Having played CTP2, what Civ3 really needs is...

[Venger]

A heart transplant, and a Cradle mod.

The CTP2 system with the Cradle mod is a rich conucopia of trade, techs, wonders, units, and goods. Cities are not restricted in size or scope the way they are in Civ3, the combat is MILES better, the terrain graphics, while inferior, scroll 10 times smoother even at 1600x1200 than Civ3 at the default resolution.

I haven't done much diplomacy, but from the looks of it there are MORE options in CTP2 than Civ3. Remember, a whole bunch of Civ3 "diplomacy" is nothing more than trade. In CTP2, there are knowledge pacts and other things. Now I can't say it's better yet, as I haven't played it enough to see it in execution, but there seems to be more options...

Which is why I think I like the modded CTP2. So many options, loads of governments, more options in your government for specialists, just more of everything. I think it makes it a little richer, though I can see how some may find it more convoluted.

Somewhere, theres a blender, and if you put all of CTP2 with mods and Civ3 in, you may have one fine product...

Venger
P.S. You may want a dash of SMAC as well...

[Ferdi]

You are right, but why don't they build a civilization construction kit instead of a supposed finished game? In this way everyone would be able to create its own game with an appropriate toolkit.

Currently it seems that there is a lot of things that can't be easily modified.

FYI: CivIII has left my hard drive like ctp2 in is time because I do not have the desire to try mods.

[opaque]

Interesting how a group of people who have bought the game have been able to do a better job of many of the game's concepts than the designers themselves. If Civ 3 accepted this kind of modding, we might have seen the same thing.

[hexagonian]

Thanks Venger

I'm not about to say that 'Cradle' is the end-all of all civ-style games - there are still a lot of things within my Mod that I would like to alter - there are still limitations, weaknesses with the AI, Diplomacy, and so forth.

The thing is, CTP2 is FULLY editable/customizable, and with the SLIC option, is almost unlimited in terms of scenario potential. Unfortunately the fan support never grew to support a robust Scenario community. Most of the effort focused on bringing CTP2 up to a playable level with the three main historical Mods (Cradle, MedMod, ApolytonPack), a revamp of Goods (GoodMod) and a host of SLIC enhancements that found their way into the Mods.

At this point, the game can progress into the Scenario building phase, as the structure to create scenarios (using the three main Mods) is already in place. All we need a people willing to start, and a viable audience.

The CTP2 community is still small in comparison with cvi3, but it is growing. And there is work being done to contunually improve diplomacy, which IMO, still needs some work in CTP2 - but fan-created work in this area has greatly improved this feature from the default game.

In the words of Immortal Wombat...
Join us!

[Immortal Wombat]

I think I'm going to compose a song called Scripting Language and embed it as an mp3 into every thread a Firaxian has ever posted in

Originally posted by hexagonian
In the words of Immortal Wombat...
Join us!

Hey! My words were blue, and underlined

Join us!


Join us!


Join us!

[kimmygibler]

Civ 3 has certainly succeeded in making ctp2 look pretty good. I could definately see myself loading it up again sometime to try out all the new mods. I gave up on after some early medmod version. Although even then the medmod made the game a million times better. Like a new game. I will still wait to see if civ3 is ever patched.
Although now I am sceptical if a decend patch will ever come from firaxis. With the exception of a few hangers-on, we can all see in hindsight that civ3 was a pretty poor effort. I presume most people have stopped playing and are looking for other games now. This will certainly turn many people on to ctp2, which should be great for the future of that game.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if firaxis gives up on the game as well. Do people actually think that it can be salvaged?

(like I say, there are always the exceptions who love the game still. I acknowledge this, so don't bother making the usual post in defense of civ3 cause I don't care)

[yin26]

It would seem that what milk the Civ series might have squeezed out has been sacrificed for a weekend barbecue.

[odisseus]

If Civ3 had a script language like CTP2 has (the SLIC language) ....

But it hadn't!

[Colonel Kraken]

My wife and I both love playing Civ3 despite all its flaws. Yet we continually mention how CtP2 did certain things so much better --certain little things that make the game so much more user friendly.

For instance, the production queue: In CtP2, just insert and delete items from the queue and change their position in the queue at will. In Civ3, it's an excercise in futility and frustration to eliminate items from a queue or place them in a different order.

What, you already have temple in the queue as the third item and you want it as the first item? Sorry, you have to first insert something over top of temple so that it's available to be built; put it at the top of the queue; then replace the item in the spot originally held by temple with the item that used to occupy position one (now occupied by temple). Huh?

Wow, CtP's model was so much simpler/easy to use. As I've read before, it seems as if Firaxis, in an attempt to avoid redoing CtP *mistakes*, they went overboard and avoided ANYTHING CtP --even those items that worked beautifully. Too bad Firaxis thought they had to reinvent the wheel so many times. *Sigh* Oh well.

[kimmygibler]

Yeah, mabye firaxis is really working for activision to revitalize ctp2. After thinking about the flaws of civ3, you really appreciate ctp2.