hello and three little problems

[Micelius]

Hello everyone, I'm new here but it seems a great place.

I have 3 questions surely easy for the veterans of CTP2:

1. Do I get points for every recapture of my once owend city? This seems a real point maker!

2. Do the celebretions held by people in my honour benefit me in any way (adding to the score or, say, growth rate)?

3. Do you know of a complete list of feats of wonder (strangely enough, not provided with the game)?

One general doubt concerns, to be honest, the level of CTP2 in itself - I mean, the level of AI and lack of balance in some aspects. I see you guys are doing a great work here with the mods, but wouldn't it be better to simply play Civ 3 or the immortal SMAC (of course, the question which of the games of this type is the best colud take long)? I think I'll just score as high as the sky and put this game on shelf. Or do you have sensible counter-arguments?

[Dale]

1. No. Only the first recapture is a feat of wonder.
2. No. So you can run your populace into the group and ignore happiness. Keep it between 73-75 (depending on Mod) and you'll be right.
3. Can't remember.

but wouldn't it be better to simply play Civ 3 or the immortal SMAC

Civ3? Pffft! SMAC? A good game I admit, but I love history, not Sci-fi.

Civ3:
- I hate the worker system vs the good PW system.
- It doesn't give the "leading an empire" feel.
- I just simply didn't like it.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Micelius
Hello everyone, I'm new here but it seems a great place.

Hi and welcome!

1. Do I get points for every recapture of my once owend city? This seems a real point maker!

No, only the first time you do it.

2. Do the celebretions held by people in my honour benefit me in any way (adding to the score or, say, growth rate)?

No, not really. I think it gives a slightly higher growth rate, but it's far more efficient to try and keep happiness as low as possible, without causing too many revolts.

3. Do you know of a complete list of feats of wonder (strangely enough, not provided with the game)?

The reason why they weren't provided with the game is so you could explore them yourself. But if you want to know them, there are:

** WARNING: SPOILER **
Circumnavigation of the world; recapturing one of your former cities, conquering an opponent, first to Concrete, first to Gunpowder, first to Mass Production, first to Computers, first to Robotics, first to Life Extension, building 8 Theaters, building 10 Brokerages, building 12 Computer Centers, building 15 Televisions, building 20 Orbital Labs.
** END OF SPOILER **

One general doubt concerns, to be honest, the level of CTP2 in itself - I mean, the level of AI and lack of balance in some aspects.

As you said, these issues are largely fixed by the mods.

wouldn't it be better to simply play Civ 3 or the immortal SMAC (of course, the question which of the games of this type is the best colud take long)?

The horse of which game is better has been beaten to death already in all forums, so I won't go into that. But if it's worth the while to play CtP seperately if you can also play Civ3 or SMAC is something I wouldn't mind elaborating on:

Yes, it's very much worth the while to play CtP2, since it offers so many features that those other games don't offer: stacked combat, PW, slavery, future and undersea units/wonders/cities/etc, unconventonal warfare, etc, etc - not to mention all the cool new features that the mods offer (unit upgrade, militias, wonder units, elite units, visible wonders, city expansion, to name but a few). CtP1 and CtP2 are very different games than Civ3 or SMAC. Civ3 offers the unique features of strategic resources and culture (although these features are currently also being ported to CtP2), SMAC offers the unit workshop and social engineering and CtP (among other things) offers PW and stacked combat. There's not a single game that offers all these features - although thanks to it's almost unlimited customizability modded CtP2 will soon not be far off - so all these games have their own strong points.

Of course, if you don't really care for the Unit Workshop idea (like yours truly) or don't like PW, you may not be too fond of all of these games, but other than that, all these games are different enough to all be worth playing - you don't have to choose one over the other. Personally, I can't live without PW or stacked combat anymore - the unrealistic and user-unfriendly systems of Civ3 frustrate the hell out of me - so I don't see myself playing a lot of Civ3, let alone SMAC or older games. But if none of the games offer you any features that you can't live without or which you completely despise, there's nothing to say for not playing several Civ games. I may not like Civ2, Civ3 or SMAC very much (anymore), but I still occasionally still play Civ1 (it doesn't have PW or decent combat, but the nostalgia keeps me going) and CtP1 myself...

[hexagonian]

I want to emphasize what Locutus said about each game being different. I have played all three (SMAC, civ3 and CTP2). All three games are good games.

I am amazed by the depth and atmosphere of SMAC, but I prefer history over sci-fi, so SMAC never really grabbed me as much as it could have - but if SMAC was the only option I had as a TBS game, I would adjust to playing it and I would end up enjoying it. The problem is that I do have a choice, so I gravitate to the games that use history as the premise.

There are a lot of good things in civ3, (and even some things in civ3 that I vastly prefer to CTP2), but on balance, I prefer how CTP2 approaches many of the gameplay issues over civ3. (PW, stacked combat/movement, more depth in governments, tile improvements, unconventionals, and the ability to easily mod the game)

Once again, this does not make civ3 a bad game either, but rather a different game that approaches gameplay issues differently.

The fully valid knock on CTP2 has always been about the AI, but the Modding community has addressed this issue, and has done some amazing things in this area. (Read the Single play Tournament thread that is topped in this forum)

The bottom line is that CTP2 is not civ3 - if you want to play civ3, then that is the game for you. If you go into any game with a chip on your shoulder, expecting to hate the game because it is not like another game, you will end up fulfilling your expectations. If you go into a game with an open mind, you have a greater chance of discovering something (unexpectively) good about that game.

This is why I am somewhat stunned by Vel's glowing report about how much he is enjoying the use of PW in CTP2. I fully expected that he would miss the civ-style worker system - but after trying it with an open mind, he found that he really did like it. Does he prefer one over the other???? That is not important because I think (and I hope I am not presuming on Vel's thoughts) that he sees the CTP2 setup as a different and valid way of approaching the same problem (how to implement Tile Improvements in a TBS game).