posted 03-30-99 06:25 PM ET        

despite activision.de's claims that the German release date was March, 25th, CTP hit the stores as of today, as initially announced. I got my copy yesterday via mail order - here are my first impressions after two session (~ 4h):

The quick & dirty summary: SMAC vs. CTP: SMAC wins by technical KO in round 3. If you plan on getting CTP, I strongly advise you to get a demo first (if Activision offers one). Chances are you might want to wait some time til the budget version is released...

Graphics, sound & the techno shebang: Looks colourful, lots of little animations, units 'walk' when moved, nice intro & wonder movies. Sound is also quite nicely done, background music grooves. All in all, nothing
impressive by today's standards. On first glance, looks nicer than SMAC, but in the end the graphics fall into the same category - 'utilitarian'. Well, units can be distinguished from one another more easily...

User interface: Ahem. Perhaps it's just me & my stone-age 'real men don't need no mouse, cursor keys are way enough' approach. Pardon my French, but I think the UI sucks. Badly. IMHO, Activision tried to reinvent the wheel
UI-wise & failed: most of the important control elements are on the main
screen, you reach 'em via little register cards at the bottom of the screen. Not my cup of tea - there's no auto-center function, so it's easy to get things mixed up (e.g. screen is over city A, but you unintentionally issue
build orders for city B). Selecting things & moving units, oboy, I do HATE what they've come up with: You select a unit & click somewhere on the map to move the unit there. Okay. No big deal. However, before you can go on to the next unit/city, you have to manually deselect the one you're moving at
the moment. Result: High 'Aaaargh, whatcha doin', you're supposed to go THERE' factor. I rountinely sent my units back to a city because after moving a unit, I wanted to go to the city & forgot to deselect the unit. BLEAH!!! Net effect: the gameplay is - compared to SMAC, CIVII, MOOII and even CIV I - incredibly C L U M S Y. Talk about a definitely non-intuitive UI! Then again, perhaps it's just me who's to stoopid to grog the above concept or to wrapped up in yesterday's game mechanics to recognize the ingenuity of it all.

Terraforming: At first I thought that finally someone had implemented a TF concept that was terrain-centered instead of unit-centered - no formers here, you select a terrain improvement & decide where to put it. To do this, you have to have your cities generate 'build points' (the German manual calls these, roughly translated 'Civic construction teams), which reduce your cities' overall production output. Dig the idea, but this also means that you'll have another indicator to watch all the time to control whether you have enough 'build points' to build roads etc. Again, I found this to considerably slow down gameplay - if you're fending of an invasion, you're quite likely to forget that there's some TF to do... Oh, and hey - I haven't quite found out yet what I have to do to remove forests, swamps & jungles. Can't imagine that this isn't possible, can't do it at the moment, either. Lest I forget - no 3D terrain here to elevate or lower - boohoo, no terraforming warfare.

Combat: I found CTP's 'stacked combat' model quite interesting & useful - you can't destroy a whole army occupying the same square with a 'one-unit-counterattack' any more. However, I'd like to have a bit more tactical control over the whole affair - you cannot determine which unit in your stack is to attacked which unit in the enemy's. Takes some time to get used to, calls for a modified attack & defence stragegy, makes conquest faster & more risky. Major overall bummer: if you attack another unit & win, your troops move into the square the other troops held. Well, okay. BUT - if you didn't have enough movement points left to move into that square normally in the first place, you cannot attack at all! While there unarguably is some innate logic to this, it makes counterattacks to protect a city against an advancing foe virtually impossible.

Trade: Yoo-hoo, no more micromanaging those dang caravans any more! Instead, build caravan, select goods, select destination (& price, if trading to another player) & you're done! Like it, like it, like it, especially the added 'monopoly' bonus if you're mass producing the good you're about to sell. Another feature I liked a lot is the possibility to disrupt foreign trade routes & make money pirating them. All in all, great concept that somewhat enlarges your bag of tricks when playing 'builder-style'.

AI: Well, I might be doing CTP injustice after having only played two short sessions,
but the AI is... pretty darn stoooopid! On the plus side, cities were quite well placed & sensibly improced. Also, the AI is capable of using the new 'alternative warfare' units (e.g. slavetraders that steal your citizens & have 'em toil in the opponent's cities instead) in a sensible, sometimes even cunning way. BUT. As usual, the AI more or less completely lacks any potential to unleash a coordinated or even only halfways planned invasion. Points in case: The AI had an army stack big enough to take out half my empire run around in circles before a city of mine & never attacked. Later on, the AI did try to conquer a border city of mine in the usual 'CIVII-annoying-but-mostly-harmless-trickle' style: build unit, attack, wait 5 rounds, next unit ready, attack again, etc. When I finally launched MY invasion, I managed to overrun their badly defended cities with a very modest army (4 knights, 4 archers on horseback, some samurais & two catapults). Net result: lost 4 units, gained 3/4 of enemy empire.

