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Civilization III from Sid Meier
blitzrage writes "Here is some info on the long awaited Civilization III game from Sid Myer. Thankfully the patent got back to Sid Meier, after some games of hot potatoe with it. The story is on Neoseeker." Having large portions of my life to the original, II, Railroad Tycoon and Alpha Centauri, I'm not sure if I should be joyful about this, or fearful of the time I'll lose.
It's not a patent, it's a license. If you're going to argue for IP rights for Napster/DVD/CSS, you should at least learn the terminology and apply it correctly, in all cases.
As a programmer of CTP, I would like to thank you for revealing to me this previously unknown use of my program. It is always wonderful to hear how people find new and cool uses for the things you create. I am going to call my former coworkers from the marketing department at Activision (I'm not there any more, they still are) and tell them to start pursuing cross-licensing deals with crib manufacturers, Gerber's, etc. There's nothing that'll get 'em into a bigger frenzy than a brand new demographic. And what could be more natural than a new parent-world domination link? Not much, I think. Thanks again!
;-)
Joe
P.S.
I think the graphics got _worse_ in Civ II. Compare the meetings with enemy leaders, for example. The original Civilization had an animated face for each leader, with cool-looking backgrounds depending on government type, but as far as I can see the sequel just has a boring still picture.
And I agree about the 3d map being sucky. I think the essential problem is that Civ II takes itself too seriously; Civ I tries harder to be fun and accessible.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
If it's as addictive as the very first one, you won't see your wife to MAKE the second kid! :)
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Got that right. I read the post and thought "Dude! Sid PATENTED Civ? Why'd the moron give it up?"
/., so no one has ever heard of the intellectual property FAQ (look for it on google) and thinks license=trademark=copyright=patent.
But hey, this is
I'd like that one to have slave trading included. Colonization allowed you to commit genocide on the indian tribes, which is true to history, but lacked any slave trading, which was an important aspect of that era.
-- Spelling and grammar errors tend to be a sign of erroneous thinking.
Looks like they aren't going to create a whole new game, just polish the ideas from the original Civilization and Civlization II. For instance, diplomacy and war will be greatly improved, the terrain/resources-system will be better and just about everything will be tweaked to make it better than the previous versions.
Personally, I'm really looking forward to this game. I really like how they are listening to the fans and adding features on request (to a limit, of course).
Uh, dude, if you don't know yet, the words within the double-quotes that are italized are NOT from the Hemos, but from the submitter of the story - in this case, blitzrage (hence, "blitzrage writes", as in, he/she wrote the following within the quotes). Anyhoo....
Hehe, I have such great memories. Even though it was Sid Meier, Civ Call to Power was pretty good and got me through the first two weeks of my first kid. I'd play for an hour, go feed him, go back and play for an hour or two, go feed him, hehehe. Guess I'll have to have another kid when III comes out :).
Never to trust that a teacher knows how to spell basic words?
u nd/onbackground990927.html).
(See http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/OnBackgro
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Well, for starters...
a) implement air units in a _reasonable_ way -- find a way to let them fly OVER other units, for cryin' out loud. In SMAC you could block planet-busting missiles with a line of Chiron locusts...
b) less blatant AI cheating; even if they know exactly how much tech and money you have, and whether you have nukes, AI's really shouldn't *flaunt* it.
c) tech costs that are based on specific areas, and not just how many (of any kind) techs you already have
d) differentiate between "hard to kill" versus "likely to kill you if you try". Not all battles should end in a unit death.
e) a GOTO algorithm that actually handles a *round world* and doesn't try to go the long way around if you cross 0 longitude.
f) quality control. Please, fewer blatant bugs like infinite-range AI missiles, et al.
g) auto-engineers/formers that AREN'T so irritating, riding around rails in infinite loops, that I vaporize them out of contempt.
h) Interface improvements. e.g. ability to drag a line indicating multiple squares where I want a railroad to be built. CivII/SMAC both degenerate into massive amounts of inane micro in large worlds.
i) if they go with SMAC-style social engineering... make them fit. Morgan had the LEAST incentive to go Free Markets, for instance, because a mere +1 economy would suffice for the big boost rather than +2.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
You gotta wonder how closely that mimics real life...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, that FAQ is several months out of date. For example, MacSoft is doing a Civ3 port (gee, guess which platform?) so there is at least one commitment yet.
