Civ3's Impact On Alt-Civ's

[dexter4dxm]

I would like to talk about how Civ 3 will be impacting the many alternative civilizations we all know about. So far I've been thinking that:

1) Civ3 will increase the flow of good ideas (but hopefully we're not just copying straight out of the game)

2) Civ3 will at first take away from the time we have to design/code the games, but then as we stop playing it so much, we will be even more interested in our own projects than before

3) Civ3 will take away any little attention our games once had

[Dale]

I tend to disagree with 3. I believe it'll be more 1 & 2 since every Civ-style (CtP included) game has had ideas thrown around afterwards on how it could be better.

IE. the settler vs PW debate......

I think after Civ3 settles down a little, people will come back to Alt-civs for the pure reason that once again, Civ3 will lack a couple of ideas that THAT player wanted. For instance, I wish there was a Civ-style game with religion. To map human history without religion is absurd! Religion has been the one major influencing factor in our history. Wars, successions, alliances, economics, diplomacy, all influenced by religion.

So basically, I think Alt-civs will benefit from Civ3 as people realise some of their favourite gameplay ideas have been added or deleted, and look for them in Alt-civs where we the development/programming teams/individuals are more likely to be influenced by them.

My two cents.
Dale

[JamesJKirk]

I agree with Dale,

while I paid some scant attention to Alt Civs before recently, over the past short while, I've begun to really get into them and everything they offer, and that you guys doing this are doing it because of something you enjoy rather than just having economic considerations as a motivating factor.
BTW, I've enjoyed your demos dex, and I'm glad to see that you're not solely dedicating your talents to CTP2, Dale

[Dale]

Post Civ3 release comment:

It appears that some people are disappointed with the gameplay in Civ3 (UI, graphics and bugs aside). I believe we'll be able to harness these player's ideas through Alt-civs to help us write games for everyone.

James:
I actually used CTP2 modding to spearhead my games progging career into overdrive. Now I've got a name in here for writing a decent MOD maybe someone will play my game when I finish it.

[dexter4dxm]

now that i've had some time to play Civ 3, i agree with you because i keep noticing things in the game that i would change if i could. i end up feeling like i want to work on my game instead of playing Civ 3.

[Mark_Everson]

None of 1-3 apply in my case . I think

Potential for most of the good things that are in Civ3 have already been discussed to death, so the release only gives a marginal level of new ideas. About the only good Civ3 does Clash is they have tried some of the new ideas, and the success or failure of that trial is of use to us. FE there is great complaining on Civ3 General that in Civ3 conquering the world is basically imposible (possibly at least until the modern era). Corruption makes any conquests after a small core civ almost useless. That kills the avalanche effect you get from putting prior conquests to work for more conquests. That's what was possible in Civ1 and Civ2. Since Clash's models try to be realistic, they would also prevent early world conquest in Clash. In Clash its more through eventual fragmentation of civs too large for transportation and communication technologies of their era giving poor cohesion, leading to civil wars. (oversimplified but I don't want to write a treatise here) This experiment in Civ3 is useful to Clash, and I have some ideas that should keep the warmongers fairly happy, although perhaps not thrilled, unless they choose to turn down the 'reality' control for empire stability. Of course we already had these ideas Long before Civ3.

I'm not sure I'll even get Civ3 unless I'm convinced by the reviews I see on Apolyton. The magazine reviewers know so little about the genre that their thoughts aren't really relevant to my concerns. FE AI is very difficult to evaluate if you have little knowledge of the system. Reviewers were trumpeting Civ2's AI back when, and it was truly pathetic. The things that would make me buy Civ3, are a reasonably good AI, and a reduction in the mind-numbing amount of micromanagement needed, especially later in the game. If I get Civ3, and it hooks me, then there'll be some danger

Clash has a core following of about 15 people, and maybe 20 more that pop in now and then. I can't see the release of Civ3 seriously changing that. Our fate is in our own hands! Demo 5 was just released, and I expect Demo 6, which will include our revolutionary internal Government approach, will increase our interest level irrespective of Civ3.

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by Mark_Everson
Potential for most of the good things that are in Civ3 have already been discussed to death, so the release only gives a marginal level of new ideas.

good point. i should read more of those old discussions. i never took place in any of them and it sounds like i'm missing out on lots of good ideas.

Since Clash's models try to be realistic, they would also prevent early world conquest in Clash. In Clash its more through eventual fragmentation of civs too large for transportation and communication technologies of their era giving poor cohesion, leading to civil wars.

nice.

The things that would make me buy Civ3, are a reasonably good AI, and a reduction in the mind-numbing amount of micromanagement needed, especially later in the game.

if you want to know my opinion on Civ3, the AI is harder, but not necessarily better. i'm convinced the AI cheats to get anywhere, a sure sign of unintelligent AI. as for micromanagement, i feel the level needed is much much lower in Civ 3 - if you like using the governors and build queues and such. i was one of the people who was horrified when i heard there will be no MP in Civ 3, but now i think it's worth getting. i'm not addicted to it, but that's probably because i've been involved with civ-related things so much already recently and Civ 3 isn't revolutionary. All the mods that are starting to come out are making it more worth it. Anyway, that's what i think about it

Clash has a core following of about 15 people, and maybe 20 more that pop in now and then. I can't see the release of Civ3 seriously changing that. Our fate is in our own hands! Demo 5 was just released, and I expect Demo 6, which will include our revolutionary internal Government approach, will increase our interest level irrespective of Civ3.

is it possible that Civ 3 will increase the Alt-Civ traffic and increase our followings? Perhaps people looking for something else because they are dissapointed with Civ 3 and they want something with different features. Or even people who are new to apolyton but are here now because of Civ 3's release

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Dexter:

Thanks for the mini-review! I might get it at some point although I'm thinking I'll wait till the first patch is out.

-Mark