Nostalgia for The Civ3 List

[Stefu]

Remember the list? The Civ3 List? And the Essential Civ3 List?

Those were grand times. Civ3 was still in the development and we, the fan base, decided to do something about it. Discussion and idea-throwing was still wild, and bunch of people decided to organize it all. People collected suggestions and debated different models in the List threads, and finally it was all collected to a 500+ page document we mailed to Firaxis. There also was a smaller document called the Essential Civ3 List, which contained... was it 10 or 20?... fixes and suggestions we deemed by vote to be essential.

I was the editor of the Religion thread, at least in the beginning. Based on the OP by me detailing a preliminary model for independent-from-players religions I had developed (and that model was at least partly based on some other model I had seen on some other board) we developed a pretty nifty, developed model for implementing religions to Civ3. There were disagreements, of course - whether to use real religions or made up religions (All hail the great Turywenzo!), whether religions should have characteristics, and whether the religions were desirable in the first place - but there were also many great ideas and the religion model even made it to The Essential List.

So, did you take any part in The List? And does anyone happen to have a copy of The List and The Essential List hanging around? I'd love to read them again.

[Gramphos]

I wasn't around when the lists were produced. However, I think that they are still accessable from the Civ3 section of the site, and the forums are in the archive.

[MarkG]

http://apolyton.net/civ3/suggestions/

[MarkG]

http://apolyton.net/news/search.php?Category=Civ3&LookFor=both&Find1=essential&AndOr=and&Find2=list

[Stefu]

Thanks.

[Gramphos]

http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=102

[Alex]

I followed the creation of the list at large, without taking an active role, mainly because I had little time to track all the discussions then. But I recall the huge collective effort to try and make Firaxis listen to our wishes and hopes. Oh well. Good times.

[yin26]

Hey, yeah. I remember that 'little' project!

[Solver]

I do somehow fail to see my credits for preparing the online version .

Yin, great to see you posting here... wish to take the job for Civ 4?

[Rasbelin]

We already had one Civ IV idea list just after Civ III was released.

[yin26]

Solver: Waddya nuts?!

My only recommendation here is that a Civ4 process take a similar path. That is, the 500 page document was certainly helpful to the developers (they said as much). But I also think it was hugely important to have a distilled list that shows the collective priorities of the public.

If I had to do it all over again, I might have gone back and focussed on a handle of 'must have' things rather than completely open it up to anything and everything.

[Rasbelin]

Yin, our man of lists.

I have to agree that Civ IV should have more community effort than before, so indeed a well organised process would be helpful

[Adm.Naismith]

Making a usable, focussed list, would be desiderable. But! as in any democratic process the plain numbers will end to command raising to the top average - but largely approved - model over great idea.
You also take the risk to force a complete design model, one where all the concept are already connected in a whole model. I don't think that a professional designer will love that...

I still think that a free brainstorming can be useful for a game designer. I let they chose at least the pieces for the puzzle.

BTW sorry for late post, I'm just taking a look at the forum after months...

[CrONoS]

Wow, I was reading this list.
This is a beautiful job you made...
Now I've read Social Engineering and Religion...

But all this can be send again for Civ4!!!

If people think we got to make another one for civ4, we got to make it before they begin to work on Civ4.

See ya

[VetLegion]

I remember the list ofcourse. Great suggestions in there, some by posters I haven't seen around anymore.

I think the list has a permanent value too because I think the future of civilization games is with independent projects, like Freeciv.org, or some other. They (we?) can all read the List for inspiration.