But it's a shame Civ3 will probably use DirectPlay (aka the Seinfeld Network Nazi) just like all of the other Firaxis games. No cross-platform multiplay for you!
- Are there any plans for Civilization III to be made for the Mac, Linux or other gaming platforms?
The publisher, Hasbro Interactive, makes decisions regarding ports to other platforms. Since this is a major release, you'll most likely see ports to other platforms, but there are no commitments yet. We'll keep you posted.Linus has,in fact,grown,and explosively-JonKatz
There is no 'e' in Potato. Didn't we learn anything from the Dan Quayle debacle some years ago?
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Open-source isn't about innovation. Open-source is about stealing the ideas from real software and making your own lame version, in the name of "freedom".
The only real open-source software that contributes new ideas rather than just leech off of old ones is the stuff produced by the various Apache projects, and they're only so high quality because of the constant, forced infusion of IP from Sun, IBM, Microsoft (yes! even Microsoft!), and various Internet standards committees.
As has been proven over and over again, "writing open source software for the community! we are so l337 lololol!!!@!" is not a viable business model. And without a clearly defined business interest, open-source projects will continue to be poorly managed and without conceptual integrity. You end up with "software" like the Linux kernel, which I believe does not even have native support for RAM.
The only useful thing to come out of the Open-Source/Free Software movement will be sociological studies regarding "large groups blissfully unaware of their own stupidity". Some good medical research may be produced as well, because if we can manage to destroy the GPL, we will have gained valuable insight into fighting other polymorphic viral infections with high rates of communicability, such as HIV.
This hand-crafted piece of flamebait was brought to you be The_Messenger!
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I like to watch.
Except program a decent AI. I'd give the world if they'd expose the programming interface so that 3rd party AIs could be coded. Quake did this, and the resulting robots were so good that they changed the nature of the game. Civ would be a much easier programming challenge than games like Quake since it is turn-based instead of real-time. This is the simplest way to improve the AI; let the community do all the hard work.
I think everyone would agree that the most important, yet the most difficult, improvement required in Civ III is better AI. Even if nothing else changed, most of us would purchase the upgrade if we could finally meet oponents who beat the pants off us and didn't do so by cheating left, right and center.
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You know, I got into Call To Power when I got it for linux, but found one big weakness with the game. Namely, it turned simply into a headache against the computer as the game progressed.
Either the computer was a roaming edget, or it built cities to the point that it's science and factories were far too quickly progressive. I just couldn't keep up because I couldn't effectively manage the equivalent number of cities...
At the risk of sounding nasty, did you read the article? It pointed out a lot of nice enhancements, such as the development of culture, making diplomacy (and war) more complex, and allowing trade to be more all-encompassing. Also, one feature that I'm looking forward a lot to is now you have to have the correct resources to build stuff. It gave the example that you need iron to build the unit of "swordsmen", and if one player has a monopoly on iron then only they can build swordsmen. Much more accurate to real-life, as well as begging for all sorts of neato strategerie.
As for Civ 1 and Civ 2, sure the graphics got niftier in Civ 2, but in my mind the huge advance was the customizability. Civ 2 has sooooo muuucchh replay value, it's truly disgusting. I never ever play a straight game anymore, but every month or so I still go back to that game and either download a scenario I haven't played yet or just start a new one from a new side or using a new modpack. There are literally millions of ways to play Civ 2, or you can always just create your OWN. Yes Civ 1 had a little bit of this, but not anywhere near the online community or freely downloadable professionally done scenarios that Civ 2 has. I think that when Civ 3 comes out it's gonna be a helluva game....
C'mon /., half the articles are about copyright vs trademark vs patent. Try to at least get this right!
I've always loved playing Civ II on my Mac. AWESOME game. I love being a President.
:-)
Anyway, I thought I bought Civilization III. I couldn't believe it was out! I played it.. and man did it suck. It was annoying. Unintuitive. The graphics seemed a lot bigger, too.
Was I actually playing Civ I? I believe it was called Call to Power.. but maybe not.
I thought to myself, "Man is this a step backwards from Civ II."
