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ToT scenario design
This topic began in a different thread, but I moved it here as I felt it warranted its own.
I’m looking forward to Civ3 as well. However, having not seen a scenario design community spring up around any Firaxis product thus far, I’m hesitant to assume that Civ3 will be the panacea of scenario design.
As far as ToT not being a potential scenario platform, I heartily disagree. As webmaster for the Cradle of Civilization I get scores of emails from people looking for ToT scenarios. At fifteen bucks, who can’t afford to buy it? I’ll bet that the few remaining holdouts would race to buy ToT so they could play the next Captain Nemo scenario. If you released a ToT scenario, Nemo, Microprose’s sales you probably double that month.
There are a number of "bugs" in ToT scenario design. Some are real bugs like the terrain animations showing up when they are turned off. And others are learning curves, such as realizing that the restrictions to tech research are stored in the SAV file and thus not affected by changes to the rules.txt - just like the tech paradigm. At the time, I was unable to help Alex solve many of his dilemmas. But over the past year a fix has been found for each of these bugs.
Also, a number of residual bugs from civ2 have been fixed in ToT. You can now have truly divergent tech trees without having to sacrifice diplomacy or allocate a half dozen anchor techs. Civs can share a tech but not share the units that that tech allows to be built. For example the tech “Armored Vehicles” could be discovered by both the Americans and the Germans but it would allow the “Sherman Tank” to be built by only the Americans and the “Panzer” to be built only by the Germans. Improvements can not be restricted to individual civs however.
Surely the increased color depth must hold some allure for an artist like you Nemo.
ToT allows multiple engineer units. The sounds are individually allocated, no longer predetermined by slot. The events file size is over 100k. There are a host of new event triggers and actions, including the ability to remove or restrict techs on the fly.
This is by no means a conclusive list of ToT design assets. But it should be enough to illustrate why, IMHO, the benefits of ToT way out weigh the bugs.
quote: William: ToT fizzled as a potential scenario platform because not enough people bought it... I also hear it is very buggy. I considered building a scenario for it when Alex made his "Hispanola" but was discouraged by all the negative feedback I got. I would love to have more units and better events though. Right now with Civ3 lurking out there in the not so distant future I would be reluctant to learn a new system. At best I will hone my skills on another Civ2 scenario. |
I’m looking forward to Civ3 as well. However, having not seen a scenario design community spring up around any Firaxis product thus far, I’m hesitant to assume that Civ3 will be the panacea of scenario design.
As far as ToT not being a potential scenario platform, I heartily disagree. As webmaster for the Cradle of Civilization I get scores of emails from people looking for ToT scenarios. At fifteen bucks, who can’t afford to buy it? I’ll bet that the few remaining holdouts would race to buy ToT so they could play the next Captain Nemo scenario. If you released a ToT scenario, Nemo, Microprose’s sales you probably double that month.
There are a number of "bugs" in ToT scenario design. Some are real bugs like the terrain animations showing up when they are turned off. And others are learning curves, such as realizing that the restrictions to tech research are stored in the SAV file and thus not affected by changes to the rules.txt - just like the tech paradigm. At the time, I was unable to help Alex solve many of his dilemmas. But over the past year a fix has been found for each of these bugs.
Also, a number of residual bugs from civ2 have been fixed in ToT. You can now have truly divergent tech trees without having to sacrifice diplomacy or allocate a half dozen anchor techs. Civs can share a tech but not share the units that that tech allows to be built. For example the tech “Armored Vehicles” could be discovered by both the Americans and the Germans but it would allow the “Sherman Tank” to be built by only the Americans and the “Panzer” to be built only by the Germans. Improvements can not be restricted to individual civs however.
Surely the increased color depth must hold some allure for an artist like you Nemo.
ToT allows multiple engineer units. The sounds are individually allocated, no longer predetermined by slot. The events file size is over 100k. There are a host of new event triggers and actions, including the ability to remove or restrict techs on the fly.
This is by no means a conclusive list of ToT design assets. But it should be enough to illustrate why, IMHO, the benefits of ToT way out weigh the bugs.
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