13-01-1999 01:32									#1
	Strategy Games Paradigms Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

There might be others, but as far as Civ-like games are concerned, there are basically two paradigms of game design. These are:

I) Conquest - The object of the game is to eliminate all other opponents and all your efforts are made to do just that. The best example of this is a game called "Command HQ".

II) Development - The object of the game is to expand and develop your "empire". A very good example is the game "Railroad Tycoon". Games such as SimCity and Caesar are examples of pure development as there does not exist opponents equivalent to oneself. Although very similar to Civ, "Colonization" is actually a development game, based on the way you play it.

There have been many Civ-like games. However, aside from "Colonization", all others are fundamentally variations on "Command HQ". Development aspects, if any, are not sophisticated or interesting enough to make that aspect alone worthwhile. Compare this with "Railroad Tycoon" or "Simcity" or "Caesar" where the fun and fundamental point of the game is development itself, and not development for the sake of building a war machine.

I strongly believe that future designers of Civ-like games should enhance and make more sophisticated the "development" aspect of the game so that the "war" aspect is not dominant. To do so would require sophisticated economic and diplomatic features and models but would certainly make it different than all the other Civ-like games that have come out, which fundamentally are nothing more than glorified versions of "Command HQ".

	13-01-1999 03:18									#2
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Paradigms? Are you sure you're an engineer?

	16-01-1999 04:26									#3
	Suffering from ads?

Maybe it's a PR person in disguise...
:-)

	16-01-1999 05:50									#4
	Got spare money?

Definitely sounds like marketing, or PHB.

All joking aside, I do agree with your statements. And the market has proved time and time again that it's easier to do the conquer than the build. And I guess some of the escuse has been proccesing power, but I think some of it is development power too.

There are sometimes I feel a little uneasy about some TBS games because the only point seems to be who can produce the most units to kill others with, which is just like RTS games.