• Historical Replay
  
• Palace
  
• Newspaper Reports
  
• City View
  
• Diplomacy Screen
  

Civilization II

• Interface (worked equally well for both keyboard and mouse)
  
• Playability
  
• Atmosphere (Formality)
  
• Great Playing Speed
  
• The High Council
  
• Civilopedia (MGE)
  
• Realistic Technology Tree
  
• Good Combat Unit Balance
  
• Customizability
  
• Great Wonder Movies (Real Video beats crappy CGI any day)
  
• Great Wonder Choices
  
• Good Tile Improvement System
  
• Great City Interface
  
• Workable Trade System (not perfect by any means, but the best so far)
  
• Spaceship Endgame
  

Alpha Centauri

• Borders
  
• Diplomacy
  
• Alternate Paths to Victory
  
• Sound Files with Technologies (except for the future tech quote, which got old hearing it over and over)
  
• Good Pathfinding
  
• Social Engineering (good system that might carry over into Civ 3 as religions and philosophies)
  

Test of Time

• Spinning Globe World-View
  
• Great Customizability
  
• Optional Extended Game
  

Call to Power

• Cool Intro Movie
  
• Build Queues
  
• Underwater Cities
  
• Ocean Tile Improvements (Nets)
  
• Good Pathfinding
  
• A Few Good Overlooked Technologies (Geometry, Quantum Physics, Alchemy, Ballistics, Electrification, Bureaucracy, Fuel Cells, Nationalism, Pharmaceuticals, etc.)
  
• Music and Sound Effects
  
• Noncombat Units (implementation was bad, but the idea was sound)
  
• All Tribes Start on a River
  
• Space (a good system, though it might be better if relegated to scenarios)
  

Call to Power 2

• Feats of Wonder
  

I can't agree that the underwater cities in CtP were good. I like to see the seas and oceans as vast, limiting borders that hem the player in, and give him/her a sense of strategic security, too. Take these borders away, and the planet becomes somehow featureless. Is this a fair comment?

Civilization II:

quote: Great Wonder Movies (Real Video beats crappy CGI any day)

CtP:

quote: A Few Good Overlooked Technologies (Geometry, Quantum Physics, Alchemy, Ballistics, Electrification, Bureaucracy, Fuel Cells, Nationalism, Pharmaceuticals, etc.)

quote: Originally posted by EnochF on 01-18-2001 02:46 PM Good Pathfinding

What?
Have you ever looked at how mayor-controlled settlers move around? Thats "good pathfinding" in your eyes?

AI unit-pathfinding is per definition ALWAYS bad in Civ-type games; partly as a consequence of the general AI-complexity of the game, and partly also as a result of using random computer-generated maps. Its really not something that is "bad" in one civ-game, and "good" in another. Thats all in your imagination, i believe.

Another one, is Call to Power had "Shipbuilding," which I thought was more precise than Civ II's rather vague "Seafaring." For the most part, CTP's tech tree sucked. It had weird advances like "Age of Reason" and "Industrial Revolution" and "Drama" (that might be CTP2, actually). But mixed in there were some good ones. "Printing Press" was another one I liked.

Agreed about the Call to Power future techs. I've given future tech a lot of thought, and I used to be an advocate for its implementation in Civ 3, to the point where the late game would include colonization of the Moon and Mars. But I've changed my mind about that, mostly because, even among people who like future tech, no one can agree which future tech is too silly to include. Call to Power and CTP2 had dumb things like "Nano-Assembly" and "Fluid Breathing," and stupid stupid units like the Plasmatica and the Cyber Ninja. Yech. But on the other hand, I liked "Asteroid Mining" and "Neural Interface" and the Star Tower, and some people thought those were just as silly as the Plasmatica.

So, my new position on future tech is this: Give the player the ability to design lots of new technologies, new city improvements (complete with new effects), new wonders, underwater cities, bridges across ocean tiles, space cities, maybe even colonization of the moon, but don't include any of it in the standard game. Let every player design his/her own perfect future tech system, complete with whatever units or techs they think are appropriate. In order for that to happen, they'll need unlimited slots for new techs, units, improvements, and stuff.

Ralf:

Oops. That's not what I meant by pathfinding. I meant, when you tell a unit to "Go To" a city, it actually goes there, and it knows how to use roads and railroads to get there quicker. In Civ II and even Test of Time, units wander around aimlessly when you try to get them to automatically go to a city. But the feature was correctly implemented in SMAC and CTP.

Seriously....I am aa World Empire Builder..perhaps Tantamount to making U.S. Foreign Bases..if case of War..or needed intervention of Economic sanctions/Aid..or having a close Direct support of a Friendly Nation...at any rate..i do a lot of exploring..finding ruins..getting Gold, Tech, Units and Oh Yes the very valuable cities to either settle or disband and move..but if say I am on A Gigantic Map..then it takes forever to move closer to my land..or Kingdom..I wish we could somehow maybe pay a small Fee..and say he catch a bus or something like that..at any rate..be able to go to a city within your region..instead of moving 50+ turns..just a thought..

One thing I did like about Call To Power was when someone demanded you stop tresspassing..if you agreed..then you unit would be sent home..QUICKLY!!(Instantaenously).but in Call To Power 2..you have to move and then it takes forever to get back home..

Just a thought..or request..

Have a great day..looking foreward to Civ III...

Later

Polite disagreement.
I left Public Works out for a reason. If Civ 3 goes with that system, I won't consider it the end of the world or anything, but I'd hate to lose the flexibility of the Civ 2 Engineer system.

