posted 02-21-99 07:19 AM ET        

1) I can remember the sleepless nights I had after buying the original Civ (for the Atari ST) and Civ2. I�ve often thought that if I was stranded on the proverbial desert island then Civ2 would be the game to take. I wish I could say the same about SMAC.
2) With Civ and Civ2 once you understood the basics you could get on playing the game, only rarely having to refer to the manual. With SMAC so far (and I�ve been playing it all weekend) I�m still constantly having to stop and try and work out what everything is and does. Researching a tech, for example, may lead to an improvement, which may lead to new units, which may lead to�.
3) It�s like going down the library every other turn! Surely a game is primarily supposed to be fun, not an exercise in researching techniques?
4) The official game guide (which I got free with the game) is useless. The tech chart is like a mass of spaghetti. I�m still trying to work out the pros and cons of fungus and worms.
5) The idea behind designing your own units is brilliant, the mechanics of actually doing so is confusing at best.
6) It may be of course that I am just thick and everybody else is whizzing through the game, grasping everything at first glance. As an experienced Civ and Civ2 player the mechanics of the game are familiar it�s just that most things have been given different (obscure?) names. After playing my first game for about six hours, I�m still unclear of my overall objectives even though I�m playing on the dozos (sorry, Citizen) level.
7) For a game like this to be called a classic you have to care about what you are doing. Frankly, at the moment, I�m just going through the motions but I don�t really care whether I succeed or not. Civ was never like this.