What about space and underwater cities?

[SerapisIV]

I don't like ocean or space cities. They're too capital intensive to be realistic any time in the next 100 years at least. Military outposts or hotels for the super-rich? Maybe. Full cities? Not way.

I'm all for near-future tech, but the problem with adding more and more scifi is that predicting the future is tough stuff, especially for a game like Civ which attempts to ground its concepts in reality. 50 years ago people were predicting faster then sound air travel, or even fast cars. Yet today, cars aren't going much faster then they used to and the only Mach1+ plane is the 20+ year old Concorde. Also, who 30 years ago would've predicted computers?

No one really knows where future tech like genetic engineering and nanotechnology is going to take us and putting guesses into Civ (which will more then likely not come true) takes away from it's real-world setting in my opinion.

Leave the scifi for scenarios

[Sabre2th]

Originally posted by Nikolai
Sabre: To get a coustom avatar, you have to be registered for a given amount of time, as far as I know. I think it was 1 year.

In that case, it's one year OR 500 posts. I haven't been here for a year yet and I was still allowed to have my custom civ3 warrior. I guess I forgot about the "one year" part.

[Sabre2th]

Double Post

[Sabre2th]

the only Mach1+ plane is the 20+ year old Concorde.

The only COMMERCIAL plane. Military craft all around the world can break the sound barrier. AFAIK there are three craft that can break Mach3, as well. (MiG 25, SR-71, and a high-altitude bomber whose name escapes me).

A little background: The bomber was made by the U.S. during the cold war and the MiG 25 was modified to counter it. The bomber was very expensive, however, and was actually made obsolete by the newer missiles before they had finished their third prototype.

Also, who 30 years ago would've predicted computers?

Lots of people, considering the fact that computers existed back then. True, they weren't anywhere near as powerful as they are today (you most likely have more computing power in your house now than all of NASA did back in the 60s)

Leave the scifi for scenarios

I agree that most should be left for scenarios (the weird stuff anyway), but a little bit is fun and can add to gameplay.

[SerapisIV]

What you're talking about are not general civilian trends, but specific military examples. When I mentioned Mach1+ transport, I meant cargo or commercial. Even today's brand new cargo jet, the C-17 and the newly proposed double-decker Ariane jumbo jets are all sub-sonic, not Concorde style. I never mentioned or even meant to relate things to fighters or bombers. The bomber you talk about was the XB-70 Valkyrie.

My mention of computers was dealing with personal computers and the internet. 30 years ago computers still took up rooms, not desktops. That was a revolution very few people predicted, even Bill Gates has his famous quote about people not needing more then 640K of memory.

It's much tougher to predict civilian future tech then military. For example, where' our flying cars ?