Slashdot Mirror
Ask Sid Meier
Sid Meier is a household name in gaming. Titles he's designed, such as Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization, are pillars in the history of PC gaming. This year the fourth chapter in the Civilization series of games is being released, and we have a great opportunity. Today we're asking for questions about design and philosophy to pass on to Mr. Meier. On Wednesday, we'll be asking for questions to give to the Civilization IV development team. That day you'll have the chance to ask technical questions about the moddability and design concepts that went into the game. For today, here's your opportunity to put questions to one of the most respected game designers in the industry. Keep them topical, and one question per post please. We'll pass on the ten best questions, his responses will go up as soon as we get them back.
What do think are the most important aspects of game design and do you think they vary greatly for different genres?
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Mr. Meier,
Recent studies suggest the traffic and ad revenue for "shock sites" may surpass that of online games and pornography[1]. Estimates of growth range from 15%[2] to a whopping 200%[3] per annum.
With those hard numbers what are your thoughts regarding games capitalizing on this until-now dark side of the net? For example, an online version of Railroad Tycoon in which a train tunnel morphs into the goatse man with the use of a cheat code.
It may not be for everyone but considering the extremes to which games such as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt go, is this really that far fetched?
Thanks for your time,
grub
1 - "The Internet's Hidden Gold Mine" 2004, Dahg & Felch
2 - "NSFW! Don't Click There!" 2003, Don Bayomi
3 - "'Shock Sites' to Surpass Porn by 2008." 2005, T. Johns
Trolling is a art,
...on open source clones such as FreeCiv? FreeLoaders, or flatterers? :)
What factors do you think help keep PC gaming alive when competing with consoles, and do you foresee that PC gaming will continue to survive when confronted with the next generation of consoles? Or from the reverse perspective, what prevents consoles from finally killing off PC gaming?
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Here is my question... When is the gaming industry going to start introducing original games and not producing sequels just for the sake of production and/or profit? Take Doom 3 for example... yes the graphics are creative and great (that is when you can see them and you're not in the dark) but it is more-or-less the same game as Doom. I'd rather play something new even rather than rehash the same plot outline in a sequel.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
This is just a general game design question. Have any of you worked on Adventure games (Kings Quest, Full Throttle, Star Trek: Judgment Rights, etc). Adventure games were my favorite genre and were part of the reason I started down a path that led to my computer science degree. Now days, it seems like that genre is dead with many games of that era that were scheduled for sequels in eternal limbo (the Tex Murphy series and Gabrial Knight are examples).
My question is, what do you think led to the move away from this genre? Comsumer demand? Replay value? Do you see a return to the old inventory/pont-n-click/story driven games eventually in the future?
Which day do we get to ask questions of the PR Department?
Have we any assurances this debacle won't be repeated?
I'd like to see responses from Sid Meier and the dev team (whom I admire), not flacks.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
How do you balance great game play with actually creating a product and shipping it within a reasonable time frame? More to the point, how do you create an entertaining game without falling into the 'duke nukem forever' release schedule?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Could you please describe some of the more technical aspects of the games you developed? Specifically, what language(s) did you choose when implementing your games. Why? Which compiler(s) did you use, and why did you choose them? Were there any compilers that either stood out in a very positive or negative way for you? What libraries did you use, if any, and why did you choose them?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I think the big question on a lot of our minds is: Why did you start doing game design and programming in the first place?
When building any strategy game, where do you start when you attempt to balance the game? Do you find that you personally need to play test and try new concepts to balance games, or do the inherent mechanisms of your games lead towards making balance easier for you to to achieve?
Since the first Civilization game in 1991, how do you think the gaming industry has changed? And, is the change for the better or for the worse?
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
I know alot of readers would really like to hear about how you approach the task of balancing complex strengths and weaknesses in games - for example, the relative speed and power of a unit in an RTS.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Can I please have my softmore year back?
One quick question... Have you explored the possiblity of actually taking one of your great sim game engines and using it in a 'real world' type environment. (i.e. a city planner laying out their city in simcity 4000) Obviously things like an alien attack wouldn't be part of it, but with some changes I imagine it could make a relatively accurate sim. Your thoughts on it?
I'm developing a game based around trashing hexus.net web servers, but Slashdot already dominates this genre. What advice do you have for new developers entering an already crowded/mature space?
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
I've been a huge fan of Civilization since it first came out. I've always thought the AI of the computer players is relatively good, especially how each has certain characteristics which differentiate them and give them strengths and weaknesses. But AI in strategy games doesn't seemed to have advanced drastically in the last 15 years. What do you imagine the next big advances in game AI will be? When will games really learn how you play? When will we not be able to tell the difference between a human and computer competitor?
Developers: We can use your help.
You've got a consistent track record of making some of the most interesting single-player turn-based strategy games ever to grace our screens. Civ and its descendants also make great turn-based multiplayer strategy games.
On the other end of the scale, we have MMORPGs - which to date, have been the direct opposite of single-player turn-based strategy games: repetitive skill grinds, no story arc, etc. The problem tends to run down to the fact that not everyone wants to run an empire - but by the same token, not everyone is content to PVP or grind all day.
It seems that many of the concepts that make a TBS great (IMHO the list includes, but is not limited to, a largish number of factions, shifting alliances between those factions, territorial control, resource management games requiring player allocation of resources between the generation of infrastructure and expendable units, a God's-eye view of history, and a story arc that emerges out of the economic, social, and political interactions between the factions) could be translated to the MMORPG genre - at least, given a suitably inspired design team and suitably-large time/dollar budget.
To what extent (if any) can TBS aspects be translated to a genre as radically different as a MMORPG, and to that extent, what advice would you have for a MMORPG designer?
Mr. Meier,
Is it true that you are the face of the Phantom of the Opera in Microprose's Return of the Phantom? The role of the phantom is uncredited and listed as, "???????."
Inquiring minds would like to know!
Have you ever played FreeCiv? If yes, how did you like it? Do you believe in Free Software, and, more specifically, have you considered releasing (older) game engine sourcecode under the terms of the GPL, or "vintage" game content under a Creative Commons-like license?
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
And how will having a mouse like ineterface on consoles effect the style of game youre known for. Are you planning on designing new or porting old games over to the new console?
Hi.
The evolution of the Civilization line has brough exciting new features with each new title. One thing though never changed much, I am talking of the government types. Do you have any plan and do you think it would be possible to have a system that could permit the creation of new government types, a kind of building block system (pretty much like unit building in Alpha-Centauri) that would give the opportunity to assign different modes of operation to different government levels, based on the separation of powers, the social choices, the economic models, etc. Thank you for your time.
Xavier Guilbeault
Some game producers, mainly id software usually release the source code for older versions of their games, have you ever thought of doing the same?
What are your reasons for/against? How do you feel about current free software Civ "clones" like FreeCiv?
Will there be a Hot Coffee patch for the next release?
It seems as if the mass market has become rather stagnant for several years. The last 'big new thing' was MMORPGs, and they've become fairly mature and standardized. Civ (although not the first 4X game) certainly sparked an entire class of games, Doom kickstarted first-person shooters and multiplayer. RTS games are still doing well, but classic adventure and turn-based have been somewhat in decline, as have RPGs. What do you see becoming the next genre in computer games?
You seem to be sure that the "originality" in the gaming industry is missing. So perhaps you could tell us what exactly you'd like to see. I mean, you must have some "original" idea that just isn't being implemented, correct?
Perhaps if you tell us what sort of original game that you'd like, an individual or gaming company will run with the idea and create the sort of game you're thinking of.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
This question is asked all the time of game industry pros, but I'd like to hear your take on it. Say you've got your masters in Computer Science, you've been programming games in your spare time for years, and you're ready to try and get that coveted job in the field or, god willing, start your own game company. What kind of advice do you have for the new folks, having yourself successfully become one of the grandmasters of the profession?
With the next generation of consoles about to be released, there has been much discussion about the increase in development time it takes to produce games for these systems and the subsequent effects on price and originality in gaming. While PC gaming has, in my opinion, taken a back seat to the surging console market in the last five years, is it possible that in the future we could see a resurgence of a strong and varied PC gaming market? Does the PC, with its guarenteed massive install base and its relatively consistent hardware/software standards, give developers can edge to take more chances and develope more efficiently?
I am and always will be a stereotype, because who in their right mind prefers mono?
With the unveiling of the Nintendo Revolution and its point-and-click interface, do you think Civilization-esque strategy games will finally come to home consoles? And with this new, entertainment-center, living room environment will there be new ways for you to expand on the genre? Perhaps, for example, with regard to teamplay and multiplayer, as these are big in the home console setting?
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
Sid -- I've always been curious: In Alpha Centauri, how did your team come up with as many snazzy future quotes as they did? Several of them seemed downright smart enough that I was suprised to see them credited to in-game characters rather than historical writers. Thanks for all the great games; I just dusted off Civ 3 for my yearly week of nonstop obsession.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Good games (and specially videogames) entail a great deal of simulation of reality: they are bits of everyday life simplified for casual enjoyment.
What do you feel is more important for a game to be great and/or successful: that the bits of reality captured in the simulation will create an environment with interesting and complex possibilities, or that the game mechanics are fun and easy to grasp?
Is balance required between these two design forces? And which of the two do you enjoy most in your own experiences as game user? (provided that you actually enjoy playing games and not just design them!)
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Who or what is your muse? When and how did that first big 'spark' click in your brain for games like Pirates! and Civilization?
Thank you,
Tom Darby
(P.S. If you feel that you simply can't answer this question properly in plain text, I'd be more than happy to drive on up to Firaxis...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I found great joy in being able to play Marla's Earth map against 15 CPU players in Civ III. The game took at least a month to complete... partly because of the size of the map, but a great part of it was the game took up to 10 minutes to process the CPU Player moves. What changes, if any, have been made to speed up game play without sacrificing the CPU's ability to formulate a realistic strategy?
How would you respond if someone accused you as being the reason for hours upon hours of neglected work, laundry, yardwork, homework, pets, spouses, wifes, dental appointments...? *guilty of all of the above*
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
It's a technical question, but I'd rather not wait until Wednesday:
How does the source code and implementation design quality of such open source engines compare to the actual products?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I'm a big fan of Alpha Centauri, at the point i'm still playing it. I think it's a great game with one of the most complex tech trees i've ever used, a "gameplay haven" that is incredible funny without any fancy graphics. The tech tree in Civ is also complex too, but I like more the gameplay of SMAC. Are you planning in a new release of SMAC with new graphics, more tech (you just never have enough tech!) and enhanced AI? Thank you...
Sir,
Let me allow you the chance to "talk up" your upcoming game with this question.
I love most of the civilization games! I remember well buying Civ I and opening it at a friends house to check it out, then reshrinkwrapping it to give to my wife for a birthday present. I remember the improved units of Civ II. I loved the many hours spent playing on Civ Net. However, I looked forward to Civ III. The whole concept of cultural influence baffled me and made the game less fun for my wife and I. And as there was no multiplayer support out of the box, I was turned off from the series. I refused to purchase an expansion that would add the multiplayer that was promised originally. Hopefully Civ IV, if I purchase it, will have multiplayer. Anyway, on to my question:
What does Civ IV have to offer that will draw me back into your franchise? What elements for Civ I and II are included/excluded and what elements from Civ III are included/excluded?
Thanks.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
A two-parter. I had read before you were making Civ III that you were planning on merging the two worlds of Civilization and Alpha Centauri, giving the player the ability to play through a big "sweep of time". Was this idea just too ambitious, and had to be shelved for the design process, and will it be revisited? If so, what about the design specifically was it that put this idea on the back-burner?
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
I admire many of the great game designers who have pushed the boundaries in gaming (yourself, Will Wright and Peter Molyneux to name a few). However, I can't help but feel that many of today's genres are stale and a lot of new games are mostly repeating past formulas as we see many sequels or derivatives of previous games being released. This appears to be a trend that will continue.
Where do you think the future of gaming is headed and how hard is it to introduce radical new ideas into the industry (for example, Firaxis shelving Dinosaurs or Will Wright's bold idea in Spore)?
I heard a rumor that Civilization was coming to the Nintendo DS. Can you confirm or deny this? What are your thoughts on such a release?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Sid,
In any Slashdot gaming discussion invariably the debate between playability vs. graphics comes up. "This game is pretty but the game sucks!" "Nethack is all I need man."
