posted 04-06-99 10:54 AM ET     

Without a demo to judge it by I've been reading the C:CTP posts (thanks to those who posted them) but I'm still not convinced.

You see, I've played both Civ 1 & 2 to distraction, built mighty empires and colonised new worlds hundreds of times. I'm tired of doing that. I bought SMAC because I wanted to see what happend to my 40,000 colonists once they got to Alpha C. I've been waiting years to find out, and I'm very happy with the result.

So what I want to know is how CTP compares with the original Civ. Is it new and innovative enough to warrant my time and money ? Do you Civ Vets find there is a "Been there, done that." feeling ?

Answers and Opinions please...

posted 04-06-99 12:11 PM ET         

The UI is a classic case of (un)fixing something that wasn't that broke (the old Sid UI).

Those two things make the game currently unplayable for me, until I get around to upgrading RAM to 64Mb and enlarging swap space to 200-300Mb. The min install has a 300+Mb footprint, the max tops out at half a gig! jeezzsh!

That's too bad, since I had wanted to see how certain combat features that should have been in SMAC, like STACKING LIMITS (an ancient board gaming concept!) and close-in ranged combat (essentially, multiunit combined arms combat in the same square).

posted 04-06-99 01:32 PM ET            

Stacked combat/ranged units/etc- great. A lot more realistic (IMHO) than the old system.

Special units- good. I like the abilities these give you, but the corny names and non-traditionalism seem to be a turn-off for many.

Lack of borders- a real drawback after SMAC. The CP's have no concept of whats yours OR whats theirs.

AI- not particularly good. Don't know how many times I've demanded a non-tresspass treaty partner to leave my territory. They will withdraw their 5 or 10 units, only to send them in again next turn so you have to withdraw again. The only way the AI has any chance at all is by giving it huge advantages over the human player. In other words, pretty standard AI does use non-traditional units pretty well, and they are hell on trade routes. Treaties that expire every 10 turns are stupid, and add nothing except frustration from renegotiating them constantly. Diplomacy as a whole is sadly sub-par, mostly due to the stupid AI and the lack of a defined territory (borders again!).

Trade- great...way more in depth than other offerings in the genre (IMHO, once again).

Public works vs. formers/settlers- I like PW's better, but it is a matter of personal preference I think...

Military budget- great...way better to have units supported by a civ-wide military budget than the old unit/city relationship. Military alert status is also a very good addition to the genre.

UI- horrible, non-intuitive, etc, etc (note- I don't particularly like SMAC's either, but its not as bad as this. I prefer the good old civ2/windows style UI...menu's on top, city screen, etc, with the rest of the board for the MAP!). Map doesn't center on units correctly, battles take place out of your vision, pop-up windows don't tell you what a city just produced, badly done go-to lines that follow you halfway around the world waiting for you to misclick, etc. Lots of problems here.

Graphics- in general very good. Looks pretty crisp.

Fog of war- sucks, you can hardly tell what the terrain is under explored land if you don't have a unit watching over it. Enemy units seem to come and go at random and it is impossible to imagine what algorithm governs whether or not you see a unit comming/going.

Micromanagement- more than SMAC even with the queue templates (note: I don't personally mind MM, and never automate anything in any game if I can help it)

Speed, stability, etc.- heres the problem. Game is slow after about 1000 AD even with 64 mb, K6-2 300, full install, animations off, and permanent 1 gig vm setting. Crashes frequently for no apparent reason. Many people experience no crashes at all, but judging by the boards just as many get hammered with them. There is apparently no correlation between platforms that crash and those that don't. I have played for up to 6 hours with no problem, then had to reboot 3 times in 20 minutes next time I fired it up. Activision Tech Support is not even remotely helpful.

In the end, I think the game has some good inovations, and is really fun to play if you can fight past the UI, but I wouldn't buy it until about the 2nd patch comes out if I had to do it again. If you just have to get it now, get it at EB so you have a week to take it back if your system is one of the few (~50%) that it doesn't run fast/well on.

Pique