I've Heard...

[Jon Shafer]

Good things about this game, and I figured there could never be such a rabid following if it was completely awful.

So I forked over 3 bucks on eBay and I am a CTP2 owner as of about 40 minutes ago. Of course, since it was $3 on eBay I have no manual or anything like that, and with my internet being flakey lately, I was wondering if there were any good download-able sources for this game that could help me learn and waste my summer away. That or some good concentrated sources of information so I don't have to go skipping about webpages.

[Jon Shafer]

Looks like there's a manual included on the CD. Good for me. Also reading some of the topped threads. Start playing sometime later today.

[hexagonian]

Play the game as it is out of the box (w/official patch, of course) one time, just to get used to the interface and game mechanics, and then...

...play a Mod and never go back to the default game

[hexagonian]

And if you haven't, read the following thread

CTP2 - civ3 comparison...

[Maquiladora]

...play a Mod and never go back to the default game

Theres not a lot wrong with the default setup in terms of fun, as long as you stick to playing humans.

[Jon Shafer]

First impressions:

• Basic gameplay is certainly very Civ-esque and pretty intuitive. Build Settlers, cities, units, improvements, etc.
  
• The interface seems somewhat awkward to me. Maybe it's just Civ 3's that is spoiling me (I never thought it was all that great until playing CTP2 and SMAC afterwards).
  
  First - OMG THE SCROLLING! Every time I bump the edge of the screen it either does NOTHING or it jumps a quarter of the way across the map. From what I can tell the scroll feature is completely useless, meaning I have to use the mini map for everything.
  
  Second - Something similar to my first issue, the fact that you can't move units with the number pad or arrows. Sometimes the game doesn't like what I've told it and it'll stick or shudder or go in a wrong direction. Kind of clunky compared to being able to kit a single key on the keyboard and move much more easily.
  
  Third - I can't seem to get the game to auto-goto units that have movement remaining and haven't done anything yet on their turn. The only indication that there is stuff left to do is whether or not the end turn button is flashing. But even if I know I have units left to move doesn't mean that I know where they are or how many. :\
  
  Fourth - It's hard to track production quantities. You can easily see how many turns are left on projects, but there's no way to see how much production is in a project and how much is left. Which is kind of annoying, as an extreme Civ 3 micromanager.
  
  Fifth - The lack of a visible tech tree is kind of annoying. Same thing as with SMAC. Yeah, you can see what comes before and after every tech, and you can learn what each does and know what to bee-line for, and yeah you can go download and print something out (if you have a printer, which I don't ), but really nothing beats being able to see the whole tree laid out visually for you. Good for those trying to learn the game.
  
  Maybe people have some workarounds (or something I'm missing ) for these issues.
  
• The breakdown of food, production and commerce into larger and less fixed quantities compared with Civ 3 is nice. Something that I've played around in a few of my game designs, helps to simulate realism more. Though, the fact that you can't choose which tiles to use or to have real direct control over your city will take some getting used to.
  
  Additionally, can you ever use tiles besides the 8 directly outside of your city? I guess it wouldn't matter much since you can't actually choose which tiles to work. If not then that must lead to a lot of tight city-placement.
  
• Public works is definitely an interesting concept, one that I like a lot. Better than Workers as in Civ 3? In a way. They definitely reduce the tedium of placing tile improvements, but they're also not as realistic. Gameplay > Realism?
  
  Overall it seems that CTP2 aims to eliminate as much micromanagement as it can. Compared with, say, Civ 3 there's a lot less to get your hands on it seems, though there are some other things to play with (more tile improvements, future era, etc.). This is both a good thing and a bad thing I think - as a perfectionist and a habitual micromanager I kind of miss the ability to avoid wasting a single food or shield.
  
• Maybe I haven't read enough, but borders don't seem to be good for much of anything. They simply exist when you build cities... yeah. Is there anything else to them?
  
• The whole concept of happiness seems really ambigious. I'll admit I haven't done much reading, but it doesn't seem to have any tangible effects. I increased laborer work day, lowered wages and rations and the game warned me the people were pissed. But nothing happened. I recall reading that crime increases as happiness decreases, and also something about rioting and possibly revolution, but I don't remember entirely. I'll either wait for someone here to explain it or go read more.
  
• How do you use trade resources and caravans?
  
  I built a city just south of a cotton resource, have a road on it and built a Caravan, but there doesn't seem to be much to do with it. I'm on an island and found the Americans on another island with a Coracle. How would I go about trading it to them and what are the benefits of doing so?

Okay, that's all for now, time to play some more and see if I can figure out more things on my own.

[Maquiladora]

Basic gameplay is certainly very Civ-esque and pretty intuitive. Build Settlers, cities, units, improvements, etc.

Spotters badge for that one

First - OMG THE SCROLLING! Every time I bump the edge of the screen it either does NOTHING or it jumps a quarter of the way across the map. From what I can tell the scroll feature is completely useless, meaning I have to use the mini map for everything.