Of all the games you've had a hand in, the intricate strategies and complex ways one can enjoy the game have always seemed paramount, with graphics playing a backseat for the most part. Some of the most successful games in the past have been very simple on the surface but can have amazing depth, all without gee-whiz factor of purty lights and pictures of bleeding edge graphics engines (Tetris, Nethack, Civ series, etc). How much focus do you place on the graphical aspects of gaming and do you think there is a way to achieve a balance without sacrifices on either end and how do you tackle that problem? Nintendo's approach of focusing on "fun" and innovation in their games seems to be one example of how it can be done but sadly they are an exception to the rule it seems.
Amoeba
Do not taunt Happy-Fun Ball
At the time that prompted learning photoshop and my first real in depth look at the Internet. In retrospect that helped spur my career in IT, by making things accesible enough for somoene who wasnt a programmer to go under the hood and make changes, to play with it.
Was it your intent to help spur interest in technology as a career, or was this just an easy way to make the game? Is making the game that easily modifiable in the future something you still plan on doing down the road?
Here's a question: As games budgets become bigger and bigger, are flashy graphics and marketing become more important, is creativity and gameplay going out the window? What role will inovation play in the game industry as time goes on?
If it's dead, you killed it.
The first version of Civilization was released 14 years ago. With the original copyright terms, it would now be entering public domain. But copyright terms have been extended many times, so Civilization will not enter the public domain for many decades, perhaps not at all.
As one of the more innovative game designers, I think your opinion on this is quite relevant. Is it necessary for copyrights on these games to last for longer than 14 years? Do you depend on revenue from the first Civilisation game? Do you even get any anymore? Would you still have created Civilization had the 14 year copyright term still been in effect? What is the rationale for longer copyright terms?
What I'm getting at, is that Civilization is a landmark in gaming; it's part of our culture and I feel that you have already been duly rewarded by society for creating it, so the reason for you having copyright - so that you can create games as a profession - is no longer valid. Do you agree, and if not, why? If you do agree, do you think there are any situations in which a game company should have longer copyrights?
Please bear in mind the distinction between trademarks and copyright - Civilization entering the public domain would not mean that people would be free to create their own games called Civilization.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Mr. Meier,
You've displayed a remarkable ability to keep yourself free of the major game publishers, even as groups such as EA begin fairly hostile takeovers of other game development companies. My question, then, is twofold: Is this simply an intent to wait for the right price, or is it instead a personal calling to stay out of the mega game houses? And secondly, what do you feel would be lost by allowing major publishing companies to acquire one (or more) of your original titles?
Don't you think your greatest mistake as a game developer was including Germans as a "Civilization"?
Mr Mier,
Have you improved the AI? CivIII was much the same game as CivII. The AI had the same failings. For many of us who play your games, and replay them, we are less interested in the pretty pictures as the game play. A smarter AI goes a long way towards keeping your loyal people loyal.
Are you planning on giving finer grain control of the difficulty settings? If not, why? One of the most annoying features of the game is the way that the difficulty is handled. Once you get past a certain point in difficult, it just cranks up the advantages to the AI (initial start, production, combat) globally. It would be nice to control which advantages it gets. For example, the huge initial advantage makes it difficult to play on the smaller maps. Yes isn't that the point? But the real thing is that if you want a smaller map for time reason (some of us have kids) but want to play a challenging game, you can tell in 10 moves (oops 3 opponents are close) it is time to quit. It would be nice to say, "Give them all the production and combat advantages possible, but only a small initial seed bonus" or conversely on a large sparse map, "give them a huge initial bonus and reduce the production and combat advantages to moderately high" being able to tune things like this will allow the players to create more difficult or easy scenerios.
Even better would be for the scenerio editor to have the further away AI get different bonuses to the close ones.
How would you rate the SimGolf game, on a scale from 1 to 10?
What is it in the brainstorming, design, implementation, or other stage you may find more interesting that YOU think sets your games apart from other games that have not done as well, had the same staying power, or popularity?
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Do you believe that innovation has slowed in recent years with the increased number of sequels and 'mainstreaming' of PC and Video games? Do you welcome console gamers as an untapped market, or do you see them as a counter to games that require strategy and actually engaging one's brain?
How much of the design work deals with the technical aspects of a product, as oppposed to the playing itself?
Meaning, do you start with what the machines can do, and design a game to fill those functions, or do you dream up a game and then design it so that it will fit the technical limitations of the machines?
You can't take the sky from me...
Was your intent to release Pirates! with the final years of my College education a conincidence or were you attempting to have me fail out of college and live a life of squalor?
Are you, in fact, my long lost arch nemesis?
This
Certain others in the gaming industry who have hit it big have gotten financially involved in ventures such as space travel.
Have you done anything interesting with the millions of dollars that you have made?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Do you feel that your development efforts have been helped or hindered by being outside of the West Coast tech centers.
You've been involved with all of the main sequels in the Civilization series. I was wondering if you ever plan on getting involved again with Railroad Tycoon in a similar way? I know two sequels have already been made without your involvement -- they were pretty good. But I felt that something was "missing" in those sequels. Perhaps it was the Sid Meier touch? I honestly had more fun with the original Railroad Tycoon! I know I'm speaking for many when I ask if it's ever possible we'll see a TRUE sequel to your original Railroad Tycoon?
Vote Libertarian
Hello Sid,
I've been a fan of yours since the original Civilization. Ever since getting hooked on Civilization I've wondered about the game design and how you achieve a excellent balance between all the aspects of game play. Although the later versions had more features, I often found I was trying to finish the game instead of playing the game. What are you in-house techniques in striking such a balance, and how have these techniques changed since the original Civilization?
Can I have back that half a GPA point the first Civ cost me and the half a point Civ 2 cost me? You can have the girlfriend Alpha Centauri cost me, she wasn't that great anyway. I would like a new version of Alpha Centauri though, any thoughts on when that might be happening?
The intangible element to game play that makes the game fun has eluded many and been stumbled upon by others. What is the Sid Meier recipe for that elusive quality that some games simply lack? Is there a singular formula for 'fun'? (Pirates saved my sanity many times in college by the way, thank you!)
"Powers. I have them."
Why do you keep using a square grid (however distorted by perspective) when a hexagon grid is known to be more accurate for movement across a landscape? I do understand that this would influence a number of other things, such as the Local City Area would be 18 surrounding hexagons instead of 20 nearby squares, and that when surrounding an enemy you only have 6 ways to attack instead of 8, but those are not insurmountable issues. For example, if the SCALE of the grid compared to the map was shrunk a bit, you could "enlarge" the Local City Area by another ring of hexagons, for 36 total surrounding cells. Productivity in every cell is merely set a little lower than before. In combat distance weapons having a range of 2 cells could allow an enemy to be surrounded by up to 18 of your units (probably only after Cannons are invented). Alternately, simple construction of roads and railroads already allow distant units to engage an enemy; why can't building roads and railroads near a city extend the Local Area of that city? And other ways of accommodating a hexagon grid are possible, I'm sure. So, why not?
The Civilization games all seem to be pretty much the same, with the only difference being upgraded graphics and features. Do you feel the strategy game genre needs to introduce new concepts to keep itself innovative and interesting?
How do you think multi-core/multi-threaded system will effect future games?
What about asymmetrical systems like the Cell?
Could the future of game design eventually lead to every unit being a separate thread?
What about managed code? Will future games start using garbage collection to speed development?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Thanks for your contributions to computer gaming. Out of all the tremendous games that you have developed, which one do you feel is the most underrated? That is, the one game that you found very rewarding to develop, but didn't garnish the attention that it should have.
How exactly DO spearmen beat tanks?
To Sid: Thank you for creating the Civilization games. I've spent more time playing any one of them than I have playing any other games. Any chance of the Colonization game ever being updated? I remember it being a very good game as well.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
What do you think of user modifications of your games- patches, hacks, cheats users rebalancing the game and reworking it into something hardly recognizable, and playing the game in ways you never intended it to be? I know that some designers take a rather dim view of this; specifically I recall how in Roller Coaster Tycoon, some later versions had special checks so that if it detected you cheating, then it would not just delibrately crash the game, it would set a special internal flag so that it would keep crashing every time you started the game from then on (until you reinstalled or deleted/tweaked a special data file); what do you think of these sorts of practices?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Dear mister "You are responsible of taking the most out of my life with Civ and Colo".
When are we going to see Colonization 2?
I swear, Civ, Colonization, and Pirates are just as addictive...
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
What are the chances that games such as Railroad Tycoon, Civ, Colonization, etc., may be released for non-PC platforms?
I enjoyed them in the past and I would gladly pay to have a compilation of them available for my PS2 or my Treo (Palm OS). I like the turn-based "god" type games and I would like to be able to play them on something other than a PC. Why haven't these games already been released for PS2/Xbox/Gamecube/handhelds?
Lots of petrified grits
In the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, there is an implication that Sierra, with Ken Thompson, implicitly tolerated drug and alcohol abuse in the early games development studios he commanded. There were huge parties, huge hangovers, and general debauchery on a regular basis. Obviously this kind of atmosphere wouldn't be tolerated today--if only for the potential liability, but I wanted to ask you whether or not you found, in your experience, addictive personalities being attracted to the game programming and design profession? Did you ever have any negative (or positive) experiences related to drug use in and around your offices, especially in the early days? Do you condone (or not) the use of mind-altering substances as a creative aid during the design phase?
Putting aside their (potential lack of) work ethic for the time being and concentrating solely on the economic value of the artistry of game design, of those users you knew for a fact were using drugs, did you find them to be more or less creative than normal people?
And a followup: Could you put the Loki ports of your older games up for download, or at least make them available for purchase somewhere?
On the illegal distribution of "very old" software, i.e. Pirates! for the C=64.
Mr Meier, Your games are regarded as some of the most in-depth in the industry, whilst retaining their addictive qualities; many are still popularly played over a decade after release. What, in your opinion, are the elements that need to go into a game to make it so successful? Do they vary from game to game, or are there elements that every successful game should include? In an industry where few games have any replay value, what gives your releases such incredible longevity? Thanks.
Will you ever make a Civilization game that extends into a future time period. Civilization Call to Power played till I believe 3000AD. Space and sea cities were expecially interesting and added a whole different dynamic to the game.
http://slashdot.org/comments.
I am your target consumer! I'm that crazy guy who bought Civ 1, CivNet, Civ 2, Civ 2 Multiplayer, Alpha Centauri, Civ 2 w/ all the expansions, Civ 3, Civ 3 w/ all the expansions, and Civ 3 Gold. I even own a copy of 'Advanced Civilization' even though you nor your company were in charge of that one. I have a problem, though I'm sure you could say otherwise. Alright, enough with the lamprey attitude... So, Civ 3 was not as popular or well-liked as Civ 2. Anyone who has played both tends to agree with that statement - Civ 3 may be prettier, and may actually RUN in a Windows XP environment, but it lacks a great number of the features that everyone liked in Civ 2. Varying unit hit points/firepower, useful artillery, units being forced to stop when adjacent to another unit, farms, unit-based spies and diplomats, movable aircraft, etc. At the same time, Civ 3 offered a number of new features that few can become annoyed with, such as the differences between 'workers' and 'settlers,' or the inclusion of the unique units for the different civilizations, or the loss of that stupid ability to poison a town's water supply. My question is: How do you decide what to keep from the original game, and what to axe? How do you balance innovation with traditionalism? A great many sequel-based games try to make each iteration completely different (re: the current run of Final Fantasy games), which others keep with what works (re: Unreal Tournament). Do you consider each game an experiment on your original idea, or a new method to express the idea?
Is there any way of getting the countless hours of playing Civilization as a kid back?
The gaming industry produces original games whenever it manages to. The fact it (and you'll excuse my refering to it as a single entity) also produces a ton of mimicries, mindless sequels and bundles of [five "new" racetracks, two new bike skins and yesteryear's second-best graphics engine], this fact doesn't stand in opposition. There's demand to that sort of thing, and some companies, some of the time, aim to profit from it (no reason why they shouln't). And there's the cry for originality most of us here echo, and companies are working hard to make money there, too.
News for merdes. Shit that matters.
Ask me about my sig.
How do you tune values for economics, damage, etc in your games? Is there a special rule of thumb to follow (other than the "double it, if it looks too small, double it again" rule)?
