c188# A CIV3 PREVIEW

[Solver]

Saddam, let me answer your question. Civ 3 does not run on 800x600, it doesn't run on anything less than 1024x768. I will though, do some work to force it run that way. I'll get civ 3 soon, very soon, while waiting for the legal copy to arrive in Europe.

[Provost Harrison]

Hey Solver, I may know a solution to your problem of running 1024x768 on a 800x600 display!

Some videocards have the feature of having a larger desktop size than the viewing area, so basically although the computer registers 1024x768, the videocard displays 800x600 but will scroll it when your mouse gets to a particular side of the screen. See if your computer will do it, it may save you all this headache

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
I seem to recall that building a city inside another nations border was an act of war (may be wrong however) so I think it highly doubtful that you'll be able to place colonies inside their borders without serious consequences.

I have windered what happens when a colony of yours is swallowed by the cultural borders of another civ. do You just lose the colony and all benefits?

[Uncle Thade]

Hey Solver that was a great review and really good column. Very insightful and thoughtful. Your optimism is balanced with a healthy dose of skepticism. Thanks for the column.

Like you said about Markos: "as I don’t want to read his musings"

I wonder if your going to write a column after the release?

[squid]

Originally posted by Father Beast


I have windered what happens when a colony of yours is swallowed by the cultural borders of another civ. do You just lose the colony and all benefits?

I suppose if it had enough culture, it would resist and become an virtual "island" or "pennisula" in their territory. I'm sure the culture required to take a city is far more than having a city radius overlap a city center.

Else, you could EASILY build a city on the edge of another's radius and overtake it....and I mean easily. This probably is not the case.

[Solver]

Provost - I have that thing done in Linux, but how do I do in Windows? I have a very nice video card (up to 1280x1024, 32 MB video ram, etc.), but how do I do it? Just don't know .

Uncle Thade - sure I will write a review once I get it and have some playing practice. Also, I will buy a pirate copy of Civ 3, while waiting for the legal game to arrive, and chances are I'll have it this week, before the official release. Pirates work quickly sometimes, you know. As for Markos, I've talked enough to him, and know his writing style, that's terrible .

[Executor]

I've never bothered to read much about the DirectX API, but shouldn't it be rather easy to switch resolutions? Just stretch or compress the bitmaps and you're done. As long as the change in resolution isn't very large, you shouldn't see much of a difference (ie. stretching a 800x600 bitmap to 2400x1600 will not look good). Sure things will look smaller in the 800x600 screen because you've compressed a 1024x768 down to 800x600, but the game will at least run.

[Solver]

The question here is, how do I do the thing that Provost Harrison described in his last post.

[Keygen]

Good review Solver, well done

But why the hell while having the ability to play the game on 1024x768 resolution to want to play it in 800x600?
If I could play it with an acceptable graphic quality in 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 resolution I would! Less scrolling more fun

[Solver]

Keygen, after you complete the Epochi design and appear on ICQ, we can have a conversation about it .

[Keygen]

Originally posted by Solver
Keygen, after you complete the Epochi design and appear on ICQ, we can have a conversation about it .

OK I will

[Martin Gühmann]

CPU clock and memory requirements are really low.

I thought this from Civ2, until my empire reached a certain size. Empire management was a pain and although disabled all time wasting messages like here is a building finished, there is a city very happy, this city is rioting, my 486 with 8MB needed 20 minutes to cycle through all cities, I wasn't able to do anything during this time. My K6 with 64 needed for the same task for minutes, this time is also too long, and shows me that the requirements for Civ2 are extremly high if you try to expand until there is no space on the map or the game just says "Too many Cities". The same thing is true for CTP1 concerning systems requirements, but there was no problem to administrate your empire. No uneccessary message during the pre-human turn. My point is that you can expand in a civ style game over your sytem resource, otherwise there would be no fun, and that was the reason why Civ2 died for me, I reached the limit of the game not of my computer. There I was allready far beyond these limits. But I was able to accept them until I was able to expand.

Another question is: Will be Civ3 as moddable as CTP2 is. I read here an annoncement of a a city kill option for Civ3 if you just conquered that city. So far as I know there is no script language like slic in CTP2 that allowed me to implement this city kill option afterwards into CTP2.

The only thing that will be shure is that Sid Meyer and Firaxis love Civ in contrast to Activision so I belive that everything that is in will work fine, and if not they will release the final patch. Unfortunatly I have the feeling that Firaxis style how to play civ is different to mine, so Civ3 will be a surprise for me and I can wait to play it.

-Martin

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann
Another question is: Will be Civ3 as moddable as CTP2 is. I read here an annoncement of a a city kill option for Civ3 if you just conquered that city. So far as I know there is no script language like slic in CTP2 that allowed me to implement this city kill option afterwards into CTP2.

The fast answer is an unequivocal NO

Civ 3 may turn out to be adaptible enough for most people to write scenarios. Firaxis have promised good support for mod and scenario makers. That may not live up to the expectations of those people used to SLIC coding. Only time will tell.