Take-Two to Publish Next Civilization Game

An anonymous reader writes "Take Two Interactive announced today that they have acquired the rights to the Civilization franchise. They also announced Civ 4, saying that "Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification, allowing gamers to create their own add-ons using the standard Python and XML scripting languages." Okay, so XML's not a scripting language. But it's nice to see open source tech in a major PC game!" Civ IV will be released under the new 2K Publishing Label we reported on yesterday.

Comments

I hope that's not all

[eln]

Being able to program the game is geeky and all, but I buy games primarily for the gameplay, so I hope they intend to improve on the game in more ways than just adding a scripting language.

Re:I hope that's not all

[TommydCat]

Perhaps they opened it up in hopes that we will improve it for them?

Re:I hope that's not all

[Nevita]

Sid Meyer is known to be taking more of a lead role in the design and development of this version, as opposed to the previous Civ game. Given that, I would bet that gameplay will be greatly improved over Civ 3.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Bander]

There's a long list of other improvements, but it's the Python scripting that I'm most interested in. Not because I'm planning on making a Lord Of The Rings mod or anything like that, but because other people with more time on their hands will be able to do so. Depending on how deep the scripting engine is, we could wind up with a nigh-infinitely extendable turn-based game, which would be a Very Good Thing.

Plus, the more exposure Python gets, the more likely it is that I'll be able to make money hacking in Python, which would be an Even Better Thing.

-- Bander

Re:I hope that's not all

[delta_avi_delta]

Actually, the industry is very interested in "utilising" the recent professional-level modding community. I wouldn't be surprised if they release the game in a rough-and-ready format, and let the community polish it up, or take it in directions the team could never have envisaged. Civ has a large following, espeically amongst the type of people likely to use the coding facility, it makes sense.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed.

I long for the day when Python will be installed on more webhosts than that evil ugly toy language Personal Home Page.

Re:I hope that's not all

[cryptochrome]

Automatic deployment of units would be a nice start. Micromanaging is fine in the early game but it really drags towards the end.

Making it run in real time would be interesting as well, so long as you control the pace of time. Balancing law enforcement (with the scientists and workers and tax collectors, etc) would be a nice touch that would help with controlling corruption.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

i think it would be a mistake to do a rough but ready release. the gamers dont tend to go after those games for long periods of time, the reviews tank it etc etc etc.

its gotta be a SOLID game to begin with, then the mods can take it in new directions.
(you were right there)

Re:I hope that's not all

[schwaang]

Yeah OK, but I can't count the number of times I've wished CivIII would let me script in some features that the devs missed. Simple things like upgrading every unit of a particular type in all cities can take dozens of clicks. So easy to fix with a little scripting.

Re:I hope that's not all

[MrDickey]

I can't help but think of Escape velocity- Its original gameplay was good, but all the add-ons available added much more gameplay than it could have come with orginally.

Re:I hope that's not all

[syrinx]

Simple things like upgrading every unit of a particular type in all cities can take dozens of clicks.

I swear there's an "upgrade all" command.

I haven't played Civ3 for awhile now, but I really think I remember one.

Re:I hope that's not all

[drinkypoo]

If it's got deep enough python hooks you could make persistent universes out of it. That's what gets my attention.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Rei]

Bah... unless they get a level of unit detail like in Wesnoth, I don't think it could peak my interest. :)

Hmm... it looks like there's now an X-com style game for Linux ( ), and it's gotten some really impressive ratings. I never even knew - I was wishing someone would make a game like that just the other day ;)

Re:I hope that's not all

[Reignking]

There definitely is...

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

> Balancing law enforcement (with the scientists and workers and tax collectors, etc) would be a nice touch that would help with controlling corruption.

Oooh. As a back-end, use something like the [single-player, online] nationstates.net political simulator. NationStates' 3-axis (political/economic/personal freedoms) model would offer a lot of political options.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is anything like Civ3 they will milk it for all it's worth and you will have to buy four more upgrades before you can actually do anything new with it.

Re:I hope that's not all

[rbullo]

I beleive it's shift-U with the unit type to upgrade selected and in a city with a Barracks. All other units of the same type that can be upgraded will be. Note that if you don't have enough money to upgrade them all, it won't work. You can upgrade units en masse through the Military Advisor's screen.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Tassach]

Simple things like upgrading every unit of a particular type in all cities can take dozens of clicks.

Select an upgradable unit in a city with a barracks. Hit Shift-U.

RTFM next time.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Feanturi]

I agree that it would be nice to see more features besides just the scripting, but frankly, in many games where I've been given the opportunity to create scripts that has been at least 50% of the fun. Me want.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Rei]

Or instead of realtime you could use, for lack of a better term, "partial realtime". I.e., it's realtime until some sort of significant event happens, in which it "freeze frames" and allows you to tell it what to do (which may be just simply to continue onward). I.e., you can issue commands at any point, but if a unit reaches its destination, gets attacked, gets its health reduced to critical, a new enemy shows up past the fog of war, etc, time stops to allow you to react to it. Additionally, you can change the rate of flow of time as you please.

Otherwise, you'll end up with something like command and conquer, with cities to build in at the same time! ;) Certainly, a "lock time to a certain rate" option might be enjoyable for some, especially during multiplayer, however :)

Re:I hope that's not all

[schwaang]

So in order to do this "in all cities" this would take "dozens of clicks"? RTFP next time.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Bullet-Dodger]

Granted it's not quite the same, but Rise of Nations does a very good job of Civ like gameplay in an RTS.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Skidge]

Shift-U will upgrade all units of the given unit's type throughout all cities with barracks, assuming you have enough money to do so.

Re:I hope that's not all

[schwaang]

Cool thx. (I still say there's still room for scriptable improvements though.)

Re:I hope that's not all

[aussie_a]

If that's the case it could be quite interesting. Civ 3 was greatly improved over Civ 2 with many interesting ideas (although I haven't played Test of Time, Alpha Centauri, etc so I can't say how original the ideas are). For it to be improved even further would be quite good for the series :) It's often franchises begin to become the same game without much improvement (Test of Time anyone? Any sports game, etc), so it'll be good if Civ manages to keep going with some decent games for some time yet.

Re:I hope that's not all

[inherent]

No offense, but if I were going to pay someone to write software for me, the last guy I would hire is the one who says he wants to "hack" in a language.

"hacking" and systematic software engineering are two completely separate things. Sure, there are occasionally hackers that are good engineers, and vice versa, but I'm not going to hire a guy who wants to "hack" instead of engineer (I have enough hobbyists on my staff already).

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

Civ 3 had "culture", which was sort of borrowed from SMAC's "zone of influence". It's possible to flip cities due to your cultural influence over them. Too bad it takes too long into a game to have much effect, most of the time. And, perhaps because it would have skewed gameplay too much, they didn't go very far with it.

Imagine a game environment where you're playing the Americans, and all the other countries are fighting internal battles against your cultural influence over their populace.

Also, there weren't any WoW's that greatly amped cultural influence or rate of growth, unless you count being able to build temples/cathedrals faster or cheaper.

Re:I hope that's not all

[EmperorKagato]

I agree. Bungie was able to do a fantastic job with Myth II: Soulblighter. By giving the users the ability to modify everything and create new units many modifications spawned that turned into in commonly played games. The WWII series was an extremely fun multiplayer map and plugin: You had tanks, grenades and RPGs that required skill to use.

I understand the game itself is very good. Yet, the available mod tools raised the playability to new heights.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Antonymous Flower]

Not because I'm planning on making a Lord Of The Rings mod or anything like that, but because other people with more time on their hands will be able to do so.

Socrates: If we all rely on someone else to get stuff done, does it follow that we sit with nothing?
Linus T.:Yes, O' wise one.
Richard S.:Yes, teacher.
G.W. Bush: Certainly it does.
Bander (2001): Come again?

Ok, bad place to ask that, given the nature of slashdot's readership :D

Re:I hope that's not all

[anaradad]

Being able to program the game is geeky and all, but I buy games primarily for the gameplay, so I hope they intend to improve on the game in more ways than just adding a scripting language.

Yep. Civ III was a complete waste of my money. Who cares if it's got scripting if the game play sucks?

Re:I hope that's not all

[hobbesmaster]

I don't know about anyone else, but if its in real time then it should not be called "Sid Meier's Civilization." It could be called something else, but it would not belong in the civilization series.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the Civ3 Multiplayer modes is like this.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the unit stacking really ruined the fun in Civ3. I mean, you could create an invincible army and march anywhere..

Re:I hope that's not all

[Anonymous Coward]

piqued your interest, not "peaked" you fucking slashfag.

Re:I hope that's not all

[Bander]

Cute, but back in college and before having children, I contributed to open source games, ran fan sites, and compiled strategy guides. I've cast my bread on the water, I don't think there's anything wrong with hoping for some returns (even though that wasn't my motivation back in my more active days).

Re:I hope that's not all

[Bander]

No offense taken. And if I was applying for a job, I wouldn't use the word "hacking". If it makes you feel better, just s/hacking/developing software/ on my message. Obviously they aren't the same thing, but in this informal setting you should allow a little flexibility when it comes to a participant's mode of expression.

Re:I hope that's not all

[snorklewacker]

Bungie made Myth II. It was Take Two that made the roundly despised Myth III. Farming out Civ4 to Take2 is still not going to make it a good game, regardless of however much they open the engine.

Frankly, I think the Civ series peaked with Alpha Centauri. Civ III had bargain-basement production values, and was essentially Civ II with better unit and map graphics. At least Call To Power dared to innovate some, despite its even lower level of polish. I don't know whether it was Sid Meier or Brian Reynolds that ran out of steam. Certainly Sid couldn't do anything inspiring with Civ3, but Reynolds took years and years to produce Rise Of Nations, aka Age of Empires 2.5.

Idolizing the bright lights of the game industry just keeps leading to disappointment, I guess. God knows Richard Garriott laid some real bad eggs at the terminus of his career.

Re:I hope that's not all

[snorklewacker]

> although I haven't played Test of Time, Alpha Centauri, etc

You must play Alpha Centauri, if only to experience the awesome immersive feel of its very high production values. It plays back interesting and insightful quotes (gee sounds like slashdot) for every single technology and improvement built, as well as voiceovers on all the wonder movies. That and a few of the "interlude" stories really tell an interesting story, with an ending far more interesting than blasting off in a spaceship (which after all is where AC starts).

It's kind of dated now, but it's still one of the best games of all time.

"The wicked have told me of things that delight them. But not such things as your law has to tell. -- St. Augustine, _Confessions_. Datalinks"

"Organic Superlube? Oh yeah, it's great stuff, great stuff. You really have to keep an eye on it though: it'll try and slide away from you the first chance it gets. -- T.M. Morgan Reilly, Morgan Metagenics"

Re:I hope that's not all

[snorklewacker]

No offense, but if I were going to pay someone to write software for me, the last guy I would hire is the one who says he wants to "hack" in a language.

Eh, I got hired to hack. Of course it wasn't for an engineering job, but an analyst job that demands a lot of quick one-offs to solve one-off problems, tools that can be tinkered with in spare time to expand them, and so forth. I'd already hacked together some very useful tools used daily in production, and it was an internal hire. So there's places for tinkerers, but it's definitely not in engineering, and you have to prove you can deliver useful tools first.

That said, I know the difference. If I need to engineer something, I can bite the bullet and apply the necessary discipline of specification, testing, integration, and deployment planning. I just don't like to, and I'm not paid to be an engineer.

Re:I hope that's not all

[smittyoneeach]

Maybe I'm repeating you from another angle, but CivIII was the first one I was able to play less than compulsively.
Meier sure knows how to bring out the megalomaniac in a fellow.

Re:I hope that's not all

[tabrnaker]

wow, you certainly sound piqued.

sp

[Anonymous Coward]

sp

Take-2 vs. EA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take 2 and EA seem like they're in a huge arms race for control of the Western video game industry, now...

Remember what happened with Radio? Don't people realize all this consolidation is bad for the industry? Better play as many video games as you still can, they're gonna get a lot more bland in subsequent years.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[Bodhammer]

I don't think it is bad, it is just a natural part of the business cycle. Successful companies grow. Sooner or later they get big and slow and unable to respond to changes in the market and young upstarts fill the emerging niches. Microsoft did it to IBM, Linux is doing it to Microsoft, etc.

EA has already experienced some of it. The Jane's series was a great franchise and had some great programmers. EA screwed it up with bad business decisions.. Hungry russian programmers developed IL-2 and Lomac to fill the niche and Jane's is gone.

It will happen again to EA.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[speedbump]

You are free at any time to write an uber-exciting and profitable video game which blows the doors off anything the Big Guys are doing.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't afford to advertise in gaming magazines so I can't get a bunch of wankers to gush endlessly about my upcoming project.

That's pretty much essential for profit.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[Derkec]

Not too worried about this one. The guys at Firaxes has shown themselves adept at changing publishers or shifting companies entirely and still routinely cranking out good games. Firaxes itself wasn't sold.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[aussie_a]

I can't afford to advertise in gaming magazines so I can't get a bunch of wankers to gush endlessly about my upcoming project.

Pffft. This guy has been extremely profitable, and I doubt very much he had money to advertise in gaming magazines at the start.

The big companies have convinced everyone you need lots of money to make a profitable game, but I think as time continues the indi-market will grow and the big companies will stagnate and die.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[homer_ca]

These days producing a video game most closely resembles producing a movie, and the big titles in both are the big budget blockbusters. With so much money at stake in the production budget you can't take many chances by being innovative. Usually that means going with a known genre and known franchise. That doesn't mean there can't be great blockbusters, like GTA San Andreas, but at the core, they're more of the same but polished and refined to the peak of its conventional category. Just like indie filmmakers, there are opportunities for small indie game makers. It's happened before.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[superpulpsicle]

For example, an online game that can't gather enough audience will become garbage. You just can't play by yourself.

An indie film that was seen by only 100 people can still be a success. If you use the indie film comparison, then the video game industry is screwed.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be right -- if the FCC decides they need to regulate and liscence the creation of games.

Re:Take-2 vs. EA?

[speedbump]

Wow, I got modded down as a flamebait post. Jeesh, get a thicker skin.

My point is that good video games are damned hard to create, and I was getting a sense of entitlement from the post I replied to.

By the way, my hobby is indy movie making. I don't like most of the schlock that comes out of Hollywood, so I make my own.

Just to note...

[DragonMagic]

Firaxis still owns Civilization, and Sid Meier's still the director on the game. Take Two is just taking over the role of Atari/Infogrames and it sounds like they wish to do more with the title than just make PC games.

Civ IV is scheduled to be out in late 2005. Hopefully, it will be.

Re:Just to note...

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

XML is not a scripting language? Gotta' fix that! I propose tags that encapsulate the C programming language as C-XML. This allows to C-XML and run!

Re:Just to note...

[Anonymous Coward]

A simpler way to explain this is that Infogrames, being a French company, surrendered.

Re:Just to note...

[temojen]

sounds like they wish to do more with the title than just make PC games.

Ah, but will it run on Linux?

Seriously, I know it's a cliche, but the success of freeciv should demonstrate the market is there.

Re:Just to note...

[faust2097]

Uh, what part of:

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., today announced that it has purchased certain rights to the multi-million unit selling Civilization franchise

indicates to you that they didn't purchase the rights to the Civ franchise?

Re:Just to note...

[indifferent children]

Not just freeciv, but did you miss the fact that Loki sold Civilization:Call To Power for Linux before they went belly-up? I still play it on my old SuSE box occasionally.

Re:Just to note...

[m50d]

Also note that the source for call to power 2 was released just over a year ago, and now runs on linux.

Re:Just to note...

[digital bath]

sure it is.

Re:Just to note...

[_xeno_]

I actually started writing a scripting language that used XML as it's input language. It (not surprisinly) was a lot like Lisp. It was basically written "because I could" and not for any real reason.

Unfortunately (fortunately?) I haven't done anything with it in a couple of years... Maybe I should drag it out again.

Re:Just to note...

[Dun Malg]

Uh, what part of: Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., today announced that it has purchased certain rights to the multi-million unit selling Civilization franchise indicates to you that they didn't purchase the rights to the Civ franchise?

He didn't say that they didn't purchase the franchise, only that they don't own the game. The definition of franchise (in this case) is "Authorization granted to someone to sell or distribute a company's goods or services". Take-Two purchased the right to sell the Civilization series of games from Atari. Actual ownership of the game itself remains unchanged.

Re:Just to note...

[ucblockhead]

Don't joke.

I'm suffering with people who did exactly that. (Well, not C...another language.)

Re:Just to note...

[Anonymous Coward]

Firaxis never owned Civilization. Microprose did, then Hasbro Interactive, then Infogrames/Atari. Now Take Two owns it.

Re:Just to note...

[T-Ranger]

So instead of having lots of annoying one character thingies (that is a technical term) all over the place, you have 5-20 charcter thingies? Excelent.

Re:Just to note...

[_xeno_]

Yeah, instead of:

(+ 4 5)

You'd do something like:

<plus>
<num>4</num>
<num>5</num>
</plus>

Or, more complicated:

(if (> x 1) 2 4)

Became:

<if>
<greater-than>
<var>x</var>
<num>1</num>
</greater-than>
<num>2</num>
<num>4</num>
</if>

It was called "Hideous" and implemented in Java. Not having a practical use was kinda the point. I really should dig it up, see if I still have it kicking around somewhere.

