Ive only just recently gotten "into" scenarios, but it seems to me that the release of civ 3 soon does NOT come at a good time for the scenario community - let me explain what I mean.
The microprose releases, FW, MGE, and TOT did not significantly alter the gameplay of the original game. Therefore there is a sense that we are playing a 5 year old game, desperately in need of updating - its about time for the release of Civ3.
OTOH, the microprose releases DID offer steadily improving scenario tools. The FW/MGE scenario community is only now just fully utilizing(exhausting?) the tools of those games. And TOT came with yet more powerful options, and there are as yet only a few scenarios that take advantage of them. Angelo Scotto has only recently released his CSPL (Civ Scenario Programming Language, IIUC) and that is said to have great potential - and yet it has only just begun to be used. It would be a shame if the release of Civ3 were cut off the Civ2 scenario efforts, especially if civ3 did not prove an even more useful tool.
I fear what happened with AOE - the release of Age of Kings essentially dried up the Age of Empires scenario community - yet the AOK scen community was never the same as the AOE community, with a much greater focus on fantasy and fiction and less on history ( I must say that some of the AOE user designed historical campaigns were magnificent, not only far better than the campaigns that shipped with the game, but in some ways more interesting than most Civ2 scenarios - no offense meant)
LOTM
The microprose releases, FW, MGE, and TOT did not significantly alter the gameplay of the original game. Therefore there is a sense that we are playing a 5 year old game, desperately in need of updating - its about time for the release of Civ3.
OTOH, the microprose releases DID offer steadily improving scenario tools. The FW/MGE scenario community is only now just fully utilizing(exhausting?) the tools of those games. And TOT came with yet more powerful options, and there are as yet only a few scenarios that take advantage of them. Angelo Scotto has only recently released his CSPL (Civ Scenario Programming Language, IIUC) and that is said to have great potential - and yet it has only just begun to be used. It would be a shame if the release of Civ3 were cut off the Civ2 scenario efforts, especially if civ3 did not prove an even more useful tool.
I fear what happened with AOE - the release of Age of Kings essentially dried up the Age of Empires scenario community - yet the AOK scen community was never the same as the AOE community, with a much greater focus on fantasy and fiction and less on history ( I must say that some of the AOE user designed historical campaigns were magnificent, not only far better than the campaigns that shipped with the game, but in some ways more interesting than most Civ2 scenarios - no offense meant)
LOTM
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