MGE is obsolete!

[techumseh]

@techumseh

I disagree. CivII is not obsolete. That's like saying Chess is obsolete because someone has invented the X-Box! If everyone took that attitude then CivII would have been abandoned long ago and we would all be playing CivIV

I think there are still new things that can be achieved with MGE (at least for me). What I meant by a challenge was that I like to squeeze as much out of the available events space as I can by making every event count. Obviously a larger memory capacity would be nice but you work with what you are given.

I do agree that ToT has greater potential for a talented designer like yourself and I hope to make a ToT version of all my games at some point. Scenarios like Operation Market Garden and Lost Legions are pushing the boundaries forward.

Personally I do not like working with ToT, though I hope I will get used to it. I don't like the look or feel of it and there is no potential for multiplayer games which is also a turn off. I do like the extra units and events space and some other features like impassable terrain but for me MGE is the one I love

The reason we haven't abandoned Civ2 altogether is that you still can't make an event based historical scenario with Civ4. Ditto with FreeCiv, which has even farther to go.

ToT was specifically designed with scenarios in mind, incorporating all the things that scenario makers had tried to do with MGE, but couldn't. Beyond the vastly more powerful events structure, such things as impassible terrain, unbribable units, multiple maps and invisibile units were all things scenario designers had asked for.

MGE elements that had hamstrung and frustrated scenario makers for years were eliminated in ToT, eg: the crappy, limited GIF palette and the rigid sound slots that severely constrain unit mix.

The release of ToT was unfortunately accelerated by the sale of Microprose to Hasbro, leading to ugly initial art. But most of us haven't used that art for years. There's lots of alternate terrain and unit art available that not only fix the problem, but improve considerably on the look of MGE.

ToT IS Civ2, and has the same feel. I'm not sure what you mean by no multiplayer capability - I've played (and made) PBEM ToT scenarios.

The MGE editors are about the only advantage it has, and I can see the attraction for new designers. But once you get used to a very few programs such as Paintshop Pro, you won't miss the editors at all. All they do is slow you down.

MGE is obsolete. For ambitous new scenario designers, it will only hold you back.

[curtsibling]

I can only agree - I could never go back to MGE. While it was the benchmark in the 1990s, ToT is the true inheritor.
All that holds designers back from using ToT are myths that no-one plays it, and that the program is too hard to mod.

Both charges are balderdash. The CIV2 community is way smaller than it was ten years ago, but it is still here.
So what if there is only 30 of us in the world, that just serves to make us all the more distinctive! And the game
is no harder to mod that MGE, a few more levers are there, like multi maps, custom tech-trees and civ-pedia, but
the modder only needs to go as far into that as he desires...The main thing that stood against ToT was ugly GFX,
but then, wasn't vanilla CIV2 primitive compared to what we see now? The game can be transformed visually.

It is what lurks under the bonnet (tech-trees, rules, events) that really matters, and ToT delivers there too.

ToT represents the final peak of CIV2 from MicroProse. It has far superior events, sounds and graphics.
The game is far from perfect, surely - But CIV3 and CIV4 cannot come close to the pure smooth simplicity
of CIV2, despite what any ill-informed 17-year old fanboys say. I hold hope for programs like FreeCiv,
but a major cross-community effort will be needed to get it into the form we require to match CIV2 ToT...

All in all, I stand behind MGE and ToT, they are incarnations of one of the best games EVER.
But for me, only ToT gives me the freedom to create the worlds I want on the digital plane.

Just my tuppence, feel free to disagree, etc.

[kobayashi]

k

[Blue Lion]

When I remember well, in very old threads some supporters of MGE said, that they prefer MGE cause of the missing battle imaginations in ToT, when the mostly cruel sprites in ToT were disabled.

On the other side, if we could do some better animated units for ToT, this arguement against ToT would be away, too. But this is another thread, where I post again, when my first animated ToT-units are ready.
This may last some time, as in the moment I´m also finishing a very big mod for Civ 3. But the work with this mod and more than thousand new units in it, showed me, that i really miss badly something from Civ 2: The events- or better the highly sophisticated events from ToT.

On the other side, when I remember my ToT mods (that were never published), there was -even with the very good articles from the scenario league, that i had nearly completely printed out -a lot of features in ToT that were not explained as well as I would have wished.

ToT had and has so much to offer, that it´s difficult to get this all explained. When I remember on my first multimap steps in my Science Fiction Mod, where each map was a galaxy, when the barbarians on the Andromeda map appeared in very different slots as they should appear on a normal map or the different principles how these maps are constructed, there was not so much help to read in the forums and about none in the documentations and at that time I couldn´t post here, cause I never received an activition code for these forums.

So Tot had undisputed awful graphics and a lot of very interesting additional features that were not explained well enough. Otherwise I think all Civers would have recognized ToT as the top of all Civ 2 versions.

BTW.: Is there now a possibility in random maps, when I change land to sea-terrain with an event, to let some of the new coastal towns that were normally land towns, let produce ships now as normal units without reworking this map manually with a tool?

[McMonkey]

I did not want to reawaken the old MGE vs ToT divide.
I agree that ToT has batter graphics and greater potential for scenario creation. I agree that it IS CivII.
I would be stupid to try and argue otherwise!

I am just happier working with MGE (at the moment) and I can cope with its limitations. One day I will produce a ToT scenario. I have several MGE to ToT conversions in mind and I have already gained experience with it in my halted (in need of a big rethink) Vietnam scenario. For now I just want to finish off all the MGE projects I have begun.