Re:Just to note...

[JFitzsimmons]

They also released SMAC. Tricky to get it running on a modern setup, but it is possible.

Re:Just to note...

[Lord Haha]

Remeber though a publisher still has a fair amount of control over the game...

As someone playing Civ since Civ 1 (go 286 pcs!) I really do hope they remain quite hands off though. As fun as real time can be, part of what makes Civ - Civ is the turned based action. (no need for it to be anything else...)

Anyways lets just hope Sid & Co, still retains the reigns not just in the figure head sense but game direction as well. (No need to have an aweful sequel to a great series - think Master of Orion 3 (which ruined moo for me))

Re:Just to note...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's retarded.

You're a fucking idiot. Go back to "worth-a-shit-idea" school and enroll in courses immediately.

Re:Just to note...

[Joe Tie.]

I don't 'think' I had to do anything but run the installer about a year or so ago, and it's still chugging along quite happily on debian unstable right now. I was a bit late to the party on SMAC, but much better late than never!

Re:Just to note...

[Greg W.]

The Loki installer (for SMAC et al.) uses historically correct /bin/sh syntax that breaks under bash 3.0. Since Debian unstable (and sarge, too) now has bash 3.0 as the default shell, this means you'll have a bit of a tough time running the installer. (And if you edit it, as I did, you'll have to redo the md5sum manually... or perform equivalent hacking.)

Obviously, running it under bash 2.x or ksh should also suffice. I haven't tried that personally, though, except for back in days when bash 2.x was the default shell. ;-)

As long as I'm here, I might as well also point out that the Linux port of SMAC is actually better than the Windows version. We beta-testers found some of the annoying little bugs, and convinced Loki to fix them, on the grounds that they didn't change gameplay. (Example: the number of talents/drones shown in the main city display is often incorrect in the Windows version; you have to click the PSYCH button to see the real count. This is fixed in the Loki port; but it's still broken for the alien factions (Progenitor/Usurper), probably because nobody tested it with them. I didn't notice the bug in the alien factions until Loki had already gone out of business. I rarely play as the aliens.)

Re:Just to note...

[Mycroft_VIII]

I rather like thier robot arena two. It's not a robotech/battletech game. It's more of a robo-wars game based on the robot wars type tv shows.
I'd really like to see a version three that lets one add new parts and motors and such.
Not to mention more flexibility in designing the outer shape of the bot.

Mycroft

AI

[fembots]

One interesting (and new) moddable feature is the computer AI, I'm sure reading Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: An Introduction will help.

This is certainly not the first time XML data files are used in games, Ghost Recon has that too if I remember correctly, and players are able to change the wind, bullet speed and whatnot in the game.

Is this going to be the trend in the future? Players pay $49 to license the game engine, and create their own game?

Re:AI

[delta_avi_delta]

Yes, even less original considering you could do similar things with a text file in Duke Nukem 3D. I remember fiddling with the rocket damage and my values. I could kill almost all the enemies, and uncover the shootable secrets by firing one rocket :)

Re:AI

[Zeebs]

Mods are not new, people edited the hell out of the Dooms, I even had a kill barney(damn puple dinosaur) mod for wolf 3d. If your interested in a low cost high quality game engine you can make your own games with take a look at Garage Games You can license the Tribes 2 engine, known as Torque, for next to nothing and make commercial games with it even.

Re:AI

[Relic of the Future]

Even less less original since you could play with the rules.txt file in CivII.

Re:AI

[DrXym]

Yeah but XML is simply a format for structuring data and quite a heavy one at that. Previous versions of Civ & countless other games allowed you change various settings through a plain .ini style text file.

Switching to XML might make the data more structured but at the expense of loading speed, readability, editability and sensitivity to parsing errors.

Re:AI

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching to XML might make the data more structured but at the expense of loading speed, readability, editability and sensitivity to parsing errors.

Oh give me a break. What is it with Slashdot and irrational bias against XML? There's no real difference between [section]foo=bar[/section] and <section><foo>bar</foo></section>. Neither is easier to read or edit, and if you have an error, both will fail.

The only important difference is there is an abundance of software development tools that handle XML, it's a standardised format so everything works the same, and internationalisation is solved through use of Unicode.

Re:AI

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this going to be the trend in the future? Players pay $49 to license the game engine, and create their own game?
People have been saying that since wolfenstein 3d. If you don't remember Barneystein you don't belong on slashdot!

Re:AI

[DrXym]

What bias is that? I deal with XML on a daily basis - it is more sensitive to errors, it is harder to read, it is slower to parse. Try writing XSLT or RDF sometime and see if you can write a simple useful document in a text editor without introducing numerous errors and typos.

I don't doubt that it's a better way to structure data and has numerous advantages but much of that is irrelevant noise if the file is just holding name / value pairs for a proprietary app.

Now I don't know what data the new Civ will hold, but the original poster was lauding it as some breakthrough when it isn't. Lots of games hold values in plain old .ini format and they're considerably faster to parse, and edit. If the new Civ is doing the same, then XML is pointless overkill.

Re:AI

[Tonytheloony]

Especially given that you could write the previous example as:
<section foo="bar" />

Re:AI

[Anonymous Coward]

I deal with XML on a daily basis - it is more sensitive to errors, it is harder to read, it is slower to parse.

I deal with XML on a (near) daily basis as well. It is not.

Try writing XSLT or RDF sometime

XSLT and RDF are much more complex than the average XML application, and certainly more complex than an XML application for storing game data. You can't point to XSLT or RDF and use them as evidence that any given XML application is hard to write.

see if you can write a simple useful document in a text editor without introducing numerous errors and typos.

What is the difference between that an INI-style format though? The only difference I can see is that XML has numerous validators available to check for errors.

Now I don't know what data the new Civ will hold, but the original poster was lauding it as some breakthrough when it isn't.

I agree here. But claiming that INI-style is any better is clueless.

Lots of games hold values in plain old .ini format and they're considerably faster to parse, and edit.

I see no basis for making that claim.

Re:AI

[DrXym]

I deal with XML on a (near) daily basis as well. It is not.

Sorry, you're wrong. It is harder. Practically every change to XML data requires running it through a parser or browser just to ensure the XML is valid. Not the data - just the syntax of the XML. If you want to validate the data then you're getting into writing a DTD or schema as well which heaps on even more complexity. Even the use of a dedicated XML editor only gets you so far and if you're using MS notepad, well then you're screwed.

XSLT and RDF are much more complex than the average XML application

The average application of XML is XSLT, XHTML, RDF (or RSS), Web services or something of equal complexity. I'm sure some apps do use ad hoc xml by slapping an tag at the top of some arbitrary grammar but even that is still more complex than name=value lines if that's all that's required. The latter is easily readable and can be parsed with fscanf. The former can puke on a single misplaced angle bracket or quote and requires you to link to expat, MS XML or some other parser, set up element handlers and is much, much more complicated.

I see no basis for making that claim.

I do. Even a non-validating parser must tokenize, keep count of nested elements on a stack, resolve entities etc.. It is by definition slower than a rudimentary fscanf required to parse a .ini file. It's certainly much more powerful, but that power is wasted on simple data.

As I've said all along, I have no problem with XML, but use the right tool for the job. If a requirement of a game (and it is) is fast loading and the information is simple, there may be no point for using XML at all. If Civ decides to encapsulate something complex with these files, then there is a use for XML, but certainly not for name / value pairs. XML certainly formalises a lot of things and takes the bother out of parsing arbitrary data but it has to be justified by how complex and correct that data is to be worth the overhead.

Hmmm...Native Linux Installer, Maybe

[KingBahamut]

Hopefully....though im sure cedega will run it no problem, still itd be nice to see a native installer.

Re:Hmmm...Native Linux Installer, Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

One can only hope for a native Linux (ia32) version. I'm still waiting for a version of Cedega that will run Civ 3 in an enjoyable manner--i.e. no weird loopy sound effects, no slow-as-hell animations, and no random freeze-ups. I used to dual-boot for Civ even though I had Cedega. Now I just don't play Civ.

Re:Hmmm...Native Linux Installer, Maybe

[DeepHurtn!]

Why would you be sure Cedega could run it no problem? It can't run the most recent expansion pack for CivIII!

I really, really hope that changes, though, as CivIII is the only reason I keep my Windows partition.

Re:Hmmm...Native Linux Installer, Maybe

[KingBahamut]

Thats what god Made Freeciv for, right? One can only assume as such.

Python

[EricWright]

Maybe this will give me the kick in the pants I've needed to go learn Python.

Re:Python

[Comrade64]

To bad your name isn't Monty...then you could make the Monty Python Civilization IV special add-on edition.

ok..I'll go back to my corner now...

Re:Python

[delta_avi_delta]

Be careful, you may become dissatisfied with every other language you (have to) program in. :)

Re:Python

[FlashBuster3000]

Yep, you should learn it. Python is just awesome for writing code quick and still readable.
And integrating it in a game is just a very good place for a language like Python.
Personally i can't wait until CivIV is released.
CivIII was fun, but now with support for pythonscripting i bet there will be much addons for CivIV (as i will definitely try this out!)
Hoping for Linuxsupport, too.

Re:Python

[Anonymous Coward]

Offtopic post claiming that Ruby is much better due in 3... 2... 1...

Impressive, it hasn't shown up yet.

Re:Python

[Anonymous Coward]

The place to learn python: http://diveintopython.org/

Waiting for Civ 4

[iMaple]

Civilization is my favorite strategy game and I still like to play Civ 3 fo rlong periods of time. My wishlist for Civ 4:
1)Good multiplayer
2)More diplomacy and humor

Ican't just think of any other way they could improve an already fantastic game. (apart from of course putting in super fancy graphice so that I will have to skip food for a month and get a new graphics card)

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[eln]

Those are like the exact opposite of what I liked about Civ. Personally, I really got into the military conquest part of the game, with the various military units and global expansion by force. I also really got into the technologies you could learn.

Leaving aside what that says about my psychological state, I was a little disappointed that the newer games moved so much more into diplomacy and "power politics," and made it almost completely impossible to win with tech and military strategy alone. Are there any civ-like games out there that put more emphasis on that part of the game?

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Txiasaeia]

"Are there any civ-like games out there that put more emphasis on that part of the game?"

Alpha Centauri. You get to make your own military units, for crying out loud ;)

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Civ 3 was always kind of a bore to me. I was kind of hoping it would be like Civ2, with more avenues to dominate and be dominated, but instead it focused much more on diplomacy and things like keeping other nations out of your territory became tedious. The overall focus was much less military oriented (though I guess it is more representative of the real world).

I really loved the increased diplomacy and culture though. I always hated how in Civ2 you would take out all a civ's major cities leaving a few size 4's and then they sucker you into a peace treaty, or even worse, you can't find those last tiny settlements somewhere out there and have to send an armada of carriers all over the place to scour the map for that last city. Pure tediousness.

I really wish they made a civ 2.5- just the basic Civ2 game, with the expanded Diplomacy and culture systems built in.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[saintp]

Try "Rome: Total War." For the first campaign, they mollycoddle you with power politics, but after that, it's pure military might. And it's very highly replayable.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[TilJ]

The weird thing is that I like Apha Centauri for the power politics side of things ... for the first year of playing it (has it been that long since the Loki days? Sigh.) I almost always used Lal and won through world peace or being voted in as supreme leader.

I now favour Santiago and win through technology along with bullying anyone who's closer to finishing a Wonder than I am ;-)

A very moldable game, it seems to be different things to different people.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Carewolf]

The new Hearts of Iron II.. It is the state of the art in military conquest games. It is almost a war-game, but abstract enough to still be fun.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Reignking]

Agreed. The Civs, for me, have reached a point where I don't think they can do too much to improve it.
Unless you think that "3d graphics" will improve the game, of course, like they thought in SMAC and its mini-movies when a discovery was made.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[SoTuA]

Play with the Hive and win through cancerous spread over the face of the planet (makes for almost infinite cash -> buy the biggest army or buy your opponents to death or bribe everybody to elect you world leader).

Or play as the Eco-freaks... subduing worms is the most unbalancing ability ever!

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why you made sure you built the apollo wonder, so you could see all their cities, or did it not have that effect in Civ2?

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[gzunk]

The only thing I didn't like about Alpha Centauri is the way that the native flora / fauna really ramp up later in the game.

Does anyone know a way of turning it off, so I can completely terraform the planet and then get round to killing all the other players?

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Surak_Prime]

Hmm...a short list off the top of my head:
1. 'Recording' Civilization Advance - allows for construction of the Movie Theater improvement. (A humorous metagame side-effect could be that it opens up a new game menu for playing your own MP3s as background music.) Allows profession:artists to be considered productive for trade in addition to making citizens happy. In combination with Radio, allows construction of Big Three Networks wonder, that makes it harder for citizens to stay mad.
2. A physical layer for the communications that can be damaged, and without a connection from an area to your capital, you can't see what units on the border are doing (until maybe a couple of turns later?) Layer is made irrelevant with invention of Radio advance.
3. Time tightens to months with the invention of radio, weeks with the invention of the Internet, but doesn't speed up actual progress for civs that don't have them. (Better have spies/diplomats in place, to acquire them quickly! Or maybe capturing any unit from a civ with it in your territory would have a chance of giving you Internet, and capturing a city automatically would?)
4. The ability to attack foreign units in your country without your permission, without it automatically being an act of war! (If anything, THEY should be smoothing things over after that, most of the time. One of the most unrealistic aspects of Civ, IMHO.)
5. Railroads upgrade to Interstates, which can be used for emergency aircraft landing sites, but aircraft landed there must have fuel brought to them by another unit.
6. Future Tech that is more than a name, but is reasonably extrapolated from current trends - anti-matter weapons, matter fabricators, etc. - with actual game effects.
7. MANY more detailed units, military and otherwise, and many more trade goods.

As you can see, I want Civ to have so much detail that it can take a month to play a game. ;)

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[homer_ca]

I liked to play the Gaians and choose a Mind Control, Democratic society.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[JFitzsimmons]

It has been a very long time since I played, but IIRC, you only got a snapshot of the whole world on the turn that Apollo was finished. After that, you would need conventional exploration to find anything (again).

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[MiKM]

I think during the startup options, if you choose a custom game, you can make it have no Mindowrms. The thing that always confused me is why the fungus & mindworms suddenly spread AFTER you communicated with the planet (the last two major wonders). That game was awesome. I need to start playing it again.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Anonymous Coward]

In later eras, corruption shpould not be radiused around your capital. LA is far from DC, but Washington still exerts it's influce over it just as it does New York.

Railroad move to fast, compared to sea and air.. slow down one or speed up the other.

NEED a line of supply. Naval battles never happen because you never have to contorl the seas to supply oil, food, ammo to troops in the field on another continent.

It swould be cool if heavy units like self propelled artillery can only be unloaded in a city with a port, and not just dumped on a beach by a transport. Like the "amphibious" flag, but backwards.

similar to a naval transport, infantry should hop in a apc. a flag for land units to haul land units. maybe civ 3 has this already.

satellites need to do more than just update the world map once. they should update it ever turn.

As you advance in age, the reasource requirment should nto shift. ex: gunpowder should not assuem to not need slatpeter just cause the era shifts.

better multiplayer stability. hell.. make it a very slow RTS. :)

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Anonymous Coward]

I also like playing Civ as a war game at times (OK, most of the time), but I completely disagree with you here. In Civ3 you don't have the problem of:

• useless units, like Legion in Civ1, or Horsemen in Civ 1 & 2
• unrealistically powerful units, like Chariots in Civ 1 or Elephants in Civ2, dominating a particular era
• the unit types "embarassment of riches" problem from Civ2- did we really need both a Knight and a Crusader unit type? And what about the Dragoon and Cavalry units types?
• funky unit statistics, which made sure you would always be attacking Alpine units when assaulting a major city in the modern era, because there was no better defensive unit between Riflemen and Mechanized Infantry in Civ2
• missing units, like modern, WWI and later infantry (see above)
• unrealistic benefits from defending a walled city
• wildly inflated artillery attack values to compensate for the above (since when have a bunch of catapults taken out a legion, or a couple howitzers a tank formation?)
• complete disregard for the cultural/regional specificity of certain unit types- how many times were you invaded by Vikings with Elephants in Civ2?

And on the plus side, Civ3 has the benefit of simulating warfare from every major era almost exactly like it was. In ancient times you use Swordsmen and Horsemen (and you really need both to win), in medieval times Knights dominate the battlefield, in Renaissance-times you mix up old units with Musketmen and Cannons, in the 19th Century you have Cavalry and Riflemen, and in modern times you have Infantry which are so good at defense that war becomes a bloody mess (like WWI) until the arrival of Tanks. Also:

• aritllery units are handled realistically for the first time, so that you're not sending an army of catapults (or howitzers later on) to invade a country
• air units are realistically handled for the first time- no more Bombers hovering over hexes and blocking them, or using the 15 movement points of a Jet Fighter to destroy all the defenders within a city
• culturally-marked territory finally simulates the difficulties of operating in hostile country- no more using the other guy's rail lines/roads to move your units up to his cities to attack

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[DragonMagic]

One of the only few things I liked about the Call to Power series were the underwater cities. That, and I'd like to see Civ 4 have growing cities, so that you don't have a city of 1 population taking the same room as one of 20 population. Make them grow larger, have more resources, possibly even duplicates of buildings like the bank, etc. It was weird playing the World Map on the largest setting and Japan could only play one city on its island.

