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

[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

[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.

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.

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...

[m50d]

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

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

[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.

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

[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. ;)

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

[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.'"

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

[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

[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.

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

[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

[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: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...

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.

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.

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.

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...

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/

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

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....

[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:"Open source"? WTF?

[SuiteSisterMary]

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

Re:XMLScript

[91degrees]

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

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

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).

-

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: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!