Cannes:

So, when Call to Power began confusing concepts with events, it ended up feeling incongruous. "Age of Reason" isn't a concept; it's a period of time. Once the "Age of Reason" is over, it's over. The same would be true of the Renaissance, or the Industrial Revolution, or the Reformation.

The kinds of advances that really bug me are:

• 1. Events (e.g., Agricultural Revolution)
  
• 2. Old technologies with "advanced" or "modern" in front of them (e.g., Advanced Flight, or Modern Medicine)
  
• 3. Vague advances (e.g., Leadership, Tactics, Religion, etc.)
  

I can put up with a handful of #3, at least in the interests of tying military units and Wonders to specific technologies. I put up with it in Civ 2 because it just "felt right" most of the time. I can even maybe put up with even one or two #2. But #1 just grates on my nerves.

1) allocated military maintenance costs to each city rather than entire civilization - ridiculous that it takes longer and longer to build each successive military unit - too difficult to maintain an actual mass military force for war

What Call to Power and Call to Power II did right:

1) allocated military maintenance costs to the entire civilization rather than each city - made for a much more realistic level of military force and units are easier to produce while you still have time to utilize them

The Public Works budget is still a simpler way to handle infrastructure things, eliminating a lot of micromanagement. It doesn't preclude having separate units that can do some of the same things, such as Combat Engineers who could build Roads & Fortresses, etc.

I also like more settlers/engineers than PW. Making TIs with PW is so boring. The problem with engineers is the micromanagement nightmare in the endgame. I think SMAC's colony pods and formers handled better the problem. Hopefully Firaxis will do one more step ahead (but can we dream to a perfect autosettler ? )

------------------
- Biddles

quote: Please keep BS like any wonder (excuse me, secret project)like SMAC's "command nexus" and CTP2's zero-crime bill and stuff that makes no sense out of civ3. Stick to the best stuff: the pyramids, the great wall, the apollo project, the empire state building, chitzen itza.

Oh, please. If the pyramids did not actually exist today, you'd be complaining that they were a "BS wonder" for ancient times. ("What? A giant pile of enormous stone blocks, erected solely by manpower? What good will that do?") Who knows which of modern society's achievements our descendants will consider wondrous?

quote: Originally posted by EnochF on 01-18-2001 02:46 PM Civilization II Civilopedia (MGE)

Civilopedia was in Civ I first. Just for your information.

quote: Originally posted by lago on 01-18-2001 06:41 PM Excellent Call To Power Feature: Public Works Let Settlers do what they do best, creating new cities. Why should you take a hit in population in order to build a road- & mine-building unit?

To tell you the truth I really did not like the PW system, but I appreciated the efforts of Activision to try and make something other than the settler changing the land forms. I never like building a settler to improve my infrastructure.

Something like SMAC's formers may work. As could a combo of PW and formers. I don't have the solution but I just now that I would prefer not to lose population to build a road.

I liked the Civ 1 palace because it was customisable. The Civ 2 and CtP pictures were a poor replacement and I certainly would not like them reimplemented in Civ 3.

Stacked combat was the best idea introduced by CtP and I will take a lot of persuading that Civ 3 will work effectively without it. Armies do not queue up to allow units to attack each other individually until one side runs out.

Civ 2:
most of the wonder movies were barely movies at all. Most of them were movies of static pictures (colossus, michelangelo's chapel). Nothing beats the Manhatten Project or Women's Sufferage though. or the music on Leonardo's workshop.

as for balanced units in civ2, what about howitzers? first thing I did was remove the Ignores-City-Walls ability.

so far the argument against Public Works has been that you keep forgetting to use them. Hmmm.

I'd agree with most of the input so far.

Some plusses for CTP2, Combat Model is good, the space cities went away, the Oceanic cities stayed (Josef - they are very late in the game and the military units at the time can move aplenty). Yaay the expanding city radius!

MrFun is right about military support costs being shared accross the empire. Although Civ2 did have "Support from this City".

-Related if Settlers and Engineers were expensive to support, this could represent the investment into infrastructure, production would effectively be diverted into terrain improvement.

Lee - just out of interest how would you describe the Great Wall (The other pile....)

As for Public Works, a good compromise would be to give settlers/engineers multiple orders, like in Total Annihilation.

Actually, the heralds remind me of another thing i was thinking of. In my limited knowledge of programming, i expect that creating "real video" wonder movies would be infinitely simpler than creating them in CGI. Combined with the common belief that the Civ2 videos were superior, they should make "real video" wonders, but also extend that to advances as well. Of course, the high council can be kept for that reason, too. Only future techs need more than real video, but CTP went too far on that anyway. Civ3 only needs a couple to reflect currently developing technologies into full-blown use, and maybe a couple of others to get cool military units to kick arse in the late game

What Civ3 needs?

Build queues
Multiple orders for settlers/engineers
High Council
Heralds
Better graphics (already done, it seems!)
Better diplomacy
Better warfare
Customisation
Natural disasters!

There's more, but i could be here all day

quote: Originally posted by EnochF on 02-01-2001 12:39 PM Heralds... wait, do you mean those guys in Civ2 who would randomly wave their limbs like Shields and Yarnell and occasionally jump or dance? Or do you mean something else?

We me your Counsels/Advisors...Remmeber? there are 5 of them (military, science, trade, foreign, and population attitude (I forget "Elvis' title)

I for one like them and would like to see them in CIV3

or

"sir! The people! They can't help fallin' in love with you!"

These are the advisors

The animated heralds are those guys who constantly do warm-up movements, stretch their limbs, jump, and do all sorts of silly movements.