Diplomacy: Basically the same as in CIVII, with the added option to make treaties/threats concerning another player's pollution level. One again, the AI is the
major problem - if SMAC's faction leaders aren't overly bright, CTP's are a bunch of completely erratic, near braindead morons. Examples: first contact with another
civ, they rudely(!) reject my 'non-aggression' offer - and, when I tried it just for laughs - AGREED to my offer of an alliance! Then, some twenty turns later, they
land one (ONE!) lonely legion near a city of mine & declare war! I might be a tad harsh with CTP, but I have the impression that even CIVII's or MOO2's diplomacy was better implemented. A definite turn-off. Oh, and yeah - no loans to other factions,no coordinated attacks, no bribes for council votes (there is no council), no UN-style global action. Would have been okay in pre-SMAC days, but looks a bit, ahem, *sparse* now.

Immersion / Identification: IMHO, has never been to high in CIVII - your folks are the
blue ones, the others are the greens, yellows, purples, that's it. SMAC's factions OTOH are a class of it's own in this regard - all those little quotes & stuff in the tech
descriptions etc. As far as I'm concerned, CTP lacks this factor almost completely.
.
.
.
Boy, this has already become one seriously longish post, so I'll wrap it up here: I'm not quite at the point where I downright regret shelling out ~ 50 EUR for CTP. However, this might happen rather sooner than later if the problems & shortcomings I outlined persist (or worsen) under closer scrutiny. All in all, I'd say that CTP can touch neither CivII nor SMAC - while it offers some new ideas & concepts, the overall execution of 'em is dearly lacking in some critical areas.

Those are my first impressions, will post more when I get to give CTP a real workout.

posted 03-30-99 08:46 PM ET         

I was on the Activision website and looking to see what ww2 and modern naval units were in the game. I seen a nice looking destroyer, subs, aircraft carrier, troopship, battleship. But what about a cruiser? Like the conventional and AEGIS they had in CIV2, are they in CTP? Also any missiles or nukes?

One really BIG thing that I am wondering about CTP is...Is it customizable as CIV2 or SMAC? You know, Mod packs, new graphics, new units, rules and all of the other good things that made CIV2 the best.

posted 03-31-99 04:10 AM ET            

Combat: you have some tactival level controll since you control what kind of units are in that stack.
"if you didn't have enough movement points left to move"
You will of course atack on the next turn

Terraforming: see the great library on what is needed to wipe out forests. some advance if I remember correct...

AI: you're discussing the AI after "two short sessions"? Come on... What level are you playing?

Diplomacy: "lonely legion near a city of mine & declare war"
What was the personality of that civ?

Prince, the map editor with some maps will be released on the net in a couple days. the scenario editor will follow pretty soon. There is a LOT of text files that can be edited. Units, terrains and city graphics have their own format, but they are working on some kind of utility. Other graphics are in .tga

Markos, Apolyton Civilization Site

posted 03-31-99 07:15 AM ET            

PrinceBimz: No, no cruisers whatsoever. Customizable, yes, haven't really tried it, tho. The usual array of txt.files to be messed with... Maps & scenarios - nope, to be downloaded from the web, which I think is a fragging disgrace. Scenario editors etc. are to be considered standard items in nowadays strategy games - what about the poor souls who don't have web access?

eNo: Wonders - no 1:1 correlation to CivII wonders because of different game mechanics (e.g. the average city tile produces 10 gold instead of 1 or 2). Most wonders still have the ususal bread-and-butter effects, such as reducing unrest or increasin revenue. Significant improvement - there are a couple of wonder that didn't appear in CivII, so wonder-wise CTP is at least par with CivII. OTOH, I'd say that the number of units has decreased, several - mostly Classical & Renaissance age - CivII units (Cruiser, elephants, dragoons etc.) were discarded. Again, the changed game mechanics might have made these superfluous, as combat stats have been altered quite drastically as well. Still undecided about this at the moment. All in all - 'significant improvement over Civ II': too early to really tell, but as for the 'instant gratification factor', CivII and SMAC beat the living daylights out of CTP (and as far as I can tell, this is not because CTP overs a *vastly* more complex setting than SMAC at least ). I *loved* both of 'em after the first game, but I've yet to be enticed by CTP (although I do hope it eventually will...).