Civ 4 had better improve in many ways, but still have the same feel that made the others great.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Greg W.]

Or play as the Eco-freaks... subduing worms is the most unbalancing ability ever!

Nope. The most unbalancing abilities are Clean Reactors (to make units that don't require upkeep), or Dissociative Wave in the Alien Crossfire expansion pack (which makes your choppers ignore the Anti-Aircraft ability of defending units).

Capturing mind worms is great in the early game, but they seriously lack punch by the time your opponents have Trance ability (and/or 3Res armor, in the Crossfire expansion). Their best use is really exploration and pod-grabbing. (This is especially true for the Isles of the Deep, the aquatic worms. Make a gunship, keep running into the fungus until you manage to turn up a wild IoD, capture it, and voila -- you now have the perfect exploration vessel, especially if you got one far enough away from your bases to be "Independent".)

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[ynohoo]

I prefered checking the sea-pods with empty troop-carriers hoping for an alien artifact.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[snorklewacker]

The only thing I didn't like about Alpha Centauri is the way that the native flora / fauna really ramp up later in the game.

It's part of the story. Avoid the "Explore" tech tree for a while and the story won't advance, and the fungus won't start blowing up. Usually by the time planet starts lobbing Locusts at me, I'm 10 turns away from ascension.

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[nzhavok]

Hi, I've been a big civ player ever since civ 1 on on my Atari ST. I quite often play military only campaigns in civ 3, I'm wondering why you think these aren't possible? About the only use i have for diplomacy is deciding who my partners will be in the next war!

Re:Waiting for Civ 4

[Mycroft_VIII]

I always found University the best to play, they get thier research done faster, this means one of thier military units can kill two of anyone elses once you get much past the beginning. And of course being ahead in all the ways that save money and improve population situations. Then of course you reasearch your way to victory while the oppenents are still trying to get aircraft.

Mycroft

Alpha Centauri

[floppy ears]

If you love Civ 2 but have never played Alpha Centauri, be sure to give it a shot. I still play it occasionally even today, but I don't play anything in the Civ series any longer. The modifiable military units are great.

Never did like Civ 3 myself. Too many boring bombing runs ...

Re:Alpha Centauri

[TilJ]

I agree, Alpha Centauri is the primary game that I play to this day. The diplomancy is better than many other Civ-style games, the "modify everything" attitude is great, and the multiple ways to win are more fun than yet another take-over-the-world Pinky and the Brain scenario.

Damn you for going under, Loki, damn you all to heck! ;-)

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Overt Coward]

Somewhat off-topic, but my copy of Alpha Centauri won't run on my newer computers (with 2.8 GHz processors and Windows XP) -- it claims my processor isn't supported. Any ideas?

Re:Alpha Centauri

[pezpunk]

i agree with this also. even though the landscape is pretty ugly (everything is pretty much a shade of red), the game itself is fantastic. it's a perfected version of civ2.

totally customizable units, functional and relatively deep diplomacy, fantastic story and brilliant characters (in a civ game?!?!), multiple paths to victory (victory by diplomacy, victory by economic domination, victory by Transcendent technology, or of course the good old victory by genocide) and an unceasing number options and worlds to play around with.

my favorite feature, though, is the wonderfully clever quotes or movies you get every time you discover a new tech or wonder of the world. they really give one a sense of not only accomplishment, but wonder at this new, exciting technology your society has just produced.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[drinkypoo]

Which processor? I only have an athlon xp 2500+ but it runs fine here. Have you installed all the patches?

Re:Alpha Centauri

[mszeto]

Are you serious? I played Alpha Centauri once and thought it was cool - however it never had the staying power. ie I would never play it again.

Now Colonization, *That's* another story. If anyone liked the civ series, and has never played Colonization, you MUST. I've met a few other people that also agree that Colonization is one of the best. This game was made in 96 I believe, and I still pull it up and play once a year!

Re:Alpha Centauri

[pezpunk]

yeah, the truth is it is very tricky to get it to run on modern processors. even with the latest patch, i had to edit the config file with some jargon i found on a messageboard just to get it to run. i'm at work, otherwise i'd paste the config file here. sorry!

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Tebriel]

There are 2 separate patches. One for WinXP and one for Pentium 4 chips. You'll need both to run it. I think they're both on EA's support page. You could also check Apolyton.Net for the patches as well, as they're a pretty decent Civ/SMAC/RoN/GalCiv community.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[floppy ears]

Totally serious. Given the different characters you can play and the different units you can create, it's got great replayability.

But I like Colonization too. It gets a little tedious dealing with the micromanagement of all of the wagon trains and warehouses, but somehow it's fun. I have played it within the last year myself.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[TheCaptain]

I'd like to second this one - Alpha Centauri is great...and don't forget to throw the Alien Crossfire add-on into the mix. It actually does add quite a bit of replay value to the game. (The game isn't lacking any in the first place.)

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Atmchicago]

The trick is to edit one line in one of the configuration files. I don't have the game with me, but I believe it is the following:
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

I believe that goes into your alphacentauri.ini file.

I have a MSN Community at: http://groups.msn.com/sidmeiersaliencrossfire. About all I do with it anymore is allow people to join occasionally since I don't have the time for anything else.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Feanturi]

My 2 cents on Alpha Centauri: Definitely a great game, especially for fans of Civ2. But what really stood out for me was how the story and situation seemed so very much like a set of Frank Herbert books, which I think are referred to as the Void cycle. 'Destination: Void' was the original story, that led to the writing of three more books that he co-authored with someone whose name escapes me: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension factor. The last one was completed by his co-author after Herbert's death. Alpha Centauri makes me think of those three books, particularly the hostile environment of Pandora, the world where Ship brought the characters in the very first book. It's so familiar, you almost want to wonder if there was a copyright-infringement suit dancing in some lawyer's mind at some point. The star system was Tau Ceti if I remember right, but close enough. A good read, not as well-known as Dune but similar to it, chock full of philosophy, religion, and ecology. If you like Frank Herbert but haven't heard of this, try to find it, it's cool.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are interested in Colonization, then you should check out FreeCol, the open source Colonization clone.

http://www.freecol.org/

Re:Alpha Centauri

[AceCaseOR]

Colonization was great. I like AC more, but Colonization was really good. The one thing I didn't like about Colonization was that I was constantly getting owned when I had to go to war. That and I could never get an embassy or something so I could send my shipping to other countries.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[dr.badass]

The modifiable military units are great.

Yeah but the Mind Worms (MIND WORMS!?!?) aren't. I can understand the role they play in the game, but the fact that you can't turn them off, and you can't tell your governors to NOT build them seems like a needless oversight.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[kin_korn_karn]

All of these civ-type games get really tedious for me towards endgame. I'm not into the grand military conquest thing, or heavy-duty diplomacy. I'm into exploration and planning of cities and infrastructure. Once the whole world gets revealed, Civ bores me.

I didn't like Alpha Centauri because I disagree with most of the ideology that the game is based on. I don't personally believe in the Gaia hypothesis (i.e. the planet itself is alive) or that the ultimate goal of humanity is to leave our bodies and become one with some machine, and that the only way to keep order is through blatant mind control of "drones". It had an elitist feel about it that really left a bad taste in my mouth.

Maybe I just don't like 4x games at all.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[strider44]

Yep I learned my entire American history from Colonization, great game!

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Sarcastic nerd]

But what really stood out for me was how the story and situation seemed so very much like a set of Frank Herbert books, which I think are referred to as the Void cycle. 'Destination: Void' was the original story, that led to the writing of three more books that he co-authored with someone whose name escapes me: The Jesus Incident, The Lazarus Effect, and The Ascension factor.

The manual that comes with my Alpha Centauri lists a few science fiction books in the back as inspiration. Along with Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy and a few others, is The Jesus Incident.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[TaGirl_Keri]

The horrible red colours in SMAC can be fixed by applying the colour-blind patch, which can be got at Apolyton or Firaxis. Possibly at CivFanatics also.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[TaGirl_Keri]

I posted this on the wrong thread before. The horrible red colours in SMAC can be fixed by applying the colour-blind patch, which can be got at Apolyton or Firaxis. Possibly at CivFanatics also

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Hatta]

You don't have to agree with the philosophy of a faction. You just have to take advantage of their special abilities. The back story is only there to provide a little justification for the diverse abilities that make the game so rich.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[mat.h]

The co-author's name is Bill Ransom.

I don't know what's dancing in some lawyers' minds, but there were probably a few more copies of The Jesus Incident and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books sold because they were inspiration for SMAC's setting and story, and because Brian Reynolds openly says so in the manual (Suggested reading, pp. 221-3). I had never heard of the Pandora books until then, and probably wouldn't have since, if it weren't for Alpha Centauri.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[ynohoo]

Aircraft are pretty much a waste of time in Civ3. Ditto military naval units, except against other naval units. Ditto artillary, except against naval units. Just stick with traditional land units and the means to transport them. Privateers are fun to harass the AI, although it takes a few of them to take out a Battleship :)

Re:Alpha Centauri

[chthon]

I got the same feelings about such games.

I do not have any problem with planning and executing military campaigns, but I found the diplomatic parts of all those games the part that was the least understandable.

I also loved to play Master of Magic, and the great thing of the game for me was discovering the nodes and towers and fallen temples and trying to get into the astral plane.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Greg W.]

I didn't like Alpha Centauri [...] and that the only way to keep order is through blatant mind control of "drones".

Well, "drones" are just "unhappy workers" from Civ2, with a different label slapped on 'em. "Talents" are just "happy workers". "Psych" is just "luxuries". It's incredibly obvious to those of us who've played both games that all they did was slap a different name and picture on the exact same concept and virtually the same implementation. (I think there's a subtle difference in how happiness is calculated, but that's a side issue.)

So if it makes you more comfortable, you can just think of "Doctors" as "Elvises", and so on.

And I really liked the Gaia aspect. If you pollute the planet, it fights back. That's just cool. :)

I'm into exploration and planning of cities and infrastructure. Once the whole world gets revealed, Civ bores me. [...] Maybe I just don't like 4x games at all.

No, you're right -- they all tend to drag on and on toward the endgame. Once you have half of the planet's resources under your direct control, you're going to win; it's just a matter of endurance to get to the end. (With the AI in these games, you really only need something like 1/3 to ensure victory.) This is simply the nature of the genre; I've never seen any 4x game that is as fun at the end as it is in the beginning.

SMAC's "vote for me as supreme leader and end this charade" is one of its saving graces. It saves you 50 turns of boring mop-up if you're going for military victory. Once you've conquered 3/4 of the world, you can just end it.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[mszeto]

the trick to not getting owned (I play on the hardest level) is to get take all your money from trading early on and make a small army. Then go over to the incas. Also, planning your cities, only have Max 2-3 cities on the water and every else inland to support those bigger coastal cities.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Khelder]

I also really liked the more flexible government/society/economic models than Civ had. It would be great to see something like that in Civ 4.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[kin_korn_karn]

I can't get past the back story and the philosophy in SMAC. I tried, believe me.

It may just be new labels for Civ2 concepts to most players, but the new labels get me thinking about what those labels mean and then I realize that I'm not playing a game, I'm propagandizing myself. That's what I don't like.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[kin_korn_karn]

I can deal with the diplomacy, but the military aspect of civ gets to be ridiculous when you're fighting a war and have over 20 maneuvering units that you have to control the movements of for every...single....little.....square.......

I never played MoM. I was rebelling against high fantasy when it came out. I played the hell out of MOO1, though, and it's still one of my favorites.
Too bad MOO3 is a spreadsheet instead of a game.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[DeadScreenSky]

I didn't like Alpha Centauri because I disagree with most of the ideology that the game is based on. I don't personally believe in the Gaia hypothesis (i.e. the planet itself is alive) or that the ultimate goal of humanity is to leave our bodies and become one with some machine, and that the only way to keep order is through blatant mind control of "drones". It had an elitist feel about it that really left a bad taste in my mouth.

It sounds like you got a little confused with the game's "ideology". Let me explain.

First of all, Alpha Centauri is not Earth/Sol. The planet isn't alive because of some application of the Gaia hypothesis (which I am not sure you actually understand, no offense), it's alive because there is a living fungal neural network covering the surface, under the seas, and buried within the crust (and there is more than a suggestion that the fungus was engineered by aliens for this purpose at least half a billion years ago). It's not an application of the Gaia hypothesis, it's a living alien creature of vast power...

The transcendence goal is merely one possible win situation - there are at least five of them. Plenty of them have no man-machine component whatsoever. One of them is to seize control over the world economy, for example, or to be elected head of all other factions. And it is important to note that even after transcendence, people are given the choice to keep their bodies and remain how they are. Nobody transcends because they are forced to - how could that possibly work?

The game itself is a little unclear over what drones are - they are basically just unhappy people and function as that ingame, but there are definitely techologies that create stuff like genejack drones that are slaves (usage of this tech is completely optional of course, and gives harsh penalties). But if you don't like drones, just don't let any of your people become unhappy (which is hardly impossible).

Even more important than all of the little details is the game's stance on all of this "ideology". The Alpha Centauri game itself is entirely a struggle over just what kind of ideology is most correct for humanity in the future. The game and its developers don't know the answers, and they completely realized that. Certain leaders you can play are utterly opposed to the trascendence goal, the planet being treated fairly because of its intelligence, or the usage of drones. There is an ambivalence about nearly every "advancement" the game features. All ideologies in the game have disadvantages of some kind. The game simply doesn't preach or force on the player some kind of ideology - it gives you choices to create the future how you believe it should be. The game is about exploring different future societies and how they would interact with each other.

It also just happens to be the best turn-based computer strategy game in existence. Nothing else beats its gameplay.

I actually have a slight problem with most 4X games and their (unspoken) ideology, and that's because they all seem to subscribe to the basic Taker mythology (essentially, the world is made for man alone). Alpha Centauri is more agreeable than most, though, because it is isn't about Earth, man needs to expand at least a little just to survive as a species, and the game does allow you to succeed without conquering the whole biosphere.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[kin_korn_karn]

Thanks for the in depth explanation.

The planet isn't alive because of some application of the Gaia hypothesis (which I am not sure you actually understand, no offense), it's alive because there is a living fungal neural network covering the surface, under the seas, and buried within the crust (and there is more than a suggestion that the fungus was engineered by aliens for this purpose at least half a billion years ago). It's not an application of the Gaia hypothesis, it's a living alien creature of vast power.
First, I'm aware that I oversimplified the Gaia hypothesis. But it's been a long while since I read the details of it.

Second, the thought of such a life form makes me feel puny and insignificant. I get enough of that feeling in the real world. I play games to feel exactly the opposite - powerful, and in control of my own destiny. I think most gamers do.

I also disagree with the plausibility of a superintelligent fungus even existing. Some would say that this means I have a limited imagination.


The game simply doesn't preach or force on the player some kind of ideology - it gives you choices to create the future how you believe it should be.
I always play peaceful and defensive in civ games, and light side in star wars games, because I can't enjoy them any other way. I fired up KOTOR and tried to be a total dark bastard just to see what the different ending was like, and as soon as the apartment dwellers on Taris (if you're not familiar with the game, this is the beginning after-the-tutorial stage of the game) started begging for their lives I had to shut it off.

I'm aware that it's just a game, and that these aren't real people. I don't care. If I'm going to suspend my disbelief I have to put myself in the shoes of the character/leader, there in the game, and if the game is based on something I don't believe in, I can't do that.

There's only one faction in SMAC that really suits me, and that's the Morganites. I really tried to like SMAC and I played it quite a bit. Once I won the game as Morgan at a low difficulty level, there was nothing else there for me.

The game is about exploring different future societies and how they would interact with each other.
I disagree with this. Why? Because it's not set on Earth. If you're going to focus on societal dynamics, you have to limit the other variables. The game being set on another planet ruins the realism of its simulation of human dynamics because nobody's been to another planet so nobody knows how we would react to living there. There's no basis in fact, it's purely speculation.

Some would say that taking earth geography and politics out of the equation makes it more of a pure simulation not influenced by earth "stuff", but humans will always think in earth terms, as long as they know of earth. The faction leaders in SMAC do.

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Overt Coward]

That did it, thanks! (And thanks to everyone else who replied as well...)

Re:Alpha Centauri

[Anonymous Coward]

Mind Worms are great eqializers when the enemy has gotten so far ahead in the tech race as to make your conventional weapons more or less useless.

They are also free on upkeep as long as you park them on a fungus spot at the end of your turn. It's a nice way to have a large standing army without having to pay the upkeep.

The real strength of the mindworms, though, shows when a pact mate builds a base in a spot where you don't want one. Just park a mind worm next to it before the pact mate has gotten a garrison unit built, release it into the wild and, presto! the base is gone with no negative impact on your diplomatic relations.