WAS it literally a step backwards, in that it was the previous version?!
I wonder if I should post anonymously, since I feel like an idiot.
(btw, I returned the game the same day, which is why I can't check... hehe.. but really, it LOOKED like a newer game... maybe just a re-designed box?)
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
If their booth bunnies were poor quality, it improves my hopes for the game. Companies which spend lots of effort on flashy marketing typically do so because they don't believe in their products. I'd rather they spend their budget on coding and testing.
-- Sigs are for losers
I first got hooked on the whole Civ series with Colonization, back in 1994. I still play it to this day. When Civ2 came out, it took an entire summer from me (anyone else build a 200mil+ civ on Deity)? As with Col, I still play it today.
The real question is, does Civ3 or any other game have that kind of staying power these days? Alpha Centauri was unquestionably a fine technical achievement, but who still plays it now? Also, with the advances in gaming design, will Civ3 be as customizable as Civ2. People could do darn near anything to Civ2. Just some thoughts.
No statement is true, not even this one.
Since the FAQ says it's up to the distributors, wouldn't they be the ones to ask? It's interesting they say that actually, it means that they are not going to do any ports themselves. It'll be up to someone like Loki to do the work should Hasbro decide to port it to Linux.
I don't think that's quite true. Yes, it is substantially the same game, but I think the 'culture' concept and the changes to the way resources and happiness work are sufficient differences to make me buy the game. I have to say I was a little disappointed when I bought Civ2, probably because it was *just* the graphics that had changed. I thought the 3D map made it more difficult to see what was going on than in the original Civ.
What about a multiplayer version of colonization? THIS was the best game ever written..
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I.
That was a vary good and detailed review. Definately worth a read.
It's Great to see this game series back on track.
Keep up the good work Sid!
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--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
The basic principles of Civilization are always the same. Playing Civilization III will be the same thing as playing Civilization II or I. The only thing that does really differ is the graphic. Civilization is like chess: The game is always the same, no matter what type of chessboard you are using.
Ok, there are always some little changes and new technologies, but in the end, this is only a marketing gadget.
For me, freeciv is completly ok and a don't know why I should speed money on Civilization III. The graphic of freeciv also gets improved all the time, and if want some finetunning of the basic rules you could also do it yourself.
Jan
For all of those who spent so much time on civ.. And especially historical games freaks you might want to check Europa Universalis The time period of the game is 1492-1792 (The age of discovery until the period just before the Napoleonic wars)
The game involves the entire world with many countries, which are all playable through a simple editing of a text file) military, navy, exploration, colonization, diplomacy.
The most interesting feature is that it's real time.. I hate RTS games.. despise them. but this is different, besides having a pause to issue some orders if you are too overwelmed, you can change speed settings, Real time doesn't harm the game but just makes it much more fun for multiplayer games.
IMHO the true heir for civ/civ2/colonization.
I say that all the /.'s should go to www.firaxis.com/civ3/ and click on the "Ask the Civ Team" link and send an email to
askthecivteam@firaxis.com
and ask them to dual release Civ III on windows and linux.
It is about time to bring Civilization to the Linux World.
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
Sorry to nitpick but CTP is not Sid's creation. It was the bastardisation that Activision created when they managed to magically acquire the rights to the title as a result of a dubious lawsuit. CivIII will be the real sequel.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
The original Civilization was my very first computer game. Like a lot of people, I lost a couple months of my childhood on that game. I still think it is the best computer game I've ever played. It would have been near perfection had the world been about 1000 times larger and customizable, with 20 or so more tribes. Throw multi-player in there also. Of course back in 1991 most computers had somewhere on the order of 2 MB RAM, which made those features difficult to achieve.
I taught myself how to program the C language trying to hack the Civilization game save files -- I got pretty far into hacking those things. I could put any military unit anywhere on the map at anytime. Unfortunately the game had a bug where you'd get some whacked terrain squares above north america after about 2100 AD, and that would eventually cause whacked-out barbarians and the game to freeze up. Or else I'd have never stopped playing that game.
How much more can you get out of a game like Civilisation? Sure, the concept is a corker, and previous ones were good, but what more can be offered?
43rd Law of Computing: