The Best Civ

[St Leo]

Personally, I think CtP shows the most promise. It is inferior to AC in the respect that the other one has real elevations, but that is a minor issue.

[St Leo]

Oh, I'm talking about elevations, rather than the terrain itself. I find ToT to have the best terrain graphics, but the iplementation is perfected in CtP

[MarkG]

What I didn't quite like on AC is the terrain and city graphics. I guess I'm used to an earth-like enviroment, and CtP surely has better graphics than Civ2...
But on the other hand, there will be someone who will change the graphics of AC, isn't it?

Markos Giannopoulos, Apolyton CS

[kwang]

i feel ctp could compete with smac. but i also want to point out a VERY slick aspect of civ2: test of time. if you'll look at the screenshots, the menus are translucent (see-thru). how cool is that?! how many times has that control menu blocked something very important in civ2? far too many!

[Jason Beaudoin]

The reason why I'm sold on SMAC is because of the people who are creating the game. All of these games show a lot of promise, but we really don't know which will be the best game until it comes out. I'm sure many of you have bought a game that was a complete dud, so you know what I'm talking about.

I tend to buy games when they come from companies that have good track records when making games. If there's too much inexperience behind a game, it will show in the final product. I can, at least, feel confident that SMAC is being created by a veteran crew.

[LT John]

I can understand Jason's apprehension about buying games from unproven developers. And the team at Firaxis has two awesome designers behind AC.

CTP has a bunch of talented people with experience making great games as well- some of their credits include Close Combat 1 & 2 (programming), I-76 (art), Dark Reign (programming and AI), and Zork Nemesis (design and direction).

Everyone on the team is a huge Civ and Civ2 fan. We get a lot of questions about how someone can make a Civ game without Sid and Brian and our answer is that it has happened before in other genres (shooters started with id, now there's 3D Realms, Epic, Raven, etc. RTS started with Westwood and Blizzard, now there's Cavedog, Ensemble and others). There is room in the market for two (or more) great world building games. CTP aims to be one of them through strong design, great art, and most of all, addictively fun gameplay.

[Jason Beaudoin]

Lt. John:

Thanks for your detailed reply. Just the fact that you're participating in the discussion group and knowing that the designers are paying close attention to the things that the consumers have to say says a lot about your game creation phylosophy and your experience. I have great confidence in the crew at CIV:CTP. The article that I read in PC Gamer showed that the creators were pulling all the stops to make CIV:CTP the best game that they can create. The attention to detail alone demonstrates their own interest in empire building games. The real rival to any other product.

Being a Civilization fan, I will definately buy this game. I've never bought an Activision game, so this will be the tester.

[Lister]

my whole problem with CTP is the funky new units. I mean eco-terrorist? is that likely? and park ranger... gimme a F***ing break. park rangers go around and relocate bears and stuff, not destroy cities. And the cleric unit... damn where is your sense of whatever.... their like priests in AOE... gay and gayer.

What you really need is some sensible new units... scuba trooper... amphipious landing craft( civ2 marine ability for ANY unit).

oh and smac will not have super units.. everything can and will be countered

[sneetch]

I think what it will come down to for me are the various bells and whistles associated with each game. I am eagerly awaiting SMAC simply because it looks very involved and promising.

I'm slightly unsure about CtP, though. What really make the Civ series great for me was the sense of history that came along with the game. The Wonder movies in CivII were wonderful and gave the game a sense of epic proportion. From the press releases, it seems that Activision has focused on combat mostly, with vast improvements in AI, orders, and the introduction of a lot of new unit, rather than the historical aspects of the original. The possibility of extending ones civilization to the year 3000, in my mind, ruins the sense of history of the game. I could relate to a game that ended 20 years from now ... We'll see if Activision is trying to do too much

[LT John]

In response to Lister:

The old traditional units are still there- cavalry, tanks, artillery, etc. There are a bunch of new ones as well. The Park Ranger and ecoterrorists are but two units that we've revealed. While you may not like the names, the strategic options that they bring to the game are really cool (IMHO). There are over 80 unit types in the game- you've probably only seen about ten or so at this point.

SMAC will be similar in this respect- they've got a lot of new sci-fi type units. Some you may think are cool, some you may think are lame. But the fact is that they will provide a bunch of new options to your strategy for winning the game.

For Sneetch:
We are not focusing only on combat. Actually, combat, trade, diplomacy, civ management, and story are all getting equal billing. What you've seen so far is just a small snapshot.

In both cases, I know that I can spend all day talking about these things and you'll still be skeptical. But be patient- we'll reveal more about CTP in the coming months, and I think that you'll find it a worthy addition to the Civilization name.

[LT John]

One more note for Lister:

I just want to make sure that you don't have a misinterpretation of what the cleric does.

He is NOT an AOE type priest.

He approaches enemy cities and "converts" them to his civilization's religion. The enemy maintains control of the city and the population, but the population now has an affinity to tithe the cleric's government every turn. In essence, it is an economic attack. There is also a side effect- if the enemy government declares war on the cleric's government, the people of the "converted" city will become unhappy- a real world example might be if Italy attacked the Vatican States. So the cleric also has a defensive purpose. He does not go around capturing enemy units or cities like the AOE priests.

The cleric is a great example of our new warfare types. We also have economic, propaganda, viral, terrorist and other forms of warfare.

[Jason Beaudoin]

I believe that these new units will be an interesting addition to this type of game and I don't think that including them will detract from the game. Actually, it is nice to see that CIV:CTP is doing something different from its competitors. After all, who wants to see the same things in each of these games?

I'm just happy to see that this genre is getting more attention than they had in the last few years. I've always been a big fan of empire building games, and I'm relishing in the new attention it is getting.

[St Leo]

Yeah, the first real RTS Empire Builder will be Empire Earth to be release in 2001. Currently, computers are a little weak to have good map scale in the RTS game area.

[civworld]

This may be a stupid question, but in CTP, will there be actuall civilizations. By this I mean will there be an (say) English and French civs, rather than just the Red and Blue Civs? Will each civ have unique attributes that they had in real life (like city names, city styles, etc..)?

Another thing; will there be real Earth maps, like in Civ1/2, or will it just be random everytime? That is what I hated about AOE, the fact that you could only play on random maps. That was stupid.

[Bio Terminator]

You mean Imperialism, don't you? In aoe you had an map editor.