MarkG: UI/keyboard: Yeah, noticed 'em & tried to make 'em fit my usual 'keyboard only' style. However, still mor of a workaround than a real solution. Terraforming: thx for the hint, I guess that my SPs weren't enough to buy the TF. AI: I do think one can eveluate the AI after two short sessions - I played both of 'em on a medium map at the third-most difficult setting (can't remember what it's called, much less in English). And I wouldn't say that the AI probs I've already run into correlate with difficulty at all - the basic layout of CivII's as well as SMAC's AI doesn't change all that drastically with higher difficulty settings ('cept for the 'aggressive' option on start-up, of course). Then again, this might be a really ingenious scheme on CTP's part, intentionally having the computer play really STUPID on lower difficulty settings...

Micje: DiabloII, YEEEHAAAW, can't wait for that one, either. The previews look *incredible*. Dearly hope that Blizzard won't stick to their usual 'ten-delays-til-release' ritual... Otherwise, I'm also waiting desperately for MechWarrior III & Heroes of Might & Magic III - German release has been announced to be something Mayish, although I understand the English version's already out.

posted 03-31-99 11:43 AM ET            

Surrender - AFAIK not, the manual doesn't list options for neither surrender of individual civilizations nor is there some sort of 'winning-by-being-voted-supreme-leader' option.

posted 03-31-99 05:56 PM ET            

I have played CTP too and I dont feel that this game is as bad as you describe it. You said you played it on prince (compared to civ2)! Well, the AI in CivII was very different from prince to deity! So I think: Why should it be else with CTP!

I agree with you on the Interface! In the beginning it is complicated, because it is different from the interface you are used to, but: When you play this game a few more times, you will find out that it is not that bad and that there are many things that are better as in SMAC for example. On the left side you have a menu and there you have the option city and within this option you can choose for every city what it should build, without scrolling to the city and entering it! I think thats an improvement. Also, if you want to play CTP, you can completely forget the keyboard! Everything can be done with the mouse easily (I was unsure in the beginning too but found out the the usage of mouse is really useful ).

One thing I wondered about your post was that you said you had 2 catapults! Well I looked it up and there are no catapults in civ:ctp!

Whatever, the tile improvement system is much better than wondering around with formers or settlers! First advantage is that you can build a whole road very fast through long distances! Second is that you can immediatly build roads to your units who have just taken some cities deep in the enemy land. This means you can move new units into the combat area faster.

To the graphics: I like the animations and the units reporting with speech (I think the knight says: for your honor (translated, i am using german version too ). Just remember what made AOE so lovely (at least for me): the tons of animations of those guys chucking wood, fishing, killing,... .

I agree with you on the trading system! Really improved, cause I always hated it to take those caravans in civ2 over thousands of ocean miles and then the transport got killed just before the isle where I wanted to land.

Diplomacy: Yeah, this wasnt improved very much, but I love it to get gifts from the weaker civs all the time! They didnt do this in Civ2 that often. The best is, they give me money and therefore I slave their cities good strategy I think. Sadly that I cant slave cities with city wall and most of the cities do have them very urly. Also, this makes combat more difficult and you really need some large stacks to take out the bigger and better defended cities. You wont do any harm with just 3 or 4 samurais to a city with a city wall and some defending units.

But I think what makes CTP good is the uncvonentional attack methods. I really love it to send my clerics to other citys and convince them or tell them that something bad will happen and then they are very unhappy. Also the slaver is a great unit, but if you slave to much than some other nation can incite riots with abolitionists. Sadly that I have played it only 2 times and 1 in MP.

Multiplayer is great! You can edit your production, change some other values, while the others are moving, then when it is your turn you move and do all the other things (micromanagment) while they move! So MP will not get that boring over IPX (however I think you must be a REAL fan to play a multiplayer turn based strategy game, because it will get boring, no matter what you do).

In the beginning ctp is a bit boring, but I think it will be a whole lot more interesting when it comes to modern age and diamond age (underwater colonies, space colonies, the LEVIATHAN (the best unit in game, at least what I saw from the chart), the run for the alien life project and other things.)

Generally I would say, CTP is worth a look. I think it depends whether you like scifi, then Smac is your game, or if you hate scifi (like me), then I would say stay away from smac and take ctp instead. Overall, the best game is still civII, I will think twice if I ever delete it from my HD! I have no experience with MoO2.

posted 03-31-99 08:07 PM ET         

Graphics and sound 98%
AI 95% it kicked my ass in chieftan
Compatibilty - 100% it runs perfect with my amd processor
Multiplayer-didnt get to it yet
The Box and all the junk inside 90% the box was cheap looket better at pics
Manual 80% the olny bad thing
Terraforming- 85% it takes a bit of getting use to
Combat 99% i love it a realtime players dream
Units and improvements- 90% so far so good
Trade-96% this is probobly the best improvment
Diplomacy-81% could of been better

posted 03-31-99 11:19 PM ET            

"I agree with you on the Interface! In the beginning it is complicated, because it is different from the interface you are used to, but: When you play this game a few more times, you will find out that it is not that bad and that there are many things that are better as in SMAC for example. On the left side you have a menu and there you have the option city and within this option you can choose for every city what it should build, without scrolling to the city and entering it! I think thats an improvement. Also, if you want to play CTP, you can completely forget the keyboard!"

posted 03-31-99 11:54 PM ET            

I really haven't had CTP long enough to do any sort of real comparison to SMAC, but I have played (slightly) more than two turns.

