Civ4

[Vrank Prins]

click, click, click




"there's no game like CIV IV . . ., there's no game like CIV IV . . ."



IS THIS HEAVEN ???



THIS MUST BE HEAVEN !!!



THANKS GRUMMIE !

[Sava]

Sorry to be a party pooper, but will you guys stop being stupid?

Arguing about whether or not there is going to be a Civ 4 is stupid. It's like arguing if there's going to be another World War, but worse. Everything you know about Civ3 you know from this site, basically. But the problem is, none of you have any idea what's going on in Sid's head. So it's all conjecture.

If there's one thing I can't stand, it's arguments over conjecture. There are NO facts to base your arguments on, just a mental picture of what you think Sid will do.

So please, direct all further factless arguments to your toilets so that this wonderful site doesn't get littered with them.

[datakodin]

Civ IV or Civ 3.1?

Development of Civ IV will take a lot of time.

What about Civ 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, ...? Suppose one new feature would be incorporated in the game each month or each two months?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by RonHiler
Jeez, guys. Why waste your breath on a fantasy project that may or may not at some point be started in the far distant future by a designer who isn't really even designing them anymore?

There are a whole mess of civ style games in the Alt-Civ section that could use the exact input you are wasting here. These are actual projects that are in progress, with concrete results. And I'm sure all of them would highly appreciate your input.

Plus, IMO, at least two or three of them are going to be better than Civ II (and, from all I understand about Civ III design decisions, probably better than that one as well) based on their results so far and design docs (including, of course, my game ).

If you really want to have an actual effect on a game, go take a look at them. All of them have a ton of interesting aspects that are worth examining. Really! They deserve better than to be ignored over a non-existant game

I am hopeful for the alt civ projects. I also note that there is a middle ground between an all amateur effort and a full-fledged commercial project like Civ 3. That would be a small shop project (whether or not evolved from an amateur project) by one or two developers. Those of us who follow wargaming at all are certainly impressed by the success of Combat Mission and await the TBS worlds "combat mission"

I would however note that the alt civ community's main weakness (at least as i percieve it) is marketing. Now thats to be expected from amateur efforts, and is one reason some may prefer them to marketing driven commercial projects. But it means it is hard to draw people to those projects. As you may recall, Ron, i posted on the alt civ board requesting a comparison table for the alt civ games. People did an excellent job of coming up with and filling in such a table - but you know what - its not featured on the alt civs main page - you have to dig through the board to find it.

While it is natural to be frustrated by Sid-worship, and by talk of "civ4", it might be more useful to peruse the very vibrant discussions of Civ3 features now going on, and provide insight may indicating how alt civ game have handled or are handling them. That would give more exposure to the alt civ community, and would attract some curiosity, Im sure.


For now I must confess I have neglected the alt civ community. Such time as i have for games currently goes to Caesar 3, civ2 scenarios, and the Civ3 board. I have not taken the time to really investigate the alt civs, even to the point of determining which one really interests me.

Lord of the Mark

[Gramphos]

I wait for Civ III right now...
Don't make me wait for Civ IV before Civ III is out .

[RonHiler]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
I am hopeful for the alt civ projects. I also note that there is a middle ground between an all amateur effort and a full-fledged commercial project like Civ 3. That would be a small shop project...

That would be us!

I would however note that the alt civ community's main weakness (at least as i percieve it) is marketing. Now thats to be expected from amateur efforts, and is one reason some may prefer them to marketing driven commercial projects.

Sure. It's a fine line to walk though. You want to get your game name out there, and tell everyone what a great product you have. But at the same time, you are intruding on other's conversations. The people who posted to the Civ3 idea boards don't, in general, want to hear about MD or Clash or GG&S. They want to talk about Civ3. You have to be very careful, because if you over-do it, or do it wrongly, you generate resentment rather than interest (as Darkcloud demonstrated).

I always feel a little bad even bringing up our name on a forum that isn't specifically devoted to us. It's only when someone specifically says something like "Gee, I wish Civ3 had spherical worlds" that I jump in and say "We have that!", heh. But that sort of thing is pretty rare. So we remain obscure. S'okay, when we are a huge hit, those who were there from the beginning will have something to hold over those who ignored us

As you may recall, Ron, i posted on the alt civ board requesting a comparison table for the alt civ games.

Indeed I do. It was a great suggestion. I think everyone at the Alt-Civ section was and is greatful for the idea.

People did an excellent job of coming up with and filling in such a table - but you know what - its not featured on the alt civs main page - you have to dig through the board to find it.

Yeah, and it's really too bad, because that is a great table. "Only Human", who was our Alt-Civ section coordinator at the time (still is??), came up with a great format and collected all the data and screenshots and really put together a quality product. But then he lost interest or something happened, and he never posted in on the front page, despite our (everyone at Alt-Civ) frequent requests for him to do so. We messaged him several times, but (as far as I know) never got any response back. I still don't know what exactly is going on with that, if he just lost interest or if there was some other problem. Anyway, there's nothing we can do, those of us in the Alt-Civ design groups don't have any special access to put it up, any more than you do. So it sits buried in a forum, totally useless.

While it is natural to be frustrated by Sid-worship, and by talk of "civ4", it might be more useful to peruse the very vibrant discussions of Civ3 features now going on, and provide insight may indicating how alt civ game have handled or are handling them. That would give more exposure to the alt civ community, and would attract some curiosity, Im sure.

Yes, but again, that probably crosses that thin line between genuine information sharing and annoyancy. As far as that goes, I try to stay on the side of courteousness. It is my firm belief that when your product is great, word will spread, without having to be a nuisance on forums that don't belong to you.

Speaking of which, this has gotten off topic, which is a clear sign that I shouldn't have said anything in the first place Let's let it return to a Civ4 discussion. But in all sincerity, thanks for the interest you've shown to our little Alt-Civ section LOTM.