You can change scroll delay in options>advanced menu IIRC. Most people? play it at 0.

Second - Something similar to my first issue, the fact that you can't move units with the number pad or arrows.

Er.. i use the numberpad.

Third - I can't seem to get the game to auto-goto units that have movement remaining and haven't done anything yet on their turn. The only indication that there is stuff left to do is whether or not the end turn button is flashing. But even if I know I have units left to move doesn't mean that I know where they are or how many. :\

Press "o" to go to the next unit with movement remaining.

Additionally, can you ever use tiles besides the 8 directly outside of your city?

Play the game for longer than 100 turns and youll see.

They definitely reduce the tedium of placing tile improvements, but they're also not as realistic. Gameplay > Realism?

workers more realistic than pw?

How do you use trade resources and caravans?

I built a city just south of a cotton resource, have a road on it and built a Caravan, but there doesn't seem to be much to do with it. I'm on an island and found the Americans on another island with a Coracle. How would I go about trading it to them and what are the benefits of doing so?

RTFM

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Maquiladora
Spotters badge for that one

Maybe I can add it to my list of civgroup icons.

You can change scroll delay in options>advanced menu IIRC. Most people? play it at 0.

That's what I get for not poking around more.

Er.. i use the numberpad.

Hmmm... maybe it's just the normal arrow keys then.

Press "o" to go to the next unit with movement remaining.

I figured there had to be a solution to this.

Play the game for longer than 100 turns and youll see.

I don't know if I can stay awake that long.

workers more realistic than pw?

How realistic is it to have a "public works system" that you can use anywhere next to any city in 4000 BC? 1000 AD onwards I can see, but way back during the origins of civilization I find it unlikely that such a system could be conceived and mantained. The idea that you would be sending out a small ragged band against their will who slogs away turn-by-turn seems more realistic to me.

RTFM

Real men don't read manuals.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Trip
Second - Something similar to my first issue, the fact that you can't move units with the number pad or arrows. Sometimes the game doesn't like what I've told it and it'll stick or shudder or go in a wrong direction. Kind of clunky compared to being able to kit a single key on the keyboard and move much more easily.

Well, I'm a mouse user, so I can't help you there. But I just tried it on my game and the number pad works for me regarding unit movement.

I will point out this feature though - you can autopath a unit to the far ends of your empire (same as in civ3) but you can also select that unit later in the game to see the path in progress (number of turns to get to destination) and then redirect that unit if something else comes up. Once you autopath a unit in civ3, you really cannot track if it is autopathed later on - and with a lot of units in the game, it is hard to remember what units are moving where.

Originally posted by Trip
Third - I can't seem to get the game to auto-goto units that have movement remaining and haven't done anything yet on their turn. The only indication that there is stuff left to do is whether or not the end turn button is flashing. But even if I know I have units left to move doesn't mean that I know where they are or how many. :\

There is an autocyle feature in one of the options menus (I believe it is either F10 or F, as pulled from the manual) I have reset the key commands on my personal setup to something different.

Pressing the unit tabscreen at the bottom of the mainmap screen will give you a pic of a unit with arrow buttons that will allow you to cycle to the next unit.

It hops all over the map the same as civ3...

Originally posted by Trip
Fourth - It's hard to track production quantities. You can easily see how many turns are left on projects, but there's no way to see how much production is in a project and how much is left. Which is kind of annoying, as an extreme Civ 3 micromanager.

I will say that I prefer the CTP1, as well as the civ3 setup over the CTP2 setup because it presented this feature a little more clearly - and the civ3 setup has all the info on a single screen which is easier to handle.

Originally posted by Trip
Fifth - The lack of a visible tech tree is kind of annoying. Same thing as with SMAC. Yeah, you can see what comes before and after every tech, and you can learn what each does and know what to bee-line for, and yeah you can go download and print something out (if you have a printer, which I don't ), but really nothing beats being able to see the whole tree laid out visually for you. Good for those trying to learn the game.

This is the one area in regards to Civotopia information presentation that I feel civ3 did a much better job on than CTP2. I felt that the rest of the info in civ3 was presented in a manner that was less user friendly than in CTP2. Not enough hyperlinks, as well as Building/Wonder pics that I couldn't identify exactly what they represented...

Originally posted by Trip [*]The breakdown of food, production and commerce into larger and less fixed quantities compared with Civ 3 is nice. Something that I've played around in a few of my game designs, helps to simulate realism more. Though, the fact that you can't choose which tiles to use or to have real direct control over your city will take some getting used to.

Direct control is via specialists - Again, I preferred the CTP1/civ3 format over the CTP2 format, but the CTP2 setup is not a bad one.

Originally posted by Trip
Additionally, can you ever use tiles besides the 8 directly outside of your city? I guess it wouldn't matter much since you can't actually choose which tiles to work. If not then that must lead to a lot of tight city-placement.

