1) Terrain

2) City View

3) Military Advisor

"Civ3 sports some nice improvements here that make negotiations more conversational and grant you more latitude, such as the right to deny enemy units passage on your roads."

As if Sid needs us to lionize him further, there's this:

"For Meier, playing a game is the most critical aspect of its design. Without it, he argues, the original classic would never have attained its lofty status. It's dogma at Firaxis -- everyone plays as much as possible. People talk, revisions are made, and they play some more."

I assume Dan Magaha could speak in greater depth on that subject, eh Dan?

This next paragraph is one we would all do well to remember:

I've considered "the Firaxis Method" on more than one occasion. I can tell you that it has obvious advantages. However, I have also seen some rather insidious disadvantages as well: When you play a game over and over from the Alpha stage as a tight-knit group, you begin to lose your objectivity. It's like when I write at speech for the president of our university...I swear I looked at the word "marital" and saw "martial" two hundred times without it registering. You simply MUST have new eyes looking at your material all the time.

So while that method is all well and good, how many of those guys are really going to say "Sid, this part of the game REALLY sucks"? First, it would take some balls, which I'll grant that they have. Second, it would take not being in love with or blind to your own work, which too much incremental upgrades over a time to things can make you do.

Consider SMAC. They thought those were some kick-ass graphics and ground-breaking gameplay. (Issues that the beta team tried to take issue with, by the way, but it was either too late in the process or falling on deaf ears).

"To save design time, art and sound assets for for certain aspects of the game won't even be approached until they're in for sure."

About the graphics discussion. I personally don't think SAMC engine to be so bad. And since height was used in the game...

I agree with that approach to a certain degree...but I wonder what all the graphics and sound people are doing during that time? Does it create a graphic and sound panic toward the end of a project?

quote: "now game worlds sport raw materials that when sitting within a city's sphere of influence can be used for the good of the player's civilization...in firaxis' design the raw map resources tie directly into the gameplay [as opposed to CTP] rather than functioning strictly as a source of revenue raw goods can be used to build certain types of units or to make your citizens happier. you can also use them to amplify your power, and possibly even win the game."

If you look at the City Management Screen, you can see all the "specials" flowing to the city of Baltimore (top right of the screen). The lowest "bar" shows how many "martini glasses" these are worth (These have replaced the gold goblet as the symbol of "luxury")

The last comment, "possibly even win the game" is alluded to elsewhere in connection with "Uranium". It doesn't take a mind reader to figure out what THAT means! If your civ doesn't have possesion of Uranium specials when the A-bomb is invented, then you probably won't be joining the "Nuclear Club"! Similarly, one can assume that access to copper, tin, and eventually iron is going to be crucial for civs in ancient times.

After months of efforts, are you loosing interest if you are not involved on beta test? I don't mean it's your absolute goal, but sometime it seems to slip into your posts in a way would had interested dr. Freud

Screenshots are promising, IMHO. They are alpha images, but probably not so far from final game look.

Well, let's see what juice we can squeeze from these news.

Examining the pic we can suppose:
- 3D terrain is not included, but simulated by tiles: flat, square and isometric are back (for Sid simplicity Mantra?)

- dark images (scan effect taken) are quite near (on my monitor, at least ) to "Tower of Babel" paintings. It seems on the Epic side, if you ask me, and I'll enjoy it as long as units are not hidden away in the dark.

- the screenshot showing lot of units is obviusly zoomed out, so I don't mind about units difference from already know full scale units (available on official Firaxis site). Arquebus unit (top right) seems very interesting to me, as different kind of tanks. I only hope we will have time to build so many different units (if some automatic upgrade will not take care of it).

- city view seems born to live at very large resolutions: 1024*768 could be the very minimum res (and while you think will be no problem, I'm still using a notebook 800*600, thanks for asking ).
- Inside city walls, there is room for about 25 city improvement (the big squares divided by streets seems able to host one), so we'll have max 26 city improvements (walls included). Wonders are outside city walls, so they don't count here.
- city view surrounding seems a bit on the "fall" season; I wonder if we'll get seasonal look change (snow for winter, light green and flowers for spring etc.) It could be an eye candy, a hint of turns down from year to season, a way to show your city "mood" a la Black & White game (dark look for sadness, light for happyness). May be I'm only me, sleeping not enough for my tired brain

- city screen show the classic city "range", no room left to a greather area, so we can forget city radius increase (may be city start with a small radius, but growth no more than classic)
- we will have only a building slot (may be a queue, clicking on it)
- city growth seems only related to food available, as in CIV tradition (more complex models are probably out)
- we can see a biplane on city view: short of eyes candy, I do a jump of imagination and suppose it reproduce a Wonder (Whright Brothers first fly) or may be a Feat of Wonder (First fly over The Channel)

- Military advisor is displayed into four looks, so we'll have four ages in Civ III (forget more complex model)

Ok, my "Sherlock Holmes 10 minutes show" is over. Please abuse of my deductions as you like.
They can be a pile of .... (well, you know ), but I would like to see Dan face if I get some right hints, after all that mystery Firaxis force him

quote: Originally posted by Adm.Naismith on 03-28-2001 04:53 AM - Inside city walls, there is room for about 25 city improvement (the big squares divided by streets seems able to host one), so we'll have max 26 city improvements (walls included). Wonders are outside city walls, so they don't count here. Please abuse of my deductions as you like.

What if they are reusing the idea from Colonization by limiting the squares in a single city. Then every city can't produce everything and thus you need to specialize with different cities. This could be interesting...
At least trade would be important.

quote: Originally posted by yin26 on 03-28-2001 02:28 AM I find it so funny some people wetting their pants looking at graphic place-holders. :)

Well it's too late now!! Nobody told me they were alpha graphics. And no, I don't think for myself!!

