Sticking with civ2

[Henrik]

So would I.

[techumseh]

OK, here's a draft. I don't think we should get into too many specifics or too many "wishes." If we set out our major disappointments and basic requirements for a patch, will that suffice?

I think we should contact as many scenario designers AND players, past and present, as possible to see if they'd sign the final letter. Can people start doing that? Jay Bee, will the Spanish Civ folk sign on?

Unfortunately, I'll be gone for the weekend, leaving Friday afternoon. I'll take my laptop, but I may not be able to dial up. I don't think this is really urgent timewise though. Please post your comments and suggestions, bearing in mind I may not be able to respond until Sunday evening. Criticize freely, I won't take offence.

-- DRAFT ONLY--

Dear Firaxis,

Like Civers around the world, the scenario design community has waited with baited breath for the release of Civilization III. We have eagerly anticipated the new editing tools and the new and innovative concepts promised. We appreciated it very much when Firaxis relented and provided for more than 8 civilizations, a key victory for scenario designers. Most of all, we were delighted that Sid Meier and Firaxis were contracted to do the design, because we knew the excellence of your work and your sensitivity to our requirements.

So it was with bitter disappointment that we learned that the new game had no events capability at all. Disappointment turned to anger when we learned that it was impossible to place units or cities on the map. Clearly, as it now stands, NO scenarios will be possible with Civ3.

We believe that our community, including the many pioneers who paved the way for us, have contributed greatly to the success and longevity of Civ2. We believe that we can contribute in the same way to Civ3 as well. There are many outstanding aspects to the new game. It shows great craftmanship, but it leaves us standing out in the cold.

We appreciate Firaxis' committment to further improve editing tools in a patch. We would like to outline here what we consider the essential tools for creating good scenarios. If you provide these, we guarantee a steady supply of creative and fun scenarios for the whole civ community!

1. An effective scripting language. Events are essential to a good scenario. No AI, regardless of how good it is, can replicate historical events properly. Events at the quality level of Fantastic Worlds are the minimum, with an increased heap size to at least 100kb in order to deal with up to 16 tribes. We encourage you to go farther and incorporate some of the features found in Test of Time, especially multiple triggers and events that can be turned on and off.

2. We must be able to place units and cities on the map. This is basic. So are flat maps.

3. The various tools available in Civ2's cheat mode and scenario parameters are required, or new equivalents. If we can't add improvements to cities, and copy them in other cities, change money, or modify treaties and reputations, we can't make decent historical scenarios.

4. Map visibility is critical. We have to be able to reveal or hide the map at will, and do so from the point of view of any tribe. Revealing the map fully means being able to look into any city of any tribe, and make changes. And it means being able to run complete turns and observe the movements and actions of ALL units, regardless of their tribe.

5. A flexible scorings/objectives system, that allows designers to set a number of different victory conditions for a scenario is necessary.

6. Multiplayer is desireable and was certainly expected. However, PBEM (Play By Electronic Mail) scenarios are rapidly increasing in popularity. These are essentially hot-seat games in which the player takes his/her turn and emails the save game to the next player. Even if true online multi-player can't be provided immediately, PBEM capability should be.

Members of our community are chomping at the bit to produce great scenarios with Civ3. Whether historical, fictional, fantasy or sci-fi, lots of scenarios have been percollating in our brains, just waiting for the release of the game. Please give us the tools to do the job! We look forward to your positive response to our suggestions. Thank you.

The Scenario Community,
__________________
__________________
__________________

[hardjoy]

Good job!

I agree about keeping it less specific, and I agree completely with the points you've listed.

Perhaps "scripting language" can be misunderstood. We do not necessarily need an exact mirror of Civ2, but rather tools (whether visual or macro based) that can perform the same kind of triggers and events, hopefully vastly improved.

I remember Mike Breitkreutz said that he'd be more interested in a visual campaign editor a la the one found in Starcraft (which I do not know much about). Anyway, the flexibility of the tools has first priority. If such a "visual" tool can be more powerful than the old-fashioned events system found in Civ2, I'd definitely be open for it. The important thing is the flexibility of the triggers and actions.

PLUS

You forgot one point, that is equally as important as scripting :

A flexible scorings/objectives system, that allows designers to set a number of different victory conditions for a scenario.

Now, how do we go about signing, and collect "signatures" ?
How about everybody who agree, simply post their signature to this thread? Is there a more practical way? Anyway, lets get as many signatures as we can.

