quote: Dear Sir or Madam, The online Civ community received with disappointment the news that Activision planned to release no further patches for CTP2, as the general feeling was that the game had the potential to become the best TBS game ever. Three months later, and the CTP2 community has dwindled to just a few hundred people who are still playing or modding. I will not comment on how *good* or not the game is, suffice to say I am still here, but it has been shown that CTP2 does not have the long-term playability of Civ2 (for example). Largely this is due to the lack of PBEM, hotseat, and a stable MP system, but the reason the Civ2 comunity is so large, is because of the huge range of mods and scenarios. I am convinced that CTP2 is as, and indeed more moddable than Civ2, and many people, especially at the Apolyton Civilisation Site have worked extremely hard to get the best out of CTP2. I am sure you are aware that many people still feel extremely angry about the bugs in CTP2, but I'm not writing to remind you of this. I am writing because I think that the Activision CTP2 team can at least give the CTP2 community the tools to make CTP2 the best it can be. The spritetool was gratefully received, and I think I have nearly 100 fan-created units on my computer, for use in various CTP1 and 2 scenarios. Now that Activision has stopped work on the CTP series, the community would be incredibly grateful if you could allow us to use the program which was used to edit and/or compress the *.til files for terrain and tileimprovements. This one program, emailed to me, or to Markos Giannopoulos at markg@apolyton.net would open up many more opportunities to add to the game, and adapt the game engine to unlimited numbers of scenarios. On behalf of the entire CTP2 community at Apolyton Civilisation Site (http://apolyton.net), Yours faithfully, Ben Weaver. email:weaver1@tinyworld.co.uk

This is a letter that I will send to Activision, and I would like it to make an impresion. I am posting it here so that everyone can add their opinions and comments to it.
I would really like to have the *.til editor, and so I do not think that insulting, flaming or hurling abuse at Activision will help this in any way. There are other threads for more angry comments, please keep this thread restricted to:

• additions to the letter


• ommissions from the letter


• other changes to the letter


• comments on changes to the letter

And also: should I post, or email this, and if by post, typed or handwritten?

I shall send this when everyone who wants to has offered an opinion and the thread has effectivly died.

Should we attatch a petition, and if so, how? Has everyone got access to a scanner, where they can scan in their name, in their own handwriting?

Anyway, let me know what letter I should send, and I'll update this post with valid suggestions.

On the letter itself: please mind the spelling of the word Civilization and the typos of playability (l. 7), hard (l. 11) and 'opportunities to' (r. 22). Use Markos' full name and email address, it may be known to Mr Ogre & Co but they don't work for Activision anymore. I frankly don't know if anyone who even knows Apolyton still works there. Maybe change 'a few dozen people' to 'a few hundred people', there are many lurkers: a lot of files in the download database still have about 1000 or more downloads. Other than that, it looks fine to me.

I don't think a petition will be necessary, you already said it yourself: 'the CTP2 community has dwingled to just a few dozen people', a petition usually serves to show that a lot of people support something and there simply aren't a lot of people around anymore. Activision isn't gonna do this because raging hords of fans are demanding it, they'll have to do it for half a dozen modmakers and maybe a few hundred players.

I am told that snail mail carries far more weight than email but if you do have a specific contact person in the company then I'd think email would be just as effective.

I am most interesting in opening the source code a hack patch could increase Activision's sales of CTP2. I know that is very much, but I think that would the only way to turn this game into the best civ game ever. Of course we don't need ask this at once, but this would be the last hope for the game and of course Activion.

I think there are more people than here in the forums presented playing or modding this game. One of my last image pack got 88 downloads in the last month, OK it could be more but that show that there are enough people who try to modify the game. And you can guess that there are actually more people than that who are playing this game. Therefore if Activion do release one of my requests it could help more than thousand people and of course Activion itself.