Why has CivFanatics overtaken Apolyton in members?

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Solver
Well, there's still a lot to discuss about Civ4 strategy. The CFC strategy forum is very lively. As for modding, back in Civ3 days, Apolyton did also produce quite a bunch of mods. For Civ4, Dale's work were the only big mods produced on Apolyton. Blake initially started work on his AI mod here, I believe, but development has long since moved to CFC, where there has been much more feedback.

Well, I'm not saying it's concrete as CFC=Mods, Apolyton=Strategy. There's a number of things at play here. I was mainly referring to the Civ 3-era, which was when CFC was still smaller.

Good point, but you're missing one more important factor - Google rankings. CFC ranks higher than Apolyton on most Civ4-related search terms, and it has been so indeed even when Civ4 came out. So for most people, CFC is simply the first fansite they find when looking for one, and people tend to stick with the first site they find unless it's crappy.

Perhaps, but that's something we'll never know. Websites which don't start as the #1 Google hit aren't always relegated to obscurity or an inevitable death. You just have to have the right stuff to attract people which other sites lack.

But except for the respectable PBEM activity here, yeah, OTF has mostly taken the place over. Given that I still don't particularly like this OTF and am still mainly interested in Civ, I sometimes don't know what I'm doing here. Well, I'm sticking here because it's my online home, I've been regularly reading CFC for Civ stuff, and sometimes posting, for several months now.

Yeah. I glance over the OT for news but that's about it. The Civ-themed parts of the site have really dropped off. It's kind of sad. I remember when this place was more popular than CFC on the whole. The main reason I stuck around Apolyton in the past was because I enjoyed the Civ 3 community here more. While I did have an interest in mod-creation (bwahaha) my primary interest was in Strategy stuff and particularly Democracy games for a while. They offered unique challenges that I found very entertaining. I wasn't SO big into modding back then. There's almost zero Civ-related talk here now.

Us-vs-them is a classic of course, some people still can't take CtP players seriously .

It's because your game had weird junk like the Lawyer and the Televangelist. I mean, come on. The Televangelist?

Funnily enough, Trip, as the inventor of demogames, you're responsible for much of what made us unique during the Civ3 times. Just don't you forget that you're an Apolytoner, too .

Hehe, don't worry, I haven't forgotten. By necessity I've become more of a lurker. Can't really speculate publically on what new things might be happening in Firaxis/Civ-land, although there's always interesting stuff going on. I hardly play Civ at all any more so I can't really talk too much about the released game. Besides, I talk about Civ more than anyone else around here I'm sure.

[LordShiva]

Civ, shmiv. Does CFC have a PolyCast equivalent? Huh? HUH?

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Civ, shmiv. Does CFC have a PolyCast equivalent? Huh? HUH?

Nope. But it seems like people at Apolyton just don't care about Civ any more. It's too bad too, as PolyCast is something that's very much unique to Apolyton.

[SlowwHand]

This is Solver's little brother. Edit: "THIS" being Shiva.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
This is Solver's little brother. Edit: "THIS" being Shiva.

Solver is a teenager. I can't be his little brother.

Immature big brother, maybe.

[Guynemer]

If we're Europe, what would that make Drixnak?

[SlowwHand]

Twins. Twin sons of different mothers even.
He can be Danny Devito.

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by Trip

Nope. But it seems like people at Apolyton just don't care about Civ any more. It's too bad too, as PolyCast is something that's very much unique to Apolyton.

I for one still play Civ constantly. The only other game eating into it at the moment is Twilight Princess on the Wii.

I'm gonna try to get the fiancee into Civ soon.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You know there may be something to the Off Topic taking over. I know I don't really play that much Civ (amusing because I'm a co-host of Polycast ), and come here mostly for the community.

[SlowwHand]

I don't think half the people in O.T. even know what Civ is anyway. The FBI agent, b etor, for instance.
Lawyers. Lawyers don't play Civ.

[Dis]

as I said before, we are older than CFC, and have real jobs. We just don't have time to mod the game like they do.

I think we still have a decent amount of civvers. Just not one's that mod the game. But I think we do have some old fogeys here. People who claim every new game sucks. And civ2 and smac are god. Some people don't even play civ anymore.

As for OT. It is big here. But we still don't seem to have as much traffic as CFC. I was browsing there a couple days ago. They seem to have threads pushed onto page 2 easily. And they have seperate forums for computers.

[Guynemer]

Dude--SMAC is god.

[Solver]

Perhaps, but that's something we'll never know. Websites which don't start as the #1 Google hit aren't always relegated to obscurity or an inevitable death. You just have to have the right stuff to attract people which other sites lack.