Game moves?

[Jpunkroman]

Is it just me or have there been a way above normal level of announcements and agreements and settlements and movements amongst the gaming companies? Makes you wonder what is going on in the boardrooms of these companies, must be pretty buzy.

open source tech?

[geoffspear]

If they don't give me the source to the program, I don't see what "open source tech" has to do with anything. Windows has open source tech in it too, from BSD, but that's hardly a selling point.

Re:open source tech?

[TheRaven64]

That depends on your point of view. From a GNU perspective, Free Software is about making sure all software comes with source code and a set of rights associated with that code. From the BSD perspective it's about making sure that everyone has access to the best solution to a technological problem. I tend towards the second viewpoint, so from my point of view incorporating open source code is a good thing, even in Windows.

Re:open source tech?

[m50d]

Well, it's normally good tech. I know I trust bsd ftp more than "random company" ftp. But I think the main point is that you can modify the AI. With luck they'll do their AI entirely in python and give you the source, so that part of the game at least is all yours to play with. It's not completely opening it, but it's making it more moddable, which is always a good thing.

Re:open source tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Python is open source, and a technology, so Civ 4 uses open source tech... get it? And that's a Good Thing, because every time a major company incorporates some open source stuff in their own products, it gives more credibility to the entire open source movement. So now, when someone tells you open source is only for amateurs, you can say no it's not: MacOS uses it and Civ 4 uses it.

reaction

[greechneb]

Looks like wallstreet likes the decision. Right now it looks like they are up nearly 5%. Should help them bring another profitable game into their portfolio. GTA keeps doing good, but they needed something else.

Re:reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably has as much to do with their announcement yesterday about the MLB agreement as it has to do with this specific game. Still interesting that they choose this time of year to make their move.

Re:reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Please stop spamming us with free shit links.

Take a good idea and work with it...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is proof that good ideas never die - if you know you have a viable concept, as long as you don't mess with the guts of it too much, you can keep it alive as long as you want. Kudos to the developers for taking their cues from the community in general and realizing that people like making mods for games, so to see one that's mod-friendly (and I'm sure there are others out there - I play a couple of games, but I'm not a big gamer) is a welcome change of pace.

Re:Take a good idea and work with it...

[Mudcathi]

This is proof that good ideas never die - if you know you have a viable concept, as long as you don't mess with the guts of it too much, you can keep it alive as long as you want.

I agree with your statement, to a certain extent... but visit most Civ3 discussions forums these days, and you'll find many, many disgrunted customers who feel ripped off after shelling out $35-50 for each "new, improved!" version of Civ, which they later discover are just rebranded products in a shiny new box.

Re:Take a good idea and work with it...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is I don't have nearly as much free time as I did in my Civilization playing days in college. I remember playing Civ on my roommate's 386 til 1am the night before my GRE. Aced it too. That was sweet!

do clones make for Developer ideas?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if open-source clones like FreeCiv are reasoning behind the Python and XML support. It's curious to see that they are catering to an open-source framework for modification. one could speculate on resoning, but it's just a parallel that i see.

Neat-o

[cryptochrome]

Potentially this could allow for people to make more representative/interesting sets of civilization advances and benefits.

For instance: photography (+sci +happy) allows porn (+happy, opens Jenna Jameson wonder)

Re:Neat-o

[Anonymous Coward]

What about ancient Japanese wood-block porn? +tentacles?

Re:Neat-o

[Anonymous Coward]

opens Jenna Jameson wonder)

uhh..huh..huh....

Re:Neat-o

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the whole point of porn was that she was already open?

Re:Neat-o

[Anonymous Coward]

-A new type of unit: patent lawyers. They inflitrate a city and stop all technological progress in it.

-A new type of diplomacy: vapor-WMD. You accuse another country of carrying WMDs and therefore can declare war on it without losing any points with the other civilizations.

-A new type of building: the Apple Store. It's a religious building that makes half of your citizens happy and the other half unhappy. All other modifiers become useless.

Re:Neat-o

[Michael Woodhams]

How long do you really think it takes for your scientists to figure out "porn" once you have photography?

This reminds me of a friend's comments on the original Civilization computer game:

"It's just taken my scientists 200 years to figure out the secret of 'horseback riding'. What were they doing in that time? 'Hm, we're researching "horseback riding". Lets spend a few years trying to ride the tails of sheep - maybe that is it.'"

Re:Neat-o

[aussie_a]

-A new type of diplomacy: vapor-WMD. You accuse another country of carrying WMDs and therefore can declare war on it without losing any points with the other civilizations.

Except for France.

Re:Neat-o

[Greyfox]

That's an interesting question. How long was it from the development of photography in the 1800's (If memory serves me correctly) to the first documented photograph of a vagina?

Would the porn discovery be required for the invention of the Internet?

Re:Neat-o

[MrWa]

opens Jenna Jameson wonder

That is pretty wide open already. Unfortunate side effect is probably loss of productivity I would imagine.

Re:Neat-o

[oolon]

Originally horses pulled charots because their backs were not strong enough to bare the weight of a person, it did infact that many uears to breed horses that were able to carry people and break them in so they could be ridden and controlled. The introduction of the stirrup was another great invention that you might over look, as it allow someone to fight and control control the horse at the same time as well as reduce the chance of becomming unseated. So I could see that horseback riding and fighting as we know it could take 200 years.

James

Re:Neat-o

[cryptochrome]

Indeed. I guess Jenna's not such a wonder after all.

Now Ron Jeremy, HE'S a wonder of the world! Proof positive there is a benevolent god smiling down on unattractive men.

Re:Neat-o

[LadyLucky]

Interestingly there is another not so obvious error in the Civilization technology tree: Alphabet comes prior to Writing.

The best example of why this is false is Chinese. It has no alphabet, yet has writing.

Re:Neat-o

[pjp6259]

How long was it from the development of photography in the 1800's (If memory serves me correctly) to the first documented photograph of a vagina?

I don't know, but Amsterdam has a history of Sex museum, that might have the answer. They have lots of pictures of ancient pornography.

I have a small number of pictures from the amsterdam sex museum on my website including a very old pornographic photo:

http://www.prestopnik.com/honeymoon/sex_museum_g al lery_entrance.php

It's uh NSFW, in case there was any question.

How it's gonna be

[Anonymous Coward]

IndentationError: expected an indented block
Wha?! But I ain't playing Tetris!

I like the theme..

[Tepshen]

..but I honestly have not found a game I like more than Call to power 2 that game is on my HD to this day.

Re:I like the theme..

[Tepshen]

offtopic? It was the Civ game made after Sid left. http://www.itreviews.co.uk/g73-activision-call-to- power-2-review.htm

Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeciv already has all this, and a lot more. And the upcoming release 2.0.0 will blow your minds!

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeciv has a lot to offer, sure. It's free software. It's immensely customisable. It's multiplayer. It's literally packed with features. I've had a lot of fun with it.

Unfortunately they forgot to include modern graphics and addictive single-player gameplay, so it's not going to catch on outside the geek niche that values customisability over eye-candy.

Re:Freeciv

[drinkypoo]

I sure hope so, because the current release makes me want to blow my brains out. I thought the original Civ and Civ 2 had a craptacular interface, but then I played freeciv.

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

I played freeciv since ... before 1.0 came out. I contributed some bug reports. It ws fun, it showed promise. Now, man, this interface is just hideous. I fucking hate it with all my heart.

You guys lost it, seriously. What an over-engineered piece of crap it has become. I am sorry for saying this, I truly am.

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, boy. Let's see here. We have some idiot on Slashdot saying that Freeciv has a crappy interface. Did this person:

* Explain WHY it is freeciv has a crappy interface?

* Explain how the interface can be changed so as not to be so crappy?

* Said anything that can even be construed to be constructive cricicism? (Clue: Constructive cricicism is cricicism that people can use to constructively improve things)

No, of course not. And, to top it off, the idiots called Slashdot moderators moderated this up to five.

OK, I can see this getting modded up to five if it explained how it is FreeCIV's interface could be improved. Heck, it's trivial to go to freeciv.org and add a page on why the interface is crappy and what can be done to improve it (freeciv.org is a Wiki these days).

However, this is just an empty flame, plain and simple. Let me exaplain something to this flamer:

The people who write Freeciv aren't getting paid. They are doing, excuse me, a SHITLOAD of work making FreeCIV a game that I feel is an excellent game. FreeCIV 2.0 had shitloads of features that I've never seen Civ have, such as allowing both top-down and isometric viewings of any map, allowing a map with hex tiles, allowing toric and non-wrapping maps in addition to maps the wrap east-west like Civilization, a lot of customibility in the map generation that Commercial CIVs don't, customization units, several possible rulesets people can play under, etc. And, oh, a damn good AI.

And, what do the free software devlopers get for all of their work? Some asshole on Slashdot who tells them, without going to any effort to support their argument, that the interface is somehow "crappy". Yeah, these people worked their butts off, didn't get paid, and all they get on Slashdot is a stupid flame. And them some moderators take this stupid flame and mod it up to 5. WTF??

You know, I'm convinced that Slashdot is one of the bigger asshole magnets on the internet, and this kind of flamage of volunteer developers supports my assertion. I once had a four-digit ID on Slashdot; I gave it up when it became clear that Slashdot was on its way to hell. According to Alexis, Slashdot readership is slowly declining, and I can see why. Slashdot has become a culture which encourages hate, and discourages love and positive thinking.

OK, I'm off my soap box. I'm sure the parent can help FreeCIV become a better program by explaining why it is FreeCIV has such a crappy interface; I am sure the devlopers will be very responsive to his feedback, and I am sure he can do a lot to improve FreeCIV.

I used to be an open-source developer, but have by and large given up on it because I got sick and tired of getting flamed by anonymous assholes on Slashdot.

Re:Freeciv

[dr.badass]

I used to be an open-source developer, but have by and large given up on it because I got sick and tired of getting flamed by anonymous assholes on Slashdot.

So....you became what you hated.

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it have good AI with diplomacy yet?

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, they didn't forget to include modern graphics. They are aware that more modern graphics would be nice. (And before someone Slashdot suggests using C-Evo's graphics, FreeCIV developers feel that those graphics are extracted from a commercial release of Civilization without permission. Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.) What happened was that no artist was willing to submit their time making more modern graphics.

If you don't like the graphics, you can do some things:

• You can contribute better, more modern graphics to FreeCIV.
• You can set up a foundation that pays someone to contribute more modern graphics to FreeCIV.
• You can whine on Slashdot about how FreeCIV's graphics suck.

Now, of these things, which one is the least likely to improve FreeCIV?

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Try the beta release; 2.0.0 is about to be released and beta6 is pretty bug-free.

It still doesn't have play-by-email, though. :(

Still a great game, though. :)

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm just sick and tired of lusers on Slashdot whining and moaning and otherwise doing nothing to improve things. It just discourages developers of FreeCIV and doesn't do anything to make the world better, beyond allowing people to let off steam.

Maybe I'll work on my open source project again now I let off steam here. We'll see. It's not like I'm getting paid.

Re:Freeciv

[Dun Malg]

Oh, boy. Let's see here. We have some idiot on Slashdot saying that Freeciv has a crappy interface. Did this person: * Explain WHY it is freeciv has a crappy interface? * Explain how the interface can be changed so as not to be so crappy? * Said anything that can even be construed to be constructive cricicism? (Clue: Constructive cricicism is cricicism that people can use to constructively improve things)

Have you played FreeCiv? It's like playing "Civilization 2 for Excel" or something. Everything is crammed into that same old stupid grey-box-with-scrollbar Windows interface design. Part of what's nice about Civ 3 is that it's an escape from the "normal" world of using a computer. Sure, it's got lots of features not available in Civ 3, but the graphics are still low-quality and it still feels like I'm working in a freakin' FileMaker database.

And before you spout off the typical "If you don't like it, fix it yourself or shut up" FOSS-nazi ultimatum, realize that I don't give a crap if FreeCiv is ever as good as Civ 3, and I don't claim that it should be. The GP poster you flamed was merely responding to the GGP post that said "the upcoming release 2.0.0 will blow your minds" by saying he hoped that it was a significant improvement over 1.14, the current release.

And, what do the free software devlopers get for all of their work? Some asshole on Slashdot who tells them, without going to any effort to support their argument, that the interface is somehow "crappy". Yeah, these people worked their butts off, didn't get paid, and all they get on Slashdot is a stupid flame. And them some moderators take this stupid flame and mod it up to 5. WTF??

1) The interface for 1.14 IS crappy, and anyone who simply loads it up and then loads Civ 3 can see why. His assertion doesn't need explaination. The things that make it suck are like a shovel blow to the face.
2) It's not a flame, it's a simple observation-- an observation that is perfectly accurate and INFORMATIVE, thus the up-mod.

I'm sure the parent can help FreeCIV become a better program by explaining why it is FreeCIV has such a crappy interface; I am sure the devlopers will be very responsive to his feedback, and I am sure he can do a lot to improve FreeCIV.

What makes you think he cares? Honestly, you complain endlessly about the asshole attitude on slashdot and the complaints seem to apply more to YOU than HIM! Did you even LTFS (Load The Freakin' Software) to maybe see if what he was talking about was obvious? Or did you assume that the FreeCiv team doesn't know that certain aspects of their v1.14 shit stinks, or that it doesn't and this guy is a whiner? Looks to me like you assumed he was an asshole and then went ahead to make an asshole of yourself instead.

I used to be an open-source developer, but have by and large given up on it because I got sick and tired of getting flamed by anonymous assholes on Slashdot.

Not surprising. Blowhards like you who like to dish out criticism often can't take it themselves.

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you played FreeCiv? It's like playing "Civilization 2 for Excel" or something. Everything is crammed into that same old stupid grey-box-with-scrollbar Windows interface design. Part of what's nice about Civ 3 is that it's an escape from the "normal" world of using a computer. Sure, it's got lots of features not available in Civ 3, but the graphics are still low-quality and it still feels like I'm working in a freakin' FileMaker database.

This is actually constructive criticism. The answer is that some developer needs to make a SDL or whatever port of FreeCIV; at one point this was actually done, but the developer lost interest and it never went anywhere. But, yes, I think FreeCIV is ready for a SDL port and the code can handle different interfaces fairly well, so it's just a matter of finding someone willing to go to all the hard work of making a SDL port available without getting paid to do so (or, for that matter, setting up a system so the devloper can get paid).

Now, I don't know if SDL allows full-screen mode in Windows or not. Most FreeCIV developers use Linux, so there is less motivation to make a Windows full-screen interface than a Linux full-screen interface.

Let me give you a clue: People can not read minds. When someone sayd "the interface is crappy", there are a zillion little reasons why the person thinks so. Maybe they don't like the way setting up the queue for city productions work. Maybe they feel the game has too many options, making the game hard to learn how to play. Maybe they think the AI is too good. Or maybe they think the only good interface is a full-screen interface. It could be any of the above. To say "it is obvious" when it is not is a flame, plain and simple (there is actually a Wikipedia article which states it; Wikipedia is a place where people actually contribute something constructive and there is a way of handling users who just sit around and flame, contributing nothing). But wait. We're on Slashdot, which has about the signal to noise ratio of an .advocacy Usenet newsgroup circa 1995.

My issue with Slashdot is this: The whole set up is designed to encourage flame wars. Anonymous accounts. Encouraging the first posts to get the highest moderations, so posters are more rewarded for being first than for being best (For example: The default view is "oldest first"). It's impossible to later on edit postings; it's impossible to delete flames, only mode them to -1. Even Kuro5hin has a way of zapping articles. Editors posting stories which are plain simply flamebait.

Slashdot used to be a place for Linux people. It has degenerated in to a community of Windoze luzers who do not contribute anything to the world except to whine and complain about people who actually accomplish something in the world.

Re:Freeciv

[cheesybagel]

Have you played FreeCiv? It's like playing "Civilization 2 for Excel" or something. Everything is crammed into that same old stupid grey-box-with-scrollbar Windows interface design. Part of what's nice about Civ 3 is that it's an escape from the "normal" world of using a computer. Sure, it's got lots of features not available in Civ 3, but the graphics are still low-quality and it still feels like I'm working in a freakin' FileMaker database.

Guess what, CivNet and Civilization II also used Windows common controls. I know it isn't everyone's cup of tea, but some people actually prefer windowed games (2.0.0 even has a fullscreen mode option). GTK+ is themable, so it isn't like you can't easily change the look if you don't like it using one of the zillions of free available themes. Try that on Civilization III... The interface has strong and weak points. The cities list is one of the strong points. I've never found one in a Civilization like game that allows to do complex actions that easily, instead of having to click the mouse a zillion times.

If you want to "escape from the computer world", go play in the outside world instead of being stuck in front of a computer screen.

Quoting the 5 "Informative" post, in full:
I sure hope so, because the current release makes me want to blow my brains out. I thought the original Civ and Civ 2 had a craptacular interface, but then I played freeciv.

Blow my brains out. Worse than Civilization I (a game on which the mouse sometimes stopped froze permanently and required constant pointer-chasing to click in teensy squares).

Seems pretty terrible doesn't it? It must be pretty terrible. Freeciv has earned 5 HappyPenguin stars, is the #2 best OSS game according to their rank, etc.

