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#87 CALL TO MOD-MAKERS Wes Whitaker agrees that while MODs for CTP will be fewer than CivII's, they can be more powerful. #88 APOLYTON VERSION 2 MarkG details the plans for Apolyton "Version 2". #89 C:CTP: UPS AND DOWNS Timothy Pintello talks about the hits and misses he sees in C:CTP. #90 IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CUSTOMIZATION DarthVeda looks at the simplicity he sees in customizing CivII any which way. #91 HAVE THE FORUMS TAKEN OVER ME? Iain Lindley is worried about where his forum addiction will take him. COLUMN ARCHIVE

Evolution is a real-time game of strategy of great ambition, the evolution of the tetrapods throuhough over 300 million years. What's a tetrapod? Even Evolution is not completely clear in explaining. Suffice to say a tetrapod is neither a seacreature nor an insect.Evolution, despite its ambition and its movies was a rather unsuccesfull game. Not just because its about moving animals to their feeding grounds, the reasons are far more subtle. I will give 3 reasons wich are in my opinion the most important.

The game designers couldn't make up their mind about what they created. This is not Simlife, its not Command & Conquer either. Instead, its a blend of both, with disastrous consequences for gameplay. The computer players can pick a large band of their succesfull predators and systematicly kill an entire opponent's species. If you've played the demo you'll discover at some time that the Hemicion and the Phorusachus have a well deserved reputation for their unreasonable enloesung abilities. On the other hand, you will have a lot of dificulties selecting a load of predators, keeping the alive long enough and finding their target before it splits, forcing you to seach and destroy the survivor as well.

Another problem is about which of your animals you want to evolve. Animals walking around on your map represent a population ranging from 2 to 999. Preferably, you want your new species to have an as large as possible population. However you have to pick the creature from a list wich does not depict the size of the population. only by selecting the creature can you see its population size (and location). Annoying. In addition, time goes on, and another creature might evolve as well making an annoying pop-up entrance over your last problem. You have to play it to experience it.

My final point regarding the failing of Evolution has nothing to do with real-time gameplay. But it is something that couldn't have slipped by proper betatesting. When I have a swamp creature prefering 38 degrees temprature, and I evolve it into a plains-and-20 degrees-loving salamander forfather, the craeture has to walk half the globe the reach its habitat. By the time its there, it dead. A waste of time and resources. A problem that should have been solved someway, somehow.

About realtime Dino's Evolution shows in my opinion the disadavtages of real-time gaming combined with Sid's idea. Whenever Sid Meier's real-time Dinosaurs is the topic Evolution should come to one's mind. And the disapointment of Evolution has to be overcome, to create a good game. Fortunately, we can rely on Sid to overcome such gameplay problems. Nevertheless, I hope that Sid will create a Turn-based game, because I think that real-time games are generaly 'tactical'games, whereass a game spanning the globe needs to be 'strategic', in other words, turn-based.

BTW, I still play Evolution. I try to score as high a score as possible as I play alone, without the computer.

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ABOUT AUTHOR: Civer.

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