For me and my friends multiplayer is the funnest type of gaming, especially when we can play on the same team. Will this be an option? Will there be somekind of smooth play options versus taking turns? Thanks, Daniel Arizona
Sid,
Many of your early games for Microprose were built around the concept of taking several robust mini-game concepts and weaving them together into a coherent whole (I'm thinking in particular of Pirates! and Covert Action, although there are others that fit this description). Was this a conscious design decision? Were you looking for interesting play mechanics to build games around, or did you start with the concept (Pirates! Spies!) and then work from a list of pirate-like and spy-like activities?
Conversely, when one of these mini-games doesn't work out like you'd hoped, do you cut them? A lot of people reacted negatively to the dancing game in the new Pirates! re-make, for instance, and I hear a general consensus among gamers that the mini-game build around sacking a city lacks depth. How hard is it to cut one of these games? What do you do when the mechanic just doesn't feel right?
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Are dinosaurs really dead and buried? No chance of a resurection?
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
What is your favourite game of all time, and why?
C17H21NO4
Is the AI cheating in Civ? (of course it does in my opinion)
"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
How do you feel about the largely unrecognized awesomeness of Colonization? Have you thought about making a new revision of it? What about open sourcing it so guys like me can fix it up to work on modern OS's?
Like any programmer, I've spent ridiculous amounts of time playing Civilization, but in all honesty I've spent more playing Colonization and I always felt it was a better (but less-well-received) game than Civilization. I still find myself trying to run the original DOS game on my Athlon64, and I find it sad that I can't get the original MIDI music to work either.
Not only was Colonization an incredible game, it was educational without cramming it down my throat. When I was a little kid studying history I knew all of the pioneers by name and accomplishments already.
Kudos to you, and thanks for the memories.
Mr. Meier,
How did you choose which cultures and civilizations made it into your games? Certainly historical impact plays a role, but one can argue with lots of historical data that you left several out. I've always enjoyed playing all of them at least once, but I have wondered why you picked the Aztecs and not the Cherokee or why the French and not the Dutch (both of whom had sizable world empires). In expansion packs certainly you've added extras, and again, why the choices there? Smaller never-defeated empires such as Thailand or Ethiopia would be interesting to play.
I'm not complaining, I'm just curious what led you to pick one over the other. Certainly you can't put all of them in so what allows a culture/civilization to make the cut or be relagated to the expansion pack of future Civilization mods?
Thank you for your time, and for many years of great games. I've been playing since the first Civ, and some of your non-Civ games (Colonization, Pirates!, Alpha Centauri) are among my favorites.
-When going for broke, go for Ithaca!
QUESTION 1: Why do you think there are so few online strategy games for systems like the Xbox?
If simply the cumbersomeness of controllers. Why is there no innovation? Do you think the Nintendo Revolution controllers might lend nicely to strategy games? Where one could easily draw a circle around their units and then hit a button to select an action option?
QUESTION 2: With the advent of "multi-player" internet games...do you think we'll ever see multi-faceted intertwined games?
For example: A hybrid of Civilization & Battlefront style games. Where certain players are playing strategically. And other players are fighting the actual battles?
Do you ever lament that by creating ever more entertaining games, you're using prodigious time, talent, creativity, and intellect to create a mere diversion?
Which could be restated as "Do you consider your craft to be more art than business?"
How did you get your name on all of this software? We don't see "John Carmack's Quake", or "Rand Miller's Myst", but we see Sid Meier everywhere, making you one of the only household names in game design. When the first "Sid Meier's ...." title came out, did people know who you were, or just assume that you were an expert on pirates and the war between the states?
By the way, F-15 and F-19 were two of the greatest games of my teen years.
Will there be any forthcoming updates to the (in many minds: ultimate) sci-fi strategy franchise, Alpha Centauri?
Have you thought of the possibility of allowing civilizations to merge? When the Romans took over a civilization, they generally assimilated the culture and spent years adpating the best of the other culture and creatine citizens out of the defeated Empires. Instead of just "crushing" the enemy and destroying their city to a man, or having a stooge, have you thought of a mechanism to actually let the enemy civ cede their civilization, carte blanche, to the player? The game would incorporate some of the better aspects of the captured civilization, giving the player bonuses for their strategic move, instead of just money.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
What's wrong with flying around shooting at stuff?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I wonder if it has ever been considered to make the ultimate strategy/simulation game, utilizing the brilliance of both Sid Meier, of almost every series, to Yoot Saito, designer of almost every (good) sim, including most of the early but goodie sims, i.e. SimTower, and I believe the early SimCities. Perhaps together they could make one game that could dominate the simulation genere, kind of like how Halflife I/II have dominated the FPS Genere. (little punch to those quake/doom/UT/Farcry/etc. players) My $.02
I was always wondering who Phish was singing about...
"Thank you mister meier"....
haha.. i know, "minor"
Recently, there have been a couple stories about World of Warcraft having a virtual plague outbreak, which apparently has evolved a new method of gameplay.
Have you found any modes of gameplay in anything you've designed appear in 'the wild'? Not just different ways of using the existing, 'accepted' paths, but entirely new ways of playing, and winning, that you didn't envision in the design and implementation of the game.
antipaucity
Is it true your firstborn was named "Sid Meier's Jennifer Meier by Sid Meier, Inc."?
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Strategy games always have every unit exactly following orders giving by the higher authority - ones horsemen will happily attack the musketeers, that far-flung city on an isolated island will happily build knights, and your cities always produce what you want them to. But for much of history (especially pre-1000AD history), an emporer would generally have a difficult time getting amries to actually go out into the field or the rulers of cities to listen to him. Rather, cities revolt requently, and even if they didn't, tax money might be non-existant, and getting armies into action could be problematical at best. Civ III certainly made world-spanning empires more difficult, but you still don't see armies rebelling, disbanding themselves, cities deciding to carve out their own empires, or barbarian invasions that actually matter. Even the highest level of barbarian threats in the game are hardly fear-inspiring. Historically, the near mid-east would see civilization overrun by a different group of barbarians every few hundred years - armies overcome, cities wiped out, the works.
:-)
Granted, this takes away a lot of the simplicity of "Spearmen, go there" and "Knights, attack the city", but would provide a new challenge for players.
Any thoughts on this? Any hope of less dictatorial powers? Will we ever see the end of perfectly loyal servents willing to die for your cause?
Oh, BTW - they've all been great games so far
--LWM
You've been in the industry for over a decade and probably seen most everything, the short slow downs, the rapid improvements. In what ways has the industry evolved and in what ways have the gaming industry fallen according to you? And in which ways do you see the future really going in the long run?
Not so very long ago, computer games were simple beasts, relying on little more than text and simple rectangles. Nearly all of these games remain fun today. Advancing technology has made it possible to experience games in new ways, but do you believe the art of game creation itself has been much advanced by computers? As an example, conceptually speaking, Doom and Quake, though technological marvels, aren't so very far removed from paper-and-pencil role playing games. The computer merely automates the dice-rolling and map drawing.
To put it another way, are there any new types of games that you've thought of or are out there that are simply impossible without computers?
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I noticed for Civ IV there are 3D landscapes and buildings, adding to a sense of realism. However, the units are still large single individuals representing the unit. Did you ever consider having an actual army of units? If it was considered, why was it rejected?
Turn Based games seem to always have "cheating" AI in order to pose a challenge to a human player - the Civilization games are notorious for some of this.
What are your thoughts on this? Is it all about the gaming experience so, ultimately, "cheating" AI is perfectly OK so long as it provides a fun and challenging experience? Or would you ultimately want to see AI that could actually play by the same rules as the humans, and play well?
Side question: Just as we have video cards optimized to provide better graphics, could you see AI cards in production to enhance the AI of various games? Is AI even really relevant, past the point where the "average" gamer is presented with a challenge?
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
You have an impressive resume of games to your credit, but seemingly no sci-fi style games in the genre of Master of Orion, Stars!, Stellar Empires, etc. With the recent flop of Master of Orion 3, it's obvious that this genre could use someone with your skill and vision. Is there any reason why you haven't done these types of games in the past? Would you consider doing such a game?
Is there going to be a time where we see in a Civilization game a techological reflection of history which is not extensively based on Western European standards?
One of the things which kept me playing your games over the years was the techology "tree" in each of the games. However, as time has passed I have become somewhat fustrated with their designs. While I understand part of their structure comes from in no small part from the rules of the simulation and the limits on the game's complexity, it still seems a bit weird to me that it doesn't reflect human history as much as it could.
For example: In Civ3 the invention of the printing press, and I am guessing that this techology also included movable type, non-metallic inks, paper, and other such things needed to utilize it, serves as a stepping block to a new government type, that of "Democracy". This is despite the fact that such governmental types had been concieved of and practiced centuries before by the Greeks. This event also igornes how movable type and printing had been created centruies before Gutenberg and used in China and Korea.
According to wikipedia's bio you started designing games in the 80's, and there seems to be a common element of deliberation or strategy in many of them (less twitch, more think).
:^)
What games or game designers inspired you? I've not played MULE, but I'd guess you might have played it. What about board games? Chess, Go?
Since you make games for a living, what do you do "for fun"?
--Robert
Do you see a problem with the current gaming industry, if so what do you think it is. Your opinion on EA, and PA. (Electronic Arts, and Penny Arcade)
---
PC's or consoles?
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Civilization IV won't be the first game to use Python as a moding language; recently, Battlefield 2 has done the same. Is this a coincidence? What motivated you in using this particular scripting language?
One thing you are certainly renowned for is creating deep, rich, involving strategy games - games that raise your eyebrows, challenge your intellect, and hopefully help your mind reign supreme. Unfortunately, they seem to all follow the same formulae, and while they tend to be thoroughly enjoyable waste of time, I found Civ-2 to be a longer Civ-1, Civ-3 a 3d Civ-2, and Railroad Tycoon great fun (;->), but not as long lasting as the others- I tired of it quickly for some reason.
:P.
How come you don't try different gaming styles? I know how great it is to feel brain-stretched, but I know it's nice to have to think in different ways! It's all well and good being able to conquer Europe - but what about having to run backwards dodging a chromatic dragon, firing arrows at targets at the right order on the walls? I am admittedly an RGP-nut, but I'm sure that if you tried an AD&D (2ed...please) game, it would invariably end up richer, more stimulating, prettier, better, and longer than competitors offerings.
So, er, RPG us, god!
My UID is prime. Is yours?
I have been playing the Civ games since the first version came out. Currently though, I exclusively use the Linux and Mac platforms.. What operating systems will Civ support? If it will support multiple OS's, will the clients be included on the same CD/DVD? (I.E. to use it on a Mac, will we have to purchase a Mac specific version or will the mac client be able to use the same data thats on the Windows version?).
On Wednesday, we'll be asking for questions to give to the Civilization IV development team.
As a long-time addict, I am pleased that I will finally be able to get Civilization intravenously, but how does the team plan to prevent users from sharing needles?
I saw a presentation online that discussed the design goals for Civ4. In it there was a discussion of losing "hardcore" civ fans in favor of a more "modern" RTS game style. How hard is it to determine which improvements will enhance the game while maintaining the same "look and feel" of the franchise.
Also, why weren't many of the features from Alpha Centauri included in Civ3? Things like configurable governments and unit design.
--WooooHoooo--
Civilization makes you balance lots of elements - money, food, technology, military strategy, etc - in order to succeed. Yet games are inherently simpler than real life, and wouldn't be fun if they weren't.
How do you decide when you've made it complex enough? Also, how much should players be able to sidestep elements they don't want to deal with? For instance, Civ III allowed you to delegate what a city builds to a city manager. Personally, I would love to delegate economic management to someone, even if I had to "pay" that person a salary. What do you think of allowing players to remove some of the elements of complexity like that?
Unfortunately, at least one claim has been made that the source code no longer exists.
Can you tell us whether or not the code still exists, and if it does, whether or not there is any chance of it being released? Are you in any position to influence the decision as to its release, and if so, would you argue in favor or in opposition?
Thank you for your superb contributions to the gaming scene.
I've read the various reviews, and one of the supposed advantages of moving to 3D was to
be able to make the units have "more character." Civ has always had the hard task of
reducing the scale of an empire and war into individual units. This has led to such
issues in Civ 1 as a battleship being defeated by a trimere (which subsequently was lost
at sea at the end of the turn).
