CivIII should have a history book that records current game's whole history which tells many historical events,master minds and major battles,etc.

The book "World History" will have many chapters which includes all the eras such as ancinet and modern. Much score should be given to civs that appear mostly in the book.

After you complete the game you may read each chapter of the book and be proud of your achievments.

It will be better to have book-like interface so we can read the book page by page.

I was thinking something that really advanced thus much detailed information can be recorded and read later to suit each player's flavour. If you wanna see all the major battles thoroughout the history the system should be able to search and demonstrate all the battles,that occured during the game, to you.

The title of the book could be "History of the [your civ], written by the Viking Scribes"!

Was it? You bet I would have voted for getting the replay thing back! and we all wanna see more advanced features about recording our paths during the game thus the replay thing definitely has to be upgraded! right Raingoon?

Sligshot

I appreciate about your comment about Australian and your dedication on this forum is well known among Apolytoners.

Thunderfall

As the advantages of it have been sucessfully written, I would like point one disavantage of it: the size of saved games would be huge!

I was reading a book called "An Introduction to the Ancient World," by Blois and Spek (Routledge Publishers). The book is easy to read, and quite interesting. I would love to have Civ III put together a book describing the player's civ throughout the ages. Here are examples, inspired from the book:

"The third millennium also saw the rise of another great civilization in the Near East, namely that of Mesopotmia [your_civ]..."

And

"What we do know about the [your_civ]ians is that they are the people who made the cities of [your_top_city, ...2] great; they also made extensive use of the art of writing for keeping accounts in their temples and palaces and for composing religous and literary texts. Sculpture, architecture, religious imagry, lierary styles and views on kingship, law and society were all developed by the [your_civ}ians."

The text describes the battles (quantities of units are set according to number of units that participated) and the diplomacy and the mood in a "suck up to the master of the world" kind of way.

Looks good. There's plenty of other things I'd like done with the game before they went to this much trouble, but I'd be happy to see something like this if they could swing it.

Especailly Sirotnicov, wow your presentation looks so beautiful I like it

Youngsun - Shhh... many don't know, but we are actually making ALL THE THINGS IN THE WORLD here. were bigger than microsoft. which is also a branch of ours . Just kidding. no reason to be paranoid. yet .

Actually I am proud to be living in the town where the MMX chipset was invented. And we do have nice uzis and weapon systems (but I don't get to play with them in real life like I do in civ )

I played SMAC today for the 4th time ever, and to my surprise it was a very nice game. I had discovered that when you have absolutely no idea how things work and what things mean in a game, you shouldn't start at high levels. so I played citizen. for over 3 hours. I'm king of the world!!! well, almost. hey, I dare you to guess which civ do I play there? A clue is in my signature that I rarely use (but used before). Meanwhile, back ot my point, the end is nice, I chose to retire to see it. It's ahm... nice... not very much. Oh, and if there is really a thing that annoys me is the landmark thing. We had the palace in civI and we had the throne room in 2. the landmark is a good idea, but it's annoying every time you do something whoops.. there goes your resolution changing and loading pcx graphics all to tell you that you had your very first city \ unit \ battle \ victory \ city.... (I have 32MB RAM you see. I upgrade piece by piece. Taxes are really high here.)

But the landmark idea is nice. The end replay should be slowed down, made more specific, with zooming, and options for fast forward and rewind. And I can save it as AVI (ok, I'm getting carried away here, stop me at will) and have a report and stuff.

and an OT question: how do you check your relationship with other nations in SMAC? I mean, what do they think, Am I reliable.. let me rephrase that, do they think they can trust me? you know, that thing that was under "foreign advisor" in civ2.

The "book" suggestion is much compromised one from my original thought which includes 30 minutes epic film that tells about my civs' history,achivements and impacts on other civs,etc.(documentary style narration with nice rich voice)

Don't you think we need little bit of reward after hours/days of hard works.

I used to feel some sort of vacancy in my mind after finishing the game which can't be fully fulfilled by mere replay thing.

But there is always great tool for this kind of disagreement "Option"! . We may be able to choose when we begin the game to record history either as a book or simpler/faster replay.

