New scenarios and other files are still being released for games like CivII and CtP, and their MP communities are still going strong, with plenty of tournaments and ladders being organized. The old UCIVIIS & TFGC2S archives became available in the Directory, which offer more nostalgia and hours of old-fashioned fun CivII gaming than anyone can handle. An important role in keeping these old communities alive have without a doubt been the Democracy Games. The CtP,, CtP2, and AC, communities all started such games this year and the CivII, community is currently playing their third game.

But of course, the main focus for me has as always been the CtP,, especially CtP2,, a game that still has plenty of life left in it. In the past year, we saw a lot of exciting mods and scenarios being released: from Visible Wonders and City Expansion almost a year ago to Call to Conquest and War of the Rings more recently. In between, lots of other mods and scenarios have been released as well, ranging from a Natural Wonders mod to an Ultima scenario. And more updates to existing major mods, such as Cradle and MedMod, were made as well -- these mods are now considered more or less final and don't require a lot of development anymore. Also, the community was pleasantly surprised by the re-appearance on the forums for several former CtP2, design team members.

But more exciting and promising for the future are the developments that were made in the modmaking process itself. A huge amount of new game art has been released; new terrain types and sprites have been or are being organized in standardized lists and files, to avoid mod incompatibility. New tools for modmakers, such as a successor to ModSwapper and an advanced Editing Tool (CtPEd), have been received enthusiastically by the modmakers community and most importantly of all: there is a real chance that, thanks to the efforts of the aforementioned former CtP2, development team, (part of) the source code of CtP2, will be released to the public in the near future. This would open up countless possibilities for further improvement of the game, and may give the entire Civ, community new insights into the how and what of designing Civ, games.

But not all my attention has been with CtP2, this year. In its innovation and open, mod-friendly structure, Rise of Nations, is in a way a worthy successor to CtP2,. DanQ's excellent preview/interview with Brian Reynolds himself got me interested and subsequent coverage on Apolyton in the form of screenshots, info pages and (p)reviews really got me really excited. Now the game has been out for a few months, and I thoroughly enjoy playing it. I think we can expect to hear much more from this game in the years to come.

So it would seem that all sections of Apolyton are still going strong, which leads me to believe we'll be celebrating many more birthdays after this one. I for one certainly hope we do...

/Locutus