Originally posted by AeonOfTime
- imagine playing a Civ4 game, and in the end you launch the spaceship to Alpha Centauri... you would then seamlessly switch to SMAC 2 and continue playing there. Aaaaah, yesssss
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Dino, to start life into earth;
Civilization, to bring human beings to Alpha centauri;
SMACX, to rise humanities from ashes to a first encounter with aliens.
A kind of link should still exist, in a way, cutting th Dino frozen project.
A re-coded game engine was a must, to refresh the possibility of the franchise. Doing it with Civ IV seems more smart to me than testing into the deep waters of SMAC II.
If Civ IV will be a success, with a proven bug-free game engine, rebuilding a SMAC II should be almost an easy task.
Firaxis can learn from the past lessons, tuning the graphics, polishing the user interface (yes, the design workshop was wonderful concept AND a nightmare about usability) and the AI.
Many concept are already in: borders, religion -> mind control, new govern mode -> social engineer, new scalable graphics probably is better fit to terrain modification than older engine, revamping of barbarian population would nicely fit with worm nest concept...
The Civ III team will shift to a different project any time between the first patch and the first Civ IV expansion, so you have people with the right knowledge of the code.
May be they are in need of a game designer with a SF vision good enough to keep SMAC II away to be only a Civ IV mod, and a couple of inspirated SF artist for terrain visual and units.
I voted Civ IV first, but to gain a better SMAC II later.
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