CTP vs. SMAC isn't really as cut and dried as some people would like it to be. They both have gone in new directions in some areas, and some of the new things I like...some I do not.

In SMAC, for instance, I like the fact that it takes a seperate unit to settle a new base than to improve terrain. I like the whole 'faction' concept, where each leader has distinctly different strengths and weaknesses, as opposed to the old simple 'personality.' And most of all I LOVE the whole border concept. SMAC went up to like 70% (from 0% )in my book just for introducing this to the genre. The diplomacy in SMAC (so far) appears to be manifestly better.

On the other hand, there are many things with SMAC that I don't like, in particular the unit designer...but that has all been discussed.

In CTP...I REALLY like the new 'public works' budget thing much better than the settler/former thing. I like the combat stacks and the cool little Stars!-like battle board. I was also was very happy to see a military maintenance cost, which differs depending upon your alert status (now I can yell for my computer to go to DEFCON 2!). I haven't really played it enough to say what sucks yet.

As an aside, to say something like 'you can't attack if you don't have enough movement points to move into the square with the enemy' is plain silly. Of course not!

On the UI, I don't really find one any clunkier than the other so far. They are both different than CivII. In either game, if I want to found a new city/base, I hit 'B' on the keyboard and there it is. You can solve a lot of the 'accidently sent the unit to the wrong place' problems by changing the default behavior in CTP to right-click to 'go' instead of a second left-click.

The point is, neither game is 'evil.' I have seen many posts (both here and on the CTP forum) damning that game because it doesn't have 'SID MEIER'S...' in front of the title.

As Joe Consumer, I know little about the lawsuit that allowed Activision to make a Civ title, and care less. I have shown my loyalty to Meier and Co. by purchasing SMAC (and Civ, CivII, RRT2, etc). His team has done his job by making some pretty damn good games, and I've done mine by buying them. To discount a game out of hand because it was made by a new company (this thread hasn't really done it, but this is one of my pet peaves ) is ridiculous IMHO.

In the end, I'm glad I have two seemingly decent TBSG's to play this year (and soon enough I will probably pick up Imp.II as well. I wish SOME company would put out a decent TBS game about every 4th-6th month. Heres hoping that whoever makes the next one incorporates all the best elements of both.

posted 04-01-99 06:17 AM ET            

my first 'real game' (second highest difficulty, huge map, seven opponents, large land mass) is approaching its last third (year is 1980), so a couple of things have become clearer by now:

- I still don't like the UI one bit, although it's more playable for me now after some generous customizations. Gameplay is still significantly slower for me than it was with CivII or SMAC.

- AI: Still a bummer, but I noticed that it has some fortes. One is described below, the other are the new 'alternative warfare' units. The AI makes really good use of these, but as a downside is not much of an opponent in 'normal' warfare (IMHO even less than In SMAC, about as good/bad as in CivII).

- Combat: Undecided about whether the stacked combat model is a good or bad thing. Makes combat faster, but a good deal more unpredictable. As I said, I'd *really* like to have some means of determining which unit in my stack attacks which in the enemy's, so as to take out one superior unit with a bunch
of inferior, expendable ones.

- Terraforming: Can use it sensibly now. Instead of watching my build points all the time, I now TF in bursts - wait til a sensible number has accumulated, then go on a TFing spree. Plusses to this: you can really surprise an enemy that way ('where did that road to my mountain fortress come from???') & it takes less time than the normal unit-based approach.

- One thing I like muchly: sea colonies. Well done, especially that you can link them with tunnels to other cities. Yeah, and I dig that if you destroy any part of the tunnel, all the units in the rest of it die. Makes for some cool 'take the bait & suffer some' kinda actions

- Another well-received tidbit: positively NO crashes by now!

Bottom line: my impending feeling of 'hmmm-I'm-going-to-regret-having-bought-it'
is slowly giving way to 'interesting-but-in-the-end-nothing-special'. At this point, I still prefer CivII (better playability) & SMAC (better setting, concept & 'coolness') over CTP. Using some gamer mags' point system, I'd rate SMAC at 90%,
CivII at 80% (would have scored more two years ago, but is a bit outdated by today's
standards) & CTP at 65 to 70%. CivII & SMAC IMHO are masterpieces, CTP is not. And I expect nothing short of a masterpiece of a game that bears the 'Civilization (R)' moniker!

