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

[Steve Clark]

Friends, some of you know that I have been prattling on and on in the Civ3 forums about the promise and capabilities for developing Civ3 scenarios...to be like many of your wonderful Civ2 scenarios. I keep trying to make the comparison of what have been done in Civ2 to what will scenarios be like under Civ3.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=51388

Since the posters here are some of the Civ2 HoF designers, and folks that I really, really respect, I thought maybe some of you can help me understand what to expect. I suspect that most of the audience at the Civ3 forums do not have a clue as to Civ2 scenarios and their creation, thus do not understand the comparison.

Thanks.

[klesh]

Hi Steve,

Its good to see you around still banging the drum, my friend.

I vist the CivIII forums occasionally, basically for a laugh. It is fun to watch kids in total frustration dying for somthing that is months and months away...

Personally, I have given up on CivIII awhile ago. I dont play it, and I dont look toward it for the future of my gaming. Its really unfortunate, but it is so.

I have seen you over in those forums, but I get the feeling that it falls on deaf ears there. Here and there I have posted a few shot of Nemo tanks etc. To tease the kids when they post a pic of this or that that they are trying to make. Sort of a "ha ha, these are up and ready to be played in CivII!" type of friendly banter. But I get the feeling that what is going to be needed for CivIII is alot of work to make a real scenario (if that ability is even ever achieved). One of the CivIII guys is quoted as sating something to the effect of 'Scripting language only gives scenario makers the ability to create bugs' or somesuch. Thats bloddy rediculous. Of course it does, but thats why we have a forum where we fix things and talk about it etc. Giving some dumbed down deal where we are more confined to the 'civ' setting is horrendous imho. Plus, even things about the game itself. Windows, diplomacy etc. just the setting in general... So so so hard to have to do all that to make some nice piece of work. And as it stands now, I could care less. A shame.

And whats this I read about problems even with trying to alter the timescale of the game! Perfect, a Battle of Britain scenario (or every scenario for that matter) starting in 4,000 BC.

I dont know, the guys here arent too hyped up about CivIII. There is virtually no talk about it here. I see Darth Veda there occasionally too. But we just are there to jab at the game, rather than give good thoughtful insight.

Steve, I'd just say stick to CivII scens for now. Or maybe get into another game. Off the cuff, I'll suggest Panzer Elite to you. Very fun WWII tank sim I've been playing for years. Better than CivIII anyway!

-FMK.

[Steve Clark]

Thank you my old friend, FMK. Since I had never really played Civ3 (or cared to), I had just waited around until the scenarios came along. But seeing that a lot of our friends here really never bothered with Civ3 and the forums, I had wondered why. How can Firaxis miss the boat regarding true scenarios when they are obviously aware of all of the work you and others have done in Civ2??? Besides, I have had the suspicious feeling all along that they believe that "modding" is what scenarios are about. Sigh, how wrong can that be.

[DarthVeda]

Well I haven't given up on Civ3 entirely, I just don't expect them to have civ2-like scenario support until about two or three more expansion packs down the line. So I don't intend on buying any of them until the real deal comes out.

[H Tower]

i posted in the civ3 forums that i was going to reinstall civ3, then i had second thoughts and never did. i'll wait and see what the x-pack actually has, remember how civ3 out of the box was supposed to contain scenarios? maybe if i get really, really bored i'll put civ3 back on my comp, maybe

[Peter Triggs]

I'm actually a CTP2 guy, but speaking of getting interested in other games have you guys noticed the posts Brian Reynolds made tonight in the RoN forum? It sounds very interesting to me, especially since:

I can't promise full scripting (yet), we'll see if that makes the game or gets pushed to an update or something, it depends on how a couple of programming issues break well for us. I should mention that we DO have a full scripting language for the scenario editor, that's definite.

One of the things that gives me a lot of confidence in that game is this earlier comment he made in the UGO interview:

BR: Fan community involvement adds a LOT to the life of games. In fact, a lot of my interest in making games comes from my younger days "modding" games like Empire, Telengard, Apshai and so forth. Whenever I get a piece of software I always want to customize it a lot, so I've always tried to provide as much of that customizability as possible in the games I've been involved with. Rise of Nations will be no different--we'll have an elaborate scenario and map editor, as well as lots of opportunities to try out your own custom rules.

I've never liked RTS, (hmm, that's putting it mildly) but maybe it's time for an old dog to learn some new tricks.

[H Tower]

what exactly is RoN going to be about and is it turn based or real time?

[Peter Triggs]

Rise of Nations strikes me as "Brian Reynolds' Civilization 3". Unfortunately, it's Real Time; but it will have some sort of 'free pause' feature so that you can slow it down.

Given that Reynolds and Coleman - two of the founding partners of BHG - were the guys who did the design and programming of Civ2, and that they intend on making RON very modifiable, I would have thought that there would be some interest in it from the guys here who've done all the best Civ2 scenarios.

[Steve Clark]

Yeah, but who would want to play an AoE/EE-like game.

[Jacobite1688]

I have very litle intrest in real time games.

[H Tower]

ditto

[klesh]

I must say i quite enjoyed Shogun: Total War. It is kind of half and half. There is a grand map/ turn based strategic level side to it, but if you have anything happening in a particular province, it wooshes you into this realtime tactical part where you move groups of soldiers against one another. Horsemen, pikemen, archers, swordsmen.... The scale is grand here as well, but highly manageable.

My only problem with alot of RTS games is that I KNOW the AI is always making a move with every piece it owns. It is optomizing in a way that I simply cannot. The last thing I want to see is units standing doing nothing, because I was way on the other side of the map and couldnt see them. Mr. AI doesnt have that problem, and that bugs me alot.

-FMK.

[Dr. Nick]

Let me at once and quickly add:

Civ3 KK!

[JMarks]

From what I hear about RoN is that the AI basically handles a lot of your stuff too. Workers find work to do, they automatically start on projects you give them. The same goes with military (which looks great with the flanks and stuff). They don't do anything at peace, stand off if another army is opposite them. Declare war and the generals go at it. Unless, I'm assuming if you want to personally do your own stuff, though I assume the generals develope varying tactics depending on where you are in your development. Anyway, it sounds interesting, but I'm still going to be sceptical about it. I would prefere if they vered fromthe civ idea of nations/civs and went with EU idea of nations/civs. A lot more advanced of course, but EU rocks in that area. You can get most of what those in Civ3 wish forums were wanting with revolutions, and integration etc etc. Oh well, mabey next time around.

El Lawrence. What do you mean Civ3 KK? I'm not up with the proper lingo.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by Field Marshal Klesh
I must say i quite enjoyed Shogun: Total War. It is kind of half and half. There is a grand map/ turn based strategic level side to it, but if you have anything happening in a particular province, it wooshes you into this realtime tactical part where you move groups of soldiers against one another. Horsemen, pikemen, archers, swordsmen.... The scale is grand here as well, but highly manageable.
-FMK.

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.