Civ IV seems to follow in the same footsteps as its predecessors in this regard. Have
you considered attempting to shift the design of the game so that it attempts to better
encompass the scale of an empire? Instead of having a very pretty 3D tank, have a
representation and information about the number of tanks, etc.
With the flood of 'good games' coming out around X-mas and Thanksgiving evey year, do you think that the market for console and pc games is stagnating itself due to too much holiday competition? I mean, lately it seems that the summer months are treated as leftovers where new, crappy ips fail, and then the industry blames low sales of those games as a deterent to creating new ips.
Civ (and its various sequels) have kept me entertained for nearly 15 years now. I know of no other game(s) on the market that have retained a sense of fun for anywhere near that long. The only comparison that could be made is to a 'pure' game like chess or go. Did you have any idea of just how much fun civilisation would be when you were designing the first one? What is it about civ that makes it so fun to play?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Will the AI be better improved in the next Civ. I found that Civ III suffered from the same issues with the automated workers no seeming to be very good engineers. They seem to lack the ability of working independently (often following other workers to the same spot). Will there be a way to prioritize their tasks (road building before mining, mining before irrigation, etc.)?
Offen the computer opponents seem to have the same lack of AI (being insulted that I offer a gold per turn trade while offering them a lower lump sum).
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
With the rise of game box, (Sony, Nintendo, MS), the game industry seems to be dominated by first person shooter games. You and your company have always produced the classic strategy type of game. In the future, will the be a place for the strategy game, and what do you think it will be? Can it compete with the first person shooter or the RPG?
Question: How much of a hand did you have in the recent remake of Pirates!, and what do you think of it?
Thanks!
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
I love the Civ games. Civ 3 almost made me fail my sophomore year of college I was so hooked on it. With the exception of maybe SimGolf, I've felt all of your games to be outstanding and high-quality.
However, it seems like most of your games in recent years have been rehashes or incrimental upgrades to your tride-and-true successes. While I enjoy the Civ iterations as much as the next strat buff I have to admit I'm starting to grow tired of them and really would love to see something truely new from you.
Are you getting tired of essentially designing the same games over and over as the years go by? Do you have anything new and exciting in the pipeline that's drastically different from what you've done before?
Have you ever been approached about or thought about creating a game like Civilization where the game doesn't end? Something like a cross between Civilization and Alpha Centuri where once you finish your world you have to start again on another world or another system, but the enemies and friends you make are also doing the same, so it becomes a multi-world / multi-system conquest!
Will you someday revisit Alpha Centauri, the finest game you ever made? Please?
I love playing Civ III on my laptop. It's great for on the plane. But as it is released, the game requires that the installation CD be in the drive every time you play even though none of the data on the CD is needed! This has the effect of annoying your customers by forcing them to search for CDs every time they play, unnecessarily wearing out the CDROM hardware on your customers' computers, and wasting your customers' power/battery life.
Most people I know who play Civ III must resort to downloading a "No-CD Crack" to fix these problems. How do you feel about the use of cracks to fix the flaws in your software? Do you intend to include similar CD restrictions in Civ IV, despite the fact that copyright violators will still be able to get around it, while your customers will continue to be inconvenienced?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
So, why does Civ slow to a crawl on a large map with lots of cities and units?
You'd think there would be plenty of time between turns to let the AI do it's thing, so that the next turn could happen almost instantaneously.
My second year of college, in many different ways, my life got more soft! Particularly the grey matter within my skull. Unfortunately this has more to do with illicit activities and not video games, but I'm sure they contributed to my drain bamage softmore year.
On my Linux box, I have two Sid Meier games: the original civilization, under Dosemu, and Alpha Centauri, ported by Loki Games. (As far as I know, Alpha Centauri is the only Firaxis game that runs on any non-Microsoft platform.) While any game could eventually be ported to any platform, choosing to use traditional sockets for networks and OpenGL for graphics and so on will make such action significantly smoother, and I believe is a strong consideration in choosing games for the Linux porting houses. Is there any thought going into portable design, any plan to release on any operating system other than Windows, and in particular, any plan - or thought of - releasing on Linux?
--Parity
'Card carrying' member of the EFF.
Sid,
Having played all of your games, far more then I should have. One thing I've noticed is that with all of the turn based strategy games is that expansive growth seems to be the real option to win. You have to dominate in terms of real estate, the more cities, the more tech/money/diplomats, etc. I've never managed to win with smaller civilizations with well developed resource (good islands or limited areas with well laid out cities highly utilizing the resources around). I realize this may sound a bit off, but am I simply missing something? Or is the fantasy of being able to have a few small cities in Alpha Centauri or Civ that are able to win the game impossible?
Just something I've always wondered, since it's often been touted that you can win with a small powerful civilization.
Thanks!
I absolutely loved the videos that would pop up in Civ II when you had completed a Wonder. It was something I sorely missed in Civ III. Is there any chance that you'll ever bring them back?
Who's idea was civanon.org ?, it is a masterful piece of marketing (check out the video featuring George Bush). Focussing upon civ's addictiveness it made me really want the new version whilst at the same time I am worried about how much time I will lose.
One more turn..., One more turn...
While Activsion and others had a shouting match over who had the rights to the "Civilization" name, you went off and made Alpha Centauri which bore many similarities to the Civilization line of games but then took a hard left with regard to the mechanics and setting. To this day I see and hear of people who talk about this game in hushed tones, as if it was a great cinematic or literary masterpiece. Many of these went on to express disappointment with Civilization III and are leery of the 3-D approach it appears Civilization IV has adopted. Since it's apparent that the Civilization line is the focus these days, what's your take on the devout following this one-off game of yours produced? And do you ever plan on revisiting the Alpha Centauri universe?
Schnapple
Question 1: Will you continue making games with turn-based-strategy focus in them? As of now, Civilization is one of the few remaining series of games using Turn-Based play that hasn't had the parent company go bankrupt (HOMM anyone), or had the series axed (Fallout). I love turn based games and the idea of having a switch to change turn based to real-time always intrigued me as a great feature in games. Turn based when you are doing something else, real-time when you are focused on just the game.
Meet new people, and kill them.
Alot of intersting features have been added since Civ 1. Culture, territory borders, religion, custom built units (Well, OK, that was AC), and Elvis, the culture advisor. What do you think the most important gameplay aspects that have been added since the original Civ? What concepts would like to be able to work into the hypothetical Civ V?
#include <signature.h>
Dear Sid, Have you ever though of creating a game like Master of Orion? The genre could use some of your design. MOO3 was a design failure. The best game ever released was MOO2 and it was released in 1996! They miss the point of making ship design/ship combat fun, and it could use a lot of your last Pirates!
Mr Meier,
I greatly enjoy Civ, Civ II, and Civ III, and I will undoubtedly buy Civ IV, and its expansion, for the PC. However, I still cringe when I see a "sticker price" of $60, especially when I know there's a $30 expansion coming down the pike in less than a year, and a year after that I can get both of them together in a "Gold" or "Game of the Year" edition for $45 or $50 that you will still realize profits from. You're one of the few developers who makes great games that don't stress my hardware and force me to get upgrades, so I guess I should be thankful about that.
My buying habits -- waiting until the games hit the discount bin with their expansion packs -- probably hit you in the wallet. Is there anything you can say to convince me I should buy Civ IV as soon as it's released?
Thanks
Jurph
Ultima IV
(*Sigh...* Nine installments from Lord British I never finished without help. And never actually finished IV because it was so buggy I gave up after 3 reinstall-retries.)
Bot Assisted Blogging
I've been looking over the preview info here and I'm glad to see most of the annoying stuff is gone, mostly roads on every square and enemy units not respecting borders. But there is one thing I'd still like to know. Will the AI cheat? In previous games, the AI has been getting bonus resources that are simply unfair instead of playing in a more intelligent way. I find it utterly frustrating when I'm fighting an unending row of stupid units. It feels like a bad MMORPG where you get beaten up by a twerp who's been farming all day, all resources and no brain. I mean, a computer can be anally calculating and accurate at all times... you'd think it could put up a decent fair fight.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Games like Half-Life have shown that phenomenal sales can be maintained for a prolonged period of time if the game is designed from the beginning with mods in mind. To date, HL is still one of the most popular online games, having spawned a number of variations that are essentially entirely new games in their own right.
With this in mind, do you plan on offering a robust and flexible method for fans and enthusiasts to modify and extend the game? The trend in FPS games is to offer a toolkit or SDK that facilitates this. Could we expect something similar in Civ IV?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
There is probably a bussiness case to be made for giving people the option to buy a US version: it wouldn't cost much extra and many people are so frustrated by the slow availability and updates that they are compelled to play a pirated copy. I do not condone that unless they also buy a localized copy to show their good intentions (luckily the copy protections are the same in both versions, so you can use a US version off of eMule with a localized copy of civ). My solution is to buy a copy from a US website but that costs $25 extra in shipping and custom fees and has a two week shipping delay.
By the way: I think future generations will look back on the beginning of electronic entertainment and will regard your work as the Rembrandt of this era.
This sig is just as redundant as the rest of this posting
...is there no *round* earth... ...are the poles like long strips where you can't move from a field to every other one... ...are cities 500x500km big and ther fit only 2 cities into europe... ...am i able to have this yearly child bith rates per family: 1 , 5, 8, ..., 127, -96, 119, -52, -120, 125, -16, 20, 50, ... ...in civilization?
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for many many years of enjoyment. Not just for myself but for my two sons who also love Civ and Tycoon. But my questions are Why did you choose to add Religion for 4? How will it affect gameplay? Have you ever thought that your science game play does not equate to real life? I think this statement is true because of all the great science that has come out of individuals who are gifted, rather than the government just throwing money and resources at it. Maybe an extra birth of a genius every once in a while could give you a bonus adavance in the science department?
boxers or briefs?
Have you got any idea how many PhD's you nukes with these infernally addictive games?
When will the AI advance enough to actually play by the same terms as the human player? I have found through experience with Civ3 that it is very difficult to have an enjoyable game with just any random map, that often times the human player is shut out from success early on by a combination of geography (i.e. lack of resources) and the ability of the AI to outproduce the human players several times over, most notably with the number of settlers and military units. When will the AI advance to the point that it is actually crippled compared to the player when playing at the easier difficulty levels, and unaided when playing at the more difficult ones?
Heya Sid: With your recent update of Pirates! for Firaxis (nice job, by the way), I am made to wonder if you would consider doing a similar update for the game Covert Action. I remember enjoying greatly the open-ended nature of the original, particularly when compared with other, more linear "secret agent" type games.
My question is this:
When I have recently read the books Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse by Jared Diamond, I was astonished by how closely the underlying concepts and ideas in the books match those in the Civilization series. (effect of environment, interaction between civilizations, making use of available resources, etc.)
Have you read the books or corresponded with Mr. Jared Diamond? Could you comment on the similarities/differences between the games and theories of J. Diamond? Honestly, I am really very curious if he has played or has been affected by the game?!!!
Having played all the different Sid Meier games of late, I had the distinct feeling that there was one "best" way of playing the game. The recent iteration of Pirates, for example, I recall most of my voyages being dictated by where a given relative was as finding all of them easily eat up the duration of one's career. Civ 3, as another example, I felt like I played the same every time -- as did other successful players with whom I've talked (succesful == being able to win on a high difficulty level).
People who are fans of the hack'n'slash genre know that character creation goes a long way in adding variety to what's otherwise a very long game. Master of Orion 2 took a similar step in in turn-based world. Civ 3 has some racial bonuses and whatnot as well, but I didn't feel they added as much variety as maybe they could.
So I suppose my question is this: are there any gameplay mechanisms to force players to play differently from game-to-game and will the game be balanced such that multiple stragies will be viable to victory or will it be like the pirates sequel, where I feel compelled to head towards one direction the whole time?
(I would argue the multiple Civ 3 ways to victory all depended on one condition (high production) and thus there weren't multiple ways to win with different strategies, more like multiple ways to win with THE strategy.)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Understandably, the concept of multiplayer turn based strategy games is difficult to feasibly implement. There have been strides towards hotseat or online play. Even turnless play.
What is the future of online gaming with regards to the civ series? Will it be expanded or phased out. If phased out, why? If expanded, what plans are in place to enhance the online experience.
