Concerned Consumer

[Seeker]

I am angry. ever since the original civ2, i assumed that such a minor problem as automated settlers, goto, and the carrier/sub problem would be fixed in the next expansion/patch. CiC: no FanWrlds: no MGE: no MGE patch: no TOT: settler automation kinda works. goto still screws up at the "international dateline". carriers/subs still ignore "hold". TOT patch: instead of fixing the problem, the just deleted the "hold" from the Civilopedia descriptions of sub and carrier.
I hope sincerely that in the next civ i can design my light carriers, my supercarriers, my attack subs, and my Typhoon Class subs.

[John Possidente]

We've looked into all of those bugs at one time or another. Unfortunately, we've found that all of them would require some rather major work to fix--enough work that it's always been a choice between adding a new feature or fixing one of them. Given that choice, we always go for giving you something more. It's certainly not a perfect solution, but when you're building on a pre-existing code base, you are often forced to make hard decisions.

When creating a fully code base for a game (like Civ III), you have the luxury of building those bugs out from the start.

[Seeker]

For roughly $65 Cnd., I could've lived without animation or the "science fiction" scenario for a fully fixed game.

By the way, thanks for responding. It's good to know someone is listening.
[This message has been edited by Seeker (edited September 27, 1999).]

[techumseh]

Does that mean that Civ3 WILL fix those things? It would sure be nice if air and ground units could also carry other units (not just missiles, please). Think outside the box and really open it up to the creativity of the fans!

[Robert]

Civilization III is a totally new game, and has therefor nothing to do with bugs from civ2.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

So... what your saying is CIV code is a mess. No one around working on the CIV games has the nerve to touch it I bet.

[John Possidente]

I don't yet know what exactly will be in Civ III (for one thing, I'm not working on it). I hope that they decide to build anew so that they can go "outside the box" and avoid or fix all the nagging leftovers from Civ/Civ II/etc. They're experienced folks; I expect they'll do what's right.

If I were a programmer, I would probably describe the Civ code as "a mess"--not, however, to insinuate that it's bad code. Remember, pieces of that code harken back to the days of the original Civ. Throughout the evolution from Civ to CivNet, Civ II, Civ Windows, the scenario packs, MGE, ToT, and all the incarnations I didn't mention, the best parts of the existing code were incorporated into the new stuff. Even Civ II, which was arguably the biggest rework yet, retained substantial chunks of the original Civ code. There's no reason to mess with something that works--but when legacy code has been through as many reworks, revisions, and additions as this has, subtle weirdnesses are bound to crop up. In a way, it's interesting to dig for bizarre interactions, but any that negatively affect the play experience should be hunted down and eliminated. Unfortunately, we don't always have the time or resources during a project to do what we would like to do.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Let me say I do think ToT is a good program. The graphics are good, it installs and runs fine and does not crash. For me I dont want to relearn all the units, terrains and other graphics. Now sure I know all I would have to do is play the game a few times and this would not be a problem. Everyone remember seeing the city walls in CIV II for the first time? ToT offered nothing (IMHO) that was new -enough- for me to do this. It's the same game. I do think the graphics for the some of the units is kinda poor (not for how they function which is what I mean above but for looks). The battle ship looks like a tooth pick. The marine unit, I love marine units and the graphics are yuk!, I mean really. I wish I could get CIV II with mulitple maps and maybe 20 slots for new units. Maybe some new features also. Or if CIV II graphics could have been included with ToT. That would have been cool. I know there is a patch of some sort that I guess lets you use CIV II graphics? I think.

I still play only CIV II. I have ToT, SMAC and CTP but CIV II is still king.