gamepen review: a semi-review

i had promised myself not to read another review, let alone comment on it
but here goes...
http://gamepen.ugo.com/gamepen/review.asp?itemid=3377

quote: "I'm not Civilization! Honest! Look, I have Ramadayan instead of Hanging Gardens!"

Ramadayan?

quote: Trade routes, for instance, are made by building caravans (or their modern equivalent, trucking) over and over, until you have enough "trade points" to create a single route. It's very limiting in that you have to stop production just to build multiple caravans (Civ2 only reserved that "pleasure" for the endgame, when you had to build spacecraft parts) just to create one route. It is much more appropriate to build one caravan and have it go to another city itself, risking attack. It also allows more than one trade route of a product from that city.

yeah, it's great fun to build a caravan and then have to put it in a ship to travel accross the sea and reach the target city after 20 turns. and it's really ugly to just assign two cities towo build 2 caravans and to come back later click a button and create the route(which will too have the risk of being pirated). as for many trade routes per product, why should one seel on thing in two cities, if one of the two cities will pay more? just seel it to the one who gives the most money!

quote: Roads and railroads have been defanged as well. They no longer give any sort of Trade bonus; their only function is to speed travel. When flight becomes available, roads become less important. One might as well forget about wasting Public Works on their creation for the most part.

1) there are increasing-commerce tile improvements
2) i presume he only played on a small map, cause he is telling us that he played on gigantic map with no road building and that he could get his units to the war front in time...

quote: The advances are remarkably poor in the early going. For every advance in CTP2, there's two or three in Civ2. For instance, you only have Writing in CTP2; Civ2 has Alphabet, Writing, and Literacy.

and civ2 doesnt have Drama, Alchemy, Balistics... what's the point in such comparisons?

quote: CTP2 only has Pikemen, while Civ2 has Phalanxes and Pikemen, with the difference that Pikeman have a bonus against horses that Phalanxes don't.

CTP2 also has Hoplites...

quote: Moreover, some of the techs are suspicious - you must acquire Slave Labor to build Mines. Why is researching slave labor important to building mines?

from the GL entry : It is theorized that slavery was first invented as a system to make better use of criminals, postulating that they were more useful when put to work instead of being killed or eaten.

quote: Why do pre-iron working Warriors have shields and swords?

and why can i have tanks in 500ad in civ2?

quote: Why are Japanese culture-specific Samurai in the place of swordsmen? (It's a bit odd to see Hebrew Samurais.)

it's also a bit odd to see japanese phalanxes...

ok, that's it. i've had enough of this...
i didnt even finish it.... i'm just amazed how much hiw (early) comments on the cdmag.com forums are indentical with what he writes in the review. did he just take his forum post, put the sentces together and gave it as a review?

therefore, 2 1/2 thumbs down for the gamepen review

(unfortunately i cant make a half thumb icon, so it's a 3 after all )
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited December 01, 2000).]

quote: Roads and railroads have been defanged as well. They no longer give any sort of Trade bonus; their only function is to speed travel.

What a ridiculous use for them.


Sounds like another member of the "Suck Up To Sid" Club.

quote: Originally posted by lago on 12-01-2000 03:44 AM What a ridiculous use for them.

yeah i mean, the historical use of roads was to increase trade. increasing the speed of travelling was just a side-effect...

[Monkey]

quote: Call to Power 2 also lacks the customization of Civilization II, by the way. You can only change the text. You can't add tech advances or units as you did in Civ2, but you can customize values in CTP2 at the very least.

Yep, another reviewer who obviously doesn't know what he is talking about. Check out the creation forum here dude.

[Depp]

I pretty much warned ya didn´t I ? He has the facts all wrong (even the resulotion limit, which is 1280X1024)) and the opinions are just so twisted. It´s sad to see really...

[JamesJKirk]

I'm wondering if the reviewer actually even ever played Civ2 at all!

quote: The limitations of early society also have severe tech bottlenecks - it's not odd to have only one tech advance available, when in Civ2 you seldom had less than 7 or 8, and the limitations came near the endgame. One game of CTP2, I only had Horseback available, forcing my civilization to research it, and Lord knows no civilization could go without horses. The very next advance, I only had Feudalism available. A few turns later, only Bureaucracy then Classical Education available. Even worse, if you have a landlocked civilization, or are in a map with no oceans, you're forced to research such techs as Ocean Tactics. Honestly, why would any civilization research them if there are no oceans, or know of none. ("Let's research seafaring hypothetically. We've never seen an ocean or even a large lake, but we might in a few thousand years, so let's spend hundreds of years pondering it, to the exclusion of any other research!") It's pretty ridiculous, especially when often Ocean Tactics or Hullmaking might be the only option available.

and...