Allow me to present my own thoughts on the matter. Instead of pitting online players against one another where the TBS problems inherently lie, place them all on the same team. Instead of advisors as in Civ III, allow players to take on command of one aspect of the civilization. For example, minister of defence, minister of finance, minister of science and education, etc. Surely the game can be made complicated enough for one of these duties to be a challenging job in itself. Consider also how interconnected team mates will be on each other (It's hard to build a navy if the finance department won't spring for an increased budget). Allow one (or several players depending on government type) to be in charge of deciding policy. If a player doesn't adhere to policy or if a player is ready to retire (after a few hours of playing), open up an election and let a newly joined player (or one already with a job - ready for a change) run a campaign of sorts for that position (perhaps simulate the election results based on past performance or lack thereof in previous games). Allow the players to have chats with one another which would simulate a parliament of sorts where policy makers can have discussions with the leaders in those specific fields. This will allow a game of civilization to be reasonably played from beginning to end without the problems TBS presents to multiplayered environments. Players will come in and out at all times as new ones put in bids to be elected for vacant positions.
Just one of several ideas that could be used to utilize the virtually empty MMOTBS market.
I noticed in the original Civilization that the computer player would sometimes be able to 'cheat' or do certain things that humans could not. Presumably these worked around limitations in the AI, but they seemed to spoil the game a little once they became obvious. Was this part of the original game design, and do you think it's unavoidable, or do better AI engines mean that computer players can be subject to the same rules as humans?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
One of the few elements of the Civ games that I always disliked was the manner in which the game is made more difficult on higher difficulty settings. It seems like the game is made harder at first with smarter AI, but after a certain point, the game mechanics change and the AI just cheats. AI Civs are permitted to acquire techs they haven't researched or traded for, AI Civs cut ludicrous deals with other while gouging the player, they produce units units faster than is possible, field armies of economically ruinous size, overcome preposterous odds in battle, all while researching at a breakneck pace and beating the player to wonders with no civil unrest. Finally, when the player comes out on top despite all this, the AI civs simply all gang up on him and arbitrarily start wars when the player is close to victory regardless of how benevolent, honorable, and generous of a diplomat he has been. The difficulties in developing a good AI justify some such measures, but rivals such as Galactic Civilizations appear to have successfully created "smarter" AIs rather than just stacking the deck against the player. What kind of unique challenges do Civ and its cousins in developing "smart" AIs that can challenge the best of players? Is it clear when you've hit an AI wall and the only way to toughen up the difficulty is with rule-bending? Does the pressure to publish and realize revenue result in shortcuts in AI development? I've always been curious about how much development efforts goes into AI, it strikes me as one of those areas where it'd be easy to cut corners and still produce a game looks, sounds, and plays great.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
How do you come up with ideas for games?
Will a warrior unit still be able to defeat an army of panzer's if its on a mountain square?
Adding units in civ2 was as simple as it could possibly be.
Adding units in civ3 is a nightmare. We have to manually edit 3 files and add graphic files in multiple locations.
How will this work in civ4?
Are you returning to a single-file for defining the games units and thier associated artwork/sounds/whatever?
Maybe just an interface in the editor to import unit graphics in some standard "package" format?
-GenTimJS
Two question on game features
1)Do you have any plans for improving the combat system? As it is, its a little bland- individual units on individual units isn't exactly realistic. Something like how total war drops from world view to battle mode would be nice, but turn based with focus on strategy instead of real time. Even the ability to line up units and give simple battle plans would be a great improvement.
2)One feature I liked of the Rise of Nation series was piracy- supply routes for luxuries and resources actually were marked on the map, and you could cut them off to affect happiness or halt production. It added a whole new aspect to running a large empire (you had to protect those supply lines). Anything like this in Civ 4? Or even Civ5?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
An ant by itself has minimal intelligence, but an ant colony exhibits quite interesting behavior. Do you see a future in gaming where the game itself is embodied by the players themselves? No central server, probably no rules as we think of them now and where the game itself evolves as a function of individual play.
There are a lot of issues in society today which have become extremely taboo. We can't avoid them, but to talk about them, or include them as game content runs a serious risk of being ripped apart by various extremist groups (who sit on the both extremes). Some of these things could apply to the macro-managed world of Civ, including terrorism, global warming, and bio technology. Also there are a number of older frowned upon topics, that are part of our history whether we like it or not, racism, genocide, and slavery.
These are just to name a few issues that might make the game to hot to publish, but may be relevant content in the context of empire building/managing. Will CIV 4 have some of these aspects included insofar as they are relevant, or will the game pussy foot around the most controversial?
Geoffrey Peart McMaster University Sfwr Eng Coast of Araska
One of the hallmarks of your games is their playability at various skill levels. How do you achieve this, which seems to be a balancing act among the various design parameters/options (i.e. "right amount" of complexity)? In particular, what role does playtesting contribute, vs intuition or other design methods?
dave
Do you think that designing civilization type games has made you (or even those that play your games) more prepared to be a real emperor/president/governor/senator/mayor/etc if the opportunity presented itself?
To elaborate, do you feel that designing (or controlling from a player's viewpoint) how the world operates in your computer games gives an edge in understanding rise and falls of power, humanity and people in general?
In order to leave a legacy, future game designers must have access to your work. Future game designers will have to overcome both legal and technical obstacles to access your work. The legal obstacles are not going to go away.
I have purchased copies of Xcom1, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Civ 1-3, and so on. However, this is no longer possible. Several of these are not for sale anywhere. We have seen the Linux variant of the Planetary Pack totally disappear.
These works (and yours) will still be copyrighted by somebody long after my grandson is dead of old age.
How do you hope to preserve a lasting legacy of game design?
My girlfriend and I loved the original colonialization. Will there be a sequel? Or at least a update of some kind?
Why, oh why did you make such great games that caused me lost sleep, red eyes and loud arguments with friend what to build next?
Lone Gunmen crew.
What influences you and gets your creative juices flowing? Creative writers, for example, are influenced by other writers. What do you do to get new ideas or give your creativity a little nudge?
Will there ever be another Colonization? (Please say yes.)
Can we get the original music back? yes, I know the quality was low, but I loved the original music from the first civilization game.
Oh, and the video files from Civ2, those were also quite good. Especially loved the Manhatten Project one.
But make the game more fun, it gets boring after a while. I've stopped playing the game, I don't even know why I'm bothering to reply.
The Civilization series of games has always used unrealistic units of time to measure turns in the game. For example, once you reach the modern era,1 turn takes up 1 year of game time. The notion that it would take one of my armies 1 year to move relatively small distances detracts greatly from what is an otherwise quite realistic strategy game. Will Civ4 use a new model for the game time or Unit movement?
When running Civ III, I see that it caps out at approx 650 Mb of memory, even though I have 1 gig on my machine. Will Civ IV utilize as much memory that is available on a machine? I am hoping that is the case, since I expect this game to have long wait times as did Civ III, in epic games.
Excellent 1970's SF movie Sengoku Jieitai (released in the West as GI Samurai, for some bizarre reason -- it contains no GIs) contains a long battle sequence between hundreds of 16th century soldiers (many with spears) and a group of modern soldiers who have a tank.
The spearmen beat the tank.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
1- weren't you, yourself, a bit disappointed that the 2004 Pirates! adds nothing to the original (and indeed, removes some things), except better graphics, and dancing? Don't you think you should have expanded the game to make it more involved? And is there any chance for an expansion pack? :) It's a fun game, but I had a lot more fun with the old DOS CGA version, and with the Pirates! Gold remake (which had a lot more atmosphere than the new one, by the way).
2- although your older games are some of the best in history, don't you feel that, these days, they are just adding your name to games that you had little to do with, or are simply sequels of your original designs? And, if so, why does it happen? Not why they put your name there (it's obvious: it sells), but why don't you really design most of a game yourself, like you used to do? Are you, perhaps, bored with the current state of PC gaming?
Sorry if the questions sound "aggressive", I don't mean them in that way - I've just been a little disappointed in the latest Firaxis games (Civ 3 and Pirates!), and I don't believe you were significantly involved in them (hey, it's a compliment!).
The Tlog - a technology blog
I've always thought that you had a very novel approach to games and created some of the most addicting games. Will you be doing any MMORPG games? (which are already addicting, but I can only image how addicting you can make them :)
My question to you is how important is it in your game design that the games end up being clean and simple enough that really anyone can load it up, start playing and have a whole lot of challenging fun with very little initial effort. Yet, when you look under the hood, you find that there are so many different options that it becomes a whole lot more than just a simple, little time waster.
P.S. Thanks for all the hours of enjoyment you have provided my family and I.
I would love a newer version of Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire. Can we expect some? Beg? Sacrifice something?
Did you ever worry that your games might give players a false impression about the workings of reality? Did you work your own political convictions into the game, or did you try to be as objective as possible? Do you even bother at all about the realism of the game?
If you are looking for a pretty current series of really innovative adventrue games, pick up a console (GameCube is my Recommendation) and try out the Prince of Persia series. Yes, they are semi-remakes of NES-day games, but even then, it was beyond anything else of it's kind. There is no multiplayer options, and you don't play online, but the action-filled fight sequences, high quality video cuts, wonderful blend of acrobatic maneuvers and puzzle solving, and darkly themed story line, make the series highly absorbing. I am currently playing Prince of Persia: Warrior Within on GameCube, and imho, there is no better action/adventure game on the market, although, to be fair, I am more of a PC MMORPG player at the moment.
what first interested me in Civilization wasn't so much the intricate decision making the game required but that I had a great love of history and Civilization let me micromanage world history - I can't not overstate how much I love the game. Still what interests me in the game is not so much the challenges I face in defeating Rome as that I get to try to defeat Rome. In the end winning the game isn't nearly as important to me as having built a really cool civilization and how it reshaped human history.
The question I would like to ask is how much of creating a good game for you depends on having a compelling story/plot/idea as opposed to quality game mechanics? For example, when "Culture" was added into Civ 3 was that to add another game mechanic that the player would have to deal with, or an attempt to make the game more reflect a realistic world?
Along these lines what non-game related books have influenced your design of the settings for your games?
Thanks
Will you ever release a native linux port of your new games?
Have you any ideas/ambitions for wireless gaming? Can I have any optimism that an updated Colonization could debut in that sort of format?
I loved Civ 3, and am eagerly awaiting Civ 4. But here's a feature I always craved because it makes better geographic sense: hexagonal maps. In a square grid, you can't move to the square diagonal to where you are. It seems to me a hexagonal map is a better approximation of "real world" movement in that there is no space immediately next to you that you can't navigate to, unlike a square grid.
;-)
When my little exploring warriors see a goody hut right next door to them in the early game, but it's Northeast of them, why should it take them two turns to get there? A hexagonal map has no such limitations: all directions of possible movement are equally accessible.
Maybe in Civ 5? Thanks Sid for a great game.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Growing up, whenever my parents wanted to join in a game with us kids, it was generally a board game of some type: Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk, etc. Video games seem to have trouble with this quality: uniting different generations into the same game at the same time. What do the classic board games have that video games don't?
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Your games span three decades now, and some still have a lot of gameplay in them. What are your thoughts on abandonware? Should games be set free (source and all) if they are not supported anymore, only in binary form, or not at all?
When you are about to begin work on a new project do you choose team members because you feel they will impact the design of the game in the direction you envision?
Or do you assemble a team consisting of different strengths and let the group dynamics mold what the end result of the game will be like?
If scientists in the future on a remote tropical island were to combine genetic material from yourself, John Carmack, Will Wright, Shigeru Miyamoto, Richard Garriott, and Peter Molyneaux, to create a super designer, that would be awesome.
My questions are as follows:
Is John Romero the result of the diminutive twin of this super designer being sent back in time to our era, as a result of what the scientist will call 'Project Daikatana'?
Will the super designer eventually aspire to become a 'governator'?
What would his trademark game Black & SimCivUltiDoom Brothers be like?
In the Your Lastest Pirates Game, did anyone every bother to do more than repeatedly press the up key during the dancing sequence so as to get it over with as quickly as possible the first time they tried it and then never dance again during Beta? [This was my approach]
As a corrollary in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, did you also ignore your girlfriends, until they just went away?
Who decided that it would be a good idea to include Advisor Videos in Civ 2? That was all Brian Reynolds wasn't it? Is that why you fired him?
Were you as disappointed in MOO3 as me?
Have you secretly implemented code in civ that sends playing tendancies onto the Defense Department to create a super intelligent machine that will be capable of conquering the world?