Some answers to earlier posts:

Atahualpa: Can't say I've noticed much differences in CivII's AI between Prince & Deity - the AI gets more agressive & expansionist, but builds & fight much the same way. Have to admit, tho, that I haven't played CivII on Prince in a long time UI: Am getting used to it, still can't say I like
it - if you take CivII's & SMAC's UI as the point of reference, my comment is 'never change a winning team / if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. The improvements CTP offers UI-wise do by far NOT outweigh the probs with 'em. Terrafroming: Hey, I like the basic idea lots, but would have prefered to designate the TF actions & then have a former/engineer take care of it. But you're right, you can TF way faster than in Civ. Diplomacy: Besides the Ui & the fact that there isn't a map editor, still the biggest turn-off.It's crappy even by CivII or Moo2 standards. Catapults: mea culpa, I ment cannons. I was sending someone a mail at the same time stating which units didn't make it to CTP; I was pretty astonished at that time the catapult was among them.

SmartFart: UI is of course a personal thing, but I'd bet that you'll find as well that CTP's UI can be more of a curse than a blessing.

SnowFire: Comparing AIs, SMAC is by far not par with a human player, but all in all - diplomacy, building, expansion, war - a class better than what I've seen so far from CTP. Setting up my last SMAC game, I deliberately chose a land-heavy map to give the AI the chance to rack up *real* offensives, as its
amphibious assaults are either never happening or pretty suicidal & useless. Haven't finished that one yet, am in a pitched battle with two enemies who give me a
REALLY hard time (for the record, it's a thinker/ironman game). Same settings for CTP in the current game - here, the AI is a pain in the ass, but not a real threat. No serious all-out offensives yet, but lots of 'guerilla action': lone units that wander my realm, pirate trade routes & plunder terraforming. The AI is quite good at the latter, but IMHO the guerilla concept is far easier to implement programming-wise: no logistics here, little coordination effort.

Pique: 'As an aside, to say something like 'you can't attack if you don't have enough
movement points to move into the square with the enemy' is plain silly. Of course not!'
Well, s'pose I said that silly thing Not sure what you mean, tho - is it possible
to attack in this situation? If so, pleaaase tell me how! If you think that it's silly
to expect to be able to attack, then, well you can do it in Civ, CivII and SMAC - depending on the situation, with reduced efficiency. IMHO, this does reflect 'real
life' - good ole 'forced march & attack with your valiant, but exhausted troops'. BTW, more often than not I don't even WANT to move in the enemy's square, so CTP's concept in this regard is a bit tough to swallow for me.

Enough with the posting already, back to work - so long,
CC

posted 04-01-99 09:20 AM ET            

If only Sid Meier would have produced a game with a combination of Ctp and Smac! That would be REALLY cool. Now we have 2 uncompleted parts and the real fan will take both (if he/she can afford it).
Any dis/agreements?

posted 04-01-99 02:35 PM ET         

The AI I think is very good. My very first game of smac I defeated the computer on thinker! My highest score was 488% on thinker and I have crushed the computer on transcender, I have only played 4 complete games of alpha centauri (many many half-way played multiplayer games were played though). But for my first game of CTP I figured I could handle the 4th difficulty setting of 6, and I was getting my ass totally kicked. My power graph in civII an smac has always been the one growing exponentially way above any computer player, even on Transcend or Deity mode. But this game, mine was the pathetic one way down last on the bottom Another example of the AI is when the scottish attacked me, I had a phalanx fortified on a mountain. What the computer did was bring in legions and phalanxs and massed them on the other mountain squares around my phalanx and when he determined he had enough (4 of each) he massed attack my poor phalanx with the super stack in one battle (he did NOT attack with each individually). My phalanx did take out 4 of his units though The computer also defends his citys very well (about 4-8 units in cities before gunpowder even) and likes to make city walls in all his cities right away. This increased his defense and also stopped my slavers. Very Smart. Another thing that really surprised me was another computer player brought a cleric to my island on a ship. This computer player was located a long ways a way from me and this was his first contact with me. Instead of making peace with me (I was weak) he uloaded his cleric which was completely invisible to me and convert 2 of my cities, including my Capital!. It cost me 2000 gold and several turns of revolt and a government change to get my cities back faithfull to me. I finally got a diplomat down there and killed his damn cleric.

So I have to say I really like the game. Plus it is not the same old boring set up as civ, civ2, and smac. After playing those games for last 8 years now (when did civ come out?) It is very fun to play a new style of game. The new units and improvements and techs and especially the wonders are great! Also the way food, gold and production is changed is refreshing. I look forward to learnind a new game, which is half the fun of new game. Not the exact same copy of what you have already been playing for the last zillion years.