Not surprising. Blowhards like you who like to dish out criticism often can't take it themselves.

Want some cheese with that whine?

Re:Freeciv

[drsquare]

If you don't like the graphics, you can do some things:

* You can contribute better, more modern graphics to FreeCIV.
* You can set up a foundation that pays someone to contribute more modern graphics to FreeCIV.
* You can whine on Slashdot about how FreeCIV's graphics suck.

Or, a fourth, more likely option:

You can play a better game, commercially developed, polished and enjoyable to play.

Just because a game is open-source doesn't make it any good. Also, the point is that the person who started the thread was stating that Freeciv already has the features of the current civilisation games, and that the upcoming release would 'blow our minds'. In your response, you didn't deny that Freeciv wasn't very good, instead you tried to excuse its faults. Therefore it seems you agree that the game isn't very good, and so why aren't you criticising the thread-starter for making false claims, rather than criticising the grandparent post for criticising the claims made by the original post.

The flow of conversation usually goes thusly:

Person A: Use this open-source software, it's as good as, or better, than the commercial alternatives.
Person B: Wait a minute, no it isn't, it lacks features, x, y and z, and has an awful interface.
Person C: Well, they're doing it for free, if you don't like it then improve it yourself!

This doesn't really solve any problems, it just makes people resent open source software. They might find it awful or not like certain features, but if they admit it they get attacked for not improving it themselves. This means people will just ignore open souce software completely just to get away from the zealots.

For the record, I think that Freeciv's graphics look worse than Civilisation 1, which I got free on a CD nearly a decade ago. Perhaps the gameplay is better, but I wouldn't know because I've never managed to get it working. Like a lot of people, I'm prepared to pay for a good quality game rather than wrestle with a free one.

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you have a lot of legitimate points here. I think the fundamental conflict we're looking at here is that Slashdot used to be a place where Linux geeks and open source developers talked about the virtues of Linux over Windows. Slowly, over the years, the audience has changed and now this site is dominated by a bunch of Windows end-users instead of Linux open-source developers.

The reason why I get so upset when open source is flamed is because the developers, well, aren't getting paid and the only reward they get is improvement to their reputation. If there is this silly idea that FreeCIV isn't a good game going around the 'net, then this will discourage the FreeCIV devlopers to work on making it a better game, since no one wants to break their back developing a program that has a bad reputation.

The most famous quote that expresses the sentiment I am conveying is Kennedy's famous "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country" quote. The way I see, there are two kinds of people in the world: People who are willing to work to make things better, and people who expect other people to make things better for them. Open Source is a reality because of the first kind of people; Slashdot seems to be full of the second kind of people at this point.

Now, any end user can right now make FreeCIV 2.0 a better game. Go ahead, go to http://www.freeciv.org and download the beta7 client. They have Linux/UNIX source and Windows binaries. Play the game. Report bugs. In addition to enjoying FreeCIV (and, yes, it is a lot easier to start up a game in FreeCIV 2.0 than in FreeCIV 1.14), you will be making it a better game.

Re:Freeciv

[drsquare]

The way I see, there are two kinds of people in the world: People who are willing to work to make things better, and people who expect other people to make things better for them. Open Source is a reality because of the first kind of people; Slashdot seems to be full of the second kind of people at this point.

I'm not ever. I don't care about Freeciv, I don't care if the entire project is flushed down the toilet. I don't need or care for an open-source alternative to Civilisation, so I don't care how bad it is.

Just don't go into a discussion about Civilisation claiming your game is as good or better, without having the substance to back it up. Remember, you open source people barged into this discussion, not the other way round.

Re:Freeciv

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that there are advantages to the proprietary software development model for games.

For people that prefer proprietary games, I encourage buying the game instead of pirating it. If everyone plays proprietary games without paying for them, they are making it so the companies won't be able to pay for game development, resulting in games like FreeCIV which you don't seen to like.

The main advantage of the proprietary software devlopement model is that they can pay for artists to make nice drawings; it is harder to get artists to work for free than for coders to work for free for reasons I don't fully understand.

In terms of PayCiv vs. FreeCiv, I have only played one version of PayCiv: Alpha Centauri. I prefer FreeCiv over Alpha Centauri, in part because I don't buy the storyline that Alpha Centauri has. I also find the way one has to wait a long time for all their units (terraformers, etc.) to move before being able to move pieces or change orders.

The graphics in FreeCiv do not bother me; then again, I also like playing Chess.

Also, issues like "curruption is too powerful in CivIII's latest patch" are non-issues in FreeCIV; the game is infinitely customizable. Of course, since CIV IV is also supposed to be somewhat customizable, this may become a non-issue.

So, is FreeCIV better than PayCiv? That depends on who you ask. If flexibility and a strong AI are important to you, then FreeCiv is a better game. If a stronger storyline and nice graphics are important to you, then PayCiv is the way to go. The nice thing about FreeCiv is that it's, well, free, so it doesn't cost anything to try it out.

I don't think the person at the head of this thread was implying that FreeCiv is better than PayCiv; he just felt it was an excellent game. I agree with him. The issue is that people are being inconsiderate here. The amount of socially acceptable criticism allowed is different when money changes hands than when money doesn't change hands.

Re:Freeciv

[rp]

For me, Freeciv is not only more playable than Civ II, it is also prettier (for me, the Civ II graphics and distractions get in the way of gameplay). It does look its age, but so does chess.

Perhaps you should try playing some Freeciv and report your findings.

Civ 3 issues

[Raul654]

I was a big fan of Civ II and I absolutely loved Alpha Centauri, but I did not like Civ III. Why? The waste and corruption was just far too high. (The patches moderated this slightly, but still not to my satisfaction). It ruined the game, IMHO. I hope Civ IV will improve upon this.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[FauxPasIII]

You have to bring Democracy to the people. Modern history tells us the most expeditious way to do this is to invade and occupy them.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[HungWeiLo]

Well, the quicker you invade and pillage the rest of the world, the faster you'll win the game and the less corruption will matter.

Oh wait...

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest problem I have with Civ3 are the damned strategic resources. Nothing pisses you off more than taking the time to research a technology to give you a military edge (like 1st gen. tanks), and then seeing you have no oil. Or needing aluminum to build spaceship components.

It didn't make a single bit of difference if you were the single largest landmass nation in the game. You *always* got shafted out of some strategic late-game resource. All the other civilizations were drawing on multiple resources and refused to trade... at all... even your "best buddy" ally.

And I never kept track, but it always seemed that the "We have exhausted this resource" events happened far more often than "We have discovered a new source".

It wouldn't be so bad if they gave the option to turn the damn resources off.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Freedom Bug]

The rule is "the first civ you really get into is the best".

For me, I much preferred Civ 1 over Civ 2. Civ 2 just added a whole bunch of new units, technologies and wonders, without adding anything distinctive to the game. They turned a nice 8 hour game into an exhausting 16 hour game.

Civ 3, on the other hand, added depth to the game. Culture is awesome, and those strategic resources really opened up the diplomatic and trading game.

Waste, corruption and unhappiness are crucial to the game. Without it, however gets the most cities planted early wins. Only the game before 2000BC matters, after, it's just tedium. You may hate it, because it's what's holding you back on your preferred strategy, but without it, it'd be a much inferior game.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[demachina]

Civilization "Call to Power" was awful.

I love Alpha Centauri too, and was hoping a new civ would build on it which is why I bought Call to Power. Call to Power has truly awful and I was sorry I wasted money on it. The tech research paths are awful and it just wasn't much fun to play compared to Alpha Centauri.

I dearly wish they would do an Alpha Centauri II, keep the best of it in tact, build on it, fix the AI's and reopen some servers for online play.

Only problem in Alpha Centauriy is the AI's in it are pretty lame especially once you master the game, after that it almost always ends up being disappointing to play. For example the probes will never learn how to approach a city or unit without being seen first and destroyed, so they attack over and over and basicly suicide. The AI often develop this massive forces of 20 jets and then never use them to attack if the odds are against 1 jet but sacrificing 3-4 would turn the course of a battle. In general the AI's seem aggressive early on but once you get big civilizations and you start attacking they often just sit there and never fight back effectively.

Strategy games like this need openess in the AI, so I sure hope thats what they are opening up. Open source AI development for games should yield some really interesting open source projects especially if you could develop generic concepts and reuse them in more than one game. Would probably develop skills in young programmers that would be useful in real AI projects later in life.

Alpha Centauri might still be fun if you could play it online so you are matched against players and not the lame AI's. Of course evenly match AC games on a big map take a day or more to play and its hard to find 2-5 online gamers that will hold together that long especially once they start losing.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[neverkevin]

I agree. In Civ 2, I used to make my civ lean and mean by having 10-15 super cities, however in Civ 3 I had to have about 100 cities spread out everywhere so I could obtain 90% of the strategic resources. Now that is not a bad thing, but having that many cities causes each turn to take 10 mins and I simply do not have time to play a game that last that long.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Dr. GeneMachine]

I disagree. You don't need about 100 cities to cover all your resource needs. I found the strategic resources a rather interesting twist to the game. The discovery of new resources changes the geo-strategical face of the map. For example, imagine you have been building a rather peaceful empire, holding your opponents at bay diplomatically or by small defensive actions, you got the lead - and suddenly you discover you are cut off from oil. What seems like a death sentence just forces you to radically rethink your strategy - suddenly it is all-out resource war. Capture the strategically important positions, defend them well, and you don't have to get into 100-cities micromanagement orgies.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[floppy ears]

This is an interesting take. I suppose it's possible that I didn't give the game enough of a chance to appreciate that the frustrations that came from the corruption problem might actually lead to interesting strategic situations. Maybe I should give it a try again.

But before I do, do you by any chance have any thoughts on the military aspects of the game. I became horribly bored doing what seeming like a million bombing runs, most of which failed. But without the bombing runs, I couldn't prevail militarily. Is there a way around this?

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to take your game to the next level and use combined unit tactics.

Artillery + Land Units is the way to over.

Unlike the earlier Civs, Civ3 isn't simply building a gazillion units of a type and charging over the frontier.

You also have to make decisions on whether to take or not take cities.

In any case, the corruption problem is really overstated. I've had more than 200 cities (in Monarch difficulty) and didn't really have problems. You just have to realize that you can't expect all 200 cities to be productive.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[camkind]

Yeah, use nukes ;)

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Tassach]

But without the bombing runs, I couldn't prevail militarily. Is there a way around this?

Bombers are pretty much a waste -- I only use them for softening up sea units. Build a few fighters and airbases to protect your forces from countereattack, but otherwise concentrate on building regular artillery and fight a pure ground war. Remember that catapults upgrade all the way to mobile artillery, so start building them early and stockpile them. If you're careful, you never need to lose a single artillery piece for the entire game. By the time you get tanks, you can easily have over 100 artillery waiting to go. With a good rail/seaport network you can move them ALL anywhere in a single turn.

Make a stack with all the artillery you can muster (say 30+ guns), 3-5 of your best defensive units to defend it, a couple of attack units as skirmishers to clear the way, and enough workers to build a railroad under the stack in one turn. Take out one city at a time. The AI isn't very clever -- it will see you massing your forces on the border and move most of it's units up to face you. After you take out the first 2 or 3 cities, (which can be a bitch) you've probably killed off 90% of their units, mopping up the rest of their civ is a cakewalk. Oh, and when you're fighting a war, turn off all animations and sound -- it goes much faster that way.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Michael Woodhams]

Without [corruption/unhappiness]... only the game before 2000BC matters, after, it's just tedium.

This is my biggest problem with the 4X game genre - there is a point where you know you are doing well enough that you are going to win, but this point is often well under half of the way through the game (in real world time.)

I'd like to see an option where you can give up most of your empire to a new computer player (call it a civil war or something) and get a big bonus on your score for doing so. That way you can spend the whole game struggling against superior foes, which is when it is interesting, racking up a huge score if you can split your empire multiple times and still come back.

Another thing I'd like to see is variable techs - in this game, artilliary isn't so useful, so you'll need to adjust your tactics to account for it. In the next game, tunnelling is so effective you get the option for a normally unavailable tech, "underground cities". Etc. The closer you get to aquiring a tech, the more information you get on how effective it will be.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Anonymous Coward]

I really liked the idea of the strategic resources in Civ3- you either have to spread out to have cities on a wide variety of terrains, or be masterful at diplomacy to ensure trade access to the things you need. The way an important new resource can shape the game mirrors reality- look at how oil has altered the geopolitics of the Middle East, for example. The concept could of course stand some tinkering for Civ IV, of course-several of my Civ III games were utterly wrecked by a total lack of coal and iron in my civ, but overall I think resources were a brilliant idea. I'll never forget one game when I depleted my only uranium resource (depleted...uranium...I'll be here all week) and started a brief nuclear war over a uranium resource.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[hyfe]

On the other hand, if you start on crappy island / area in Civ 3, there is no way you will ever be able to compete with the core grassland civilization.

In Civ 2 I managed to fight myself out of corners repeatedly (especially on the hardest difficulty level) through good military tactics. In Civ 3 I've yet to turn a game I considered a loss due to a bad start. You can conquer all you want, if your core cities aren't growing you've lost. I hate absolutly hate it.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[deepestblue]

Aye, aye. In addition, waste and corruption add the necessary negative feedback to ensure stability; without corruption/waste, if you capture one extra city, you get that much more production, which makes capturing the next city that much easier. The result is steamroller AIs, which makes for very poor gameplay.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[AceCaseOR]

Well, I had some serious problems in Civ III with this. Specifically, I always end up a long ways away from the Iron. If I'm lucky, I get one group of Iron. If I'm unlucky, my opponents get the Iron & I don't.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[aussie_a]

The rule is "the first civ you really get into is the best".

Not true (for me anyway), and normally this is always true for me ;) I've found Civ 3 to be extremely refreshing and quite different. Then again I got Civ2 in 1997 and it's the only Civ-like game I've had since late last year ;) So after 7 years, an finding an upgrade to be better probably isn't surprising (I also had all the features completely brand-new to me and didn't have to put up with bad releases that were improved via expansion packs).

Re:Civ 3 issues

[DeepHurtn!]

Okay, I'm sick of that particular whine. Corruption and waste is CRUCIAL in Civ. Otherwise the *only* style of play that makes any sense is massive empire building, ie non-stop war. Corruption/waste encourages players to acutally *think* about how to manage their empire, and to pursue strategies other than warmongering. And you know what? Even with corruption and waste, you can *still* warmonger effectively if you actually manage your empire intelligently. Know your Optimal City Limit. Know how wonders/city improvements/governments modify that. Use your Forbidden Palace wisely!

People who whine about the corruption just want to be able to run a massive warmongering democracy all the time. TOUGH. Corruption and waste doesn't RUIN the game, it MAKES it.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[mabinogi]

I've played all three, and have felt each one to be an excellent upgrade.

They each add just enough extra to be new and interesting, but don't change too much of the gameplay to alienate fans of the previous version.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[lsmeg]

I'd like to see an option where you can give up most of your empire to a new computer player (call it a civil war or something) and get a big bonus on your score for doing so.

A different spin off that: what if everytime you switched governments (monarchy to republic, etc), several of your cities would split off from your empire. It would add some realism to the concept of changing governemts and help prevent stupid crap like switching back and forth between government types out of convenience.

Personally I think this would be a much more interesting (and effective) method of limiting early hyper-expansion than waste and corruption. If you build a vast empire before you even get monarchy, you'll risk losing a lot of that effort when you have to switch, and potentially end up creating a dangerous new enemy civ.

I don't know, what do you guys think? Sid, are you listening? :)

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Dr. GeneMachine]

I have to admit that early-game resource lack can totally wreck a game. But still I view it more as a challenge than as a problem. When in this situation, sometimes I just give up, sometimes I fight with all I have to procure that specific resource. One problem with CivIII is the AI. In a game with uniformely distributed resources, one can beat the AI using rather simple strategies, like REX or the classical tech-whoring. Lack of strategical resources lets these strategies often break down at some point.
My real gripe with Civ III is waste and corruption. I see no reason why corruption should be determined by distance to the capital in a frikkin' democracy. That might be valid in feudalism, but come on - democracy. Nearly instantaneous transport to every point on the map at this time. There is no such thing as "distance" any more. THIS needs to be tweaked.

But I guess, all of this is mostly a matter of playing style. And that's why I'm looking forward to a customizable Civ IV - hopefully there will be a mod for every style one likes.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Pulzar]

I've had a win on Deity level that started off with two cities in a corner peninsula when the opponents had a dozen cities each. I've built up a force, took a couple of cities by surprise, acquired some tech to make peace, moved my palace to one of the cities, and I was off an running.

The fact that you can create new "core" cities through moving palaces and creating the Forbidden Palace on the opposite side of the world really help out with this problem.

Becoming a communist will let you create a third center, as well.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Anonymous Coward]

"Know your Optimal City Limit"

Yeah, because we all know that memorising the internal game mechanics is a great way to keep the "suspension of disbelief" and imagine you are managing a real empire.

Use your Forbidden Palace wisely

I would if they stopped changing it in every patch. In the latest one, it only affects the distance corruption in the city it is built in, meaning that there is no way to build a "mini civilization" (i.e. second core) on another continent without insane amounts of waste.