-- As a corollary: How exactly does the algorithm account for a guy on a chariot defeating a battleship? What secret techologies has the US Goverment incorporated into our Military to make it more whip resistant?
Why were shields used to represent production? Why not something like, or I don't know, how about swords, or candy bars, or women's pantyhose, those seem approximately as arbitrary and more fun!
Why doesn't unit movement scale to the size of the world? On a huge map it takes a battleship several year to cross the atlantic, this is non sense! Can I mod the game to make it scale appropriately?
As for battleships, (yes i am obsessed with them), the civ2 graphic was the best as was the corresponding civ 2 sounds effect, though the civ2 AEGIS crusier also looked awesome, kudos to that artist, did you tell him he is the master of 128x128 pixel art?
Was the fact that in civ 2 a pinkish color was used to represent transparency a subtle nod to the almighty Invisible Pink Unicorn, since he surrounds everything and we can't see him, but we have faith that he is pink?
On a huge map when you have 100's of units do you also enjoy spending half an hour a turn cycling through them all and moving them a few spaces, because they couldn't be group effectively and furterh if you did stack them up you make them vulnerable to nuclear attack, and bombardment by artillery?
I like the idea of units getting experience upgrades in Civ4, well they retain their upgrades, after they become obsolete and I have to upgrade them to the next level?
Will it be possible for the modding community, full of nut-jobs, such as myself, to give varying abilities to the different religions through the XML files or using the python scripts, that may fly in the face of political correctness and make Baby Jesus, Shiva, Buddha, Confucius, The Prophet, and Moses all cry simultaneously and guarantee that I go to every bad after life those religions promise me, If I believed in them and not Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, so help me Invisible Pink Unicorn?
As a corollary, and as a matter of political correctness (ties into your choice on religion), you did remember to make a branch in the tech tree so that the player can choose either the Theory of Evolution or Intelligent Design?
And since we don't want to offend anybody, could you preface every battle with the fact that the units aren't really fighting, but playing tag, and that when a unit loses said tag match it is not really killed, but sent to an invisible island un-accessible to the player where it is fed milk and honey by several dozen scantily clad virgins until the en
Mr. Meier, In reading about Maxis' new game Spore, I remember hearing that civilizations which players come in contact with will have been developed by other players as well as developers. What is the likelyhood of Spore becoming a persistant online community (preferably free of course) where each civilization is actively controled by a player? If price demands cause this to be an impossibility, how difficult will it be to obtain new opposing/cooperative civilizations to integrate with one's own world? Thanks, and I'm quite looking forward to seeing more about this game in the future. Necoras
Trading reputation is a very tricky (and obscure) concept in CIV3. For example, if you have an active per-turn trade with A, and B cut the trading route, change is that you'd ruin your reputation which cannot be recovered during the rest of the game. How is it going to change in CIV4?
Sid, can I have a job?
What ever happened to Sim Thunder Storm? Considering the difficulty was in the user interface, could the rest of the design be released to allow some creative designer to complete this neat idea?
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
...some Wonder Movies??? Come ON that's my que to go to the bathroom once a day at least!!!
From what I read about CIV4, it looks like you'd need 3 cities to have a cultural victory. This would make One City Challenge (OCC, which means you can only have one city in the game) + cultural victory impossible. What are the Firaxis's considerations to support OCC and other variants in CIV4?
My family's first computer was a Macintosh LC we bought in 1991, at the time I was only 4, I loved your Railroad Tycoon game and continued to play it for 10 years until we finally retired our LC and got a new iMac.
Unfortunately your game would not play well on PPC and not at all on OS X, I have played the sequels that were not by you, but they never seemed the same.
Would it be possible to release the source of some of your classic games for nostalgic people like me?
The Scratchware Manifesto
I've been playing your games since the original Civilization, and they all seem to have one thing in common: you start playing and then just can't stop! What do you think it is about your games (especially the Civ series) that makes it that way?
is about Duke Nukem Forever! that's the game that I want to ask its developers about!
(what the fsck are doing the last 10 years! are they gonna release DNF or not? and what Sid knows about it?)
Some game producers, mainly id software usually release the source code for older versions of their games, have you ever thought of doing the same?
Id is a poor example. Their business relies heavily on licensing their engine (source code) to other developers. Letting people see and get used to their code, even older vesions of their engines, fits in well with their business. Releasing old Civ code would be charity, it might even be counterproductive to their business in that it might lead open source Civ-like teams away from dead ends and bad decisions.
And if not, why not?
Yes, I am the one with the legendary sig.
Early games you were involved with mostly seemed to revolve around realtime military simulations of one kind or another (Nato Commander, Silent service, F-15 strike eagle, F-19 steath fighter, Gunship, M-1 tank platoon, Red storm rising). Around 1991-1993 there seems to have been a sudden shift of focus to turn-based strategy games like Railroad Tycoon and Civilization.
What happened?
Given the opportunity, what do you wish you had done differently in the original Civilization game?
Have you ever considered teaming up with the developers of Google Earth to design a game interface based on their global model?
What games have you played in the past few years that you really liked? What about those games makes them worth playing?
Nareau
Two years of college spent playing Civ III, a plague that infested my computer, brain, and subconscious. Civ III is an addiction that forced me to fail exams (I fought back so it wasn't as bad), destroyed my social life (or whatever little I had), and basically turned me into a zombie. This is one of the only few games I know that slows down as you approach the end. BTW, for serious Civ players, there is no end...Grraaaahh!!!
And now Sid Meier has cursed mankind with the latest nemesis Civ 4. Comeon gamers! Fight to the end. Civ 4 should not win again!!!
Together we can defeat this enemy. Brace yourself and buy this game.
Its a trap!!!
Are you going to kick your Mac porting company in the ass and get this ported to Mac within the decade?
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Do you still look to boardgames for inspiration? Have you tried any boardgames that have been released in the last decade, such as Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, or Puerto Rico? Do you see any aspects of these games that could be adapted to perhaps break some of the rigid stereotypes that PC games all seem to conform to these days?
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
I was dissapointed to discover that at the hardest AI level, the computer is allowed to cheat. The computer can make more moves than the game rules allow. Don't you feel that this degrades your game, and really shows that you couldn't bother to write a decent AI?
There are a lot of more technical and professional questions already, but I'm curious about the mindset you get into when making a new game. The Civ franchise (and offshoots) is one of the most successful ever, it has almost a dozen games in it and has made your name well-known to even many casual computer gamers.
When you sit down to make a new game, how much of the previous success weighs on your mind? Do you get concerned that you have to "live up to" some set of expectations of success just because of who you are? Do you feel boxed in, that you HAVE to make certain decisions because they are "what people expect from a Sid Meier game"? Or do you do the opposite and try to find specific things that you want to do very differently, just because you know players and critics will be expecting ABC, and you want to throw a curve and deliver XYZ?
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
There are two types of games currently in development. Games for consoles (xbox, ps2, etc.) and games for beefed up computers. On the other hand more and more people are purchasing laptops since they better fit their lifestyle and provide the functionality they need. Unfortunately most of these machines do not have specs required by most of the modern games because if they would , they would weight more than a person would want to carry around. Do you see any value in game development specialized for casual portable machines which would address this audience?
How does Civ: the Board Game compare to other Eagle Games like Attack!?
Here's my situation: sometimes I'm playing with some ideas for games, among other creative activities. Three of them are quite refined.
However, since I lack programming knowledge and my artistic skills in the area of graphics and music are lacking, the projects won't go far without some team... Furthermore, I doubt I could interest some studio in the ideas - lack of industry experience, situation of the industry in my country and style of games (#1: artsy experiment in presentation and atmosphere; #2: logical twist; only #3 could be called mainstream, but quite unconventionall anyway...) prohibit that. Also, amateur programmers are usually interested in implementing their own ideas, and graphics/music people who'd share my visions either price themself high or are not interested in games...
What are you thoughts on such situations and, perhaps, recommendations?
One that hath name thou can not otter
Remake X-Com Enemy Unknown, please. We miss it. (Note: 'miss' means still play on our PS2 with the scratched but readable X-Com PS1 Disc or the abandonia copy of x-com gold).
Click Here for Memories.Is there any Truth to the Rumor that you have aquiered the rights to the UFO Game?
And if so can we expect to see a New UFO game with the Traditional Qualities of the old ones?
There are Millions of Fans of this wonderful game who are disheartened by the So Called clones that leave most of the fun Options out of this game.
We would all love to see this game broght back with modern graphics and your own personal enhancements.
You've been one of the few game designers who sticks to the in-depth intricate gameplay side of the fence as opposed to the latest trend in high-res graphics bonanza. As much as we the hardcore gamers love gameplay over 'bells and whistles' do you feel that this can hurt sales of smaller titles that go further into gameplay versus the big-name high graphics 'special effects' style games that seem to be flooding the market, and do you feel that there is an effective way to integrate an intricate well thought out game that can also make use of the latest trends in the graphics and sound technology of todays pc's?
Insert witty
Have you considered the following possible features?
:-).
* Tech tree varies randomly between games (both prereqs and effects), so that you have to vary your strategy much more from game to game. In previous Civ games, you know that Railroads are amazingly useful, and exactly what techs you need to get there. However, while a 15th centuary genius might speculate on the possibility, they have no way to know how well it will work in practise. Some games, railroads are great. Some games they are a flop. The closer you get to them, the better your estimate of their usefulness becomes. (Another example: in 1950, commercial fusion power was thought to be 20 years away. It still is. What if they 1950's people had turned out to be right?)
* An option to shrink your empire for a greater score. The fun part is expanding, not managing the large empire that results. Allow an option where you can split your empire, keep playing only one half, and get a bonus multiplier to your end-of-game score. (E.g. you start of as England, and in 1776 become USA, and England becomes computer controlled.)
As an aside: I've often played "single city" games of Civ. I play at an easer level than normal, and allow myself only a single city. This allows a game in a single evening. From the Gamespot preview of Civ 4, it looks like you've already made allowance for fast games - thank you.
Yes, this "question" really is just a thinly disguised plug for my own ideas. Feel free to make me a job offer
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Have you looked at why Shadow Magic is somehow more playable as a game? Do you think the manual combat feature it has is a lot of fun? Do you think more elaborate combat would allow units to have more attributes than attack and defense and hitpoints, and thereby make the impact of technological advances "feel" right? Isn't it a lot more satisfying to use technological improvements when you can move the unit around in combat to use it?
Thanks for giving me a great game to use in inspiring my son to read! Your game is one of the more educational ones out there for kids.
Huge budget hollywood style productions seem to be taking over the gaming industry. Is there anything other then 'voting with our wallet' that we (the consumers) can do to fight this trend?
Thanks for your time,
-Z
Dear Sid,
we never met, but my father gave your sister trombone lessons, and your brother was my piano accompanist at Solo and Ensemble. When I was about 10, you gave me a gift of about 7-8 of your titles for the Commodore 64, and I've been waiting all these years to say "Thank you!"
I often lay in bed at night thinking about how I could have lived my life differently, thinking about the different branches that I might have taken on the grand decision chart (not because I have regrets, mind you). Since I've become a software professional, albeit quite indirectly, having played horn in a German orchestra for a while first, I often wonder what it would have been like if I had skipped the musician part and started out in software back then, when you gave me those games.
My question, which follows one of those late night scenarios that I mull over, is this; if I had not only said "Thank you!" back when it would have been polite to do so, but also shown you the number guessing game that I had just programmed for the C64, and maybe some of the Sprites that I had painted, might you have become my mentor and taught me everything there was to know about making great games?
cheers,
Robert Douglass
For us windites, C-Evo is a way better game. Too bad their site doesn't have a decent forum.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Can I get a refund on those two semester's tuition that I lost to the first Civ? I know a few others who didn't get the best GPA that year...
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If you read up on Civ4.com and every interview Sid has posted about Civ4, there will be four layers of customization in Civ4. As such, I think this should be modded down slightly so that we can make from for a question that hasn't already been answered.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I know it is more important to make a game that is fun rather than one that is realistic (if it is an either/or choice), and in the original CIV, processor power was rather at a premium, so a very simple economic model was chosen - "trade units" were generated by workers on terrain that had roads, or were water tiles; these trade units were then subdivided into three baskets by the player, one for tax revenue, one for science research, and one for luxuries.