The way diplomacy is conducted I believe is much improved, the diplomacy AI may not be the best though but I beleive it could be almost on par with smac, which was not that great at diplomacy either. I found it rediculous that the stupid Hive (or any faction) would still demand a tech from when I just took 5 of his cities last turn and his empire of 50 cities has shrunken down to 2 and he is still demanding **** from me. Hello? that is stupid!

Trade has been greatly improved, greatly. Trade became way to simplistic in smac and was way to complicated and time consuming in civ2. It has reach the perfect equalibrium spot in call to power. The computer is very adapt at pirating my trade routes in the sea and will pillage my sea farms along the costs. Its also fun sneaking a mounted horse archer( a cheap fast unit) into enemy land and pirating his trade routes

There are some disapointments to the game, a big one being no borders and also not being able to see what units are in an enemy city (maybe i should read the manual) but you can use diplomats to spy into enemy cities and see whats in them. There are a few other things, like in smac it says what a city is producing below the city, that would be nice to include in the patch.

Overall, now that I have played smac for 2 months I will be playing CTP for the rest of the year. The new changes are very nice and different. Its more fun to play something new then something that you have already been playing for so many years except with just a few enhancements added (for exampe: smac)

posted 04-01-99 05:00 PM ET            

Huh? Boring? And SMAC is far different in many ways from CivII than if that's what you meant by boring.

posted 04-01-99 05:36 PM ET            

Your right, I probably shouldn't have just said 'silly' without an explanation of where I was comming from...silly me o)

In these games, I have always seen one tile as a simple representation of a rather large area on the globe. One city represents, maybe, a state capitol, with the surrounding squares the outlying lesser cities that are not graphically represented.

I have always thought that military units should not be able to fight, particularly in pre-modern times, when they were not in the same tile, because realistically that puts them miles from each other. I liked CTP's approach to this particular aspect of the game, because they did what I always wanted

On formers vs. public works budget: Once again, I've always disliked my formers/settlers out there where they can be attacked. I assume my highway department workers and such would take to their homes in times of hostilities, and creep out after my armies have met the enemy and begin repairing the damage.

One big problem with the PW approach is, as noted, the ability to save up and lay a highway into enemy territory all in one turn. They should have BORDERS beyond which you can not build!

Having to gear up to go to war, and bring your armies over a few turns up to alert status (or pay a lot to keep them there all the time, Cold War style) is a little touch of realism that I love. Same goes for taking my military budget out of my whole civ instead of individual cities supporting individual units.

I have really grown used to seeing what my cities are producing on the map with SMAC, and the whole border concept (once again). I really miss these things in CTP.

BR: "Don't make the mistake of assuming that Firaxis won't do a 'history of the world' style game!"

This is good news indeed...someone should be sure to ask about this at that chat this evening!

posted 04-01-99 05:43 PM ET         

So snowfire, smac is different from civ2, but the difference is not much compared to the difference of CTP to civ2.

Possibility.

posted 04-01-99 07:20 PM ET            

WHOOOAAA! Can't believe it! Brian Reynold himself graced a thread of mine with his presence. Does this mean that I now get the 'Senior Member' tag in the user profile ? Anyway, some more news from the CTP front:

My first 'real' game is nearing completion. I've just started to build the first thingamagics to get the 'Alien Life' project
done. The map by now is mostly blue - with the exception of an island empire I've pretty much conquered the world. Boy, am I thrilled to see what they've come up with as the 'You won' screen... The only things that bugs me is that I didn't build the 'Contraception'
wonder - I sho' would've like to see THAT wonder movie

Voracious: '...an attacker can simply build a road...', basically, he can. The only limits to this are your build points & that, if the city concerned is several tile away from your next city, you'll have to build the road tiles one after the other. I used this tactic several times with great success: build road/railroad in peacetime (this does not count as an offensive act), whack 'em when you're done.

Possibility: Can't say I've experienced the same so far. I play on 'Emperor', and didn't start in a particularly advantageous possition (shared my continent with another civ, as did the other computer players). Still, I led the power graph pretty much beginning to end, even though I played rather peacefully at first. 'computer player defend very well', hmm, not quite. He basically takes the same bait that SMAC does: feint an attack on city A, and he'll cramm that one with troops. Then steamroll city B, which has only one or two defenders. Works almost every time . Diplomacy: much to my chagrin the AI handles diplomacy even more erratically than SMAC. In the current game, I've broken treaties with just about anyone & waged war against anyone - still, I never had a problem getting the other guys to sign peace treaties. After which I'd assemble my troops, break the treaty & go on on my merry way of looting & plundering. Nonetheless, the two nations which I have abused the most are on 'friendly' terms with me (the smiley face in the dip screen) & even make trade offers to me! 'see what units are in an enemy city', use diplomats/spies for that, as in CivII. AFAIK, there is no other way to peek inside a city. 'graphics are totally sweet etc.' - yepp, definitely so. However, I turned most of the eye and ear candy off, because it grows old really fast & considerably slows down the whole affair.