I'll go ahead and post a link to this thread on CivFanatics Civ3 Scenario Creation forum. Perhaps a good idea if someone posts a link in the Apolyton Civ3 forum too.

[jasev]

You can count with my sign, and I think the other guys in the Spanish Civ2 Site Forum will sign too; you should see what we've been saying about Civ3 there (just in spanish, sorry...)

Javier Arriaga
jasev@aluesi.us.es
First Carlist War, Communities&Brotherhoods, Drole de guerre and others.

[Case]

Well put Techumseh

I think the normal way of signing electronic petitions is through giving your name and email adress.

edit: and here's mine ( hey, its getting late)

Nick Dowling (aka Case)
email: nick_dowling@hotmail.com
Author of the scenarios 'Raging Dragon' 'The Cruel Sea' and one more finished scenario

edit: I just cut my number of scenarios down to two

[hardjoy]

My Signature

Morten Blaabjerg (a.k.a. hardjoy)
email : crewscut@mail.tdcadsl.dk
scenarios : Hammer of the North, The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition

[hetairoi22]

I'm with you guys! I've never made a scenario myself, but I like to play them, and I want scenario makers to get what they wanted, and was promised to them.

My signature:

Andreas Naes Aaserud (a.k.a Hetairoi22)
E-mail: andreas@dk2net.dk

PS: Techumseh, Sid's surname is Meier, not Meir

[BeBMan]

Well done...

My signature

Bernd Brosing

Bernd@civii.de

[techumseh]

Thanks everybody. I'm just going to edit the original post with any changes to the letter, so check back to it every now and again. When it's done and everyone's signed, I think I'll open a new thread on the main Civ3 forum and post the whole thing at once. Does that sound OK?

I was wondering if scenario designers wanted to list a couple of their best scenarios under their sig as examples of their work? eg.

Case
Cruel Sea, Invasion of Australia and 3 other scenarios

Or whatever....

Until it's officially posted, I think we should avoid getting into a discussion of the letter with Firaxis folks or the non-scenario community in general. Sound alright?

[Henrik]

My signature:
Henrik Lohmander
Email:Henrik.Lohmander@Telia.com

Scenarios (if we are to list them, I only have one completed project, but I am still working on two more for civ 2) :
Carolus Gustavus

[Henrik]

You might want to remove the part about homing units, since units dont have home cities in civ 3, support is national (in gold) and war weariness (republic and democracy) is also nationall.

[hardjoy]

Until it's officially posted, I think we should avoid getting into a discussion of the letter with Firaxis folks or the non-scenario community in general. Sound alright?

OK. Already getting these kind of responses. Perhaps you're right, if people list their primary scens, it certainly seem more "weighty".

[Case]

Originally posted by techumseh
Until it's officially posted, I think we should avoid getting into a discussion of the letter with Firaxis folks or the non-scenario community in general. Sound alright?

About an hour ago I sent a PM to MarkG asking him to put this draft petition up as a news item in order to get more feedback/sigs

IMHO, the more people that sign the petition, the faster Firaxis will produce a patch and/or anounce a expansion pack. (considering that each sig would = 1 customer of such a patch/ expansion pack)

However, the sigs of people who have previously produced scenarios would probably carry a little more weight then others, so how about splitting the list of sigs into groups? (say 'past designers' and 'those who would like the opportunity to make scenarios' [or something a little more catchy ]

[Henrik]

Originally posted by Case
IMHO, the more people that sign the petition, the faster Firaxis will produce a patch and/or anounce a expansion pack. (considering that each sig would = 1 customer of such a patch/ exansion pack)

We want a patch not an expansion pack (expansion pack is for MP, but scenario tools should come with a patch, MP is something they hadn't promissed us when the game shipped, scenario tools is).

[Case]

Originally posted by Henrik
We want a patch not an expansion pack

I agree. I'm just being realistic - I'm sure Firaxis made a consious decision to drop the scenario editing capabilities (either to correct bugs, or to make more money by selling expansion packs)

Another addition to the letter would be asking Firaxis to release the scenarios they pulled for 'additional testing' ASAP, so we can at least get a hint of what Civ 3 is capable of. I'm sure they'd have no trouble finding volunteers for this testing
I suspect they may be doing this anyway (putting extra stuff on the company's web page seems to be all the rage these days [eg The Sims, etc])