But with computer processor power so much higher and vast quantities of memory available, has thought been given to a more complex, organic economic model, somewhat along the lines of SimCity, where millions of trade routes are "tested" repeatedly over time, to see which ones succeed and which ones do not? Or perhaps some different, more sophisticated model where the fundamentals are complex, build up over time, and are not so easily/linearly controlled by the player? To make economic building as significant a part of the game as city development, diplomacy, and exploration?
What, if anything, do you think George W. Bush could learn from Civilization about dealing with foreign leaders?
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Having quite a few of your games, one thing has always stood out: While the game concepts are out of this world, the quality of the programming is usually very lacking, most especially in the optimization area. As an example, Civ 1, 2, CTP, and 3 all ran much, much slower on my hardware than games which by all rights *should* have been much more demanding. Why has that been the case?
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
but ported the board game. Which parts were your additions?
During the course of the Civ series, have there been any features that you've thought good enough to implement, only to discard them before release? In other words, what have you tried that hasn't worked?
If you were going to have a pet monkey, what type of monkey would you get?
I would like to hear if you have an opinion on why Open Source engines such as for instance www.Ogre3d.org do not have greater penetration in the gaming industry. How far are the current top open source offerings from being something that you would use?
Which of these boardgames do you prefer, and why?
Civilization(with or without Advanced Civilization)
or
Sid Meier's Civilization - The Boardgame
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
Sid,
What is the point of Pirates? And why do I constantly have to split the booty to keep my #$%# crew from rebelling? No matter how much freakin' treasure I collect, they're never happy. I can't even amass a large enough crew to attack a large city because by the time I've stopped in 3 ports, everyone's deserting. And why does the potential population of recruits never replenish once I've visited a tavern? Aren't these people breeding? Don't new people ever visit the bar? Also, am I the only one who hopes to God nobody walks in while I'm doing the "Dance with the Governor's Daughter," minigame? Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep step when someone looks at the screen with little hearts popping up, and gay (as in happy) music, and they ask "What the hell are you doing?"
I guess what I'm saying is, it would all be worth it if I could see a nice big "You Win!" at the end, and maybe some fireworks.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Mr. Meier,
Civilization was the first computer game I bought with my own money. I credit much of my interest in ancient cultures, philosophy, government, and politics to your game. Despite the fact that the way such things are portrayed in the game is vastly simplified, the simple fact that they were portrayed at all as part of a larger narrative was sufficient to pique my interest in learning about them. Therefore, my question is:
What is your opinion on using Civilization-type games as a narrative to support an educational curriculum, and do you see a market for that kind of thing?
I have read several papers on this idea, and they seem to use Civilization as a substitute for the curriculum rather than as a supplement - and as a result, the students didn't seem to learn much. However, educators that use games as educational supplements are praised for how well their students understand and like the game. A standout educator in this area wrote a simple Javascript-based political and economic simulation of the Vietnam war.
An implementation of the game could span multiple educational levels. Consider a kindergarten teacher as the class starts out with a settler (on a custom map with no barbarians, of course). The class only runs the simulation once each week, so the kids have something to look forward to. The game serves as a narrative device to tie different elements of the childrens' education together.
"Oh, look! We, the whole class, we're in these wagons here. We're all tired of walking, so let's find a place to sit down. I'd like to be next to a river, how about you? I like mountains too. Have you ever been to the mountains? Here are some neat photos of mountains and animals. Let's draw some pictures of what we see!"
One can also extend this to the high school level - we already have things like the Mock UN, and the game could serve as a narrative there as well:
"Consider the following deployment of guerrillas, government troops, and refugees. Where should we recommend the refugees move to avoid the crossfire? How should we implement a medical and educational support system for the refugees? What are the budgetary requirements? What members of the UN should be involved?"
People of all ages seem to relate better to concepts if they're part of a story, and I'm interested in what you think of a game driving that story as part of a curriculum.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Civilization II was kind of boring. Why don't you make Civilization real time?
game. Do you feel that you idea of civilization is changed anyway by turning it into a game? Do you compare cultures and civilizations by the number of cities they build, their demographics, etc. in real life too? How much of your definition of civilization as portrayed by the games are a product of designing a fun-to-play game, and how much is it your own thoughts on world history?
If that is your Real Name...
Is it?
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
I want to know how he makes all the wee hours of the morning disappear like that.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I got a chance to talk to Sid at E3 '02, just before Civ3 hit. Being an AI guy myself, I asked him about learning AI. His response was that it wasn't for him; while most people might think they want learning AI, in practice it isn't nearly as fun as it sounds.
Will you ever work on another game with Brian Reynolds? Why did he leave?
What happened between you and Brian Reynolds? Watching him leave Firaxis was like watching Simon and Garfunkel split up.
One of the challenges in designing the Civilization games, it would seem to me, is keeping the game from becoming too centered on Western culture, i.e. its developments and accomplishments. How have you tried to address this issue? Is it important to you and your development team? For example, do you think it would be worthwhile to switch out the Hoover Dam Wonder for a Three Gorges Dam Wonder?
I would have been seven years old when Civilisation was first released. I would have been about nine when I received a copy of it, along with a photocopied manual off a friend's dad who'd received it, thinking it was an Amiga version.
I was busy getting to grips with my Dad's DECStation 316, he bought it in the hopes of catching the computer wave of the 90s, he'd only ever done accounting on paper before. He had been laid off, and I wanted an Atari ST for Christmas. It was a good compromise.
I started playing not really knowing what was going on, getting to grips with terms such as 'irrigation' and 'pillaging' were relatively new concepts to a kid who's idea of high art would have been the DeLorean.
Anyways, all I had were demo discs so I had 8 hours a day dedicated to getting my head around Communism, the Feudal System et al.
All in all, it kept me interested but much more it moulded my mind into being able to see "How things work", well somewhat.
After trying to create a world of superhumans, with an army big enough to invade a large planet, I realised that there's only so much fun in a quick tete au tete.
I eventually became a leader of a free world that allowed me to explore the depths of the universe all inside my own mind beside my computer.
So for the education sir, thank you.
What is the game you've always wanted to design, but feel you won't in your lifetime because of technological constraints, market constraints, or just plain old haven't-figured-out-the-right-approach constraints?
Thanks so much for remaking Pirates!
So many game designers should take note of how you remake games!
1) Take a classic game with excellent gameplay
2) Give it a few new features but make certain not to change what made it great in the first place
3) Upgrade the graphics, music and sound to current standards
Sid:
Most artists do their best and most creative work when they are younger. It's a wonderful talent to be able to put your ego aside and recognize where you are as a designer, instead of where you were. You breath new life into your ideas by simply tweaking and upgrading them without trying to 'fix' what isn't broken! On the other side of that spectrum are people like George Lucas. He has almost single-handedly destroyed the Star Wars legacy with his ego and lack of self-perception. Quite an amazing feat! Thanks so much for not making the same mistake with the Pirates and Civilizatoin series! =)
That being said, are you considering investigating winning formulas from other 'classic' game designers (Brian Fargo, Richard Garriott, Peter Molyneux, etc.) and possibly revamping those? If so, have licensing issues forced you to give up on the idea?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
...so my question is, Can I have a job?
One of my favorite games ever is Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, I've grown tired of playing it and I'm hungry for the newest space civ sim out there. Why didn't you bother creating a sequel to this incredible game?
A lot of the classic games did not place high demands on hardware, yet were very enjoyable and fun to play even on a modern system. In contrast, a lot of today's games are very visually appealing and heavy on the system, but do not leave a lasting impression. Why would you say this is happening? In your opinion, can anything be done to bring the "joy of the game" back to computer gaming?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
First and foremost - thanks for Pirates. I played that on a commy64 for several years, it was a landmark game.
When I heard about the new version I was looking forward to playing, but the new pirates was rather lackluster in my opinion with many playability bugs and extremely repetitive scenes.
What happened?
And while I'm on the topic, have you ever won a fair game of Civ 3 on "sid" difficulty?
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
Would you consider a company based modifications/maps repository and forum, which would include two "best" ranking lists (company & user)? Mod-ers would strive for the coveted top 10 positions. Lurkers could jump to the "best", and leave comments/praise. It seems to me a wide-spread game called Civilization should have a real sense of community.
Who are we talking to here, you, or your PR flunky? Just checking.
I don't buy a lot of games generally because I find very little replay value in most of them. But I have to say that Alpha Centauri (and Alien Crossfire) are the best games I have ever bought. You can't imagine the fun I had (and still have) playing just the single-user mode. It is very unforunate that (I am a Mac user) I was never able to find anyone to play a multiplayer game, either because of bugs in the application itself or because of a lack of available players. In any case, I was wondering if you have ever considered a follow-up to those wonderful games, maybe something more in-depth with deeper social and political aspects (I loved how they intergrated into the game). I should say I've never been tempted to play any of the Civ games. In any case, kudos on all of your work and the people that have helped you in making it happen. Thank you!
Do you think it is possible for a so-called "indie" game to be successful in today's market?
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Did anyone notice this in an interview from earlier this year?
--quote--
Barry Caudill: Civilization 4 will be the most moddable version of Civilization ever. Players can edit basic stats and attributes in XML files. On a higher level, much of the game will be exposed to Python so modders will be able to edit events and have more control over how the game works. On an even higher level, we are planning to provide an AI SDK to allow experienced programmers to dig very deep into customization.
--endquote--
Scripting via python eh? Might be the impetus I've been looking for to pick it up.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
an interactive history lesson?
:-)
Don't get me wrong, I've been enthralled by Civ ever since I first saw it on my high school's computer lab computers. And I did learn a thing or two about history from the game.
But...it's not really your own civilization you are creating. Its a sort of interactive history lesson, with specific technological breakthroughs, wonders of the world, historic figures, and even the artifact of the Christian calendar.
But it seems to me, that if you were to truly rewind the clock and let history unravel in a different direction, many things would be different, not just the calendar! Why not start at year 0 and count up from then instead of the contrived system of some odd number of years between turns that changes as time moves on?
Science and technology hasn't always been a march towards progress that's more or less fueled by money. Sometimes there's a great leap forward brought about by a controversial figure. Perhaps a sort of random event engine in the game could replicate this. For instance, the player might be working on stamping out religious and political unrest in his empire, when he suddenly discovers that a figure (say Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or, maybe it doesn't need to be a scientific person, maybe a Martin Luther or a Thomas Jefferson, the name could optionally be randomly generated but their contribution to history would be the equivalent) has appeared and gives the player an empire changing choice, either maintain the status quo or embrace a new paradigm. These could be random events, not entirely dependent on an Earth-like history.
Also, perhaps the same idea could be applied to the wonders of the world.
To me, this would be even more satisfying and enthralling. Don't just recreate history as the Romans, Babylonians, Chinese or the Americans, but as a whole new people who the player can shape into one of those civilzations, or something entirely new. Cultures are dynamic, not static as in the Civilization (and other such games.) They're molded by the people who live in them, leaders, thinkers, malcontents and common people.
Now, if only I could get paid to come up with ideas like you do.
I work in the game industry, and I know what marketing departments can be like, even from way back. How did you manage to get your name on the boxes of your games, and how did you subsequently manage to keep it there?
I hope this question doesn't actually make it into the presented questions, but this is what I really want to know:
Will you please please please do whatever you can to get whoever owns the rights to release Alpha Centauri source code? You can even keep the artwork if you need to! I absolutely love that game, and it's one of the two programs I have so missed since I left Windows. Just release the source code and I'll do the rest. I would love you so much, Mr. Meier!
If aspiration is a virtue, achievement cannot be a vice.
I'm more curious as to whether a group of men with wooden spears can take out a chopper or tank again ...
if that's the case, I'll be sure to be a spearmen in any Civ mmorpgs that come out.
This may get lost in the noise (5 pages long now and still growing) but I would like to know what to tell my son.
He plays games. He's never been interested in hardware. He doesn't know what an OS is, nor a programming language - yet.
However, becoming a game designer may not depend on these things...in the not-too-distant future.
Hearing about the feast-or-famine industry, where human resources are used up and discarded (to be replaced by the next eager candidate), I don't want my son to walk into this without a clue.
I'm a J2EE guy, I don't write or design games. There's too little room here to really put my question(s) into context, but I feel you'll understand where I'm coming from.
What would you tell my son?
Thanks.
Redundancy is good; triple redundancy is twice as good! - Me.
