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Nikolai
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Bergen, Norway
Oct 2000
time: 06:15
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In the norwegian paper( ) magazine "incite PC games" it stands a inderview with Sid Meier! It stands in norwegian, but I will here translate as good as possible.
We got the man behind titles as Civilization 1 and 2, the strategy players god father, Sid Meier, and asked him to tell how and why he began to work with the third sector in the million selling game series:
"First I will avoid to hear 'the more, the better' phenomenon, that in the lenght are destroying for all game genres. I will not for any price fill the game up with more technology, more units and bigger landscapes. Just because it is big and intricate, it doesn't have to mean that the game is good," Sid Meier explains. Therefore he also has choosed to limit the number of civilizations to 16, and to keep the quantity of technological possibilities and units on the same level as Civilization 2.
After what the lead programmer in Firaxis, Soren Johnson, says, one can't expect radical changes in the build up of the landscapes:
"All the formative things in the build up of the terrains as for example the different types of landscape will be the same, but we have of course changed some details in the meaning of the terrain, so that the units for example will see longer if they are on mountains and hills, and can then see prosessing enemies earlier."
Though Civilization 2 now is five years old, it is still popular among many hardcore strategy fans. One of the main reasons to the long durability are the artificial intelligence the computer opponents have, which means that two different games can evolve in very different ways. Fortunate it seems that Sid Meier and Firaxis are working hard to do Civilization 3 at least as long time lasting as the earlier ones, at least that is what the strategy guru says himself:
"The most important for us aren't to make the most technical revolutionary 3D game. The best with Civilization 2 are actually that it is fun to play, so we will try to make a good AI and a well balanced gameplay, so that the players will play again and again. It can be you wont say whauuuw the first time you see Civilization 3, but after some hours you will explore all the details that lies hidden under the grund. It is our way to make games. We often works with a game in several years and tries to make something freakish that catches the players interest at least as long. Civilization 3 will not be a game you will be done with in a couple of hours, and then delites. It will be on your hard drive in all the future.
Other (new?) info(stands in small frames around in the interview):
Ships will play a important part in Civilization 3. War ships protects the cities against naval attacks, freight ships transports goods to foreign countries and u-boats can launch nukes.
Fast cavalery units are ideal to explore the landscape. Three stripes next to the unit shows its health in combat(all right, the last one aren't soo new, but I don't think it has stood in plain ttext before, just on the pictures.
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Edward
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I, for one, WILL say "whauuuw" when I see Civ3!
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Steve Clark
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Colorado Springs, CO
Oct 1999
time: 22:15
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quote:
I think that there were two ways we could have gone. One was to [add] more and more complexity, technologies, units, etcetera, which is a direction that I think kills most genres eventually – the idea that you have to make everything more complicated, take longer to play, and require a bigger manual than the last one. You make a good point: there are a significant number of people out there that didn’t play the original Civilization. Our goal is to capture the spirit of the original Civilization which was easy to start playing. You had one settler moving around, pressed a button, and a city came up. We didn’t want Civ III to be the most complicated Civ or the most difficult Civ to ever play; we wanted to take advantage of the new technology to make the game easier to play and to make the information more accessible, keeping the “easy to get started” aspect and the depth that the original had. That allows new people to play but with enhancements, like new cultures and diplomatic play, there’s [still] a lot of new things for the experienced Civ player as well. |
In other words, making Civ3 more accessible to all civers instead of just the hard-core ones who demanded a revolutionary game. I like that very much. All (most) of Sid's game have one thing in common: simple to play yet deep in its game.
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Steve Clark
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Colorado Springs, CO
Oct 1999
time: 22:15
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quote:
Originally posted by OneFootInTheGrave
I can bet that if Civ II had the ability to improve AI, and to allow more than 7 civs, + the ability to change terrain graphics as well it would have been used as a platform for a brilliant Civ mod that would have been played even now from many more people than it currently is.
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That is not correct at all, OFITG. For one, most scenario do not have more than 4 civs. With their emphasis on warfare, you don't have that many sides. Kull's Ancient Age scenarios works perfectly with 7 civs because that can cover all of the major civs of that time period within that region. Even a world war scenario do well with a limited number (else it would take much longer to play than they do now). For example, it is customary and more playable to break WW2 down into allies, axis and a few minor nations. Rarely throughout history do you have more than a handful of protaganists going at each other. So I would suspect that many historical-based scenario developers would not be interested in anything more than 7 civs.
Secondly, there have been many Civ2 scenarios where the terrain tile changes as the result of an event.
And as far as improving the AI, developers like Capt Nemo and others have done an incredible job with the events.txt file to make the AI play very hard. Suggestion, play one of the minor nations in the Red Front scenarios and you'll see how difficult the AI can be.
In all, there were many, many clever scenarios designed for Civ2, it's just some folks don't know about them. I would say that just in the past 12 months, the best scenarios for Civ2 had been developed and I would fully expect that Civ3 will be even more. No, the customization for Civ2 was about the best that can be expected, and long lived, as proven by our friends in the Civ2-Scenario League.
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20-08-2001 21:02
While my settlers were spies 
I like the way mr Meier thinks.
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