Pique: Agreed, your idea is more realistic. OTOH, this would also mean: no arty barrages.
If a tile is some 50km wide, you'd have to use short-range SSM to pummel another tile.
Definitely no cannons here... Lest I forget: another incident that got me cursing about the follow-up attack style: attack a city/stack that's in a mountain field. After you've done away with the other guys, your cannons & cav get destroyed as well - those units aren't allowed to enter mountain terrain! I lost 5 crack units that way... What an utterly IDIOTIC idea < 'Hey sarge, SOP sez we're not supposed to be here, so shoot the horses & blow up the arty'. BLEEEAAAH. (Oof, I sho' feel better now.) 'my highway department workers and such would take to their homes in times of hostilities' - hehehe, gotcha! It is possible to TF a tile that contains enemy troops! Which makes for some *really* brave construction workers
Borders: I'm with you on this one, especially because the computer players don't use that
procedure. And it's definitely a headache in MP games - one more thing to watch out for
while the clock is ticking...

Sofarsogood, goin' to bed now. My elder son is dropping in over Easter & has already issued an 'I play the Believers, you get UoP & I'll still swipe you of the face of
Planet before 2350' kinda challenge, so I have seriously fit tomorrow. And YEEHAW, his
girlfriend is bringing along 5 FAT HOURS worth of Ren & Stimpy videotapes for this
here televisionally challenged old man. Now if this moron would only marry that girl..

posted 04-01-99 11:39 PM ET            

In the CTP_Program/CTP folder there is a file titled userprofile.txt. Edit it, and you will find a line saying Autosave=No. Change this to Autosave=Yes, and you've got your wish.

This is an incredibly inconvienent and just plain stupid thing to have to do to activate autosave, but there you are...

Pique

PS- Yeah, no city radius outline sucks.

posted 04-02-99 06:11 PM ET            

<B>Brian!!!!!!!</B>

<Font size=20>I want to believe </Font>

Btw, when do you open the Gettysburg forums?

Huh, that were a lot of questions, I only hope I get a good answer.

Ata

posted 04-02-99 08:43 PM ET            

First browse to the directory you installed CTP, to the same internal folder you found the userprofile.txt in...for me D:\program files\Activision\Civilization-Call To Power\ctp_program\ctp (all default except the 'D' drive designation).

There you will find a file called auto1.sav (took some searching to find this baby). But...you can't use it from here.

Next open up the folder (in this same directory) called save, and THEN the folder titled games, THEN one of your game folders inside there that gets created when you save normally (mines called Pique ).

Now copy the auto1.sav file into this folder. Now, finally, you can use the autosave from the LAST TURN ONLY. To use the most recent autosave next time, repeat this whole stupid procedure.

Every time you are forced to use autosave (page fault or whatever), take a moment to go online and fire off a nasty email to Activision...I put them in my address book...telling them to hire some better programers. Suggest the SMAC crew as subcontractors. This will, hopefully, motivate them to fix this idiocy.

Pique

posted 04-03-99 04:55 AM ET         

All of what I said before is true, except I may have slightly over exagerated on the AI (I can now defeat it). The AI is still good though (no game can ever match human intelect). The major dissapoint is there is no autosave (as far as I can tell). But this did not affect me at first because I dont like the idea of reloading when you make a mistake except that in Civ:CTP, there are no warning messages that pop and confirm any of your actions when your about to make a huge blunder.

For example, this is a MAJOR ONE. There is NO, I said NO, warning message or confirmation when you attack an ally or someone you have a peace agreement with. I was at a total alliance with one of the comps and we were going to war with another civ, this ally was giving me about 500 gold every 20 turns and well, we were good allies for the whole game. Then I ****ed up and attacked a diplomat next to one of my cities on the front lines. I didnt think it could be my allies cause I didnt think he would have had any units way up there and the city was surround by my real enemies units, so I mistakenly told my calvary to attack the diplomat and did I receive any messages saying I was about to break a peace treaty and an alliance? NO!! After I attacked and killed the diplomat, I got this funny/horrible feeling that it was my allies diplomat, so I went and checked the diplomacy page, and sure enough, it was his because it showed I was not at war with my ally. And there was no auto save to go back and redo it. I was just so fricking pissed, I could not believe it.

