Civ III and Beyond...

[Christantine The Great]

How about, at the end of all current technologies, the game goes into the SMAC techs. We would pick up from "Hand Weapons" and continue. I think it is kinda silly to still be using a howie in 2133. This would be an option of course so no one can come yelling "I don't wanna." or "No!". The good side of this is that it continues replayability by a lot.

[jdlessl]

So you want to give up what's left of your spare time for this game?

That's a cute idea, but there's a lot of stuff in the SMAC tech tree that we don't need. Motorized vehicles, airplanes, that kind of stuff. I say just put in the extra techs to allow FTL travel and graduate to MOO.

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Jared Lessl

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

I dont quite understand, but about what I do, I think I like this idea. I want civ-3 to end at the year 2000, but at in much more years in between 4000 BC, and 2000 AD. Like to start off with at the year 4000 BC, one turn would be 10 years, then when it reached 1 AD, it would turn to 5 years, then at 1000 AD, the years per turn would be 2. At 15-1700 it would change to 1. Then at 19-1950 it would change to seasons, winter, spring, summer, and fall. Then at 1990, it would change to months.

I still dont quite fully know about my own idea of these turns/years, Please dont jump on me, I still dont know about this myself.

[DarkCloud]

I'll be happy if the tech tree merely goes to the year 2050 in new technological developement;
however if it went to 3000 and Earth wasn't destroyed then we could have 'Cities in the Sky' (Read James Blish to understand)

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto on 12-09-2000 05:17 PM I want civ-3 to end at the year 2000, but at in much more years in between 4000 BC, and 2000 AD. Like to start off with at the year 4000 BC, one turn would be 10 years, then when it reached 1 AD, it would turn to 5 years, then at 1000 AD, the years per turn would be 2. At 15-1700 it would change to 1. Then at 19-1950 it would change to seasons, winter, spring, summer, and fall. Then at 1990, it would change to months.

I dont now about months. But, anyway - your idea could be turned into a combined pre-game option difficulty-level + timeline-screen, with dragable sliders under each time-era; eras that goes from ancient to modern times.

The sliders go from 20-, 10-, 5-, 1 year and quarter (= seasons). Underneath these sliders you have "reset to default" buttons for each difficulty-level.

[Ralf]

I want the Civ-3 main-game to end 2040 AD, just as Civ-2 did. However, it would be very nice if Firaxis included one of many futuristic beyond-2041 scenarios that would have end-techs like the early ones in SMAC.

Your idea is great - but, add it to a included futuristic scenario instead.

[Yog-Sothoth]

If Civ3 comes with a research three that has a unlimited amount of slots, this would be easy to implement. Firaxis could then supply a couple of different threes, and if thats not enough you can make your own.

[Tical_2000]

I'm sort of a conservative gamer. I also want Civ3 to end in the not so distant future. I mean, future techs are cool but some are WAY too out there (CTP & CTP2). I want a larger ancient and medieval period instead of a wacky future era with eco-republics and gaia controllers and what not. What do you think?

[Truman]

Ending the game in the near future (2000 - 2040 AD) would make it tough to give the game a viable science victory condition. Any decent Civ player will have developed all techs up to real world 2000 AD before 1500 AD, game time. What kind of science victory would be plausible with that level of technology AND be a worthwhile goal to attain? In the original Civ, players attained interstellar travel before 1900 AD!

No, Civ 3 should progress into the future by at least a couple of centuries. As far as the future techs being unrealistic, that's probably what Leif Erikson or Alexander the Great would have said about ships travelling to the moon.

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"Let me know the instant we have nukes!" ~Harry S. Truman
[This message has been edited by Truman (edited December 10, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Truman (edited December 10, 2000).]

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Tical_2000 on 12-10-2000 01:22 AM I want a larger ancient and medieval period instead of a wacky future era with eco-republics and gaia controllers and what not. What do you think?

Theres a saying that goes: "If you try to please everybody, you may end up pleasing nobody".

Translated to the Civ-3 project this means:

Expanding the main-game beyond 2020-2040 AD is not going to be popular by conservative players, and those who DO like this approach, are likely to rant about this or that futuristic government, improvement, unit or wonder, and the fact that this or that version of it, perhaps wasnt exactly what they wanted either.