I know, to a degree - the trends are visible when viewing site hit statistics. Also importantly, it's kind of common sense. A guy who just bought Civ4 would likely enter "civilization iv", "civ 4", "sid meier's civilization 4" or such terms into Google - all of which would point him to CFC first. Of course, some also come to Apolyton that way, but most people stick with that first site. The amount of new registrations throughout 2006 at CFC and here kind of shows it.

Yeah. I glance over the OT for news but that's about it. The Civ-themed parts of the site have really dropped off. It's kind of sad. I remember when this place was more popular than CFC on the whole.

Very sad indeed . Though the PBEM parts are still active. At least I come up with an article to post on the main site now and then .

By necessity I've become more of a lurker. Can't really speculate publically on what new things might be happening in Firaxis/Civ-land, although there's always interesting stuff going on. I hardly play Civ at all any more so I can't really talk too much about the released game.

Yeah, I can't exactly "speculate" on the second expansion or anything like that, either - if I could, the Civ4 forums would likely be twice as active as they are now . And I think that programming the game should also count as playing for you .

Nope. But it seems like people at Apolyton just don't care about Civ any more. It's too bad too, as PolyCast is something that's very much unique to Apolyton.

Yeah, PolyCast is actually, IMO, one of the best things Apolyton has come up with recently. Such a podcast could be totally awesome for a large Civ community. It's a shame, though, that here it instead usually is a target for silly jokes and trolls.

You know there may be something to the Off Topic taking over. I know I don't really play that much Civ (amusing because I'm a co-host of Polycast ), and come here mostly for the community.

No, someone tell me what I'm doing here .

as I said before, we are older than CFC, and have real jobs. We just don't have time to mod the game like they do.

I think we still have a decent amount of civvers. Just not one's that mod the game. But I think we do have some old fogeys here. People who claim every new game sucks. And civ2 and smac are god. Some people don't even play civ anymore.

As for OT. It is big here. But we still don't seem to have as much traffic as CFC. I was browsing there a couple days ago. They seem to have threads pushed onto page 2 easily. And they have seperate forums for computers.

Dis, do you really think that no one at CFC has a job or school or university to attend? People still tend to have some free time, well, most at least. Clearly, CFC has many people which spend much of their free time modding Civ - and not posting much as a result. It was the same here some time ago, we had some modders spending most of their free time on the games, and they weren't really active posters.

As for the decent amount of civvers, I'm not so sure - if you look at the Civ4-General forum, it's not too active, either. And I've noticed that people don't tend to stick around here much. We had LOTS of people register and post in Oct/Nov 2005, immediately after Civ4 was released. Most of them went away, and only a few remained as members. When I browse CFC, though, I get the impression that more new registrants stick around there.

The OT at CFC definitely has more activity (right now I see the last thread on page 1 having the last post ~14 hours ago), but the activity in this OT is still respectable, and sometimes threads do move very fast. It depends on the thread and time of the day anyway.

Oh well.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Solver

Perhaps, but that's something we'll never know. Websites which don't start as the #1 Google hit aren't always relegated to obscurity or an inevitable death. You just have to have the right stuff to attract people which other sites lack.

I know, to a degree - the trends are visible when viewing site hit statistics. Also importantly, it's kind of common sense. A guy who just bought Civ4 would likely enter "civilization iv", "civ 4", "sid meier's civilization 4" or such terms into Google - all of which would point him to CFC first. Of course, some also come to Apolyton that way, but most people stick with that first site. The amount of new registrations throughout 2006 at CFC and here kind of shows it.

Google rankings aren't voodoo. There are real things that staff can do to make Apolyton ranked higher in Google. "having the right stuff" is part of it. If I had to take a guess I think one of the best things CFC did to attract new people in the time leading up to Civ4 was maintain an extensive and comprehensive list of information on Civ4.

They really harnessed all the anticipation out there in the fan base around Civ4. What civs are in? What traits do they have? What are the traits? What buildings? What units? etc. All that info was picked out of various news articles and leaks and assembled into that one page on CFC. It was a very good list and anyone discussing the game would go there. Better yet anyone writing about Civ4 on forums or blogs would link to that list. And that would boost CFC on Google. I know I checked that list many times.

Plus of course the mod community. I heard whispers that the modders actually left Poly for a reason. Some falling out or something and they decided to en masse migrate to CFC. I dunno, maybe I'm making it up, but I thought I heard that somewhere. As has been said of course CFC's mod community is unbeatable and will prop up the site's popularity for some time to come.

[Solver]

True, but our pre-release coverage wasn't really inferior to CFC's. We did have all the available information on Civ4 here, even though some of it was only on the forums and not the site, which is a downside. The real problems started later - one year after Civ4 was released, our Civ4 site section had minimal pre-release info on Warlords, and the vanilla info wasn't up-to-date - the information was of summer of 2005, a few months before Civ4 was released. That, granted, didn't really benefit us.