Know how wonders/city improvements/governments modify that

That would be great, except when half of your cities are experiencing 95% corruption, it is almost impossible to build anything... when a courthouse takes 50 turns to build, you're pretty much screwed in the corruption stakes.

Corruption and waste do RUIN the game. There is almost no way to expand your civilization around the world. You can't form a "beach head" colony on other continents to help conquer your enemies, because waste is too massive there to build anything.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Michael Woodhams]

I was looking more for "I want to take a big whack to my power in return for a higher score at the end of the game", which is orthogonal to your suggestion.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Matt_R]

The rule is "the first civ you really get into is the best".

I played Civ1 a LOT, never played Civ2.

Civ3 is much better than Civ1 - in Civ1 I lost a battleship to a Phalanx! wtf!?

Re:Civ 3 issues

[mandalayx]

I'd like to see an option where you can give up most of your empire to a new computer player (call it a civil war or something) and get a big bonus on your score for doing so. That way you can spend the whole game struggling against superior foes, which is when it is interesting, racking up a huge score if you can split your empire multiple times and still come back.

This is possible in both Victoria and Europa Universalis II from Paradox games. In both, you can release vassals/satellite states which become allied to you (basically your pawns) and can improve your prestige (major score modifier) and reduce your badboy score (give you more options diplomatically).

The aforementioned are a bit more deep than Civ, though, and won't appeal to everyone. Having said that though, I enjoy both Civ and Victoria immensely. If you need some help getting into Victoria (has quite a steep learning curve), remember to (1) patch it and (2) visit VickyWiki.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Dan Hayes]

Waste and corruption will either be removed or at least completely reworked for Civ IV. Have a look at one of the designer's goals for Civ IV here (it's a PowerPoint presentation). It looks like it could be very good indeed.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[MaDeR]

It seems to be bug in game. Sometimes they thinks that you betray someone, but in fact you betray no one! This really sucks, especially later in game. (betrayers got virtually no longterm trade)

Re:Civ 3 issues

[Greg W.]

Alpha Centauri might still be fun if you could play it online so you are matched against players and not the lame AI's.

It has perfectly good Play By E-Mail (PBEM) capabilities. Well, OK, not perfect... there are some major bugs that pop up in multi-player mode. If you join a PBEM SMAC game, you'll usually end up agreeing to a set of rules in advance (no exploiting this bug, no exploiting that bug, etc.). Since such a game usually lasts for months, it's not for everyone. But you might want to try it some time.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[nzhavok]

The rule is "the first civ you really get into is the best".

Well, not always :) I prefered civ2 over civ, although mabye that's because it was a lot faster on the PC than the Atari.

I was never a big fan of alpha centauri, it was probably a superior game to civ2 but I really wanted the game set on *earth* and no decent modpacks came out despite my predictions on the civ2 newsgroup. Civ 3 came out in my final year of university, so it was somewhat disastrous, but I loved it anyway. I picked up civ3conquests last year and it makes for a much, much better game so it's my new favorite. As long as civ4 is basically a version of civ3conquests which allows wide ranging scripting I see no reason why it won't quickly be my favorite.

Waste, corruption and unhappiness are crucial to the game.

It's only really a problem whilst you're in monarch/republic. If your empire is so big that corruption is a problem you can move to communism in the late-mid game. If you can time this with your golden age the benefits are insane, although holding off the golden age for so long is a bit difficult.

Re:Civ 3 issues

[KarmaOverDogma]

I played Civ I, II and III

Civ I was great
Civ II was even better; not a new concept but an improvement, and the clear best seller of the three
CIV III looked great but just didn't catch my interest as much (and apparently didnt sell as well as Civ II either). Maybe it was just too sophisticated for me, but I find that unlikely because I loved Alpha Centauri (another game that didn not sell well), which was not a light game.

Go figure.

i can see myself playing it already!

[raarky]

My Turn! edit-cut-paste-move-edit-cut-paste-move-edit-cut-p aste-move

Sounds like Disney movies

[Trolling4Columbine]

"This is proof that good ideas never die - if you know you have a viable concept, as long as you don't mess with the guts of it too much, you can keep it alive as long as you want."

That sounds like how Disney creates their movies. Too bad it usually results in a predictable and unintersting storyline, with cliched characters and bland dialogue.

so...

[Anonymous Coward]

should we expect a storyline where the player character is hired by competing city states, gaining more power/influence over the centuries?

That would be a pretty cool cross-over with GTA.

Oh - and using a crossbow for driveby shootings in chariots.

Yeah, I know I'm nuts.

Re:so...

[temojen]

"storyline" and "player character" do not exist in Civilization.

Re:so...

[Inverse Icarus]

I thought about it, and it wouldn't make sense any other way. While I admit that "ruling families" ala Rome: Total War are pretty sweet, it makes no sense for them to stand for the whole of human existence, especially once you start becomming Republics / Democracies.

Re:so...

[Anonymous Coward]

neither do "driveby shootings". That's the idea of a cross-over: mix and match aspects of one part with another. Unless you didn't read past the first line of text.

In other words.

[Kenja]

"Civilization IV will also set a new standard for user-modification"

In other words, there will be no game included and they hope that we, the consumer, will finish their prodcut for them.

Re:In other words.

[Txiasaeia]

Ever since NWN went this route, it seems to me that more and more companies are doing this - heck, id has been doing it for years now with Doom and Quake! Anyway, I'm not quite as cynical as you, but I still can't find a decent game that replicates the Civ2 w/Mars scenario feeling - maybe this will be it?

Not the First Time

[lavaforge]

This isn't the first time that Python has shown up in a major commercial game. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines uses python 2.2 (could be wrong on the minor revision number) to handle almost all of its in-game actions. It's interesting to read the scripts and see how the game works, even if it can spoil things a bit.

Re:Not the First Time

[Tobias Luetke]

Another good example of python use in a game is Eve.

However lua has firmly taken the industry now. World of warcraft comes with a huge xml/lua based UI and tons of mods exist.
Painkiller, Massive assault, Monkey islands are all prominently putting lua symbols in their games.

Re:Not the First Time

[morganjaffit]

Prior to that, Freedom Force did the same thing. All game logic is handled through Python scripts, and Homeworld 2 used LUA in the same fashion. Trust me, I should know.

Re:Not the First Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough talk. Let's look at some Freedom Force python script code:

http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~sholden/site.cgi/STUFF/ FFORCE/SCRIPT/MUG1/

Re:Not the First Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Lua was also used in many of the BioWare / Black Isle games (Baldurs gate, 1 & 2 at least), Grim fandago..... a few others too..

Re:Not the First Time

[tdelaney]

Actually, it still uses 2.1(.1). I built psyco to work with it ... (didn't give me a performance improvement unfortunately).

Re:Not the First Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Vampire wasn't even the first Troika game to use Python. Temple of Elemental Evil used it before then. I think Arcanum may have also, but I'm fuzzier about that one.

Documentation

[Fr05t]

World of Warcraft allows users to make their own UI mods and addons using a combination of XML and LUA. The only problem (not blaming Blizz because they don't "offically support" it) is good and complete documentation is pretty much impossible to find.

There are plently of places with fragmented documentation but it's still a lot of trial and error/guessing. It also seems mod developers who started in the begining of the beta do not want to share their knowledge.

My advice to Take-Two is this: If you are going to talk it up make sure you document the damn thing.

Re:Documentation

[Anonymous Coward]

thats crap. they dont have to officially support it to provide some decent docs.

support is different than the documentation that should come with it.

they copped out

Civ 2 still the best.

[Anonymous Coward]

Civ2 > Civ3 by a long shot. I'm gonna wait for the reviews before I try to buy civ4.

Hmm, A CIV GTA cross-over

[cybergrue]

Hmmm, Take Two is also the pubisher behind Rockstar games. Maybe they could spice things up by making a cross-over between the Civ franchise and the GTA series. Think of it, you could lead you army in first person into your opponents capital, storm his palace, and kill him in one-to-one combat with a spear, and then jack his chariot for a triumphant entry back to your safe house / palace. The only problem with this plan is that the in game leader would have more of a life then I currently do.

Re:Hmm, A CIV GTA cross-over

[rimskij]

And all this turn based? Gosh, can't stand waiting for this one.

Re:Hmm, A CIV GTA cross-over

[AceCaseOR]

Hell, I'd just like to see a Civ-style (note: this means turn-based) game that has you running an organized crime family, like Blood Feud in New York. Every sort of mob-boss sim I've seen has been real time or a combination of real-time and turn-based (like "Gangsters: Organized Crime") and it didn't work too well. A turn based game would work a lot better, IMHO.

Re:Hmm, A CIV GTA cross-over

[PurpleWizard]

How about:

Sim city plug in. You can drop into a city you are developing and run it as a complex sim. Maybe on another machine.

Yes various GTA style in city games.

Battles done with something like Art of War

Railroad Tycoon for when you hit the Railroad advancement.

Moving into Third Reich style strategic battles when you get to the modern armour.

With of course a good first person shooter sort for going on spying and asassinations.

The list just goes on...

SDL?

[lost sheep]

it's nice to see open source tech in a major PC game!

Didn't Civ 3 use SDL?

Re:SDL?

[mabinogi]

You're thinking of Civilization:Call To Power which was NOT a Civilization game, despite having licensed the name.

It was a piece of crap that didn't play anything like a Civilization game. I don't know what possesed Sid Meier to license the name like that, I hope he never does it again.

Re:SDL?

[ynohoo]

As I recall, Activition, who produced Civ2, decided they owned the rights, and went ahead and produced it. Sid's new company, Firaxis, sued. Then then settled, allowing Activision to continue to use the trademark "Civilization" for the first edition, provided they only referred to it as "Call to Power", dropping the Civ reference on any subsequent release.

And yeah, it sucked, overall. While they had some original ideas that added to the gameplay, they screwed up on changes they made to the base model - getting gunpowder was a pain, as suddenly your base defensive unit took ages build, even in your capital city.

XMLScript

[slagdogg]

Okay, so XML's not a scripting language.

Right, but a scripting language could be represented in XML.

<for var="i" test="i &lt; 10" mod="i++">
<drop object="nuke[i]" on="civ[i]" />
<clean object="pollution" nearobject="nuke[i]" />
</for>

Re:XMLScript

[Anonymous Coward]

Somehow i was waiting for this...

Re:XMLScript

[Anonymous Coward]

<for var="i" test="i &lt; 10" mod="i++">
<drop object="nuke[i]" on="civ[i]" />
<clean object="pollution" nearobject="nuke[i]" />
</for>

Man, you have no clue. Try

<!-- pretend there's a DTD here, life's too short
to make parodies perfect -->
<for>
<initialization>
<set>
<variable identifier="i"/>
<integer value="0"/>
</set>
</initialization>
<condition>
<less-than>
<variable identifier="i"/>
<integer value="10"/>
</less-than>
</condition>
<increment>
<assign>
<variable identifier="i"/>
<expression>
<add>
<variable identifier="i"/>
<integer value="1"/>
</add>
</expression>
</assign>
</increment>
<statements>
<attack>
<unit>
<index><variable identifier="i"/></index>
</unit>
<target>
<owner>
<index><variable identifier="i"/></index>
</owner>
<city identifier="capital"/>
</target>
</attack>
<!-- fuck cleaning up pollution, global warming
is only a problem for the weak -->
</statements>
</for>

Now that's XML.

Re:XMLScript

[Anonymous Coward]

there already is a scripting language in xml... see miva

mostly used for shopping cart apps tho

Re:XMLScript

[91degrees]

Right, but a scripting language could be represented in XML.

Yup. And a hammer could be used as a screwdriver;)

Re:XMLScript

[Anonymous Coward]

It's more like making a screwdriver out of pure gold. It's really expensive, and it doesn't really hold up to what you want to do.

Oh and I tried that hammer thing. You owe me a new hard drive.

I'm waiting for

[Lord Kano]

Take Two or EA (yeah yeah, I know) to apply for and receive a patent for "Using a computer or other electronic instrument for the purpose of providing entertainment using sound, visual images or a combination thereof".

LK

National Security Risk!!!

[HungWeiLo]

Looks like Take-Two and Sid Meier will be personally responsible for decreasing America's GDP for the 3rd and 4th fiscal quarters of 2005...

Re:National Security Risk!!!

[tktk]

That's ok. With our newly combined skills from GTA and Civ, we'll be able to hijack another country's GDP.

"Open source"? WTF?

[MoralHazard]

Since when does "extensible" mean the same thing as "open source"? For all we know, they could claim ownership of any derivatives works of their product, making any user-contributed code the property of the game manufacturer. Even if they don't intend to at first, who's to say they're not reserving the right for later? This is more like the "Anti-OSS", if anything: no guaranteed rights.

And I didn't see a reference anywhere to the license that covers mods. Maybe if someone did see it, they can point that out to me.

How did previous mod communities deal with this? Did modders just not care, or did the fact that the game manufacturer didn't claim rights over derivative works from the beginning save it?

Help enlighten us--maybe I'm being too harsh.

Mac version?

[akira69]

Since there's a Civ 3 for mac, how about civ 4? I buy about 1 game every 2 years, and it's usually a flavor of civilization. I wouldn't mind buying Civ 4, but would love to play it on my mac...

Re:Mac version?

[creep]

Second the motion. The AI in Civ3 for Mac is horrendous--it's impossible to conduct any type of diplomacy.

Re:Mac version?

[ynohoo]

it aint great in the Windows version - the AI's concept of "fair trade" for luxuries means that you might as well invade them.

XML Scripting Language

[getusout]

Okay, so XML's not a scripting language

You sure about that? :) It's been done before. See the stax project: http://staf.sf.net/

Valve - Take 2 phone conversation

[dmrt_viper]

V:Civ 4 ? Nah man, source is the only way to fly !
T:Source ?
V:CIV SOURCE ! Let me tell you about `steam`
T:Stop calling us okay ?
V:It's tha bomb
T:Hello ?

Mac Version

[NardofDoom]

Civ III is one of my favorite games, but they've pretty much stopped producing Mac versions of it. The last patch to Civ III was put out 8/13/2002. 2002!

So while the PC version will be out late 2005, the Mac version will be out two years later, running on hacked-together code that requires a 5Ghz G5 and 512MB of VRAM just to run. Slowly.

Here we go again....

[jborawski]

I think the Civilization series has been touched by so many companies and has been through so many variations, that it's comparable to the max amount of technologies you can research and discover in an entire game of Civilization I....

Great, now you can CUSTOMIZE your crack

[StefanJ]

God damn. I forsee many months of lost productivity ahead.

Anyone in the Portland, OR area want to put together a Twelve Step group for Civilization addicts?

"Hello, my name is Bill."

"Hi Bill!"

"I would like to tell you about the time I wore Depends and stewed in my own filth for twelve hours while playing as the Mongols in King mode."

"We've all been there Bill! Go on!"

Stefan

Re:Great, now you can CUSTOMIZE your crack

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes I just hate eating Turkey Chili while reading ./

Re:Great, now you can CUSTOMIZE your crack

[mabinogi]

the scary thing is that's not even an exageration.

Too many times I've sat down to play Civ III at 4 in the afternoon, remembered to blink at midnight, and only moved when I realised it's 7am and light outside...

just....one.....more.....turn..... ...well, maybe the Depends thing is an exageration - I've trained my body to shut down all non Civ essential functions, so it's never come to that for me.....

No, GTA keeps doing well.

[Anonymous Coward]

adv/adj

Re:No, GTA keeps doing well.

[Anonymous Coward]

you sucks teh coxor

Re:No, GTA keeps doing well.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Grand Theft Auto does good. Just last week I saw the dude from GTA III volunteering at a soup kitchen, and it was recently announced by Tommy Vercetti that 50% of Cherry Poppers Ice Cream profits would go towards the D.A.R.E. program.

Will mods/scripting be cross platform?

[amichalo]

Is Take Two dedicated to the cross platform capabilities of Civ IV?

As a Mac user, I was put off that Civ III came out for the Mac but no expansions did and even the patches stopped at 1.21f while the PC version went to 1.29g (and no, the 1.29 patch was not PC only bug fixes).

Any information on the support of non-Windows OS's?

Re:Will mods/scripting be cross platform?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Mac user, I was put off that Civ III came out for the Mac but no expansions did

Three words baby:

Who
Fucking
Cares.

Another?

[Mazem]

Civ 3, Civ 2, Civ 1, and all the Alpha Centauri titles are basically the exact same game. There are small changes, tweaks, graphical updates etc, but when it comes down to it they all have nearly the same gameplay.

Civ was such an amazing, addictive, and replayable game to begin with that everytime they release a new Civ everyone starts playing it again, remembers how good the game style is, and likes the new version. However, I'm not convinced that buying and playing Civ X is a significantly different or better experience than just picking up Civ 2 off the shelf, dusting it off, and playing it again.

Re:Another?

[Martin Blank]

Civ X?

C'mon, man. We're still drooling over Civ IV. Don't make us start drooling about the next six versions after that or you're going to see a lot of Slashdot geeks swimming home.

And you definitely do not want to see that. :)

Re:Another?

[mabinogi]

that's the POINT!

