14-02-2005 09:42									#1
	LESS IS MORE: Scrap the Ancient Age Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Who cares about a bunch of syphillitc goat farmers gazing at stars or inbred kings forcing slaves to build giant pyramid-shaped tombs. Boring!

What is interesting are the cobblestone streets of bustling industrial cities. Exciting advancements in the enlightenment and industrial ages are fun. Give us factories and men marching into hellish trenches. Give us the modern age with its nuclear weapons and fighter jets waiting to strike. Give us democratic parliaments, fascist dictators, and technocratic commissars running workers' paradises!

If we have learned one thing from Civ 3 its that it is difficult to build a game that handles early history and later history well within a single game paradigm. Something has to go, and that something is the earlier stages of human history.

The enlightenment, industrial age, and electronic age are where Civ is the strongest. Why bother suffering through the boring ancient age where there is nothing to do but settler rush and swordsman/horseman rush? You usually can't even build any of the wonders if you are playing on a decent difficulty level. The later ages give us a panoply of activities to engage in - scientific, economic, developmental, political, and military. There is simply a richness of activity in the later stages of history that the earlier eras lack. Come on, all there is to do in the earlier ages is fight wars and build churches. Forget that! I want to be the first civilization to discover blackbody radiation, corner the semiconductor market, and build an unstoppable army of tanks.

Finally, there are already plenty of games dealing with the ancient ages out there.

	14-02-2005 19:19									#2
	Put an end to popups!

(For the record, I think most people would indeed like the ancient age to be more fleshed out. But I also think doing that and still remaining fun and somewhat realistic would be much more easier to achieve for the ancient age than for the modern age, which would require a whole new game system to make some sense.)

	15-02-2005 15:41									#3
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

If that is your complaints about the ancient age, I don't think removing it is going to fix it, it will just move the same game 'problems' into the enlightenment age.

What you actually want (it seems to me) is an option that makes the world start out fully settled, removing the rush portion.

I think it might be nice to have an option to have the world start out covered in neutral cities, a la Master of Magic.

	15-02-2005 17:13									#4
	Put an end to popups!

StormSeed: He's joking. Look for the similar thread about scrapping the modern age.

	16-02-2005 14:27									#5
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

I'm eagerly waiting for the next issue: Scrap the Middle Ages

	16-02-2005 15:19									#6
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Hey, it has merit. Would make one reach the Modern Age every now and then.

	18-02-2005 01:45									#7
	Put an end to popups!

This could get ridiculous by suggesting the scrapping of the ancient, medieval, industrial and modern ages!

Funny thread anyway!

	18-02-2005 02:55									#8
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

I for one am pro-Neolithic age only for Civ. We just don't have enough caveman empire-building games out there.

	18-02-2005 19:49									#9
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

Maybe because cavemen rarely built any empires? ;-) But I'd like to expand the game into the Stone Age too. (As an option; if you don't like it, you can still start in the Bronze Age, as the leader of a little city-state.)

	18-02-2005 19:59									#10
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

That has been discussed previously IIRC. Research would have to start with "stone tools" and "leadership" and "social structure" (to allow community living) to name a few.

It is interesting and I would play this feature, but yes, it would be important to have an "accelerated start" option to allow people to skip as you point out.

	18-02-2005 20:39									#11
	Inflate your Upload Space

I remember the suggestions from the old List(I think it was that long back) on how to make civ last from 8.000/10.000 BC, with nomads until 4.000 BC and so on...