[QUOTE}The biggest culprit to this is the fact that CTP2 goes into the far future. Instead of the broad base of Civ2, it's been stetched vertically, and choices are sacrificed. Remember how some civilizations in Civ2 could become a power without even learning Literacy? Impossible in CTP2 - essentially, every civ has the same technological curve. There is no variation. [/QUOTE]

Yeah, you were never forced to search seafaring in Civ2 or anything, and there was certainly no pressure to become a democracy by the end of the game after researching every exact same advance as all the other civs...

actually, the max resolution is 1600x1200, but it wont show up for you to select if your video card does not support it
(his didnt apparently)

[Metamorph]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 12-01-2000 02:49 AM i had promised myself not to read another review, let alone comment on it but here goes...

You probably should have stuck with your initial instincts.

quote: Ramadayan?

Hmm, a spelling error. Yep, that invalidates the whole argument for sure.

quote: yeah, it's great fun to build a caravan and then have to put it in a ship to travel accross the sea and reach the target city after 20 turns.and it's really ugly to just assign two cities towo build 2 caravans and to come back later click a button and create the route(which will too have the risk of being pirated).

Most of the routes worth building (in gigantic maps, the sort that you accuse him of not playing later in your retort) cost some moronic amount of caravans, as many as 20 or more. That means 20 caravans have to be produced in multiple cities taking perhaps hundreds of city-production turns. OR, you could build ONE caravan and transport it by ship to the destination city. Choose wisely.

quote: as for many trade routes per product, why should one seel on thing in two cities, if one of the two cities will pay more? just seel it to the one who gives the most money!

Seel?

His point is that if you have coffee in Veracruz, then you should be able to sell that coffee TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, not just exclusively to Athens simply because they'll give you $3 more for it than Rome.

quote: 1) there are increasing-commerce tile improvements

...which aren't available until you've researched Trade, hundreds or even thousands of years later; and which cost some staggering amount of public works; and which CANNOT be present on land at the same time as another type of improvement.

quote: 2) i presume he only played on a small map, cause he is telling us that he played on gigantic map with no road building and that he could get his units to the war front in time...

I play on gigantic maps. I don't build roads. I get my units to the war front in time. River usually suffices for that. (Did I mention lately that I hate river? I think I might have.)

quote: and civ2 doesnt have Drama, Alchemy, Balistics... what's the point in such comparisons?

Balistics?

It's generally heralded that CtP2, while trying to cover a larger time frame than Civ2, ends up sacrificing important tech stepping stones to accomplish that task. Come on, Mark; don't you read the forums?

quote: and why can i have tanks in 500ad in civ2?

Probably for the exact same reason you can have them in 500ad (or earlier) in CtP2.

quote: ok, that's it. i've had enough of this... i didnt even finish it.... i'm just amazed how much hiw (early) comments on the cdmag.com forums are indentical with what he writes in the review. did he just take his forum post, put the sentces together and gave it as a review?

Hiw? Indentical? Sentces?

Come on Mark, I expect better from you.

- Metamorph

meta, first of all spelling errors in a forum post are a different thing from spelling errors in a review....
feel free to spell check my review(when it's posted)

quote: That means 20 caravans have to be produced in multiple cities taking perhaps hundreds of city-production turns. OR, you could build ONE caravan and transport it by ship to the destination city. Choose wisely.

and the ship will take one thousand years to get there... as for the 20 caravans, you could also make a trade route with a city that requires less caravans(i myself have never seen a route demanding 20 caravans)
beyond that, dont you agree that it should be more costly(in production) to create a trade route with a city in the in the other end of the map?

quote: His point is that if you have coffee in Veracruz, then you should be able to sell that coffee TO THE ENTIRE WORLD, not just exclusively to Athens simply because they'll give you $3 more for it than Rome.

strange, i believe he wanted to be able to sell coffee to more than one city(like civ2) and not to the "entire world"

quote: which aren't available until you've researched Trade, hundreds or even thousands of years later;

i believe you need to discover 4 or maybe 5 technologies from the start of the game to get trade

quote: It's generally heralded that CtP2, while trying to cover a larger time frame than Civ2, ends up sacrificing important tech stepping stones to accomplish that task. Come on, Mark; don't you read the forums?

i would not prefer a game where i would be discovering technologies every 2-3 turns, just for the sake of historical accuracy. while i enojy much better a game on an earth map with real technologies than one on SF setting, i dont care if 1-2 technologies are missing from the tech tree.
[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited December 01, 2000).]

