End Time; 2000 AD or 3000 AD?

icet · February 21, 2004, 17:33

Please take this poll and post your views regarding the end time of the game. Should it be 2000 or something AD or 3000 or something AD?

Trifna · February 22, 2004, 00:09

If Civ starts covering up to more than the ACTUAL time, it will mean that the developers will balance the game so that all is used while if it finishes with 2000 techs, it'll mean that we will play through history (with no science fiction, maybe only very predictable things).

Optimizer · February 22, 2004, 02:45

I refuse to answer this poll because there are too few options.

lajzar · February 22, 2004, 05:46

Yeah, no bananas

Mart · February 22, 2004, 05:50

what i like about Call to Power is that it ends somewhere in the future. I voted 3000AD

Fosse · February 22, 2004, 13:01

Didn't we all complain about the last poll having no "near future" option around 2050 AD?

I'm not casting a vote, but I'll say that I agree that near and very predictable future is all that should be done, and more focus should be put into making Industrial and Modern ages more playable and fun, instead of tacking on sci-fi.

icet · February 22, 2004, 14:12

Regardless of what our views are I am sure that the end time of Civilization 4 will be 3000 something AD.

Plotinus · February 22, 2004, 14:31

Why are you so sure? They've never extended the timespan of the game yet, and we're already on the second expansion pack to the third game...

icet · February 22, 2004, 14:40

I feel sure because a majority wishes the game end time extended to 3000 AD and most also wish some other features of Call to Power in Civilization 4 and I think that the makers will take into account the needs of the majority of their customers.

Trifna · February 22, 2004, 14:52

Why are you so sure that a majority wished the game to extend to 3000 AD? This is your second gratuitous affirmation, be careful it drowns credibility of your sentences...

We don't have a market analysis.

icet · February 22, 2004, 15:08

You can get an idea by watching the results of the polls and views of the people in the forums.

icet · February 22, 2004, 15:08

You can get an idea by watching the results of the polls and views of the people in the forums.

Fosse · February 22, 2004, 17:50

True, but if you go back and look at what was said in polls and forums of the Civ 3 List you'll see that the majority of Apolyton posters is hardly the determining factor in game design.

I do think that, as a committed community to the Civ series and TBS genre, that our opinions carry some weight. But I also recognize that it isn't nearly as much as we'd like. For one thing, we have a tendancy to say things like "I want to to have an ultra detailed economy model where I can change the price of CD players," or "I want to see the game play for 1 year = 1 turn from 4000 BC to 3000 AD." As a community, we're a little insane.

The fact that a dozen more people voted for a 3000 ending rather than a 2000 ending - with no option in between - doesn't strike me as compelling evidence that Civ 4 is going into the year 3000.

lajzar · February 22, 2004, 17:52

You know, if you looked at the list that was generated just before civ3, you would have found a similar majority in favour of an exgtended endgame. There are many other things that a huge number of people were in favour of in that list.

Very few of them got implemented.

I guess that means that regardless of what we say here, they didn't really listen to their customers.

DarkCloud · February 22, 2004, 18:36

icet, we already did a poll about this- that's why a lot of people are complaining

In fact, here's the link http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=104021

and that poll was more comprehensive than yours.

Please check out this thread:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=105391

for more information on the polls already conducted here.

Oh and by the way, welcome to apolyton!

okblacke · February 22, 2004, 21:13

Quote:

Originally posted by lajzar

I guess that means that regardless of what we say here, they didn't really listen to their customers.

No, what it means is, we're not their customers.

Firaxis gives Apolyton its props, but no one should be deluded that a game that sells hundreds of thousands (millions?) of copies is going to be strongly influenced by the opinions of a few thousand hardcore fanatics.

We could all evaporate and it wouldn't impact the bottom line.

I've seen what happens when developers take their cue from the fans. It's not pretty. (HOMM IV, anyone?)

As Fosse said, we're a little insane.

[ok]

Paddy · February 23, 2004, 07:17

I would like to see the finish closer to 3000 than 2000...

we start so long ago, it can only be good for us to be willing to peak a little into the future

icet · February 23, 2004, 09:53

Yes after going through the old ages for so long we wish to enjoy the present and future ages to the full.

Fosse · February 23, 2004, 11:56

You guys are making it sound like playing the ancient and medeival ages are a chore!