I want to know because I wonder if Civ can be improved even more up to this stage. I mean, it's been really great already.
...because I see some captivating similarities in your interests.
I guess great minds think alike...
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I have played Civilization, Civ II, and CivI II. I mostly play and enjoy Civ II (it is one of my all-time favorite games) because that is the first one I ever played. One thing that I have noticed is that, with each new version, the game takes longer to complete. My Civ III games take substantially longer to complete than my Civ II games (in which I usually win via space race) and many times I don't even get into the modern age in Civ III. This can get very boring and frustrating, and this is the main reason why I prefer Civ II to Civ III. Is Civ IV going to follow this trend, or are you going to make the game play out much faster?
The current business model for games is getting ruinously expensive: more detailed textures, more frames, features added because they're standard (e.g. multiplayer modes). Games are now easily a dozen man years and several millions of dollars in cost, making game development a high risk investment. Do you see any possible business models which may help reduce the risks which stem from such high costs?
Or to be more specific what draws you to simulation game design rather than, say, shooters or rpgs?
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
Many of us would like to see you re-visit Alpha Centauri. Have there been any serious thoughts about a new version (one that is OS X native would be excellent!)? Barring this, is there any way to recreate SMAC using the tools and scripting that comes with Civ 4?
As long as the game has been around (and I've played since the beginning) the technologies, units, civilizations, and gameplay mechanics have gotten better and better. Yet, one thing remains the same. There are truly only two ways to successfully play your civ, from an overall perspective. You are either specializing in science, or you are specializing in building your military. Civ3 made a stab at breaking the mold by enabling culture to become a primary factor in the development of a civilization. Yet, culuture is almost always a side effect of the civ that is most dedicated to developing its science. The civ that focuses on its military is best off focusing entirely on its military so as to increase the chances of victory (we all know that extra unit of two makes a huge difference when attempting to take an adequately defended city). And even beyond that, there's no reason to focus on science, since you will most likely (if you are truly making war with another civ) not be able to keep up scientifically with the others civs who aren't at war, and hence won't be able to complete the wonders in time. So, you usually end up focuses on units and threatening other civs until they hand over their technologies to you. The major point here is that these seem to be the two only true paths (or ways of playing) in the game. It's true that the tech tree allows you progress with some customization, but this is really only allowing the player to choose which tech is developed first, since there are all needed in order to progress to the next age. Isn't there more to a civilization than if it is scientifically or militarally specialized. Shouldn't there be an incentive to play as real world civilizations have been able to play out be rewarded for this. Or am I only inticed to play in one of these two ways because of my desire to be the best at one, rather than second best at either? Is it just me? Or does that game set us up to play that way? Or, on the largest scale, is that the mind of man, to want to conquer and be the 'best', no matter which path we are on?
.... for the c64 version of Pirates!
;)
Have you got a decompiler? We're still trying to debug it
hey that's not a bad idea - the online pirate game. I mean, we're sick tired of fantasy RPG's with wizars and dragons... why not an online RPG about sea conquest?
See? You wanted to make a joke, but I think you got a good one in there. THAT's creativity.
Mr. Meier has a chance to really showcase some hypocrisy if he answers this question, considering his involvement with Alpha Centauri: a spiffed-up but nevertheless thinly-veiled rip-off of the Empire games, first created by Mark Baldwin in the Seventies on a mini, IIRC. Recognition of that might lead a critically-minded person to question the true degree of originality in the other works to which Meier has affixed his name.
This is nothing new, of course, but sometimes this incremental evolution isn't properly recognized and people who are merely stepping-stones in the process wind up getting more credit than they've really earned. Take Master of Orion and all the other 3X/4X computer games which both preceded and succeded it: they can almost all trace their roots back to a BOARD GAME first published in 1972 (Stellar Conquest, by Steve Jackson).
Will I be able to cross over the poles of the map this time?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
I've played ALL versions of Civilization, and spent FAR more time doing so than I should. Right now, the most enjoyable part of CivIII is the Conquests expansion pack - playing "Rise Of Rome" is just GREAT.
My question is this: Will there be a similar expansion to CivIV, and how important are such expansions for the game in general? Also, have you played any of the free mods available for CivIII, of which some are of great quality?
Black holes are where God divided by zero
Sid: It's with great excitement I'm looking forward to playing Civ 4. But when/if I buy it, will I still have to DL a no-CD fix?
urd
There is a very simple reason why there is no sequel to railroad tycoon. There is hardly a profitable railroad company in the world, so it would have to be known as railroad hobo. On top of that, should one want to attain any level of realism, one should incorporate all the rules, regulations and politics involved with running a railroad. Such a complexity would require white mice to operate the computer.
Use Adsense for Charity
How much do you think Civ can impact teaching history?
One of the things that made me stick with Civ was the real world/historical links of the game rather than the out and out fantasy of soe of the other turn-based strategy games out there. This piqued my interest and spurred me into reading up on countries and cultures I would not have otherwise.
Okay, this could probably be done with a huge modpack, but...
Integrating an historical encyclopedia into the game could work as the worlds first sucessful educational game (TM) - implemented at stages of the game such as end fo era, city creation, or encountering a nation could add to the real-world aspects of the game I so enjoy and also educate the younger generations.
Obviously you'd want this as an option rather than enforce it.
In Civ3, he who has the biggest economy and best technology is almost guaranteed victory in the later stages of the game.
Sun Tzu argued that numbers and technicl superiority are ultimately meaningless; Lind argues that modern wars are played on the 'moral level'.
Will there be an attempt to make Civ4 reflect this, or is it too frustrating for users?
Agile or Big Design Up Front?
Historically, empires fragment and provinces rebel. Will we see a mechanic allowing for new civilisations to break off from existing ones?
The arguement could be made that civilisations are meant to represent cultures rather than empires, but this leaves tribes such as the Americans mostly redundant. Wouldn't it be more realistic for someone playing America to start with cities that have just broken away from an established English empire?
Okay, so I think the abandon city option might not be an viable here in the real world!
Turn 312 Mechanised Infantry defeat Spearmen, Basra Captured
Turn 313 85 Mechanised Infantry units fortified in Basra
Turn 314 "The citizens of Basra hate our culture and have..."
85 units down the drain without a fight....aaaaaaaarggh!
One of the hallmarks of Civ since the beginning has been that you can't win by doing any one thing well -- not war, not commerce, not building things or growing food. You have to find the right mixture. Comes Civ III, with its diverse collection of civilizations, you can choose a civ that focuses on one of those things, but that confers no special advantage in overall game play. Although different, the civs are evenly matched.
Once you have a game concept in place, how do you tune it to achieve this balance?
I really liked the ability to choose the economic model, values, security and future society attributes for my faction in Alpha Centauri, and I also like the unit editor and I was considerably disappointed when those features did not appear in Civ III.
Is there any chance we'll see those features incorporated into Civ IV?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I think the above re: Guns, Germs, & Steel should be modded higher. I too found that the book read like a Civilization game, and wondered how much either the game and/or the book influenced each other. In the epilogue to Guns... the author discusses the possibility of theories based on the science of history, and how that may lead to better organizations for people (e.g. balance between too much authority and too much anarchy).
nt
activestudios web design
From all the previews I've read, there will not be any choice of atheism/agnosticism for a religion in Civ IV. If all the religions are being made equal, with equal benefits for each, why are you singling this one out? It would make perfect sense to "discover" atheism right along with Marxism/Communism, as those governments are officially atheist. Personally, I was pretty upset to find out that my own personal faith was not going to be included in the sequel to one of my favorite game series, a game that will be sucking up a lot of my time in the future. Is it actually in there and we simply haven't heard of it? Or is it deliberately not being included?
If you want to see an example of an FPS with a plot and story that is really integrated and captivating, check out Marathon 2, I think it is available as an open source project now.
Aleph One is probably what you are referring to. If you want to know more about the amazingly complex and wonderful story there is only one place you need to go: The Marathon Story Page.
Question: Since you have addressed terrorism and fighting terrorists using a variety of methods in games in the past (Covert Action - great game - any chance of a remake?) as well as acknowledged the significant impact which spies, enemy action or terrorist-based activities can have on a modern, industrialized society (Civ, Civ II), why the sudden aversion to including this in Civ IV? Problems don't vanish or go away by ignoring them! You're not eliminating the plague, civil unrest or conventional warfare, are you?
Hi Sid. First up, I am loving the look of Civ4 so far-Kudos to you and the team. My question is, how exactly will culture work in Civ4? Particularly, what role will both the Culture Slider and Cultural Improvements/Wonders play in the game? Aussie_Lurker.
Hiya Sid, am REALLY loving the look of the new game. Quick question. We know that cities now have a maintainance cost associated with them, but what about improvements, wonders and units-will they still have a seperate maintainance cost? Thanks for your time! Yours, Aussie_Lurker.
Hi Sid, it looks like Civ4 is coming along very nicely indeed now-you and the team should be proud :)! My question is in regards to the new health system in Civ4. We know that the way population growth works has been altered, but can you tell us how the elements of food 'unit' (bread) surpluses/deficits and health actually work together? Thank you in advance. Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
Do the leader's apprearance change as time progresses like in Civ3, or do they stay the same throughout the game?
One annoying part of Civ is airports. I have a worker at point A and there is water between point a to point B. Why can't they use the airports on point A and B without having me micromanage? Is this going to be fixed in IV? It would be nice to be able to tell worker to go to point B and have them automatically go using airports or harbors if you have a ship in the city. I have had several units die because they decided to walk half way across the continent through war zones instead of using mass transit.
BTW, I am currently having my soul sucked away by Civ III Conquests and I love it. I went to a LAN party and we all played for one entire day. We had to set a time limit on the game so we would play something else and not have the LAN eaten up by Civ. I love the series.
Cmdr_Pooky sgg@nettally.com http://www.nettally.com/sgg/
subject says it all
There is hope!
.. there's a thought)
(I'm still going to lock the world away for a month right after I get IV. Hmm.. I.V.
I've been a long time player of this game. In fact, I've been playing since the original Civilization release. In all the games, it is very difficult to manage your empire in the late game due to the amount of units you accumulate as well as cities. So my question is: *What has been done to help players manage their vast empire efficiently during late game play?* I hope it still does not take nearly an hour to discover a new technology due to unit movement, etc. once you reach the industrial revolution in Civ III.
...but, I've wanted to know for years why the Civilizations games' premise is based on the idea that certain civilizations have inherent characteristics, when in the game all civilizations start out with a blank slate on a randomly generated world. It's easy to argue that the commercialistic "nature" of England's civilization is only due to geography and has nothing to do with the English themselves. I don't know; maybe it doesn't matter, but it just doesn't make any sense either. p.s. sorry if this has already been asked. I did a quick search but didn't find anything, though.
Does the New Civ IV have any weather or natural disaster aspect? In Civ III there were volcanoes - are they still in Civ IV? How about hurricanes, tidal waves, earthquakes, meteors, and other nasty things?? Any chance of them appearing in Civ V?
Movies go to theaters, then to dvd release. Videogames go to straight to stores and rental. David Jaffe (GOD of War director) blogged an insightful rant about Best Buy getting into the USED game selling market.
Where you can buy used games, or rent new games for 30 days at 10 bucks a month... OR buy a new game for $50. Its an interesting self destructing process it seems.
How does he feel about gaming as a buisness, the suits now dominating what game ideas get made, the quest for copying the latest greatest... The lack of inventive risk taking...
Those things would be interesting to hear talked about by Sid, someone i respect as being in the gaming industry for a while now and having been successful at it. Best of wishes Sid.
I've played Civ for years and feel it ranks as a top 3 game of all time.
Q1:
A couple points - I thought Alpha Centauri was brilliant. The terra-forming and changing of continents was really interesting. Will this kind of feature be in Civ 4? It's not appreciated by the masses but it added a whole new way to play the game.
Q2:
It seems that your own political leanings seem to peek out from the games I've played. For example, it seemed global warming destroyed alot of productivity in Civ2, was more managable in Civ3, and the planet actually attacked when 'hurt' in Alpha Centauri (Although it could become a powerful ally). It also seemed that Democracy and Republic were dominant in Civ2 and Civ3, and war was protested almost immediately, even in cases where a 'Pearl Harbor' scenario happens. To what extent do you feel this affects development and are you concious of this during balancing of the game?