posted 03-30-99 06:51 AM ET     

Summary: This is a very good game indeed, but it could be great. It tends to be the small details that make a great game, and some of these from CIVII are missing!

CTP has made mention of including these, if Firaxis patch SMAC to include them, the game will be more enjoyable to those that already play it, and will not be relegated to the bottom shelf when CTP is released.

So what are these enhancements?

The Three Pillars of CIVII

1) City screen - There is none in SMAC - this is a BIG mistake and detracts from the enjoyment of watching your cities grow - with the Sci-Fi feel animation could (and should) also be employed!

2) The Throne Room - Again, missing - very cool in CIVII plus the option to turn it off when you are playing it for the Nth time!

3) Unit attack sounds - Erm - where are they? There seems to be a stock attack sound as if this was simply overlooked!
What happened to the numerous sounds from machine gun fire to dropping bombs to the air-raid siren before a nuke went off a La it's predecessor?

Anyone reading this, please post - with enough support I'm sure Firaxis will look seriously into doing this!

Lastly this game has not crashed once (Yin)

posted 03-30-99 11:31 AM ET         

A most honourable cause though! However, I think the palace is supposed to have been replaced with the plaques that are placed on that huge great monolith that pops up now and again (first battle won, first new base created etc.). Not quite as much fun as picking a new chair, but it gives you an idea what you've done which the palace didn't.

I expect it may be a little much to ask for a city screen now (I stopped using them in Civ II quite quickly) as the art and programming is fairly demanding. Maybe the Firaxis design team thought it was too much effort for something that wasn't used by a lot of people and didn't add much to the game play. Either that or they couldn't figure out what a Hunter-Seeker algorithm would look like once it had been built...