With so many people enjoying the early game and the medieval ages as much as they do, I'd rather see work done to broaden the scope of the earlier game than make it even less of the total game length.

wrylachlan · February 23, 2004, 12:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Fosse
You guys are making it sound like playing the ancient and medeival ages are a chore!

With so many people enjoying the early game and the medieval ages as much as they do, I'd rather see work done to broaden the scope of the earlier game than make it even less of the total game length.

Ditto

Plotinus · February 23, 2004, 12:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Fosse
With so many people enjoying the early game and the medieval ages as much as they do, I'd rather see work done to broaden the scope of the earlier game than make it even less of the total game length.

Me too. If you want anti-gravity tanks and robot infantry to play with in the year 2500, which things from the earlier ages do you want to lose in order to make room for them?

Personally I wouldn't mind it stopping in the *near* future, simply to give us a chance to play with the latest toys for a little longer before the game ends; in particular, the spaceship gets launched too early, in my opinion. I think that if the spaceship is kept, which it should be, it ought to require a few futuristic and perhaps slightly fictional advances, rather than c. 2000 technology - after all, we're hardly close to flying to Alpha Centauri right now. But that's all.

The point of Civilization is meant to be seeing how you would do controlling one of the great civilisations from history. Would you go the way of the Pharaohs or survive to modern times? It's a game that's set in real-life history, or rather, an alternative version of real-life history that might have happened if things had been different (if the continents had been different, if different cultures had been next to each other, or if - God forbid - Bamspeedy had been in charge of the French). I think that messing about with future science fiction, fun though it would undoubtedly be, would be to lose sight of that basic plot. I think that the makers of the game are well aware of this, which is why Conquests is the way it is - focusing more on particular parts of real-life history and letting us play them for ourselves. You'll note that there is no weird Star Trek Conquest or anything of that nature. On the basis of this, I doubt very much that any future Civilization game will go further into the future than any of the others have.

lajzar · February 23, 2004, 18:13

What I'd like is for each tech to be defined internally as being from a particular era. However, this should have no effect during a game.

During set up, the player chooses a starting era and a finish era. All teach earlier than the starting era can be researched at 1/10 normal cost. All techs later than the chosen finish era are forever unobtainable. The system will adjust the research costs to make the amount of beakers the same regardless of which part of the tech tree the player wants available.

This way, players could choose when they want the game to end. But definitely, if it is a choice between shipping with a longer tech tree or a broader one, let's go for breadth. But make the system such that a modder can add the length. I don't want it to ship with, say, 60 techs in the default game and a hard coded limit of 64 techs in any modpack. I want to be able to produce broad and deep mods.

mr Rura · February 26, 2004, 04:09

Including far [>2100 AD] future is IMO a sick idea. if you like SF just play SMAC, not civ... I like s-f but not in Civilization.

SM Civilization has always been realistic, and I hope it will be so. Why? Science-fiction just don't fit to Civ. What I like in civ is realism. Everything what is presented in the game existed in real. adding future sacrifies realism with no mercy...

adding the future perhaps would be good if we could predict the future and see what it look like

. But we can't unfortunately...

AroSch · February 26, 2004, 08:43

I also prefere a timespan up to 2000 and something. Plotinus and many others pointed the reason out in another tread to the same question or here: Broader game in a shorter timespan over a thinner one for a longer span.

Fosse · February 26, 2004, 10:35

The more I think about it, the more the broader shorter game argument seems like the winning one.

I've been opposed to far future for a while as a matter of personal taste, and therefore stuck arguing my opinion that sci-fi in any whole history game will be lame. But the truth that adding a future timeline will necessitate limiting content throughout the rest of the game seems to be an ironclad argument against the far flung future.

With most people reporting that the early ages are their favorites, and many asking for more techs, buildings, and units from all current eras, there seems to be little room for the future.

lajzar · February 26, 2004, 18:06

My preference is broad and long. However, realistically, the developers aren't going to do both. So the best solution I think is to ship it with a BROAD epic scenario.

However, the game should ship with enough room (ie unallocated unit slots, tech slots, mod options, etc) that a sufficiently interested modder can expand it to broad and long.

alva · February 28, 2004, 21:59

Jeezes, how many 'end game' polls have been made???

It's not that big of a deal, is it?