[wheathin]

I think the more important point is that a supposedly objective reviewer made prejudicial and biased comments in other forums before he had a chance to play or review the game, as pointed out by Depp (I think) last week. He has not reviewed the game in a fair manner. The sheer volume of half-truths, misstatements and flat-out errors in his review proves that he does not care a whit about giving the game a fair shake, but rather wants to use his position as a reviewer to suck up to Sid.

It would be better if he said "I do not beleive that any civ style game will ever be good unless it has Sid's name on the box. If this game had been Sid Meier's Pong, I would give it a kajillion stars based on the box art alone."

btw, Mr Falcon complains about the manual...

quote from yet another post on cdmag.com

quote: I hate having to go through the entire map to see which units are active.

i believe the last page of the manual has the keyboard shortcuts. if he checked that page, he would find what the "o" key does


and a quote from a previous post devoted to all the modmakers in the creation forum

quote: Those .txt files are basically for creating new scenarios, not improving CTP2

[skorpion59]

quote: Maybe Activision isn't paying off the right people (or maybe they tried to send them the check through the mail). Inside joke.

That is too good. I have missed your humor Wes.
(BTW, I finally got my copy today, although it was addressed to Tom & Katy).

Markos, in trying to catch up with all that has been going on lately, I have noticed one thing. You have been the one to consistently keep these CtP2 forums going and to provide much help and guidance. I know from previous experience that this is more than a full time job and would like to say 'Thanks'. Maybe now you can start getting some more help.

Back to the topic at hand......
I think this guy pretty much made a fool of himself for all the world to see. Some of his statements were so blatently wrong that he set the Civ2 community back instead of helping it. That was a PROFESSIONAL, unbiased game review, yeah right. (I think it is time they let the Apolyton Civ2'ers start doing the reviews. At least they have integrity.)

quote: Originally posted by skorpion59 on 12-01-2000 05:03 PM Markos, in trying to catch up with all that has been going on lately, I have noticed one thing. You have been the one to consistently keep these CtP2 forums going and to provide much help and guidance. I know from previous experience that this is more than a full time job and would like to say 'Thanks'. Maybe now you can start getting some more help.

well, nice words wont get you out of it! you've got the game, we need some maps!!

[WesW]

I thought about writing this bozo a nasty letter, but if he doesn't care enough about his job as a reviewer to familiarize himself with the game he's reviewing, then he probably won't care about any letters he gets responding to his review.
I didn't know whether to laugh or shake my head about the "can't add units or advances" part, and much of the rest of the review was about as ignorant. How do these people keep their jobs?

Maybe Activision isn't paying off the right people (or maybe they tried to send them the check through the mail). Inside joke.

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 12-01-2000 12:08 PM (or maybe they tried to send them the check through the mail). Inside joke.

FOTCL!!!

Jason Levine, a CGO reviewer, writes in the cdmag.com forums

quote: I've submitted my review for CGO/Computer Games. I expect it'll be posted in a few days. Without giving the whole thing away, those of you who have read my previous posts in this forum can guess that it will be more positive than Jonah's. I read Jonah's Gamepen review and I've read all his posts in this forum, and while I agree with some of his criticisms, there are a few I strongly disagree with: 1) The game is unbalanced. Call Power I was wildly unbalanced. The game was replete with "phalanx sinking battleship" incidents (a phrase which was coined for the Sid Meier games btw) and the uncoventional warfare units were way too powerful. I found CTP2 to be quite well balanced. The unconventional units are still powerful, but it's possible to counter them after the fact now. 2) The game forces you along certain technological paths. Yes, and I've never played a Civ 2 game where the endgame didn't wind up with everybody researching the same techs too. It's a strength of Civ 2 that the paths separate more widely early in the game, but they all seem to wind up in the same place. And I've never played a SMAC game where the research paths weren't all pretty much the same either, if only because the computer players all seem to have their hearts set on beligerance. BTW, Jonah seems to find it a strength of Civ II that you can sustain an empire without literacy. Now that's wildly unrealistic. 3) The cultural specifism. From a western pov, Hebrew samurai seem very odd indeed. I even make a little joke about this in my review. However, from an eastern pov, phalanxes in Japanese armies are just as odd. And am I the only one who finds it odd that Deirdre Skye would use planet busters? On the whole, Jonah seems to focus on specific aspects of CTP2 that he either doesn't like or feels that Civ2 and SMAC do better, and these specific items were enough to sour him on the whole game. There's no question in my mind that Civ2 and SMAC are overall better games than CTP2. But I still find CTP2 enjoyable, particularly if you want to concentrate on the military instead of micromanaging cities.

[This message has been edited by MarkG (edited December 01, 2000).]