When CTP2 came out I was considering going and buying it- but thank god I stumbled on it while looking through a warez site. This saved me wasting my money on what has proved to be an awful game. There are 2 main problems with it- 1. The AI has the 'intelligence' of a worm. 2. The interface is horrible. There don't seem to be many posts about 2. on this forum, which surprises me. Maybe I have just not played CTP2 enough to get used to the interface changes from CTP1, but I think it's more than that. For example the thing where it centres the map but doesn't select the city when you choose to edit a build que.
The interface to CTP1 was excellent- not perfect but it was good enough for managing 50 or 60 cities with astronomical production values (ie lots of finished building messages each turn). It wasn't ideal for large military campaigns but it was usable. Another thing is that there appears to be no unit cycle button- the one you could use to cycle through and use the movement points of all active units before the end of the turn. It takes me ages to deal with the messages from my cities each turn (a build que finished, a wonder built, a unhappiness warning message etc) whereas in CTP1 it was a quick and relatively painless operation. I could go on for pages picking out all the things I don't like about the interface but I won't.
Finally who's stupid idea was it to remove space? It was one of the best areas of the game- not only for having extra room to colonise but it was great for military campaigns- you could drop whole armies out of orbit. It eliminated the tedious multi-turn movements required to get units into enemy territory.
Activision's reason for this was some crap about space not really being part of the central game playing area- it was a distrction from the game because it was a seperate view. Personally I think the reason for this and the awfulness of CTP2 was that activision management wanted a quick dollar- they wanted to capitalise on consumer loyalty to the civilization/CTP name. As I write this I'm about to remove CTP2 from my hard drive- CTP1 may not be perfect but at least it's playable.
The interface to CTP1 was excellent- not perfect but it was good enough for managing 50 or 60 cities with astronomical production values (ie lots of finished building messages each turn). It wasn't ideal for large military campaigns but it was usable. Another thing is that there appears to be no unit cycle button- the one you could use to cycle through and use the movement points of all active units before the end of the turn. It takes me ages to deal with the messages from my cities each turn (a build que finished, a wonder built, a unhappiness warning message etc) whereas in CTP1 it was a quick and relatively painless operation. I could go on for pages picking out all the things I don't like about the interface but I won't.
Finally who's stupid idea was it to remove space? It was one of the best areas of the game- not only for having extra room to colonise but it was great for military campaigns- you could drop whole armies out of orbit. It eliminated the tedious multi-turn movements required to get units into enemy territory.
Activision's reason for this was some crap about space not really being part of the central game playing area- it was a distrction from the game because it was a seperate view. Personally I think the reason for this and the awfulness of CTP2 was that activision management wanted a quick dollar- they wanted to capitalise on consumer loyalty to the civilization/CTP name. As I write this I'm about to remove CTP2 from my hard drive- CTP1 may not be perfect but at least it's playable.
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