Next Patch

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
Still nothing, man what the hell is going on. I wish they would say something so we know they are alive. What are the plans firaxis?

I think they keep their plans hidden, so that when they do release a new patch all of the sudden, everybody is happy...until we find out that it caused more problems than it fixed.

[simwiz2]

Originally posted by Coracle


The plan is to leave Civ III so effed up, that we the Suckers, will be forced to BUY new versions, and scenario disks, from Firaxis.

Those are the plans.

I sure hope not.

I dont think it would be very smart for them to do so. Consider the mess with AI tech trading in 1.17. And they already promised lethal bombardment toggleing in the editor in the next patch.

If they had the nerve to charge MORE money for us to beta test their product, I think a lot of people, including me, would just forget about civ3. And then Firaxis would have to forget about ever making alot of money off of future civ games. So it wouldnt really be in their best interest at all.

[WarpStorm]

But those monkeys on C-64s are playing 1.19f and you aren't

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Coracle
we the Suckers, will be forced to BUY new versions, and scenario disks, from Firaxis.

Those are the plans.

Forced?! Like a mafia thing, or more like a government tax or something?

[The JIG is up]

"Firaxis is developing a program to do all of its playtesting for the company. This would save almost a dozen hours of playtesting for the company and revolutionize playtesting everywhere.

I think the SMAC manual says something about the Firaxis crew playing dozens of games with 0(that is zero) human players just to watch the statistics at the end. So they could fine-balance the different factions.

...So...not so far away from your idea...

[rpodos]

In one of the early chats, Soren said that he would set up several games with multiple AI civs before going home at night, and check the results the next morning (which I'd like to do btw, but is only possible with the development versions).

There were some pretty funny results along the way. One I remember was that the AI thought there was a way to get from the North Pole to the South Pole, so all of their ships ended up hanging around at the top of the screen.

My guess is that Firaxis has been overly dependent on automated playtesting, and that's where a number of the key problems have slipped in (late-game tedium, communist meltdown, tech trading, etc.). It's obviously a great solution, in theory, from a cost and time perspective, but is not quite ready for primetime.

Did anything ever come of the call for patch beta-testers?

R

[WarpStorm]

They have a set of beta testers (some of whose names are familiar to those in this forum) currently testing v1.19

[Coracle]

What most of us want NOW, instead of 1.17, is at least the option to use 1.16 WITH stack movement.

Where is it, Firaxis??

[Pyrodrew]

Getting monkeys to beta test v1.19... not easy. The only way they got most of them to do it was by putting the game in a tin box.

[Cookie Monster]

Fix Civ3 please!