Sirotnicov

Do not regard Australia as poorly defended nation because of that outdated MBT things. We have impressive array of weaponry in both the Air Force and Navy.(I won't tell ya this time what they are ) Since the continent is fully under control of Australia,the army has not given the highest priority to upgrade its heavy equipments but I believe there will be lots of modernisation of the army equipments soon especially after what happend in East Timor.

Anyway "Merkava" is one of my favourite MBTs and it is the outcome of all the accumulation of the Israeli experinces in armoured warfare.

I agree with you that after a very long game we need a better way to end and share our accomplishment with friends (and Apolytoners too ).

I think that a better "events log" is needed to keep track of a civilization evolution. I'm not only thinking about the end of game phase, where you should see the whole world, but also as a feature to recall your last moves when you go back to an old "save" of the game (without spoiling the game revealing other CIV "unknow" info).

IMO, we should divide facts&figures from graphics: first we must decide which events are useful to remember, then which kind of graphics is more appropriate to reproduce them.
In this way, we can divide the effort, may be we also can have options for players (or to cope with PC limits: no 3D cards = no slow and jerky animation) or simply let more room for Firaxis artists .

Looking first to the fact, we can realize if we are really biting more than we can chew (looking at a text list of ten thousand of minor event we'll be forced to use some sort of scissors ).

My draft of events to log:
City foundations (name, when, where - if name of place will be available -)
Technologies discovered (name, when, first applied - unit build or building founded)
Main trade and diplomatic pacts (with whom, when, the subject)
Start and end of wars (first battle, winner, last battle, winner, total losses)
Long revolt (lasted more than one turn) and city loss (where, when, a fictional why)
Wonders built
and other main results as enemy Civ destroyed or annexed, the launch of the Starship and the like.

To keep the statistics maneageble, I suggest they will be summarized into sort of "superturns", age of time that can better underline the whole timeline. Something in the line of

quote: "From 3500bc to 3600 bc the Romans Monarchy of Queen Elena founded the city of Praga, Milano and Berna on the fertile plain of Center Europe. Meantime, it ended the wars with the Republic of North Africa with a pact, after the end of the naval battle in south Mediterranum Sea. The war lasted 15 years, with the loss of 4 fleets of trireme, against 1 fleet sinked to the Republic of North Africa"

On the "graphics" side, I have different suggestions:
1) to create it as a modern history book with mainly text, some predefined picture the program will add where appropriate (wonders, units) chosing from which are already available by Civilopedia or intro/cut scene, or adding short movies and sounds as a more "documentary film", but as we will write / shoot on modern time (actual History book or TV special).

2) to change the look and feel of the report by the age you look at: start with written tablet, then papers; draw, then sepia photos, colour photos, then movies, as in a Museum collection.

Mainly I'm thinking of a graphic library ready to use (extensible by downloading new items by Internet Firaxis and fans' sites), that the program can easily link to the text generated by log.

In my opinion it's not a program feature as difficult to build as it appeared on first view, but I will like any other opinion.

Adm.Naismith, I think your outline for the replay is very good. Just one thing, it must have a scaled down map of the world with X marks showing when decribing major battles or new citys, and maybe colors showing country borders. Perhaps in big battles, the map will be a close up of the immidiate area with graphical units like I did in the picture. I did it on a large scale, but it would be best on a province or city teritory scale (only neares city\ies showing).

Maybe some of you had heard about the new version of "Risc" for the PC. there you have a zoom option which doesn't give you anytihng, but it is very pretty to watch. I think we take this and add small scale detail that can't appear on the global map.

Your suggestion is very thorough and practical. I actually don't mind not using book as a main interface as long as I can enjoy all the goodies of my civ's history.

Sirotnicov

Ahm, ... I said ahm! Is anybody adding this to "the list"? I think Adm.Naismith covered the subject pretty well and this should be added formally to the list.

Is anybody listening?

Anybody home?

I'm here. You are right let's support Admiral's idea to be added into the game!

OrangeSfwr

Still, as in a museum tour, we can suppose some movies will run only if we click on the appropriate button.
New player (and game reviewer ) will enjoy and be impressed as required, veterans can skip the repetitive parts.
Instead, a good text generator is a must, IMHO, but we haven't so much concepts to handle, so Firaxis can cope with them.