If you'll excuse me, I've gota go and change my pants :)

quote: Originally posted by Jeje2 on 03-28-2001 05:06 AM [QUOTE]Originally posted by Adm.Naismith on 03-28-2001 04:53 AM - Inside city walls, there is room for about 25 city improvement (the big squares divided by streets seems able to host one), so we'll have max 26 city improvements (walls included). Wonders are outside city walls, so they don't count here.

What if they are reusing the idea from Colonization by limiting the squares in a single city. Then every city can't produce everything and thus you need to specialize with different cities. This could be interesting...
At least trade would be important.
[/quote]

Sorry, I never played Colonization. Would you explain me a bit more, please? I'm a bit confused: how your post relate to my "investigation" on screenshots?

Thanks alot for the scan's and info Shuttleswo, it made my day!

I love the idea that making nuclear weapons will become less obvious since it seems you need the right materials to make stuff.

OIL:

The thing I would love to see is that you need oil to use "oil-using" units with fosile-fuel engines. This would make resources an important issue for diplomacy or even war in modern times (unless you specialise in other units as alternitive)! Let's face it in today's world natural resources make all the difference. Look at the Gulf War. Maybe even use oil to trade for things your nation could use from others and create a global resource economy. This way you could wage economic war as well by trying to monopolise resources. But in case of oil I think this should be used as an extra and that for example all nations should have a minimum per turn to operate a certain number of units according to the surface of their empire. It would be great if a civ could for example operate a number of "extra" units outside there cities using oil for each oil icon in their zone of control. That way one could have "reserve" units in cities or units without oil allocated to them in reserve, just like nations have in the real world! Artillery in a city could then be used to defend it but you can't move them unless you allocate oil for them. Maybe they could even save up oil in peacetime as a strategic reserve, just like until now I used gold as a reserve to build units fast when war breaks out. I think oil icons( just as any other resource) should then probably be hidden until the right tech is developed to only induce a resource race when the resource is dicovered and can be used. This way you might have a bad island nation build on desert and so lag behind. And then suddenly have a lot of oil at your disposal to take revenge. That seems very nice gameplay and realism to me for a civ game...
It's just an idea that might ad a level a realism to the game and some different strategies.

And as Sparky said, could resources get depleted?

Feel free to comment !

PS. Keep up the good work Dan & the whole Firaxis team! I've never been this excited about a game before!

Excuse me if my English spelling in not perfect...

quote: Originally posted by Kull on 03-28-2001 01:19 AM Henrik: Copy the link directly into your browser. It didn't work for me either when I just clicked it. You could also try these: 1) Terrain 2) City View 3) Military Advisor 4) City Management [This message has been edited by Kull (edited March 28, 2001).]

Strange, when I was at school they worked, but when I try to open them from home (where I actually have a better connection) it wont even try to load the site. It says the server name is wrong.

I just have one suggestion, we have complaints that the land is too dark - I have to agree, but then again, the land in reality is also quite dark - DEPENDING on where you live.

So, Firaxis, why don't you start off with lush green plants, etc at the beginning of the game, and as your cities get bigger during the industrial age, make the land around it get darker (like it is now). And then in the future it gets greener again with less pollution using enviroment friendly factories, cars, etc.

And it doesn't just have to be cities, it can be land that is heavily used (run) over with units and roads and railways, etc.

I love the city view and the military advisor, I can't wait to see him in action.

quote: Yin26, overreacting is bad, but underreacting is...?

Good question. Don't get me wrong. I'm quite interested in some of the gameplay elements. Resource-specific units/abilities is great (and the exact thing discussed here, hmmm). And push come to shove, it's about gameplay.

But my underracting is more a reaction to the overracting. I think it's clear to anybody who thinks about it a moment that these are VERY early shots...and none too impressive on their own. A moderately modified city view itself just doesn't get me going, either.

Hope they included fascism.

Well I just got the idea while reading your post...

In Colonisation you had specialists, (Timber, masonry, etc.)
But there was never space/citicens to have all buildings (Sawmill etc.) in full production, thus you had a city good in timber another maybe in wool aso.

Now, think of using this idea in a Civtype game.
So maybe one city would have a hiways (generating transport for your nation), next one would have a mill (more food), third one could have Olympic stadium sites (amusement), fourth one barracks (army), aso.

Do you now get the point...
This way you would have to have several cities and choose what you specialise on in each city. (NOTE: Civ3 will apparently be more on a nation scale balancing than SMAC/CivII)

and the people and the city seem very blan, too much brown. but i am sure that will be fixed.

i hope i can watch the improvements get built in my city view screen when i finish them, also like in Civ I. i could care less about the dumb council though, waste of cd-rom space.

also isnt www.zdnet/cgw the website for this magazine? if so why does it have NO information on civiliationIII, at all. in the synopsis of the april 2001 edition, it says:

quote: What's in the April issue of Computer Gaming World? ... Previews: Unreal II, MYST III, and Tropico.

BTW I was left out of forum too, a clear move from someone to shut me from revealing more Civ III screenshot hidden secrets

Tjopie you ask

quote: By the way, does anyone know why there is a bi-plane flying over the city screen of Baltimore ?

But I already guessed that into my previus post!

Do your homework and read ten times:

quote: - we can see a biplane on city view: short of eyes candy, I do a jump of imagination and suppose it reproduce a Wonder (e.g. Whright Brothers first fly) or may be a Feat of Wonder (e.g. First fly over The Channel)

Just my guess, but I would love if will end to be true