CTP2, "The Best Civilization game yet"

JimMac · April 24, 2001, 15:06

Er.. Not my opinion actually, but that of The Wargammer

http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/call...er_ii_main.asp

Me? I am still waiting until the price is reduced in the UK. (Surely it cant stay full price for much longer?)

JimMac

(the article also gives Apolyton some publicity)

Skeeve · April 24, 2001, 15:55

I'm sorry, but I am Laughin' at Mark McLaughlin!! (The writer of that article in the Wargammer)

Take a look at this quote from his review:

"Mr. Meier will have to pull some real magic out of his hat to surpass Activision's excellent redesign of his initial concept. Call to Power II is clean, crisp, intuitive and addictive - and free from many of the annoying little ticks and tricks that detracted from and led to frustration in previous Civilization and Civilization-style games"

What is he kidding????!!!

Excellent redesign?
Clean?
Crisp?
Intuitive?
Addictive - I'll give him that one,
but free from many of the annoying little ticks and tricks...???
What about the bugs, the incomplete code, the crashes, the unplayable MP, the bugs, the fix-it-yourself code, did I mention the bugs?!

OH MY GOSH, DID HE EVEN PLAY THE GAME??!!

He even rates the AI a 4 out of 5!!!
Anyone who plays CTP2 for 2 minutes can figure out that the AI is on life support!! If I had to rate the AI ability on a scale of 1 to 5 I'd rate it a negative two!!

Sure, this guy's a good writer, but I think he submitted an article about the wrong game.

McLaughlin, try playing the game first, before trying to write a review based on the game manual!

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My reach exceeds my grasp!

Skeeve · April 24, 2001, 15:57

Sorry, I'm calmer now.

Immortal Wombat · April 24, 2001, 17:08

quote:

Originally posted by Skeeve on 04-24-2001 03:55 PM
Addictive - I'll give him that one,

I won't. Number of games I've got deeply into, you could count on the thumbs on one foot

Simpleton · April 24, 2001, 19:27

I know I said I wouldn't come back to write about CTP2 but after seeing the comments that this reviewer said I couldn't resist.
I don't know what CTP2 he supposedly played but it sure isn't the one that I deleted off of my hard drive 3 months ago. This guy obviously only played this game for a couple of hours. I thought some of the same things he did the first few hours I had it but quickly came to my senses. Civ III in its present condition (as we know it) is probably twice the game CTP2 is.
When I saw the 5/5 I laughed. This guy should be writing for Saturday Night Live! If this guy is trying to make a name for himself by sticking out from the crowd he's really picked a crappy game to do it with.
If CTP2 is the best Civ yet how it's deleted off of my hard drive sitting on the floor beside my cat's litter box and I've just last week I finished playing yet another game of CIV2?
CTP2 is a sham! Activision is a sham and so seems it be that this reviewer is also a sham.

faded glory · April 24, 2001, 20:30

I think it is funny. I went back and read through some of the old posts. Right off the bat there was critism. Yet these paid-off eggheads continued to spread there foul odor

.

PrinceBimz · April 25, 2001, 03:47

I agree with that review, most of it anyway other then the AI.

TheBirdMan · April 25, 2001, 04:32

Hi Skeeve.

Truth is probably, that he had beaten the AI, but only after having been closed to be wiped out

And he knows HE has a natural talent for all civ-games - ergo the AI must be very-very cleaver

dennis_caver · April 25, 2001, 13:57

Sounds like he has a vested interest in Activision. ... I'm thinking its
time to go back to Civ2-TOT. I get very frustrated with the AI desktop
crashes. Since I've got my desktop set up for blue trim ... I call it -
HERE comes the big dumb blue bomb. #&%$!@?%

Cave til ya puke,

Dennis

Skeeve · April 26, 2001, 00:06

quote:

Originally posted by TheBirdMan on 04-25-2001 04:32 AM
Truth is probably, that he had beaten the AI, but only after having been closed to be wiped out

And he knows HE has a natural talent for all civ-games - ergo the AI must be very-very cleaver

LOL Birdman! I guess he figured that since he couldn't possibly be a bad Civ player, then the AI must be really smart!

