IMHO, CtP and CtP2 haven't done this, and CtP2 moreso than the original. Perhaps this is one reason (among many) that CtP, while a very challenging and fun game to play failed the "Civ" Test that all games of this genre have to pass.

Also IMHO, there can really be no compromise between historical accuracy (again, some exceptions can be made) and playability.

As for the exceptions mentioned above, they really should be few and far between and not a kind of loophole in the tech tree.

Taliseian

Here are just a few things that Civ games don't take into account:

1) Erosion/natural shifts in ecology
2) Ice Ages
3) pestilence (except briefly in Civ1)
4) Natural disasters in general
5) treason
6) How come you can still rule by fiat as a democracy or other representative government?
7) Crazy or wildly inventive battlefield tactics (use of plague-infested horses as catapult shot, poisoning water supplies in sieges, etc)
8) Bigotry/racism
9) WEATHER! It (helped to) defeated Hitler and Napoleon, for Chrissakes!
10) How about the fact that immortal guiding spirits DON'T manipulate things in the background of history?

No, the game dosn't have these "features" - but some might be made by "our" terrific modmakers

Now I take your points one by one. I have to compare them to CTP as I dosn't have CTPII

1) Erosion/natural shifts in ecology

Kind of it has. Pollution and the ability to use PW to restore to grassland or whatever you want.

2) Ice Ages

This might be done. I don't know what possibilities, there are hidden in the socalled "events".

3) pestilence (except briefly in Civ1)

As for no. 2.

4) Natural disasters in general

As for no. 2 again.

5) treason

No, unfortunately not.

6) How come you can still rule by fiat as a democracy or other representative government?

Yes, here we miss the senate from CIV II.

7) Crazy or wildly inventive battlefield tactics (use of plague-infested horses as catapult shot, poisoning water supplies in sieges, etc)

A few "older" new units á la the infectors could to this job. Easy to implement.

8) Bigotry/racism

Something like this has been discussed between the modmakers on the forums. I don't know (can't remember), what the result ended up with.

9) WEATHER! It (helped to) defeated Hitler and Napoleon, for Chrissakes!

If the modmakers can handle no2, 3 and 4 then they can handle this too.

10) How about the fact that immortal guiding spirits DON'T manipulate things in the background of history?

????

quote: Originally posted by jkadabomb on 11-27-2000 09:36 PM Maximus42 you are not very smart. The Ice Age was millions of years ago and has no chance of fitting into the Civ time periods.

Well, that's a bit wrong.....

We had a ice age for circa 10.000 years ago. Then Europe from Scandinavia in north, to Germany(half) in south, was just ice!

Atomic power can't be discovered before quantum physics/relativity and metallurgy. QP can't be discovered without a sound base in chemistry and wave physics. Chemistry springs from alchemy and biology. Wave physics comes from optics. Metallurgy also comes from chemistry and civil engineering, etc etc. (OK, this is pretty simplified, but you get he idea).

So essentially you do need a tech tree.

But in one way you are right. The advantage of SMACs techtree is that the different branches are independent. Whether you have discovered optics should not influnce whether you discover democracy. (Then again, the abolishment of slavery came from the invention of the horse collar, so they do have some overlap... but I think that is a little bit outside the scope of the game). So, someone concentrating on atomic power should be able to get it in the 1800's, providing he ignores, say, advances in social science. You see?

Regarding CTPII's tech tree, I can't say I think much of it... Fascism as a requirement for democracy? OK...

And the techtree is ok, but could be done better. I would like to see different paths that could be take which would give different cultures which different goods/bads etc. After all, all countries are different, and whereas the large discoveries spread rather quick people often tend to take different angles to it.

And maybe the possibility to enchance your units by putting some science into them and getting a better version of it.

Rollo: Before the invention of the horse collar, the only way you could get work out of a horse was to put a rope around its neck. Unfortunatley, when the horse applied pressure on the rope, it effectively choked itself, so it could only use a fraction of its strength. Consequently, a horse could do the work of four men, but ate as much as five... Therefore it was more economical to keep slaves for farmduty.

When the horse collar was invented, the horse (or ox) could use its full strength. Now the horse could do the work of ten men, but still eat (fairly) the same. Naturally, this makes owning a horse more economical than slaves.

It should be said, I guess, that it doesn't eliminate slavery all together, slaves were still used for more qualified labor, but the era when most slaves were used more for brute strength than their intelligence ended. Compare the societies prior to the horse collar (greek, roman, etc) to the medieval societies after.

Depp, considering you being in Lule I understand your name... How many hours of sunlight do you guys have right now?

Anyway, something I've always found odd about the civ genre is the fact that you will still pay upkeep for a phalanx even when the SAME CITY is churning out tanks... I think there should a function where you could upgrade a unit for a small fee and say, five turns in a city.

Now back to the 128 limit. I am told that this number is for indexed advances with references to the Great Library. If you put NO INDEX in the advance.txt file than the speed increases, of course all the GL files I worked hard on (to polish the game) are then disabled. I tried this and saw a noticeable increase in speed, but still not as fast as having only 128 non future techs. I think something was done to the code for future techs in addition to the NO INDEX flag that speeds up the game.

I even optimized the Advance.txt file in order of advances (instead of just adding new ones to the end) to see if that would help (it only caused me to rewrite every preq).

My understanding is that these same limitations are in CTP 2, so adding techs to flush out and correct the tech tree still has the same problems/constraints/limitations.

quote: Originally posted by jbs on 11-29-2000 05:52 PM Civilization is not a game that you should be able to finish in a weekend.

waiting for your mod...