Column #146; By Zero_Tolerance

Zero_Tolerance is intrigued to ponder how Sid Meier's Dinosaurs and Civilization III will mesh together. ZT makes his Column debut with his article entitled "The Sweep Of Time".

Comments/questions are welcomed here, or you may opt to contact the author directly.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Zer0_T0lerance]

Dear DanQ or MarkG,

There is a critical error in this document that I think needs to be fixed. Look in the 4th paragraph where it says 2100 B.C. That should say 2100 A.D. Sorry about that.

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Zero (formerly jrhughes98)
[This message has been edited by Zero_Tolerance (edited December 24, 2000).]

[Ken Hinds]

Gee, you want Fraxis to take my CIV II scenario (still in development) and make a whole game out it? Well, I guess that I could accept that.

When I first broached the scenario idea a year or so ago in the creation forum there was reasonable enthusiasm for the idea of starting in the era of "Lucy" or earlier and bringing your "tribe" up to the dawn of what we call civilization. This would actually end some time prior to the Ancient Empire Scenario series by Kull. Probably late Neolithic, certainly no later than the Chalcolithic.

One of the prime reasons it is still in development is the problem of removing various enhierent abilities of Settlers without violating the license agreement. Another was how the launch the spaceship replacement without actually launching it. I was looking at having your goal being the building of Stonehenge. I also wanted to have some new wonder movies, but have not yet figured out how to get them created.

Playing the scenarios "Slash and Burn" and the "Search for El Dorado" help me realize that some of my other problems were actually realistically doable.

Ken

Edit to fix typos
[This message has been edited by Ken Hinds (edited December 24, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Ken Hinds (edited December 24, 2000).]

[DarkCloud]

The game in-between Civ III and Dinosaurs:

Sid-Evolution
Sid-Life (A la Sim Life)

This game could chronicle the rise and fall of species through evolution and natural selection.

[jcarkey]

I think that people will lose interest if the game is the same, just a big mod-pack.

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Save the whales, collect the whole set!!

If Al Gore invented the Internet, then I invented the spell check- Dan Quayle

If someone doesn't agree with you, you haven't explained yourself well enough-Luther Ely Smith

[zyxpsilon]

Interesting...

Sweep of Time;

Evolutionary theories are in fact making us think about what caused -natural- selection to occur (Darwin's hypothesis). Gapping Dinos to Mammals and then to the "stand-up" HomoSapiens brain activity.

SMAC takes a step "out" of history and speculates on the Future of humanity.

But scaling back technological discoveries at, say, the Jurassic Era is NOT possible since Velociraptors friends and foes could not =think= like we do. For exploratory purpose of facts about evolution, then it IS. As an observer of, for examples; the advent of organic flight (birds), shelling turtles or even T-Rex distant cousins, the crocodile's lineage... the game becomes an excellent 'Walk in past'.

Do we, as we are standing on the top of that pyramid of animals highly adaptable capacity, can seriously consider the -probability- of having to face a new breed of genetically evoluted "race"?
That's what Civ-III could try to tackle.
The possibility that we eventually might have to alter ourselves somehow to gap the vast distances to other stars. Biologically fit to exceed the FTL travels or Earth grounded cellular beings.

Fiction or Facts?
Reality or Anticipation?

The Dinausors could not walk on the Moon.
Humanity can colonize most of the Solar system and BEYOND.