-like game with a flavour of war and governing. I like all 3 aspects.

Solver: How long did it take for you to grow from a standard player to the one seeking for unknown things in the game mechanics, the great expert you are?
Xin-Yu: It took a while. For a couple of years I did not have other games to play (couldn't afford to buy) so I had to play this game again and again. Then something caught my attention and I started to treat the game as a research subject.

Solver: What was the first discovery you made about CivII?
Xin-Yu: You can change all citizens to specialist with 1 food left in food box without facing famine.

Solver: I just wonder how you manage to find out those amazing things about the game. Do you look for them, do you stumble across them, or what?
Xin-Yu: A lot of ideas came from discussion with other players.

Solver: What's your best experience ever with CivII?
Xin-Yu: Got to be the one Ming, Rah and I playing 3 minor powers in the original WW2 scenario.

Solver: Thinking back to several months ago, what did you think about Civ 3 before it was released?
Xin-Yu: It would have a lot of bugs.

Solver: Now that CivIII is released, do you think it's a worthy sequel or just a re-release? Are the new concepts new enough for you?
Xin-Yu: It's a worthy sequel with a lot of new concepts. However they stopped at the level of only letting the player deal with one city or one unit at a time. I just don't have that much time to go through every city screen and move hundreds of pieces each turn. My governors don't know how the adjust city productivity to avoid civ disorder, so I can't trust them.

Solver: As a strategy master, do you think advanced CivII strategies are applicable to CivIII games, or not?
Xin-Yu: Generally speaking, no. CivIII has counter measures to most strategies in CivII so they won't work.

Solver: A common complaint about CivIII is lack of scenarios in it, and inability to make any. Do you miss scenarios, or doesn't that matter at all for you?
Xin-Yu: It sure matters. And even if they allowed making of scenarios it still wouldn't satisfy me. I want CivII and Test of Time scenarios to be easily imported to this game. That seems not possible at all.

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