Ron

[DarkCloud]

Well, I am not angry at you in particular- it's just that when the Alt.Civers come over here to 'discuss' they make one point and then say, but, "our thing is going to be better than civ III",

(Which may be true, but it gets annoying when you have seen claims like that since august 2000 and no finished projects (with the exception of FreeCiv)

Oh- but I am interested in your projects; in fact I contributed to the economic and trade models on one of the Alt.Civ games.

-
Also- I understand that games produced by non-professionals take long to develop, in fact I happen to be part of an adventure game team at:

http://www.pythianproject.org/

I like to help make games; but that project is sort of disorganized and even with 30 dedicated people working on it, has been around 2 years in development with little progress (but the DEMO is coming out in 2 WEEKS!)
-

I wish you every bit of luck on your games, but I also understand that it is hard to actually code a good game; even the pros produce some horrible games sometimes

-

Also- this thread was originally started to discuss whether we should rename the Civ 3 Suggestions Forum to Civ 4 Suggestions Forum rather than creating a new Civ4 ideas forum and deleting the Civ3 forum.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by RonHiler

Sure. It's a fine line to walk though. You want to get your game name out there, and tell everyone what a great product you have. But at the same time, you are intruding on other's conversations. The people who posted to the Civ3 idea boards don't, in general, want to hear about MD or Clash or GG&S. They want to talk about Civ3. You have to be very careful, because if you over-do it, or do it wrongly, you generate resentment rather than interest (as Darkcloud demonstrated).

I always feel a little bad even bringing up our name on a forum that isn't specifically devoted to us. It's only when someone specifically says something like "Gee, I wish Civ3 had spherical worlds" that I jump in and say "We have that!", heh. But that sort of thing is pretty rare. So we remain obscure. S'okay, when we are a huge hit, those who were there from the beginning will have something to hold over those who ignored us

I guess i was thinking more along the lines of the conversations we have here where someone says public works would be good for civ3, because it worked in CTP. but not future techs, because they made CTP silly, or Cic-specific units worked in SMAC, and someone responds yeah but only because its a sci-fi game. This is not a CTP or SMAC board, but clearly implementations of ideas in CTP or SMAC are relevant. I see no reason why ideas from freeciv or other games would not also be relevant

LOTM

[RAF]

Yeah, right....


====== ~~~~

[eNo]

Whooo..those were some long posts. I'll read them later because I need some sleep but just a thought: has anybody actually played the Civ board game? I only heard about it when CtP was in developement and all that talk about the copyright issues. How similar is the board game to Meier's game? Did Meier really steal that much?

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by eNo
Whooo..those were some long posts. I'll read them later because I need some sleep but just a thought: has anybody actually played the Civ board game? I only heard about it when CtP was in developement and all that talk about the copyright issues. How similar is the board game to Meier's game? Did Meier really steal that much?

I suggest you dig a search into the forum (not sure about the Forum area, but it surfaced here and there, and surely I missed some) for better info. I'm giving you some info I remember, just as "appetizer"

Yes, Civilization and Railroad Tycoon where board games before Sid move them in Computer games world

I never played them, but some of my old friends did. AFAIK, the board and computer versions share some fundamentals points, while diverge in others. In board Civ trading/diplomacy played a more relevant role than fighting battle. The map of the world was more focused on Europe, North Africa and Middle East (the nest of Civization as we use to know).

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
Also- this thread was originally started to discuss whether we should rename the Civ 3 Suggestions Forum to Civ 4 Suggestions Forum rather than creating a new Civ4 ideas forum and deleting the Civ3 forum.

IMHO the answer should be NO!
I loved Civ and Civ2, I liked to some extent SMAC, I had great hopes for Civ3 and may be I'll be very happy with it when released and patched twice

I'm not interesting into another effort to put new life in a... well, bad looking corpse. Don't take me wrong, it's only I'm almost sure there is a big wall is been hitting into the effort to improve a ten year game concept without making a major leap.

We discussed before about need of evolution vs. revolution into Civ 3 design, sorry if I repeat myself.
I'm not ready to argue too much about a game largely unknow and under development, but (disclaimer) I'm ready to guess, until anyone agree it's only my guess, and I'll eat my message if time will prove me wrong

Firaxis is payed for a sequel, not to take a risk and make a new revolution: you can think as you like, but the bare facts are clear from cold or warm effect on reviewer after game preview at E3.

Lot of us will love more and more of the same meal, but most of new players will look to others concept.
I haven't played them so far, but my friends are very happy about Shogun Total War and Black and White. I don't care to compare them with Civ 3, but surely they introduced more welcomed innovation.

TBS is not dead, but surely don't look in good shape. I feel the need for new concept that can resurrect the genre, and I don't think that Firaxis can do something in this way, with the lead chain of Civ moloch franchise to obey.

Alternate Civ can start something as good as the original shareware Doom did, but they must prove it on the gamefield, because lot of games look quite good on paper or on early alpha, where you can wonder any glitch, unbalancing and design flaw will be resolved before to go gold.

My best wishes to anyone working on Alt Civ, of course.
Meantime we'll have a Civ 3 and may be a Civ 3 X-pack to fill the gap.

No Civ 4 please, the fourth in a row will make me nervous

[Grumbold]

Civilisation the boardgame is very different from Civilization the computer game. There was a true port of the boardgame done a few years ago as "Advanced Civilization"and you may be able to find it if you dig round the abandonware sites. One interesting thing about the boardgame was that it was impossible to conquer the board or even permanently kill a single opponent. Warfare, while necessary, was generally conducted at the expense of civilisation/tech progress which required stable cities and extensive trading. There are threads about it in the "Other Games" sections of Apolyton if you are interested.