By my comment about multiplayer potential I was referring to the fact that most people play MGE PBEM's. I think you would struggle to find seven people with a copy of ToT who were willing to play a game. Thats a shame!

At the end of the day we all love CivII in all its forms and MGE and ToT are close enough that we can easily talk about them both in the same forum, there is no need to choose between them!

[fairline]

Originally posted by McMonkey
I am just happier working with MGE (at the moment) and I can cope with its limitations.

What is it you're happier with? Is it the MGE scenario editor, as that's really the only 'advantage' to a scenario designer, albeit a pretty buggy one?

[McMonkey]

I don't know why I like it more, I just do! Maybe its a familiarity thing. When I load up an MGE game I feel good, ToT just feels a bit cold and alien to me. I really hate the way that the ToT units don't flash when they are selected and the way they move so slowly, details so insignificant but they effect my enjoyment. Of course a good scenario like Frederick the Great cuts through all that but I don't like the feel when building a scenario myself!

I know everyone talks about the graphics. To be completely honest I can see very little difference between the two games. Sure the units can be a bit bigger and can be shaded better but I was (and still am) quite happy using Fairline's work from several years back. They look great and there are loads of them and best of all I can modify them fairly competently to fit what I am looking for, with the ToT units I have no chance.

There is nothing wrong with ToT, I enjoy playing ToT scenarios and I will move on to making single player ToT scenarios as soon as I have completed my current batch (Europa 2 and the Balkan Wars). I agree that you can do much more with it. I will carry on using MGE for PBEM games as that is the format that people use.

I guess I just need to work with ToT more to get the same feel for it that I have for MGE. To summarize, ToT is superior but that does not mean that MGE is obsolete, it just has to try harder!

[McMonkey]

BTW, what is the MGE scenario editor?
I do everything the same with ToT and MGE when I am making a scenario (apart from the ToT extras).

I do remember the god awful editor with Fantastic Worlds that used to shift the lines about in the rules file and completely mess up and crash your scenarios. That was the reason I learned to edit the text documents directly!

[Dr Kellogg]

I always thought ToT would be just like MGE + some gimmicks like extra unit slots but with an charmless interface and ugly graphics on the other hand... until I have played techumseh's Red October! Everyone should take a closer look at Red october - no matter if you like it or not (I do so, it's my favourite one! ), you'll be astounded by the possibilities of ToT's extremely extended macro language!
Since fairline has begun to make units for ToT I have no doubt that MGE is obsolete.

If we just had spent more time studying ToT... While examining techumseh's scenarios more closely and working on my own scenario project I discovered many interesting things e.g. if a civ researches a certain tech (which may trigger an event then) you can take that tech the next turn so it can be researched again. This infinite loop might be used in scenarios in which the player gets reinforcements by researching a certain tech.

[Dr Kellogg]

Originally posted by McMonkey
BTW, what is the MGE scenario editor?

Good questions. Are you guys talking about that awful Fantastic Worlds editors or 3rd party tools like CivCity? The latter are mostly compatible with ToT.

The only thing I miss in ToT is a map editor...

[Cifer Almasy]

Ah, Tecum, I disagree!
ToT does seem to have a lot of advantages. Though I agree to McMonkeys statement about the "feeling". Feeling is a lot for me, who plays Civ2 since he was at elementary school. I tried ToT too and was discouraged about it. And I even played a well designed and graphiced scen by Court Sibling, not the famous ugly Vanilla. And - yes - I switched view to MGE style.

That doesn't mean, I won't ever look at ToT again.
But yet I am at my very first designing progress. So, naturally I won't take my feet on foreign terrain and second I design for PBEM purpose. Perhaps you see that all Civ2 community rejoined at Webring Forums. There is like 7 PBEMS going on fluently at the same time with Germans and many international guests.
A PBEM Scen should be designed the way it is played at PBEMS. Regarding that, ToT could be announced obsolete!

I understand your arguments, but I have to say that you are heavily wrong!

[McMonkey]

Re: Map editors
I just use the CivII map editor to create the map and then load the map file with ToT. After you have started work on a scenario you cannot make use of the map editor anyway so that should not be a big problem!
I seem to recall a ToT map editor on Mercator's site though I have not needed to use it yet.

Re: Utilities
As long as CivStack, CivTweak and CivCity are compatible with ToT then I will be a very happy man. I have not tried to use them yet but I find them invaluable for working with MGE.

General:
I have done a very rough reckoning of active Apolyton members and I think the number of MGE and ToT players / designers is roughly equal with about the same amount of people playing/designing in both mediums. If you add to this the healthy MGE PBEM community at Civ Webring you can see that there is plenty of life left in MGE.

I think it is good that there are people creating scenarios for both and we should be encouraging creativity in whatever form it takes

[Eivind IV]

If it makes you feel any better, Donky Kong, I can relate to everything you say, especially about the feel and what not. You are not a lonely wolf crying in the winderness!

Why was this thread and discussion started again anyway? Havn't we talked about this up and down before? I see no new cards on this table. People have personal preferences. Some people listen to classical music, others to techno. Who is to say one is better than the other (although I personally prefer classical music before techno )?

[McMonkey]

AMEN BROTHER!

Lets just get on with making games

[Boco]

Originally posted by McMonkey
Re: Utilities
As long as CivStack, CivTweak and CivCity are compatible with ToT then I will be a very happy man. I have not tried to use them yet but I find them invaluable for working with MGE.

I recall that Gothmog's utilities choked on multiple map scenarios, but worked fine on single map ones.