I happen to like playing Civilization games. I don't want a different game, I want the same essential game with just enough incremental changes to be interesting and different, but not so many that it's not Civilization anymore.

There's plenty of other strategy games out there for those who have had enough Civilization, but I haven't.

The main things I'm hoping for are a better thought out Play By Email mode or equivalent (and more polish on the multiplayer in general), the ability to play in a window - or at least play nice with Alt-Tab - and better worker automation modes (or maybe scriptable workers - although that might be overkill).
And of course whatever core gameplay changes Sid Meier and Firaxis can come up with.

A bigger city name database would be good too - it gets confusing going through all then "New"s and then starting ont the 2s.

Re:Another?

[ynohoo]

Well I've been playing Civ3 (& variations) pretty much constantly since it came out, but I still "dust-off" my copies of Civ2 & AC for a change now and again.

Bring back Wonder movies! They give you a chance to notice your bladder is full ;P

In related news...

[allanc]

Take Two interactive announced today that it would be changing its name to "Take Everything Interactive". A company spokesman was quoted as saying "We felt that the new name would better reflect the company's new goals and objectives. We found we weren't satisfied with just taking two, so we're going to go ahead and take it all, piece by piece."

Insiders report that the newly renamed company next plans to acquire exclusive rights to all games that feature the concept of 'crates', games featuring the likeness of Jodie Foster, and games that use the musical note B-sharp anywhere in their score.

Alien Crossfire

[floppy ears]

I should have also mentioned that I recently discovered the expansion pack for this game, called Alien Crossfire. It's a pretty good expansion, with a new storyline, seven new factions and a bunch of other stuff that you might expect to see an an expansion. Not revoluationary, but recommended if you are an AC addict.

Great for my 8 year old!

[randall_burns]

I have an 8 year old son that likes Civilization. What I like about this is that he might learn python to make changes to a favorite game.

The best part of Alpha Centauri

[GoofyBoy]

... was the quote voices with accents and everything.

Eg:
Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded.
Chairman Sheng-ji Yang
"Looking God in the Eye

AND

A brave little theory, and actually quite coherent for a system of five or seven dimensions--if only we lived in one.
Academician Prokhor Zakharov
"Now We Are Alone"

Thats was the #1 disappointment I had with Civ3.

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[Atmchicago]

Organic Superlube? Oh, it's great stuff, great stuff. You really have to keep an eye on it, though--it'll try and slide away from you the first chance it gets.

-- T. M. Morgan-Reilly,
Morgan Metagenics

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[reverseengineer]

I had much the same disappointment with Civ3 (though it's still one of my favorite games)- while Civ3 improved much of the gameplay from SMAC, it didn't have quite the same feeling to it. I missed the quotations, both those taken from books supposedly written by the faction leaders (which really fleshed out their personalities) and those from human history, mostly from political and ethical philosophy texts- how many other games quote from Kierkegaard's The Sickness Unto Death?

I also wished there would have been Wonder completion movies like the Secret Project movies in Alpha Centauri. Seeing your grand Civ3 capital stuffed with Wonders is pretty sweet, but completion of The Space Elevator, with a short clip of a craft gliding up a slender cable to a captured asteroid terminus while the accented voice of Academician Prokhor Zakharov whispers, "In one moment, earth. In the next, heaven." is unforgettable.

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[Jerf]

My favorite, at least in a way, for the Punishment Sphere (no drones in the city you build it in, production drops 50% (think rebels if you haven't play SMAC)):

It is not uncommon to see patients undergo permanent psychological trauma in the presence of the Sphere, before the nerve stapler has even been strapped into position. Its effect on the general consciousness of the culture is profound: husbands have seen wives go inside, and mothers their children. Dr. Xynan left the surface of the sphere semitranslucent for a reason. You can hear them in there; you can see them. It is a thing of terrible beauty.

Baron Klim: "The Music of the Spheres"

I kid you not: I have build precisely one of those things. I almost can't stand the thought of building them after the quote.

For full effect, you need to hear it. Here's another good one:

'Abort, Retry, Fail?' was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, we'd remind them: if you see this message, {always} choose 'Retry.'

Bad'l Ron, Wakener: Morgan Polysoft

If the game came out today, the voice acting would still be considered superb.

List of SMAC quotes.

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[drsquare]

Those two links point to 26-byte mp3s which don't give off any sound. It seems there is a problem at your end.

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[Brian Reynolds]

I'm glad somebody liked and and remembers these. They were the most fun thing of the whole project to create. Whereas so many of the games I've worked on have had me "playing historian", Alpha Centauri was a perhaps unique chance to "play philosopher".

We found a voice talent agency, I think it was in New York, that specialized in international talent, and intensively screened for accents. We tried to find the most genuine accents possible (Santiago was played by a Puerto Rican, Lal by an Indian, we had a real Russian, and the closest to James Earl Jones' voice we could find for Morgan).

A great memory of the project is the day we brought in a voice actor to play the drill sergeant and he led us in a rousing round of "Deirdre's Got a Network Node" (which is the version you hear in the game).

Brian

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[Jerf]

Read them.

Re:The best part of Alpha Centauri

[Jerf]

Alpha Centauri was a perhaps unique chance to "play philosopher".

Some of us noticed. And it was definately appreciated. It added a dimension to the gameplay that I have never seen in anything else... System Shock touches on it at a couple of points but just can't do much more than that because the story doesn't permit.

I knew, even on the first playthrough, that this was something special after two of the voiceovers: "Air power rests at the apex of the first triad of victory, for it combines Mobility, Flexibility, and Initiative.", and I'm thinking, hey, that makes sense, and the first use I've ever seen in a computer game of the word nihilistic, also used not just correctly but intelligently (i.e., not just an adjective used to describe someone that somebody yanked out of a thesaurus with no real understanding, but in a statement that may be short but had actual philosophical meat attached to it). Both of these came fairly early, so I was fairly tuned in to the rest of them.

Gameplay-wise, I hope for an Alpha Centauri 2 someday; it is still my favorite Civ so far, though I have high hopes for 4. (Boy, it'd be fun to program the AI for that...) Artistically, I don't think you've left any more room for a "remake" of Alpha Centauri than there is room for a "remake" of Dune. High praise. (But something can always be worked out with sufficient creativity, of course; one of the great things about science fiction, no?)

Thank you, and your team. I think I'll cry if anybody else ever does SMAC2.

I totally agree

[Kinniken]

This was a clear-cut case of a game designer deciding he wanted people to "play well" (in this case, build smallish, advanced nations instead of conquering everything in sight), instead of listening to what his customers wanted.
However, I found some efficient patches for it early on that neatly solved the problem for me. I can't remember what they were though...

More useful if...

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be infinitely more useful if they make a Linux release. I can't believe nobody made this comment already.

From an Avid Fan....

[Himring]

Here is my take. Correct anything you wish as I enjoy learning especially about one of my all-time and long lasting games: Civilization.

Let me say here that I do indeed hope that they don't fix what isn't broke:

I am an avid Civ fan. I bought the hard-boxed, big mannualed CivI -- that came with all sorts of goodies -- from Radio shack in the early 90s and fell in love. I also went into a coma and nearly caused myself and my cousin to flunk college.

CivI: This game set the stage. It built upon the basis of railroad tycoon and the way in which is incorporated butter and bullets (which many games get lop-sided) set it apart as a turn-based game. A player could focus on military might or cultural growth or both.

What it lacked: it lacked a more advanced combat system. The ol' "phalanx takes out battleship" is the prime example.

CivII: This game was a vast improvement over CivI and was a needed addition. An advanced combat system was now in place, technologies were added filling in gaps and wonders of the world were expanded. A true gem that brought the dynasty into its own. I thoroughly even enjoyed the video clips of the advisors -- actors -- who would discuss with you your decision-makings.

What it lacked: not much -- that we knew of, but CivIII would show us what would make the Civs even better than ever....

CivCTP: "Call To Power" was a travesty. I tried diligently to play this game and like it, but they did exactly what SSI did with the 1st Panzer General and that is they fixed what wasn't broken. Suddenly, all pieces had different movement commands, a different system of controlling settlers, etc. Nothing fit. It was an entirely new game and it flunked horribly. I don't ever wanna see it or talk to it again -- I DIVORCE IT!!!

What it lacked: EVERYTHING!!!

CivNet: K, of course, the one thing you ALWAYS wanted from Civ was the ability to trash your buddies. CivNet comes out -- woohoo!!! Wtf POS was this? Talk about crashing! It wasn't worth it. And patches? Not many. It was based on CivI too (am I missing something?)

What it lacked: um, the ability to not crash while in a networked game after 5 minutes of play....

CivIII: Finally, another improvement -- or was it? CivIII came out and my first impression was "ah!" thank goodness they didn't rework the commands or controls. Good, good, good -- I can use the number pad to move settlers and stuff. Nice. Wait! What's this!!! Cultural boundaries!!!!!! (orgasm). Yes! I first saw it in Black and White. The best two things about B&W were the cultural boundaries and the king room (rest pretty much sucked). Finally, something that added to the mystique of playing a turn-based god-game. As your culture grows, it only makes sense that a natural boundary and influense would exude from it. Excellent. Ah, the wonders are about the same -- technologies. My goodness. They took CivII, they added mo' betta graphics and also cultural boundaries! I love them! (SSI!!! Pay Attention!!! -- yes, yes, I know all about SSI).

What it lacked: Wait a minute. Some ... thing ... isn't ... right. I, I, wtf are the Chinese planting cities are pure ice! Wtf are the Romans putting cities are pure rock! Wtf? I gotta keep planting cities like a madman? Um, why is Civ dragging down my honking system? CivIII was promising and nearly became my Civ to keep playing, but the way the AI built cities forever and always at a maddenning pace, the way the game chugged after much growth -- it was too much. I grew to not like it. Why should I have to wait 5 minutes between turns while the AI catches up as the math is hammered out?

Conclusion: today, right now, I play CivToT all the time. It's like an on-going chess game for me. I play it on my old P2 laptop and it runs like a champ. It is excellent. CivToT (Civilization II Test of Time) is my Civ of choice and will remain so until someone

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Sunspire]

Note that Civ Call to Power (and the sequel) aren't part of the Civilization franchise, it's not made under the same license and I think there were even some lawsuits at the time if I remember correctly. It was made by a completely different company and published by Activision.

I personally like Alpha Centauri the most, it's got all of the best parts of Civilization II plus borders and the ability to create your own units. If you haven't tried it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a Firaxis game (Sid's company). There's even a Linux version available.

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Himring]

Very good info dude. I will follow-up on Alpha Centauri. I have heard of it but never played it. I tend to find my little Hobbit holes and not venture much out from it. I still play Panzer General I too.

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[ucblockhead]

Check "Alpha Centauri". It is a nice middle ground between CivII and CivIII.

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Evil Butters]

Yes, Civilization-CTP (Call to Power) was a direct rip-off of CIV (according to the courts at least) and the company had to payback to the CIV franchise, something like $5 for each copy it sold! Then they came out with CTP II (but dropped the Civilization name). Personally, I thought this game was pretty good, as it had some improvements that I would like to see in CIV (monorail, underwater and cloud cities, some very interesting military units). I also really liked the ability to change the building projects for multiple cities at the same time -- vs. city by city. It was very convenient to select "all cities" and change them to a specific military unit if you were suddenly attacked or when it became available, for instance.

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[khallow]

Despite the goofiness of Call to Power and the almost complete lack of multiplayer and customization, that game is my personal favorite. I think that ToT was pretty good too. Personally, I think that ToT combined with cultural boundaries and the innovations (eg, the huge amount of tech and associated stuff past the present day and a few military bonuses like bombardment) of Call to Power would be pretty sweet.

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[f-f-f-f-fuuubar]

Civ II was played endlessly at home, on the plane, on vacation...the ultimate time-passer (and waster). I have lost track of all the city name themes we would come up with...Trek, Lewis Carroll, Bab5, Sixties TV, you name it....

But when Civ II came out, it promised to improve all those things which Civ II lacked. We bought it the day it was available, played it for weeks, and gave up in annoyance, frustration and disappointment.

What was wrong?

• The game was slow. Dog slow. 'Nuff said. I could have lived with this if it hadn't been for...
• A HORRIBLE interface. Bad graphics, cheesy icons, ugly cartoonish characters, confusing buttons, slow performance...I could go on for days. This drove me nuts. Clearly not designed by someone with any real interface experience.
• Competing civilizations were right in your terrain and seemed to get in your face way too quickly and were too competitive, even at the second-to-lowest skill level. After a couple of dozen attempts (in each of several games) to get rid of competitors early, late and otherwise, it just seemed to be nearly impossible. Of course, there was always the alternative of playing an easy game, but what's the point of that?
• The diplomacy options were improved, but the diplomacy interface was rotten.
• The Mac version...other posters have commented on that. An embarrassment.

What Take Two Should Do

Stop and breathe. Don't just clone Civ III and clean it up.

1. Look at Alpha Centauri. Although in essence a richer version of Civ II, its interface was amazingly clean, its descriptions of technology and societies were deep, detailed and compelling, its graphics very good for the time, and its overarching story actually thought out.
2. Read Boorstin's The Discoverers. If a history book is a page-turner, this is it. Highlights the role inventions and knowledge played in the conflict of cities, nations and societies, and contrasts the different societies in an often startlingly fresh way. One of the Civ branches (Test of Time?) had the clock as a major invention, which it was; that's just one example.
3. Hire a usability expert. This current craze for themed interfaces makes usability go down in favor of cute buttons which either all look alike or don't make any sense. Everything doesn't have to look like a Windows app (or a Mac app), but please put your interface in front of Grandma at least once before adopting it.
4. Hire a graphic designer, not some kid out of college. Again, see Alpha Centauri. Cool, clean, comprehensible (mostly, though the unit modification rules were a little unclear at first).
5. Offer finer gradation between levels of gameplay. Going from insultingly easy to seriously hard in one step is a bit much.
6. Don't insult your customers' intelligence. It should be somewhat educational. I learned more about the fictional Alpha Centauri society than I did about our own from Civ.
7. Code so a Mac version is easier and can be brought out more quickly. Don't depend on MS-specific technologies. (Hey, could even make a Linux version easier!)

Overall, I hope the designers have fun in bringing a new version to life.

(side note: I'm glad it's no longer with Infogrames...let's just say it's not a well-run company.)

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[theantix]

What it lacked: Wait a minute. Some ... thing ... isn't ... right. I, I, wtf are the Chinese planting cities are pure ice! Wtf are the Romans putting cities are pure rock! Wtf? I gotta keep planting cities like a madman? Um, why is Civ dragging down my honking system? CivIII was promising and nearly became my Civ to keep playing, but the way the AI built cities forever and always at a maddenning pace, the way the game chugged after much growth -- it was too much. I grew to not like it. Why should I have to wait 5 minutes between turns while the AI catches up as the math is hammered out?

It sounds like you are playing maps that are too large for the number of civilizations in the game. Try playing the same number of civs with a smaller map, or put more civs on your favourite map size. Or play freeciv for a bit and be happy that the civ3 AIs build way less cities by comparison. :-)

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Anonymous Coward]

My brother and I played all the Civ games, from I to III (including ToT and Alpha), but none of them were any fun as Civ-Call To Power.

Civ-CtP was just complete joy from game-intro to a conquered finish. Maybe because of the game's simplicity, could be the balance of units (the cleric and slaver always brings a smile to my face). My guess is Civ-III micromanagement that sucks and like the previous poster said,"corruption is too high to get really deep into a game". With CIV-III my brother and I never really went past WWII tech, from there the game stagnates to a stand off(BORING!).

While Civ-CtP you can really progress deep into the game, where you can really OWN most of the map, and use cool tech to wage war. This is the only game where we talked about our battle campains and usually ends up into a lan party.

CtP-II was ok and fun; but somehow still wasnt as good as the first. kinda got the feeling the game wasnt finished and rushed out

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Spunk]

wtf are the Chinese planting cities are pure ice! Wtf are the Romans putting cities are pure rock! Wtf?

WTF are you trying to say here? :)

Your English is great for the rest of the comment so I guess this is a typo or something. What did you mean?

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Greg W.]

I think he was using "WTF" as "Why The Fuck" in that particular paragraph. And in "Wtf are the Romans putting cities are pure rock!", the second "are" was clearly supposed to be "on" or "in".

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[Spunk]

Thank you.

Re:From an Avid Fan....

[galen]

Wow, finally, someone else who likes Call To Power. I loved it. Had great fun giving up large chunks of my life to the game.

I still have fond memories of waging global War Walker style war while just ahead of the front lines I'd be waging an info war with those blimps (can't remember what they're called.) Nothing was worse than hitting a city only to find out it had a Leviathan parked in it.

Hell, maybe I'll re-install it tonight to play through just a few turns. ;)

~~Galen~~

Whether or not XML's a scripting language...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...is simply a function of whether or not there is an interpreter for it. Presumably this game would ship with such an interpreter making a fine and dandy scripting language.

Re:"Open source"? WTF?

[Nasarius]

Python is "open source tech". You're reading too much into this.

This may be a stretch, but

[Anonymous Coward]

starcraft or warcraft3.

