Column #127; By Christantine The Great

Christantine The Great is appalled with what he saw as MicroPROSE milking off of the success of CivII in his debut article entitled "The "Real" Civilization II".

This is the 127th installment of The Column, a long running feature on Apolyton where Civers can submit their pieces of writing on the past, present and future status of the Civilization gaming community.

To comment on Christantine's article, you can either email the author directly or post them below...

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Panda]

I've just finished reading this article, and while I'll agree that there are general continuities in the Civilization genre, it is unfair to dismiss Civilization II as Civilization 1.5.

The general continuities are self-evident: pick a tribe, build a civilisation to last for 6000 years. You get to found and develop cities, explore new worlds, research new technologies, built ever more powerful means of genocide. Great stuff!

Civ2, while faithfully adhering to this astoundingly successful formula, was also revolutionary: Isometric maps, and fully customisable, with sufficient explanations by the company to enable people to make their own improvements and modifications. So much so, that two years later when Conflicts in Civilization was released, people (like Jeff Head for example) were able to produce mod-packs and scenarios to rival the best efforts of Microprose.

There was no way this level of activity would be possible with a first-generation game like Civilization. If you've ever been to the Colonization home page (http://www.dledgard.freeserve.co.uk/) you can find a couple of saved games offering a quasi-scenario function. But Civ2 lets you do pretty much everything: Game interface borders, City interface, City icons, Terrain graphics and values, unit graphics and values, improvement graphics and values, people graphics, and new sounds (have I missed anything?). This allows Civ2 users to effectively reinvent the game as any other themed TBS game they wish.

Such an ability is for me, the most enduring aspects of Civ2. It is for me the single reason why Civ2 successors, CtP and Alpha Centauri, failed. The same reason why first generation games are no longer played: they are fixed in the year they were released. You can only play Civilization or Alpha Centauri so many times before it becomes dull and repetitive (cries of: Treason!). But it's true.

Alpha Centauri and Call to Power were not simple games. They took the basic formula and took it too far. True, Call to Power was very innovative in the genre; and, true, Alpha Centauri did redress criticisms of the limited diplomacy model of Civ2. But they were effectively stand-alone games.

I do agree with the point about there being lots of modifications released for Civ2. Conflicts in Civilisation made it easier to play scenarios. Fantastic Worlds included a scenario editor. The Multi-player edition added a multi-player function. But they were not afterthoughts. The original release did envisage a multi-player function, and a clever hacker realised this and hacked a new executable file enabling a two-player game. So from that point of view this was just more milking of the Civ legacy - and add-ons, or expansion packs, were common enough for other releases at the time, so why not? Certainly they have all been released just as the original/last release was becoming a little stale. What I think is inexcusable is Test of Time, which was released as a full commercial game, so you'd expect something different. You'd expect wrong from Microprose. The whole thing was just a mod to Civ2 using the interface of CtP with the single new innovation of linked maps. Big Whoop! Otherwise the principle of more of everything applies, but it is still recognizably a Civ2 development. The same cannot be said for the relationship between Civ2 to Civ1.

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"The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on"

[Father Beast]

I have to disagree with Christantine that civ2 was really more like civ 1.5. I think that civ2 was a vast improvement. to call civ2 a civ1 mod is to forget that civ1 was just about impossible to mod. It was pretty much stuck the way it was. even the "scenarios" that were made were just hacked savegame files.
I suppose that if civ3 comes out with a square tile system, you'll think it's just civ 1.8 or somesuch.

Now, Alpha Centauri really was much like a civ2 mod, even though it had some good improvements. I refer to AC often as civ 2.5.

MGE and ToT were both simply add on packs like CiC or FW, despite them being sold at full price. I can only guess that Microsoft -err- prose I mean, was getting greedy and didn't want just the add-on revenues.

[Father Beast]

oh yes, and I also want to say that I think it's a good thing to go so long between iterations of this game. That allows all of us civers to play it into the ground and discover all of its neat little tricks before the sequel comes out. I mean, how many editions of Tomb Raider have come out between civ editions? there's going to have been TWO versions of CTP between civ 2 and 3.

quote: Originally posted by Father Beast on 08-06-2000 12:08 AM I mean, how many editions of Tomb Raider have come out between civ editions? there's going to have been TWO versions of CTP between civ 2 and 3.

under normal conditions(sid&co not leaving microprose to form firaxis), what we probably see a "smac on earth"(named civ3) long before the release of ctp1

[Father Beast]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 08-06-2000 09:06 AM Originally posted by Father Beast on 08-06-2000 12:08 AM I mean, how many editions of Tomb Raider have come out between civ editions? there's going to have been TWO versions of CTP between civ 2 and 3. under normal conditions(sid&co not leaving microprose to form firaxis), what we probably see a "smac on earth"(named civ3) long before the release of ctp1

I don't think so. Civ3 was announced over a year ago and it won't be out until next year. the time between the announcement and release of CTP2 is something more like a year or less. of course that's just a quickie sequel like Christantine accuses civ2 of being.

you didnt understand me. i'm not talking about the current situation. i'm saying that if sid, brian and the rest had stayed with microprose, they would have released a "civ3" even before the release of ctp1...