By my previus example:

From [arbitrary slot of years here] the [name of civ here] of [name of civ leader here] founded the cities of [put here the list of cities founded into that slot of time, if any] on the [chose a terrain attribute by the average on the area] of [name of region if available].

Meantime, it ended the war with [name of enemy civ] with a [result of the war: cease fire, pact, victory, etc.], after the end of the [last battle here] in [name of region if available].

The war lasted [maths here] years, with the loss of [statistics here] fleets of trireme, against [statistics here] fleets sinked to the [enemy civ again here].

We have some problem with counters to keep, but we can also resume more (e.g. reducing units loss to global by slot of time, not specific by Civ wars).

Playing with the synonims and the order of the words, we can put some difference between similar sentences, just to keep things interesting.

Map snapshot shouldn't be a big problem if we keep them not too much detailed (not many info to save)

About adding this idea to The List, I'm not sure there will be another version (someone suggested the previus 500+ pages already kill ed half of the Firaxis staff ), and the main concept of a better replay already appeared on Essential Civ 3 Poll.

I thank you for your support (wow, from Australia, Israel and Pennsylvania, more global support than Italian President got ), but I also hope someone of you will correct my bad english and my mistakes, before putting this into any kind of "official suggestion for Firaxis" form

Sorry if I've trodden on any toes. Maybe I should go to bed already.

We want to summarize around six thousand years of a Civ history, it can't be too short

The key is, IMHO, as in business reports: summarize then let the reader to "drill down" the detailed info.

Please consider that:
- old Civ reply only show to you the territory owned by every CIV;
- it doesn't work as an "in between" remainder about the situation of a previus save
- it doesn't help players to share good game results to learn from and enjoy

Our requested CIV III replay must:
- cover every path to victory of a civ, showing the evolution in tech discovery, military and diplomatic power, market dominance and any other useful info to help us to compare Civs. May be (as in SMAC terms) someone win cornering the global market just when another player is almost ready to launch the starship: please someone show to me how @#* can I deduce this from a stupid coloured map of territory owned

- I want to go back to old save an restart a game with some general briefing showing how my Civ is where it is on that turn, just to catch the right feeling and remember previus tactics.

- I want to "build history" and show the result to some friends of mine that don't know the whole CIV game but can be interested seeing some not boring reply (well, at least as interested as to see my photo or holiday movie . I want to see in a glance how good players reached their records, downloding their "replay" by some "Apolyton History Museum of Great Civs".

It will be more useful if (as others suggested) in Civ III your Civ will gain a positive result also if it doesn't last forever, as Romans or Egyptian in real history.

Of course someone can be bored to read everithing: just let him/her to skip unwanted parts, as I already wrote on previus post.

Come on MidKnight, don't leave us, just tell us what you would change of this proposal

I guess I'm just aware that it's going to take a fair bit of effort by designers to make sure that it stays relevant and doesn't become boring. Particularly when there's plenty of other things which I believe need to be improved upon first. That's what I'm thinking anyway. It'd be a great feature, but it's sort of an extra to the game rather than improving the game itself.

Don't take anything I say too much to heart though

Please read twice my proposal:

Mainly text (HTML format is good for me) means just some ten/twenty Kb added to the game save. Counters can be difficult to extimate, but you can really put lot of numbers into a bunch of bytes, can't you?

About movies and cut scene, I spoke about link to a game library (and reuse of in-game cut scene). That can take more or less space, just it's always the same from installation of game.

On another example, please take a glance at http://crisium.com/sn/snnews.htm (site of STARS! Supernova, a TBS about space empire) and browse to look at their "log" concept.

They will record relevant messages (as SMAC main events) adding the feature for the player to add (during evey turn, if you want), some written notes. ("Emperor diary", if you want .

So they are mixing part of computer generated report to human "glue" to fill the gaps. It surely is less programming intensive and still let you the ability to save as html and send it everywhere.

Some Australian Knight feel better now?

It would be nice to have an HTML file that reads like a parallel 'World History Book', so that you can revel in your old glories, or wallow in your defeats!

I like this idea more and more as I type!