So I broke down and played a game of CTP last night and...

[cassembler]

*preface: to date, I have always loved Civ3... I play it often. It's a good freakin game, and MORE than worth the $45 price tag*

Yeah I played CTP I last night on my home, slow as poo PI 166 with 64 megs of ram and my short, humble thoughts:::

1) The interface was kinda "busy," but at the same time, it was all really on one screen... most stuff was easily accessible.
2) My legion unit, in my first battle ever, LOST to a barbarian warrior (on chieftan, mind you). This was really cool 'cause all of the sudden I thought, "Oh $#&%$... I needed that liegon."
3) Unit stacking and army fighting was great... I miss it.
4) The map scrolled SOOOO smoothly, even on my ancient machine.
5) The graphics weren't half bad.
6) hotlinks everywhere!!!
7) a whole bunch of little tiny things... like on the left, all of the events that have happened (even built units and what not) had an icon so I couldn't miss anything.
8) you could build stuff everywhere... like the ocean.

All in all, there's a lot of thing that this game have that Civ3 can't touch...

In Civ3's defense, however, I think Civ3 is a deeper game and has many perks above those mentioned...
It just pains me to realize how much more things could have been done with it.

$.02

[bigvic]

Yeah, oh for the best of both worlds. The army thing, the ocean improvements, the lack of memory and time eating busy workers...lots of good stuff civ III guys should have looked into. Even more, ctpII had some truly revolutionary ideas, like getting rid of tile laborers, larger armies, units w/ different roles (attack, defense, ranged, flanker), abandonment of the 24 tile city radius slavery. Too bad it had some fatal flaws, though checking out the ctp2 section of the forums, found out that w/ the help of a few friends here at Apolyton, one can fix most all of those shortcomings. Maybe worth checking out before its too late.

[Tuberski]

Originally posted by bigvic
Even more, ctpII had some truly revolutionary ideas, like getting rid of tile laborers, larger armies, units w/ different roles (attack, defense, ranged, flanker),

Getting rid of tile laborers isn't revolutionary, Master of Magic had that back in 1993. Same with units w/ different roles and armies.

MOM didn't waste a lot of time with workers and tile improvements, the buildings you built in your cities improved the production from the tiles.

However, if I could find Ctp II I would probably snag it. I have Ctp I and I had fun with it.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Tuberski



Getting rid of tile laborers isn't revolutionary, Master of Magic had that back in 1993. Same with units w/ different roles and armies.

MOM didn't waste a lot of time with workers and tile improvements, the buildings you built in your cities improved the production from the tiles.

However, if I could find Ctp II I would probably snag it. I have Ctp I and I had fun with it.

Really? I was not into the hobby (obsession) back then. Haveyou tried to find it? I'm sure someone has it & is willing to part w/ it. From reading a little of the ctp2 thread, you can really fix it up w/ patches and fixes available here. I think I even remember it saying you can have up to 20 civs at once or something. Check the internet, or even the ctp2 forums here at apolyton

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by bigvic
I think I even remember it saying you can have up to 20 civs at once or something.

It's 32 (including barbs and yourself) - and you can do it in CTP1 as well

[bigvic]

I guess I can find this in the ctp forums, here?

[Locutus]

How to play with 32 civs, you mean? It's Simple: both in CtP1 and CtP2, just open userprofile.txt (in the folder ctp[2]_program\ctp) and change NumPlayers to 32. (Don't try to change it again from inside the game though, only from userprofile.txt.)

[Solver]

In the first post he mentioned that

even on my ancient machine

So I don't think 32 civs are any good in this case.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by Locutus
How to play with 32 civs, you mean? It's Simple: both in CtP1 and CtP2, just open userprofile.txt (in the folder ctp[2]_program\ctp) and change NumPlayers to 32. (Don't try to change it again from inside the game though, only from userprofile.txt.)

That easy, eh? Thanks

[Jac de Molay]

Ctp's a decent game, except I find myself stuck in the "city' mentality of civ 2 and smac, and can't have a "country' mentality of ctp. At least in terms of managing units and trade and such

Dave

[TheBirdMan]

But remember, if you edit the userprofile.txt to more than the default maximum (8 + babarians), you can't change the number within the game normal setup screen.

It will crash until you manually change the number in the userprofile. txt back and below 9 (9 included?! - not sure of that).

[Locutus]

BTW, I also played a game of CtP1 again recently- I laughed my @ss when I saw those graphics again I thought the step from CtP1 to CtP2 was a very small one in terms of graphics but once you're used to CtP2 graphics the CtP1 ones do look awfully old...

But the interface was very nice to come back to Oh, how did I miss those message icons along the side! Although CtP2 has more powerful macro-management functions it was nice to have those good old tabs back at the bottom of the screen... Overall I must admit I enjoyed playing CtP1 again more than I had expected, both CtP1 and CtP2 have some great features that the other game doesn't have. Although I don't expect to play it an awful lot, I don't think I'll ever uninstall CtP1 again (except for system maintenance and stuff of course)...

[TheBirdMan]

Oh, how did I miss those message icons along the side!

Specially I do like this one from an add-on:

Great One, maybe we should give up and merge our civilization with another one. We are not even within the Top 10 civilizations in this category (in total [nump.value] civilized competitors). Sooner or later our civilization is going to get crushed, I will get fired, and you... hanged.

(the text copied from ps_info.txt file).

[drAgON1]

CTP1 is a great(one the greatest of its time) heads up internet war game if you know how to play.