Firaxis; save yourselfes some headache! Let advanced tailor-cut scenarios deal with the believes of future and fantasy, please.

The main-game should have the following time-eras:

- Stone-age
- Ancient
- Middle age
- Renaissance > Enlightenment
- Industrial revolution
- Modern age

In Civ-2 the city-graphics changed from ancient to industrial, and then again to modern. In Civ-3 it should change between each and every historical era.

In addition to the time-travel slider-bars suggested in my previous post; above era-boundaries should be drag-able back and forth. This should stop historically interested players from getting annoyed over "wrong" default settings.

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PS: If Civ-3 is going to end 2020-2040 AD, they cannot realistically implement underwater ocean-cities in the main-game. Any thoughts about that? Its OK by me.
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TRUMAN quote: "No, Civ 3 should progress into the future by at least a couple of centuries".
That would definitly NOT be a god idea. I dont want a diluted game-experience like CTP or even CTP-2.

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 10, 2000).]

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by Truman on 12-10-2000 08:05 AM Any decent Civ player will have developed all techs up to real world 2000 AD before 1500 AD, game time.

Did you enjoy those games? I always developed all my techs no sooner then 1900-1950 AD, in Civ-2, Emperor-level - sometimes Diety.

Theres seems to be two kinds of players that simply cannot relax, and just enjoy the Civ-game in its full length:

- Those who tries to conquer the world as soon as possible - preferably before 1000 AD - game after game.
- Those who tries to develop of the techs as soon as possible - preferably before 1500 AD - game after game.

Relax a little. Instead of frantically found and conquer huge 50-60+ city-sleeze empires early on; try to cultivate smaller 25+ well-developed ones. And save any huge several-civ invasions until late end-games, then most of the AI-civs is railroaded. Have fun!

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited December 10, 2000).]

[Truman]

The questions remains: What modern scientific goal is both possible yet unattained at this time *and* worthy of ending the game with? Traveling to another planet was done in the original game, so a "Mission to Mars" ending would be repetitive.

Civ games don't need to be historically accurate. The selling point of the whole series has been to alter the course of history, after all. Scenarios with limited tech trees can be developed, but the main game should extend into the future as well as the past. It would be more difficult to build an extended tech tree for scenarios than it would be to trim all futuristic branches from a larger standard tree.

[airdrik]

Idea: have civ 3 end when you land your first colony on mars/the moon. You win civ 3 there, and you can now play that game on 'SMAC 2' (or have some title to suggest the colonization of the solar system). When you win that one (by landing your first colony on Alpha Centary, or some other goal) then you can now play that game on MoO 2.

What do you think?

[Tical_2000]

quote: Originally posted by Truman on 12-11-2000 06:44 AM The questions remains: What modern scientific goal is both possible yet unattained at this time *and* worthy of ending the game with? Traveling to another planet was done in the original game, so a "Mission to Mars" ending would be repetitive. Civ games don't need to be historically accurate. The selling point of the whole series has been to alter the course of history, after all. Scenarios with limited tech trees can be developed, but the main game should extend into the future as well as the past. It would be more difficult to build an extended tech tree for scenarios than it would be to trim all futuristic branches from a larger standard tree.

This may be so. However, the way CTP so recklessly dived into obscure future technologies was sort of weird and empty. It was like good ol' civ was being transformed into some sort of fantasy world. Civ does not strike me as a fantasy game. I'm also irritated by players who would kill their own mothers to get that next tech in the tree. I don't think thats what civ is about at all. I'd much rather have fresh, useful game concepts and an kickin' AI than a neverending tech tree.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

quote: Expanding the main-game beyond 2020-2040 AD is not going to be popular by conservative players, and those who DO like this approach, are likely to rant about this or that futuristic government, improvement, unit or wonder, and the fact that this or that version of it, perhaps wasnt exactly what they wanted either.

I think that the whole "Sweep of Time" concept was designed to take care of this sort of problem...assuming, of course, that it's not defunct at this point. It only really makes sense for CivIII to cover the same time period as CivII if it's going to dovetail with SMAC.