I think that review article is hilarious. Maybe I'll bookmark that web page so I can always go back for a good laugh.

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My reach exceeds my grasp!

Solver · April 28, 2001, 14:48

AI is easy, and the game his big potention. But without PBEM and AI, it's pretty much lost, of course.

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Solver the "Running Beer" - http://www.aok.20m.com

bj · May 6, 2001, 20:35

We too got the game because of a decent review and a full 2 page ad in a magazine, and also disappointed a bit. Keep in mind that reviewers do easily more than one game a week and they (reviewers) usually only get a couple of hours to play each game. I've come to realise that now and wont trust any gaming reviews as much any more, although I still find magazines such as Pc User (uk) a good starting point.

To get the right impression out of ctp2 I reckon a reviewer would need to play it almost a week and they just dont have the time. Im involved with a quake3 mod that has had a few reviews that are simply incorrect because the reviewers would have played them, oh, say 2-3 hours.

It is a long detailed review though, give him that, but my final 'bang for the buck' rating would've been quite below the 5/5 given.

redstar1 · May 7, 2001, 04:34

I'm not sure its fair to say that reviewers only spend a couple of hours on each game. Looking through the pages of the most recent UK gaming magazines I have, I can see that each reviewer only has 1 main game reviewed, some of them have reviewed some budget titles but there are 12 reviewers and 13 main reviews. I also have a freind from Univsersity who studied journalism and is now a reviewer for a magazine. He tells me that when the deadline passes for submission of games to be reviewed, they get passed out and al they are pretty much expected to do for the next 10-14 days is play the game inside out.

Nevertheless It does make you wonder how some games get rave reviews in magazines and so forth but in reality they are nothing but utter bollocks. I'll be honest and say I quite like CTP2. I honestly don't beleive the lack of good AI affects many of my games as i tend to follow an isolationist path, preferring to build up and secure the island/continent I start on. Perhaps it is the lack of satisfying diplomacy and AI players that leads me to do this.....

As with everyone else here i can't wait to see what Civ3 has in store.

bj · May 7, 2001, 11:16

Point taken, i didnt really have a gaming mag on hand to check, but as far as I was aware, even if they did only one game review they still contributed to the rest of the magazine (in different sections...) but that doesnt matter

My god, what a job! I'll take that anyday

I agree, before even visiting this site I thought some features of ctp2 were much improved (battle, for example) while others werent. Playing sole multiplayer games, even though would take forever even on a local network, would work very well. After a couple of games with computer controlled opponents though, you do see that the AI is poor, along with some other stuff. But we all know that...

Back on the article, Similarly I've seen poor reviews of games that I thought were good. Its a matter of tastes. If reviews from different magazines give similar results, I'd trust it, but one sole review would not entice me to buy/not buy the product any more.

These reviewers though, they spend so much time playing and so many different games and genres, perhaps only they truely know what is a quality game, more than anyone else? ? ?

redstar1 · May 7, 2001, 11:42

Of course it comes down to personal tastes....

Take Tetris for example, held high as one of the most addictive and fun games of all time, and on mass opinion it has to be regarded as such. Personally I've never 'got it'. I can do about 20 lines before it just starts to get a bit boring. The same goes for games like Elite and its sequels. Don't get me wrong, I regard Elite as one of the greatest games of all time. A fantastic idea and brilliantly implemented for its time but after you get past that certain stage where you become so much better than the computer (this applies much more to Frontier/FFE than to Elite) it becomes pretty much tedious. How much fun can there be in repeating the same action over and over again 6000 times just to get an Elite rating?

Anyhoo, i rant on

I've noticed this in the civ games too. I'll not suggest for a minute that I'm an expert civ player, I'm crap at waging war, which is probably why I follow isolationist policies. Also I cannot stand when there has been peace for hundreds of years and I want to talk to a Civ, only for them to immediately change government and declare war. Its a pain in the arse frankly. Any of the civ games would be given a massive increase in longevity with an overhauled diplomacy and economic model. Lets home for Civ3 to give the community what it needs....

