Firaxis: Eleven Things You Didn’t Know about Sid Meier’s Civilization IV (Part 1)

[Trifna]

I wonder what a map of me will be like...

From what I can see, this game is going to be the best TBS game ever!

[Dinner]

It sounds like they've finally caught up to many of the things CTP2 had in 2000.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Oerdin
It sounds like they've finally caught up to many of the things CTP2 had in 2000.

Yep, when CTP was released, it was widely called a "Civ wanna-be", and now that Civ4 is being released, it is sure to be widely called a "CTP2 wanna-be".

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by Trifna
I wonder what a map of me will be like...

color...



ok I will set the keyboard down now

[MarkG]

Originally posted by alms66
Yep, when CTP was released, it was widely called a "Civ wanna-be", and now that Civ4 is being released, it is sure to be widely called a "CTP2 wanna-be".

actually, with stuff like civics, thech voice-overs and a full UN, Civ4 is bound to be called a "SMAC wanna-be"

[Nikolai]

With all this additions from here and there, aside from new ideas, why not just call it "Civ4"?

[GeoModder]

Whenever did a game get released without it being referred as a clone/wannabe of another game?

on Nikolai's stance!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by CyberShy
Nah, I wonder if people were really dissapointed, people just are conservative, they want things to stay the same, and if something is being token away, they complain anyway.

The advisor movies were taken away as well, but that's never been named again as one of the shortcomings of civ3. Why? Because they alerady focus on the wonder movies and forgot about the advisors.

That's just how the human brain works.
The people who complain now how the 3D engine is not good and looks cartoonisch will complain in 5 years if civ5 comes without a 3D engine.

Of course it's nice, I like it, I love it, but it adds little to the game.

Bull! It adds a LOT to the game. It adds immersion and atmosphere. Without the 'fluff' CivIII had no soul. It felt cold and distant and less of a labor of love and more of a money grab.

The wonder movies, speaking units, quotes spoken with every tech, etc, etc, CivIV gets its soul back. It pulls you in with its atmosphere.

I'm not an ubergamer and I like the atmosphere. In Civ2, whenever I had the CD in, I watched EVERY wonder movie, even after my 100th game.

It adds more than just 'little' to the game.

About advisors. They were already taken out in SMAC, but SMAC had so many other things that added to the immersion (the most immersive TBS game ever, IMO), that it didn't matter.

[ForesterSOF]

I have taken pictures and made them inot maps on Sim City and someare recognizable but most....

[Verenti]

Originally posted by GeoModder
Whenever did a game get released without it being referred as a clone/wannabe of another game?

on Nikolai's stance!

As an Actor I have this to say:

Read any ("complete") history of theatre. Practically every great work through it was inspired by somthing else. I don't know why everyone puts so much emphasis on originality.

For 3000 years we've been copying everyone else and putting little twists on it to make the works our own, but its still essentially the same stories.

CTP, SMAC, Those are just names of old games; Fact of the matter is at a glance you can tell the difference, so they are obviously not the same game.

Note: I wasn't directing this at the person I quoted, but more so the context where this mini-rant came from.

[MarkG]

Practically every great work through it was inspired by somthing else.

exactly. greeks invented everything and then everyone else copied us

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


Bull! It adds a LOT to the game. It adds immersion and atmosphere. Without the 'fluff' CivIII had no soul. It felt cold and distant and less of a labor of love and more of a money grab.

The wonder movies, speaking units, quotes spoken with every tech, etc, etc, CivIV gets its soul back. It pulls you in with its atmosphere.

I'm not an ubergamer and I like the atmosphere. In Civ2, whenever I had the CD in, I watched EVERY wonder movie, even after my 100th game.

It adds more than just 'little' to the game.

About advisors. They were already taken out in SMAC, but SMAC had so many other things that added to the immersion (the most immersive TBS game ever, IMO), that it didn't matter.

QFT. The whole damn post. 100% pure, uncut Colombian truth.

[MrFun]

Imran and his Columbian truth

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Verenti


As an Actor I have this to say:

Read any ("complete") history of theatre. Practically every great work through it was inspired by somthing else. I don't know why everyone puts so much emphasis on originality.

I absolutely agree-

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

T. S. Eliot


I suspect the change happened with the Romantic movement, when the emphasis on the 'personal' and 'personal experience' and expression was heightened in literature and art.

Certainly if you look at the work of Ben Jonson, Marlowe or Shakespeare, it's self-evident that they ransacked the Classics and the works of contemporary authors, or utilised translations (Holinshed, Polydore Vergil, Plutarch, Suetonius) for inspiration:

Shakespeare:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumèd that
The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion – cloth of gold, of tissue –
O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.      

Antony and Cleopatra (2.2.201–15)

compared with North's translation of Plutarch:

She disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus, the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, hautboys, citterns, viols, and such other instruments as they played upon in the barge. And now for the person of herself: she was laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus commonly drawn in picture, and hard by her, on either hand of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in their hands with the which they fanned wind upon her.