The Altera Centauri collection has been brought up to date by Darsnan. It comprises every decent scenario he's been able to find anywhere on the web, going back over 20 years.
25 themes/skins/styles are now available to members. Check the select drop-down at the bottom-left of each page.
Call To Power 2 Cradle 3+ mod in progress: https://apolyton.net/forum/other-games/call-to-power-2/ctp2-creation/9437883-making-cradle-3-fully-compatible-with-the-apolyton-edition
I like to take my time when I play my games so I have never used the feature. I can see though how it can be useful in MP.
So long...
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On Emperor I adore AP and tiny maps because the "just one more turn thing" sucks me into a huge Civ III vortex where I find myself gibbering about railroads and "It's pay back time!" around 4AM. With AP I just might get to food and sleep by dawn!
Yesterday I completed my first game with Accelerated Production and I liked it. A lot.
Caliskier asked me (see above) to note my pros and cons. So here goes.
The nitty gritty: I played on a standard map, skinny little pangaea, Regent, as Persia, with raging barbs (that was a first, too) with all random AI civs.
My average time for a game (I almost always play a standard map) is 18-19 hours. This one went 16.
Everything moves along faster. The food bin fills faster, techs research in a shorter number of turns, and so on. And I enjoyed it. I had to keep reminding myself that I did NOT have any kind of an edge on the AI, that they were enjoying the same rate of production -- and that was evident when I called them up to make a deal and saw how many techs they had and I didn't.
For the purists in the group, I too am a purist. I have never modded the game, figuring the guys who designed it and played it figured out how the ideal ideal game would play. And I noted in the thread that one or two thought to use AP would be to somehow compromise the game. Having played it, I don't see that there's any compromise. It is simply a shorter version of what we all know and love.
To the poster who said he liked to have his cities always building something, I would simply say that, once they've built everything there is, it never hurts to build another defensive unit or to bring in some extra gold (wealth). I've been doing that ever since I started playing the game.
Now there may be some differences that I'm missing. I don't bother trying to get into the inner workings of the game the way some of our colleagues here do. But on the surface and after 16 hours, I don't see the difference. Except that you get to each goal faster. And I found it very enjoyable.
I should have noted above that I'm also not pressed for time. I have lots of hours to devote to Civ. I'm retired and Civ is my afternoon at the golf course. So I don't do it because my spare time is limited.
I'd be interested in reading of bad experiences with AP.
I play builder games on huge maps, 20-30 hours of playtime per game. Much of the game seems to consist of "I have to wait until "this" gets built, whatever "this" is. With Accelerated Production I don't have to wait as long in RL time for the game to progress to different stages, or to complete. The game is about making decisions, not waiting, although you get to do enough waiting when you reach later stages of the game and the AI engine has a few thousand decisions to calculate each turn. I tried the regular method, then very early in my CIV III experience I found AP and turned it on and have never looked back since. More things keep happening that I have to worry about, strategize over, and make decisions for. Since those things are what I play the game for, I like AP throwing more of them at me all the time. Just consider AP to be "standard" and the other mode to be "Slow". Then you might be able to fool the purist in you that avoids AI.
I Likke it, I think it may be suited to some games more than others.
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