The thing is, there is no confirmation messages at all. If you pillage the wrong players sea farms, you will go to war even though you have a peace treaty with them. Pirate there trade routes and the same thing again. All with no little message popping up saying "You have a peace treaty with such and such. Do you wish to break your treat?" No, Nota, Nothing, just nothing.

I have already written a long email to them stating this but I urge everyone else to also. CTP is a good game, most people would say smac is better, but CTP is still a good game in its own right, hopefully with some patches it will be fixed and then the game will shine.

posted 04-03-99 04:59 AM ET         

It should say:

... it was his because it showed I was NOW (not not as i wrote above) at war with my ally. And there was no auto save to go back and redo it. I was just so fricking pissed, I could not believe it.

posted 04-03-99 08:46 AM ET            

Markos, Apolyton CS

posted 04-03-99 03:43 PM ET            

Pique: Thanks for the lowdown on autosave, I also missed that one badly!

Possibility: 'no pop-ups', not quite. You do get that kind of pop-up until 10 turns or so have passed. After that, you can pirate/pillage with impunity, most of the time the other one won't go to war with you & instead send those lovely 'Stop pirating my trade routes, or else!' messages. Expect, though, that he'll pay you back in kind & pirate/pillage your colonies. However, I feel
pretty much the same as you about this approach; i also mistakenly declared
war that way a couple of times. The only way to prevent accidental attacks is to renegotiate a peace treaty every ten turns, or try to get the other guy to form an alliance with you. About the AI - some people said that SMACs AI sucks because it can't really use the unit workshop & therefore can be taken out easily by a human opponent able to use that to his/her advantage. I found out that this pretty much rings true with CTP as well, albeit in a different way - those
vaunted alternative warfare units. The AI is simply not able to put up a sensible(!)
defense againt these at wartime - it always tries to counteract them on their own terms, i.e. drive of a lawyer/subliminal avertisement unit with another lawyer. Somehow the developers seem to have forgotten to tell the computer that lawyers etc. bleed just as much as the next guy when you shoot 'em . In other words: I had absolutely NO
problem moving three lawyers of mine merrily to and fro between three enemy cities & clamp down on their production until my army arrived & conquered them. Each city had a
garrison of normal units, but no special ones - they never attacked those pesky lawyers! Just for laughs, I tried this again later on with a veritable fleet of subliminal ads.
Same result - my fighters took out the other guy's lawyers, and my ads placed franchising
enterprises in every city he had on that continent, about 25, if I'm not mistaken.
Really funky. 'I have already written a long email', hey, a kindred spirit, mine is in
the make, I'll prolly fire it off on Monday. A positive side note - I yet have to experience my first crash/lock-up, CTP runs remarkably stable.

posted 04-05-99 07:35 AM ET            

FIRST: the poster is fargin stupid.(and ugly, but poster graphics does not a good game make anyway).

posted 04-06-99 03:23 AM ET         

First impressions:

First game, I hated it. Couldn't control the units, couldn't load/unload transports, got an Interceptor downed by 2 musketeers(!!), unit movement was slooooow and finally (mercifully) the game crashed - on a PII450 with 128MB.

I posted several critical comments on the Apolyton site.

Started afresh, and just finished the Alien creation.

Current thoughts:

The game is different, recreating the early CivII years and beyond, so comparisons with CivII are bound to come - probably why i hated the UI so much. But by changing to a left select/right move mode I found I could really hum with it;

Graphics, music and sounds are great (space shuttle turning fiery as it re-entered, dripping of hydroponic tanks, etc);

You need to edit the hit points to get game balance - even using the old Civ ones are better;

The Public Works feature is a must for SMAC 4.0;

The unconventional warfare is cool - defending against them is a challenge (and the AI makes full use of them at the higher difficulty levels);

Unit movements are sloooow and painful still - with roads, railways, magtubes and even in space you can brew a cuppa while your unit moves 15 tiles;

I still don't know how to unstack units for single unit disembarking - the manual is pretty useless here;

Build queue templates are useful - you can create your own customized build queues for science, production, food etc cities, and chhose the template you want when you found a new city;

The space and undersea developments are great - some cool futuristic units - and the AI again is nit afraid to use them;

The AI still cheats at the higher levels;

The biggest plus (for me, at least) was the frenetic charge at game end to complete the Alien creature - much like CivII, with the tweaking of the last unit of production to beat out the AI. I miss that in SMAC - the Ascent to Transcendence is rather tame by comparison.

All-in-all, though, a worthwhile buy IMHO. I can see myself alternating a couple of weeks with SMAC then a couple with CtP, just for variety.

As if my opinion counted, I'd recommend it to any CivII fan or current SMAC fan.

posted 04-06-99 03:43 PM ET            

I feel like a traitor, but I think if there was room for but one, then CTP would remain, and SMAC would be on the shelf.