I have heard several people mention that they would rather have 8 civs with a good AI than 32 civs with a bad AI. The number of civs in a game is personal preferance. I myself would prefer to play against 32. However, the precieved tradeoff in AI quality and number of civs is nonexistant. Anyone that thinks the number of civs has any bearing on how well they play doesn't know what they are talking about. All civs will be using the same game logic. Playing with 32 civs will definately take more time than with 8, but the quality of their play will be the same. Activision just didn't feel like giving the player the option of playing with greater than 8 civs. If the game was coded well, this could be changed very easily. I do not understand why CTP2 will not have an in-game menu to set the number of civs to at least 32, if not 64. If they do not allow play with greater numbers of civs by text-editting, we know they reserved this functionality to make more money on a patch. I am a programmer myself and I will tell you that this is a very easy thing to do.
As a side note, I hear that CTP2's AI is much improved. I certainly hope so. The critical question is: Doe the AI cheat? It has in all past civ games and that the AI had an advantage always bothered me. If Activision can create a computer player that does well and doesn't cheat than that will be a major accomplishment. If they "improved" the AI by allowing it to cheat more, well, I could have done that myself.
As a side note, I hear that CTP2's AI is much improved. I certainly hope so. The critical question is: Doe the AI cheat? It has in all past civ games and that the AI had an advantage always bothered me. If Activision can create a computer player that does well and doesn't cheat than that will be a major accomplishment. If they "improved" the AI by allowing it to cheat more, well, I could have done that myself.
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