Can't find these features, are they there?

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by Dis
functioning UN? We don't have that today.

That's a great exagerration, as usual because every now and then a country that like to avoid UN directive (I'm not referring to US or Italy, I mean one in general terms) usually try to minimize UN role... and that's end in a general bad perceiveng of the whole UN

The UN is not very good at enforcing its decision, because is not born to do that, not it can cope well when it's strangled by vetoes any day.

The *fact* is that as not perfect as it is now, UN still is kept alive from more than a hundred of countries, and still is a place where diplomacy is at work, sometime with better result than any "preventive war" a country can feel the urge to fight.

Indeed, some countries (e.g. in Africa) also today are fighting horrible war, civil war, massacre of civilian, etc. but I don't think things would work better *without* a UN.

UN is not, as Civ gam implies, the future Government of the whole Earth, so it should be only a tool on the path for a sort of "Diplomatic shared victory condition".

[Yolky]

I keep forgetting how good a game was SMAC and alot of the things there are not in Civ. I wunder why that is?

[GeoModder]

Yeah, well, it's one of a kind eh?

[Senethro]

Wasn't Civ3 developed partly in parallel with SMAC off a very early build of the engine that went on to be used for SMAC?
Also, didn't a lot of people follow Brian Reynolds or just leave firaxis at that point?

[Flip McWho]

UN is not, as Civ gam implies, the future Government of the whole Earth, so it should be only a tool on the path for a sort of "Diplomatic shared victory condition".

Disagree, in the long run I wouldn't be surprised if thats what it turns out to be. But of course this is offtopic discussion isn't it.

It is interesting how a few real good SMAC features managed to stay with SMAC and wasn't incorporated into other games.

[Nikolai]

Originally posted by Senethro
Wasn't Civ3 developed partly in parallel with SMAC off a very early build of the engine that went on to be used for SMAC?
Also, didn't a lot of people follow Brian Reynolds or just leave firaxis at that point?

AFAIR, Civ3 was right in the middle of the development when Brian & co abandoned it to make that silly RTS RoN game, resulting in total collapse of Civ3 development, so that the game had to be made with less of the promised features, less persons on the same time etc. Considering this, the game might not have been that bad after all, eh?

[Adm.Naismith]

SMAC lost in time

Originally posted by Senethro
Wasn't Civ3 developed partly in parallel with SMAC off a very early build of the engine that went on to be used for SMAC?

AFAIK the SMAC code was mostly left back in the dust because it uses a kind of raw 3D terrain (almost in a wireframe way) that was a nightmare to manage and code (I'm quoting words from an old Firaxis post, IIRC).

Firaxis' rebuilt codeteam was forced to reuse most of Civ II source code with some routines reworked from SMAC (e.g. pathfinding, again IIRC).

The SMAC concept of raising/lowering terrain can't be managed by Civ III, nor (AFAIK) by the CIV 4 graphic engine, so we'll be again out in the cold if we hope in an easy source porting from Civ IV to SMAC II.

I bet this is quite a barrier to our request of a SMAC II, because of the effort of reworking the graphics.

[Nikolai]

Re: SMAC lost in time

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith
The SMAC concept of raising/lowering terrain can't be managed by Civ III, nor (AFAIK) by the CIV 4 graphic engine, so we'll be again out in the cold if we hope in an easy source porting from Civ IV to SMAC II.

I bet this is quite a barrier to our request of a SMAC II, because of the effort of reworking the graphics.

Who says Firaxis has to use the same kind of graphics engine? A completely new one would sound more reasonable after so many years and so much techical improvements. And the rolling terrain wasn't that popular either.

[GeoModder]

Back then, the rolling terrain was graphically seen the thing of the day for me.

[Kataphraktoi]

Originally posted by Nikolai


AFAIR, Civ3 was right in the middle of the development when Brian & co abandoned it to make that silly RTS RoN game, resulting in total collapse of Civ3 development, so that the game had to be made with less of the promised features, less persons on the same time etc. Considering this, the game might not have been that bad after all, eh?

perhaps that was because they realized(brian and his supporters) that the game was shaping up to be a failure and needed to be restarted. then when it couldnt happan($) they left to do their own thing. even if they had released civ3+conquests at the same time with the latest patch available now,i wouldnt be impressed-a good game,but a sequel to civ2?

[Senethro]

Re: SMAC lost in time

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith

AFAIK the SMAC code was mostly left back in the dust because it uses a kind of raw 3D terrain (almost in a wireframe way) that was a nightmare to manage and code (I'm quoting words from an old Firaxis post, IIRC).

Firaxis' rebuilt codeteam was forced to reuse most of Civ II source code with some routines reworked from SMAC (e.g. pathfinding, again IIRC).

The SMAC concept of raising/lowering terrain can't be managed by Civ III, nor (AFAIK) by the CIV 4 graphic engine, so we'll be again out in the cold if we hope in an easy source porting from Civ IV to SMAC II.

I bet this is quite a barrier to our request of a SMAC II, because of the effort of reworking the graphics.

I think you're underestimating the modding community if you think they can't find a workaround. One possibility would just be to have mountians designated as terrain at 2000m and hills as terrain at 1000m. To make it deformable by Planetbusters/Terraformers would be more difficult though.

[sophist]

I think of mountains and hills as corresponding more to ruggedness than to altitude.

[Sirian]

in Civ3, every game was the same because, in many parts, there was only one right thing to do, strategy-wise. I hope that is no longer the case.

Amen.