Your cities expand in radius size as they grow in population - and they do not stop once they get past the normal 21-tile size of SMAC/CTP1/civ2-civ3

Originally posted by Trip [*]Public works is definitely an interesting concept, one that I like a lot. Better than Workers as in Civ 3? In a way. They definitely reduce the tedium of placing tile improvements, but they're also not as realistic. Gameplay > Realism?.

Actually, it is not any more abstract than the worker system. PW is more along the lines of your empire taking control of infrastructure issues.

Originally posted by Trip
Overall it seems that CTP2 aims to eliminate as much micromanagement as it can. Compared with, say, Civ 3 there's a lot less to get your hands on it seems, though there are some other things to play with (more tile improvements, future era, etc.). This is both a good thing and a bad thing I think - as a perfectionist and a habitual micromanager I kind of miss the ability to avoid wasting a single food or shield.

There is a definite streamlining in gameplay, but that does not mean that you cannot micromanage - Specialists can take as much micromanagement as worker placement.

Originally posted by Trip [*]Maybe I haven't read enough, but borders don't seem to be good for much of anything. They simply exist when you build cities... yeah. Is there anything else to them?

There is no culture in CTP2 - they are there to mark your territory

Originally posted by Trip [*]The whole concept of happiness seems really ambigious. I'll admit I haven't done much reading, but it doesn't seem to have any tangible effects. I increased laborer work day, lowered wages and rations and the game warned me the people were pissed. But nothing happened. I recall reading that crime increases as happiness decreases, and also something about rioting and possibly revolution, but I don't remember entirely. I'll either wait for someone here to explain it or go read more.

The simple explaination is that as your happiness drops, you lose production/commerce/science to crime. If it drops low enough, your city will riot/revolt.

In the default game, you have a large margin of unhappiness before your city riots (At 74 you will get the messages as warning and 72 is the breakpoint). In my Mod the breakpoint is at 75...

Originally posted by Trip [*]How do you use trade resources and caravans?

In the default game, creat a unit (Caravan, available at Trade I think - its been a long time since I played the default game), go to the Trade Manager and create a route, which will show up on the map as a dotted line. Trade generates Rush Buy gold, which is not all that worthwhile. In my Mod though RB gold is critical because you use it for unit upgrades, and you will need a WHOLE lot of gold to do this (Upgrading is not part of the default game)

Maq is right - for multiplay, the default game is fine, but if you singleplay, you need to get a Mod. I do plug the Mods a lot though...

The bottom line - CTP2 is a different game than civ3. Both games have the same basic ideas, but they both present these ideas in different ways. Both games have their pluses and minuses, and like any game, require a different mindset in playing. If CTP2 was exactly like civ3, then there would be no need to play one or the other.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Trip
How realistic is it to have a "public works system" that you can use anywhere next to any city in 4000 BC? 1000 AD onwards I can see, but way back during the origins of civilization I find it unlikely that such a system could be conceived and mantained. The idea that you would be sending out a small ragged band against their will who slogs away turn-by-turn seems more realistic to me.

Tell this to the peasants of ancient Egypt who built the irrigation system well before -4000 BC and the first Pharaoh. Agriculture and trade was actually expanding at this time.

You should have a look at the CtP2 FAQ, it will certainly reply to many of your questions.

The CtP2 interface can be confusing at first but you will see it is actually very powerfull once you get used to it.

CtP2 is actually reducing the micromanagement so that you can concentrate on strategy and on the management of your empire. This is a point that really differs from Civilization 2 or 3 and that is really appreciated by most of the CtP2 community. IMO there is a perfect balance between micro and macromanagement.

If you want to take the most from CtP2, don't compare it to Civ3 and play it like a new game. Though the original concepts are the same (build a civilization, expand and rule the world, which is also true for GalCiv or Alpha Centaury) there are two very different games with very different concepts.

When the end turn button is flickering, you have cycled through all your units which means that you have given an order to them or pressed the space bar to jump to the other units. The "wheel" lets you access all the information you need and the city manager is a very powerfull tool that allows you to have a quick look at all your cities and their state.

Welcome aboard!

[Martin Gühmann]

Well if you like you can also test our playtest version from the source code forum.

-Martin

[Immortal Wombat]

In the default game, you have a large margin of unhappiness before your city riots (At 74 you will get the messages as warning and 72 is the breakpoint). In my Mod the breakpoint is at 75...

In CtC I managed to get a city with -8 happiness without it revolting. I don't know how

[Quimby]

Welcome aboard! Hurry up and play the ai a few times to get the hang of things, then join the multiplayer community. I'd be happy to "educate" you on some good game tips during a little 1 v 1.

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Quimby
I'd be happy to "educate" you on some good game tips during a little 1 v 1.

Sounds more like a threat rather than an invitation...

[EPW]

I'd be happy to "educate" you on some good game tips during a little 1 v 1.

Not if he has XP.....