RON could topple Civ

[Rohag]

Curious in Cyberspace

I thoroughly enjoyed Civ II, but life events took me away from games for a while, and didn't return to the Civ series. So I haven't played Civ III but it's impossible to not notice the controversies surrounding it.

I don't wish to hijack the topic, but could someone point me to a concise summary of the "Civ III Imbroglio?"

[Capt Dizle]

Concise summary of the "Civ III Imbroglio?

I'll try. A glimpse behind the scenes:

Firaxis and Infrogreed team up to produce Civ3.
Wild party ensues because everyone will make a lot of money.
At wild party Sid declares he doesn't do sequels and leaves.
Wild party hits second gear. This means that BR will design as he did for Civ2 and SMAC. Overjoy! BR is a better designer than Sid anyway. Civ3 will be great!
Cut scene.

BR, busily working on Civ3, is called into Infrogreed meeting. Slash budget in half. Game cannot be in-depth masterpiece. Infrogreed has lots of games and wants to sell all of them. Nothing can stand out. Civ3 to be dumbed down to mass market (7 year old level). BR says **** that, takes a few pals and goes to see Bill Gates.

Post BR meeting. Sid is playing with dinos on floor. Sid declares he doesn't do sequels and leaves. General dismay. Who will design Civ3. Jeff Briggs says that Jeff Briggs will do it. Everyone laffs ass off till they realize he is serious. Uneasy silence. Someone ventures that Jeff Briggs might need a little help. Someone is fired. Jeff Briggs says, anyway, I have someone in mind to help out. Everyone wonders who will help cause Jeff can't design a paragraph, but no one asks. Jeff Briggs responds to unspoken question by reaching into pile of rejected resumes. Jerks one out. I have a great guy here Briggs proclaims.

Soren Johnson and Jeff Briggs design and release Civ3. It sucks.

And, per Infrogreed's plan, we are here looking and praying for a good strategy game.

But I won't buy Moo3. The last laff is on them.

[mrboo123]

Disorder eh? Well, civ3 looks fun, because of the culture and dipomant vics! And I was play Chietian-King (using civ2 levels,) anyways.

[Rohag]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
Concise summary of the "Civ III Imbroglio?...The last laff is on them.

Interesting (and creative)! Many thanks for the 'history' behind Civ3. Have you considered the soap opera potential of the tale?

So among the BHG founders' considerations was not being forced by a publisher to dumb down a game so as to not outshine the other games backed by the same publisher to ensure all would sell. Hmmm...

[Inverse Icarus]

Reynolds has a lot of fame (civ2) to live up to...

I hope he pulls this one off flawlessly

[mrboo123]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000 Get something else, TRUST me

Too late.

[HuangShang]

Originally posted by 123john321
Too late.

too bad for u
how much did u pay?

[WarpStorm]

I only played about 500 hours on it

[Sava]

I used to play Civ 2 about 3 hours a day for close to 3 years... Civ 3 just sucks... I played a ton of Starcraft, but that was only because of MP on battle.net. RoN had better be pretty damn good if it's going to topple the Civs. It will probably be much better than Civ3, but if its another AoE clone, then it won't have a chance at becoming a classic.

[HuangShang]

it looks too AoK from what i see, but i think it'll be good

[St Leo]

You guys are nuts. RoN is competing against Total Annihilation and Warlords Battlecry. Civ is a totally different kind of game.

[tniem]

Originally posted by HuangShang
RON will topple the Civs

What do you mean topple? Do you mean it will cut into sales of Civ3? Do you mean that there will never be an urge for a Civ4? Do you mean that it will make people ever forget their was a Civilization game?

Define topple because by the time RoN is out, Civ3 sales will be damn slow anyways (the expansion was an effort to get them going again but horrible reviews and word of mouth destroyed that effort). So how will RoN topple Civ? If they came out at the same time one could dominate the other but that was not the case and I am sure Infogrames and Firaxis made a ton on Civ III. If you instead mean that people will forget their urge to play another Civ TBS game, I believe you are quite mistaken. I will always have that urge to play a game where I cannot go to sleep until I have played that one more turn. So I need a more precise meaning of what you are writing before I can even begin to see what you are saying or where you are coming from.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by tniem
Define topple because by the time RoN is out, Civ3 sales will be damn slow anyways (the expansion was an effort to get them going again but horrible reviews and word of mouth destroyed that effort).

Actually, this isn't quite true. It's selling fairly well for a year old game. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a second expansion as well as a Gold edition (that includes PTW).

[Peter Triggs]

St Leo,

RoN will come equipped with a variant game called 'Conquer the World'. It's been described as "Risk meets RTS" and, from what little we know so far, sounds mighty like the Total War series that Kull and Field Marshall Klesh were raving about last month in the SLeague forum.

In his account of the Fanstock event

http://ron.heavengames.com/press/events/fanstock/day1.shtml

Obsidian wrote:

Conquer the World

Now here is a game variant that is sure to have the gaming community standing up and cheering for quite some time. I can’t really say much about it due to a Non Disclosure Agreement, ...

What I can say here is that in my opinion, this is the feature that will keep players interested in this game for years to come. There are still a number of tweaks to be made to it, but even in its limited version I was incredibly impressed. In talking with Brian Reynolds about this later in the day he would say “I thought to myself, wouldn’t it be cool to have the #1 Real Time Strategy game and the #1 Turn Based Strategy game? Is it possible?” Based on what I have seen, it just might be.

When Brian Reynolds says something like that, anybody interested in Civ type games has gotta sit up and take notice.

[WarpStorm]

From what I've heard it sounds almost exactly like the Campaign mode from Warlords Battlecry 2.