What's the deal about the upcoming Civ3 scenarios and editor?

[Dr. Nick]

KK is the Spanish acronym for ****.

[JMarks]

Originally posted by Steve Clark


FMK,

I also quite enjoyed Shogun and thought that was a nicely done hybrid, given the scale. I remember some of us talking about that here a year or two ago and concluded that the nation/civ scale of Civ just would not work for CivX. The problem that I had with Shogun, and I imagine you and others as well, was the lack of attention and details in the TB strategic part of the game. But since a majority of the gamers nowadays wants to see hordes of ants filling up the screen, that's where they put the emphasis on and not on the boring stuff that us old gamers prefer.

In speaking of RTS games, I think there is another caveat besides the hybrid ones like Shogun. Among my current top 5 favorite games are Pharaoh and Zeus. Both of those are RT but with a very critical difference - you do NOT directly control the ants (people) in the game. You control those things that affect the people. The RT part of Shogun was like this to some extent, you only control the group not the individuals. That's why I will always be critical of games like AoE/EE/RoN.

Don't get me started on EU/EU2. I find those games (I only did EU) nicely done but unplayable for me. It's not because of its RT nature (it really wasn't, you could slow things way down, like in RRT2), but because of the vagueness of the information it presents to you and in how you affect information. One of the main analogies I gave was in comparing the roles of improvements and techs in Civ2 to EU. As you know, when you research a tech or build an improvement in Civ2, you know what effect it will have. In EU, if I recall, it's all shrouded in vagueness and complexity. The same thing applies to the very abstract nature of battles. I hate the design concept of EU and if I want to play a game of that time period, I would play Imperialism II (like I'm doing now) or one of the Civ2 Age of Exploration scenarios.

But back on topic, I'm not hopeful that we will see any of the Civ3 scenarios approaching the quality of the Civ2 ones, not for a while at least. However, I would be curious to see how a regicide, cultural or resource objectives scenario could play out. But if those that will be messing with the scenario editor are the same folks screwing around with the "mods" and not those that have designed Civ2 scenarios, then I am not hopeful.

Clark,

Hehe, I'm responding to a post directed at someone else. Oh well. Anyway, concerning the RT part of armies in RoN, it is, from what I read, more like the Shogun's approach than AoK etc. That is you control units. Each grouping of units has a front, two flanks, and a rear. Anyway you control the groups, not necissarily the individual units themselves.

On EU2, I don't mind the vagueness of the whole system, though I agree its not for civ or RoN. The part of EU I would prefere is how the nations interact. First of all you virtually have an unlimited amount of them! and I'd prefere that over having tons of little guys running around with different weapons. Anyway, I'd like to see that level (even if toned down somewhat) of civ interaction. Its just plain awesome!

Back on topic again, civ3 scenarios will only become good (assuming they give decent enough untensils) if dedicated people like ourselves (although I have never actually completed one myself.) get involved. I doubt that will happen for a while, but, unless I'm mistaken, which I probably am, the level we see now in scenarios weren't there when civ2 came out. Oh well, we shall see how it all comes out. Don't hold your breath though, you might pass out.