All IMHO of course

Dave

redstar1 · May 7, 2001, 13:18

I reckon a good idea would be more non player events. By this I mean inter country events that perhaps give an indication of how well you are doing in certain areas. Things like sports. Who would love to see their civ's footy team beat their main rivals in front of 100,000 people at the colloseum?

Mayeb Sid should link Civ in with NBA and FIFA2001

Dave

JimMac · May 7, 2001, 14:46

Re: The reviews in game magazines,(in the UK anyway,-maybe other places?).

Both of the best selling PC games mags in the UK (PC Zone and PC Gamer) gave CTP2 a good review. Also, I recently noticed that both PC Zone and what passes for PCGaming World these days, use CTP2 as a benchmark game when reviewing other TBS games, saying something like "Game X" is good in many respects but not as good as CTP2.

What I am still not clear about is why do such established magazines with a reputation to maintain, come up with conclusions which are so different from the majority of on-line reviews and even more importantly

the "real experts" at Apolyton. I know that I would have bought the game if I hadn't come to here.

David Murray · May 7, 2001, 15:06

With regards to Wargammer's review:

I think the reviewer must have spent all of his time playing the Alexander scenario. He bangs on about it for most of the review, leading me to think he didn't really try out the "normal" game very much.

I mean, when you think about it, Civ2 is getting quite old, and it too has a great number of bugs. Many of the hardcore Civ fanatics bemoan that the Civ2 AI is too easy to beat, just like they do with CTP2. If a gaming magazine used Civ2 as its benchmark it would be laughed at by the gaming majority. Civ3 will blow everything else away when it comes out but there really isn't much at the moment that surpasses CTP2, for the gaming mags anyway. (Like I said, they can't compare everything to a game that has been around since 1996.)

Skeeve · May 8, 2001, 00:12

Redstar - I'm with you on Tetris! I find the game pretty pointless. Sure, it was kind of a challenge for 10 minutes, but after that, what's the point?

Hmm... maybe it would be more fun if, well, let's say you're playing a Civ game, and you find an enemy civ. Instead of declaring war on you, they challenge you to a game of Tetris!
That, might make it more meaningful.

- Skeeve

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My reach exceeds my grasp!

bj · May 8, 2001, 21:01

redstar - yes it definitely needs more such events, but i say more non-military, not non-player. For example, lawyers and corporate branches are in the same class as war units - they have to travel (slowly might i add) to the other cities and perform their action which is equivalent to an attack.

On a similar note, taking railroad it might take me 5 turns to get outside an enemy city. They expel me and immediately Im back in the city. That sucks.

I say there should be two sides to any future civ game, a military based side (represented by the playing map) and a non-military based side.

All actions regarding cities, armies, exploration and such should be carried out on the map with help from the usual dialogues (Army manager, etc)

All other actions and events should be carried out in a method similar to trade in ctp2. You can set your cities to produce these units, but unlike in earlier civs you dont have to move your caravan/freight unit to make a trade route. Similarly, take lawyers for example, you could disperse your lawyers to different cities/civilisations. Just like conversion by a cleric, a symbol would be shown next to the city to indicate enemy lawyers are present in the city, reducing overall production (not *all* production). Your own lawyers, or possibly even military units

could be used to get rid of em. Imagine having to pull 5 of your lawyers out of an enemy city to remove (sue) some from your own.

Like you said redstar, you could also have a sporting side of things. If you are at peace with another nation, you should be able to create a sporting 'link' which represents teams travelling to other nations to play sport. This could up commerce.

Of course all of these options should only be available once civilisations are discovered, and say, railroad has been discovered. Meanwhile all military units would retain normal movement rates etc. because moving a troop of machine gunners or a squadron of fighters or tanks takes a lot longer, and much more co-ordination, than it is to send a few lawyers or corporate branches.

Just a (long winded) idea, but if its any good might link over to a civ3 forum.

faded glory · May 11, 2001, 01:15

Arnt Wargammer those jackasses who just went outta business

?

Owell, if not, lets hope so