Think about it: you establish a base, build up your military, develop better skills for each unit, expand and fight. Even the terrain can be a critical issue. And lucky for you, there's no option for diplomacy. Then again, they're not turn-based.

Actually, I'd be interested in learning of a Civ-like game that doesn't include diplomacy. This genre pretty much requires the use of it (like a FPS that doesn't offer any ranged weapons).

Re:"Open source"? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Python = Open Source, that's what the blurb was talking about.

Re:"Open source"? WTF?

[temojen]

Civ 4 will use Python, which means it encorporates open-source technology, but is not nescesarily open source itself.

Why is this flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, the guy makes what I'd consider an insightful comment, and he's modded down?

Hey, some of us just want to play a decent game, not mod some piece of crap until its barely playable.

Sheesh!

SMAC

[Reignking]

I never liked SMAC, but I ran it long ago on a slow computer. After all of these recommendations, it looks like I'll need to revisit it...

Re:"Open source"? WTF?

[SuiteSisterMary]

I believe he's referring to the use of Python.

What I want is the ability to...

[Zphbeeblbrox]

Script my own AI for my units so all the micromanaging I would have done can be scripted by me. Of course depending on how powerful you made the scripting options it may have limited appeal for the non programmer player. But hey It's *my* wish.

Woo hoo!

[Alsee]

I can't wait to watch my tanks pop trying to kill spearmen again!

P.S. obligatory:
Your civilization has built the Internet (+2sci)! This obsoletes the Hollywood wonder (+1hap).

-

Re:Woo hoo!

[Inverse Icarus]

Shut up.

The odds, assuming both are "regular" units, are that the Tank will beat the Spearman 98.5% of the time. Assuming they're both "elite" units, the Tank wins 99.7% of the time.

In the latter situation, the Spearman will win three out of every thousand attacks. First off, that hardly ever happens and you only bitch about it because it happened to you twice in all your years of playing and you remember it because you ran to your forums and posted a thread about it.

I'd be willing to bet that if you ran a Tank into a group of Spearmen a thousand times, in real life, eventually one of them would get caught in the treads just so, and muck everything up.

I also talk solstice in the fact that by the time tanks are around, nobody has Spearmen. If they do, you're playing on one of the difficulty levels designed for eight year olds. And, even on the odd chance that you somehow managed to race through the tech tree at an astounding rate above all the hardest AIs, and you do actually attack a Spearman with a Tank, you can think of them as if they were Somolians ala Black Hawk Down, poorly equipped for a modern war, but with small amounts of guns and bombs that are not representitive of the majority of the unit.

That said, Civilization III does have it's faults. I personally love the game, but I acknowledge various failings in the game, the most prominent being the whole "cultre defining national borders" system. But if the only reason you don't play Civ III is beacause of an event that happens once every thousand games, I feel bad for you.

[/avid civ3 pbem-er]

Re:Woo hoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone is badly in need of a sense of humor.

Re:Woo hoo!

[Alsee]

Shut up.

Get a sense of humor. A tank blowing up on a spearman is funny.

Second, I suggest you reconsider the math premise. A spearman that's been hanging around all game *will* be elite, the tank is quite reasonably not, especially if we assume that we did just witness it lose. And then the defender is presumably fortified, and likely in hills or even on a mountain. The odds of the tank losing become VERY substantial if it's against an elite fortified phalanx on a hill, but I went with spearman over phalanx for comic effect.

And yes, I did generally speciallize in racing through the tech tree. And yes, on the hardest level. I particularly loved blitzing for railroad so I could use the free movement to defend two dozen cities with 4 or 5 military units. Can't always do that, but almost no army maintenance definitly lets you tech-flood.

Civilization III

Actually I mainly had the original Civ in mind. I played an absolutely staggering quantity of the original and really didn't find much in later versions to fully renew my interest. By most standards I played quite a bit of CivIII, but a small fraction of the number I played of the original.

-

Already have the tag

[Anonymous Coward]

<![CDATA[
int matchwo(int a, int b) {
if (a < b && a < 0)
return 1;
else
return 0;
}
]]>

(stolen from w3schools)

Re:Already have the tag

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

<![CDATA[
int matchwo(int a, int b) {
if (a < b && a < 0)
return 1;
else
return 0;
}
]]>

(stolen from w3schools)
This is ugly! Man, try and make a joke - and sombody's already implemented it - what a gret pipeline for exploits!

Re:Already have the tag

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you didn't realise, CDATA has nothing to do with C, and a CDATA block is not a pipeline for exploits in any sense. Follow the link the grandparent thoughtfully provided if you want to know what it actually is.

Weed

[twoshoes]

They need to put weed in the game as a resource and make it so people are happier but, not as productive.

Tanks vs Spearmen

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the spearmen still sometimes win?

Speaking of games to dream about...

[mrchris516]

who didn't live out their Civ strategies in their dreams?

Re:Speaking of games to dream about...

[Reignking]

who didn't live out their Civ strategies in their dreams?

Dreams? Who had time to sleep when these games came out?

modding may not be new, but . . .

[bodrell]

but modding with something other than C or a hex editor is pretty new. At the high school I attended, a couple of guys did a special project to mod Doom using our school as the layout. The bosses were different school authorities. It was a damn good job for 1995, considering they used a near-prototypical digital camera for wall textures and such.

In case you're wondering, this school was not your average public school.

Try a better OS

[BinLadenMyHero]

Alpha Centauri has a native Linux port that runs fine on any newer computer.
Since you already own the game, you can download it from edonkey.

C-Evo

[Lady Jazzica]

If you want to try another good freeware version of Civilization, there's C-Evo. It's a bit different in gameplay from other Civilization games, but I prefer it to Freeciv.

Re:C-Evo

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows only crap.

Re:C-Evo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's Windows-only, but it is otherwise open source. The source code is available, freely downloadable, and freely modifiable.

The problem is that the program is written in a proprietary language (Delphi) so this game is stuck in Windows. There's a reason the first things RMS wrote for GNU were the editor and the compiler.

Make It MMO

[gbulmash]

What would be cool is if they took the MMORPG concept and applied it, so a couple of dozen players could each run countries in a tournament mode. I don't recall that option being in Civ 3 and I would have liked it.

Re:Make It MMO

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, then freeciv can sue them for all their money :)

Re:Make It MMO

[KD5YPT]

The problem is that Civ games are almost all Turn-based. Since by definition an MMORPG must have more then 100+ participants (or can support 100+) in a single game (not seperated into several mini-skirmishes), waiting for all 100 participant to make their decision is not feasible.

Alpha Centauri II

[frankie]

No matter whose name you see on the box, Alpha Centauri is actually a Brian Reynolds game, not Sid Meier. Brian left to form BHG, so Firaxis making AC2 would either not happen or not meet your expectations.

not for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Good rule of thumb, but I prefere Civ 2 to Civ 1, despite getting into Civ 1 first. I do prefer the top-down view of Civ 1 to Civ 2 though. Give me Civ 2 with Civ 1 graphics and I'd be in heaven.

Alpha Centauri stunk. The technologies were all bunk, so you had to consult the map every time to figure out how to get where you wanted to go. In Civ, it was more intutive, since we are familiar with the technologies.

Civ III is poor, the management within the cities is superfluous and tedious.

I'm still waiting

[Joe Mucchiello]

for a version of Myth: The Fallen Lords with Java plugins activated.

Civ sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

These games are boring as shit.

Whoa....

[sadomikeyism]

For a sec there, I thought I read that some dot com had patented the idea of civilization....

Buster Bombs....

[FirstNoel]

The best way to take out an enemy...

Send a nuke to a point between 3 or 4 of his biggest cities and he is toast. Also made a good way to terraform, everything became sea side property.

The were some serious nukes...never seen them like than in any game since.

Sean D.

Re:Buster Bombs....

[ynohoo]

nah, just build one with the crappiest power supply and it only obliterates one square - right on the city >:D

Colonization

[gzunk]

Once a year? For a game as great as Colonization? I play it once or twice a month! And when I got VDMSound installed I got the music back - my favourite is when you find the fountain of youth.

I only play Alpha Centauri about once every four months or so. I don't like it when the natives get restless towards the end of the game.

Bleah

[ucblockhead]

As long as it maintains its "everyone moves all at once" thing, it's not for me. I play Civ games because I want to sit and think. If I wanted to worry about reaction speed, I'd play an RTS game.

Re:Bleah

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree this is an area the FreeCIV can improve. The developers seem friendly to the idea; it's just a matter of finding one or more people willing to take the time and effort to do this without getting paid.

Why wait till photography?

[IdahoEv]

Every history class shows you ancient figurines and cave paintings of "fertility symbols". What exactly did you *think* you were looking at?

That very well, however..

[fenix_ix]

The problem with the majority of games that are easy to modify is that you then need a systematic way of sorting out the gems from the rubble. For every well-balanced, original, creative mod there are 500 "hello world!" equivalants. Admittedly this is a human issue not a programmatic one. All you need to do to see this is to look at some of the hundreds of thousands of projects on sourceforge.net, for every successful project there a thousand 1 person projects that havent been touched in 4 months. There's no magic bullet, no automated solution. Might i suggest a 500w lamp and an interrogation chair?

XML != scriptingLang... not so fast

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously not familar with ANT. Now the horrendous practice they started is moving into usage with a number of XML based GUI builders.

Thankfully there is a counter movement to replace such poor usage of XML with scripts.
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2003/06/10/jytho n.html
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-10-2004/jw-1 004-groovy.html

I'd pull some more links for ya, but I've gotta bolt.

Ideas for improvements...

[Skim123]

I cut my teeth on CivI back in 10th grade, what a fun little game. When CivII came out, I sunk more hours into that game than I'd like to admit. I thought CivII was a huge improvement over CivI - better graphics, better playability, more techs, more units, etc. In fact, every now and then, when I have no pressing deadlines, I'll fire up C-Evo, which is a pretty slick looking CivII-like game (and free and open-source (Delphi 4)). C-Evo's got a lot of twists on the classic CivII game, new units, different wonders, different effects of wonders, a better diplomacy option, etc.

I tried Alpha Centari in college, but found it's look and feel distracting. I prefer the Earth-like features of Civ. Also, Alpha Centari seemed too military focus, and I didn't like the weird military units. (As with the terrain, I'd prefer soldiers, tanks, planes, etc. over alien weaponry.) I guess my favorite part of the game is growing my cities, discovering new technologies, and establishing alliances with my neighbors. The military part is ok, but I'd rather be at peace with everyone than at war. War, for me, is only fun when I am a modernized nation and I get to pick on some stone aged civ, sending in tanks, bombers, etc. I think I might enjoy the military aspect more if it was more involved - i.e., if a single attack wouldn't just decimate your forces. If there were more variables for accounting the defensive or offensive strength of a unit; if you could plan your attacks better, like having three units attack one simultaneously, or setting up a line of defense in which others could come to the aid of a unit being attacked. Or coordinated attacks/defenses with allies. (I.e., I could agree with an ally to attack a certain city for a certain number of turns...)

Now I've not tried CivIII, so maybe it has a lot of the features I'm looking for, but I am a little doubtful on the reviews I've read and what little I've heard about the game. I am hesitant to give it a whirl b/c I'll be really bummed if it turns out to be a downer, and will likely end up staying up too late, neglecting the ol' lady, putting off working out, etc. as I would be too engrossed in the game if I do enjoy it. Curse you, Sid Meier!

Re:Ideas for improvements...

[igorthefiend]

Change the words "Civ", "CivII" etc for drug names and see how that post reads... "I cut my teeth on pot back in 10th grade, what a fun little game. " "I tried crack in college, but found it's look and feel distracting." Heaven knows with Civ that's the way it was for a lot of us!

Python and XML?

[jensend]

Not that I hate Python and XML or anything, but I'd expect to see something lighter-weight and more extension-oriented, along the lines of Lua (which is accordingly much much more commonly used in commercial games than any other non-proprietary scripting language).

Advice for the new Civ Overlords...

[crhylove]

1. Make it more like civ 2.
2. Make a really sweet opengl engine, and beautiful models and maps. Let the citys be alive in a certain view.
3. Add lots of technologies and stuff. That kind of stuff is what makes civ so fun.
4. Make it more like civ 2.
5. Don't give it so much busy work. Some things should take care of themselves.
6. Make it more like civ 2.

Short trip down history lane

[Moraelin]

Dude, effectively riding a horse into battle is _not_ a question of going "I know! Let's ride them instead of making them pull charriots!"

Yes, they wanted to ride them, but staying on the horse in battle is not as easy as it sounds. You try charging at an enemy without a saddle or stirrups, and you'll fall as soon as you hit the first enemy. It's in fact, more dangerous to yourself than to the enemy.

Early uses of horses for riding were limited to mounted infantry. Meaning that they rode the horse for transport, then dismounted and fought like infantry. Again, because they didn't have a saddle.

So basically that's what your friend's scientists were researching there. "How the heck do we keep a rider from falling right off the horse when he hits an enemy? Hmm..." And if it only took them 200 years, hey, that's a lot shorter than in took real life.

(And from discovering the saddle to being able to do a proper medieval cavalry charge, another millenia or two passed, and another invention was needed: the stirrups. But that's another discussion, for another time.)

Re:Short trip down history lane

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from the whole thing about stirrups not being necessary to use a couched lance, fair comment.

Yes, you need something to keep you in the saddle, but a proper saddle will do that. Ask the Roman cavalry why their saddles have those large horns on them.

Re:Short trip down history lane

[Moraelin]

Ask Roman Cavalry why they didn't do a charge with lances ;)

Yes, there are several ways of fighting on horseback. You could use a spatha (long sword), like the Romans did. Or you could do a downwards strike with a short-ish spear, like ancient greek cavalry did. Or you might even be able to use a lance, sorta, if you use the other hand to hold tight, instead of using a shield effectively. Or you could stay away and use bows as much as possible, like the Parthians and Mongolians did. Or various other ways.

The stirrups are not 100% _needed_ to fight on horseback, that is true indeed. They just make a particular style of fighting very effective.

Being able to stay in the saddle using your legs alone, if nothing else gives you full use of one arm for the shield. Increasing the rider's survivability even by a small fraction, can make a huge difference. Add the fact that an injury to the left arm doesn't make the rider completely unfit to fight, as was the documented case with ancient Greek cavalry, and you have one hell of a troop type.

That's basically what the stirrups did. They gave heavy cavalry just the extra edge to become _the_ deadliest troop type on the battlefield.

But, indeed, no more. People certainly fought on horseback before stirrups.

The Temple Of Elemental Evil...

[montyzooooma]

...used Python extensively. The console was actually a Python interpreter. (And with the Circle of Eight patch it's a reasonable RPG now.)

Scripting languages

[DerWulf]

XML can be a scripting language. The webMethods integration server has been using one for years. You just need to define a xml schema, write a compiler/interpreter and there is a brand new XML scripting language. This is probably what they meant.

Regardless, I think this is pretty cool. Having 'content creation' applications within a game certainly would bring more people into the mod scene. People like me that don't really want to install the latest and createst C++ IDE, download the games mod SDK and spend years figuring out how the engine is supposed to work.

Total War series and Sword of the Samurai blend

[getha]

Exactly. I'm at this moment just starting out with Rome: Total War and it has me hooked. Thing is, the predecessor, Shogun: Total War was awesome for its day too. The one in between, Medieval: Total War I skipped, but now I'm thinking maybe I should look at that too. But first Rome.

On another note, when Shogun came out I thought it was a revamp of the game (EGA-era I think it was) Sword of the Samurai. Sword has sort of the same premise of Shogun, namely, conquer Japan, and had sort of the same components, in that you could fight wars, but also kill adversaries and stuff. At the time I was a bit disappointed with Shogun because the one-on-one missions done by spies and stuff were no longer player-controlled. You just clicked 'go' and hoped the dice would fall your way. While in Sword you got to do the act yourself, as in infiltrate the mansion of a daimyo, find him stealthily (or not) and kill him yourself. That was a big part of the appeal of the game: so many different arenas you had to be good in.

Now I was thinking, wouldn't it be totally cool if they did that with the Total War series? Give one of your assasins the order to kill a general and there you go into a FPS-style mission where you have to do the deed yourself. Now, I would totally buy the game that implemented that!

Civilization vs. Civilization...

[wikthemighty]

The licensing behind Call to Power was messy.

Way back when, Heartland Trefoil made a board game called Civilization, which was distributed in the US by Avalon Hill.

Avalon Hill even released an expansion, called Advanced Civilazion, and a computer game based on this.

Sid Meier had acknowleged that the original board game was as a source of ideas for his computer game.

Some years down the road, Sid's game has been popular and has spun off sequals, and Activision goes and licenses Civilization from Avalon Hill (who has a license from Heartland Trefoil) to compete directly with Sid Meier/Fraxis/MicroProse.

While the lawsuits were underway, Microprose bought Heartland Trefoil.

Funny thing is that Hasbro eventually ended up buying MicroProse and Avalon Hill, and aside from what rights Sid/Fraxis curretnly hold, have complete control of everything...

Small game developers

[distortion311]

I run www.distortionfile.com , and Distorttionsoft, our small software development. My games are currently free, and I'm wondering, with all the talent in the world today, will there be a place for another small time company to make it big?