all Speculation now-

City magement - I can barely see the city management screen, I need a better scan!

Map screen - It seems that the borders are affected by the roads some how.
The resources do need to be unique and easily identifiable once they are discovered. This is the map I live on and is the most important to get right. The caption state RAW, are there refined materials? Are the scales between the units and other terraing features and citys okay?

Military Advisor - Who. Who. Who let the dogs out!

City view - This is cool. it is definately fall in this shot.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column on "The Look" of Civ 3, and what I hoped it would be. It's far too soon to say reliably "this is what it is," but I'm not above hazzarding a few opinions and I'm encouraged. My general sense is this is the right team, at the right time, doing the game right.

Lots of you guys are really worried about how this game is going to come out. Come on, when's the last time these guys disappointed? No offense, but some of you are acting like those hardcore Star Wars fans before the new one came out, they already decided that it was a failure. The first two Civilization games were fantastic, and there's no reason to think that Sid and Brian have, say, taken a lot of drugs between their last project and now.

And what's with all the concern over the graphics? I thought that the hardcore Civ player's trademark was a "gameplay's the thing" attitude?

quote: Originally posted by GaryGuanine on 03-29-2001 03:58 PM I hope there are no art historians working on Civ3. Lots of you guys are really worried about how this game is going to come out. Come on, when's the last time these guys disappointed? No offense, but some of you are acting like those hardcore Star Wars fans before the new one came out, they already decided that it was a failure. The first two Civilization games were fantastic, and there's no reason to think that Sid and Brian have, say, taken a lot of drugs between their last project and now. And what's with all the concern over the graphics? I thought that the hardcore Civ player's trademark was a "gameplay's the thing" attitude? Gary [This message has been edited by GaryGuanine (edited March 29, 2001).]

Sid and Brian ???????
Has Brian Reynolds abandoned BHG and gone back to Firaxis??? News to me.
Sorry if this is coming in late and out of context, but as a Brian Reynolds fan who has posted several times on the BHG forum speculating what BHG is doing, i cant let that one pass.

LOTM

GaryGuanine

quote: And what's with all the concern over the graphics? I thought that the hardcore Civ player's trademark was a "gameplay's the thing" attitude?

We are mostly liar, we'll kill for a Great Civ with Great Graphics

Stefu:

quote: no sense jumping up and down as if these are great screenshots or something.

The fact that we now have screenshots is in itself a great thing. Besides, Yin, if either of us had any sense we wouldn't be here.

I don't know for certain, but I got a feeling that city is a mock-up, a place-holder. It looks like an artist's rendering of simple modeled shapes. Those aren't skyscrapers, just purposely generic blocks. The magazine probably misquotes when it refers to "new city graphics." If so, they got a good chuckle over that at Firaxis, you can be sure.

Also, there are 16 citizens, but in food department it says: "## per turn", where ## are not 32.

In Improvements box there are two columns, but two identical columns.

Where are tile improvements? How many food/trade/production is coming from a single tile?

How we get informations about happines, trade routes (Ok, that's maybe changed) and map position of the city?

That biplane is possibly just another civ's unit. The heads to the left are probably not advisors, because there are 3 types of faces that repeates twice. I believe that advisors should be all diferent.

And so on. Still, I like what I see. In fact, I'am overwhelmed. It has good atmosphere somehow, good feeling, good design. All that unclair things surely is going to be changed, and most beautifull news are not on those pictures but in text itself.

quote: Personally, I was hoping that city screen and city view are going to become one. If not, then let them get rid of city view, I don't care.

i agree, if you cant see it at teh same time OR improvements are not shown as being built in the city screen in front of your eyes (like in civ I), then it should go away.

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 03-29-2001 12:28 AM Did someone say no fundy? BOO HOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Its my favorite government

BOO HOOOOO TOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! Firaxis, don't deprive us non-micro-managers of this fantastic sit-back-&-enjoy-yourself style of government! Not that real fundie governments can afford to think that way at all -- I have to admit it's not a very realistic aspect of Civ2... but it's fun!

Having said that, this preview encourages me that there will be many extra dimensions to Civ3 that might just possibly make up for the loss of Fundamentalism!

------------------
Ilkuul

quote: Originally posted by Nemo on 03-29-2001 02:53 AM i hope that the ocean or ocean edges move, like in Civ I...

Y E S !!! I second that motion 1000%! That was one of the things I missed most when I made the changeover to Civ2...

quote: Originally posted by Sparky on 03-29-2001 09:02 AM I wouldn't mind seeing a lot of vibrant greens in Civ3...

Me too! I was all excited when I first bought ToT, but it was a devastating shock to find myself out in a dismal drizzle without a coat when I started the game!! Since then I've hardly played it. Give me a world of bright sunshine that's a pleasure to explore and conquer!

OK, comments

What's out:
supporting units with shields (now gold)
I can handle that. makes more sense, too.

Fundamentalism
Fine, it wasn't very balanced anyway. As long as the editor allows me to edit governments enough to recreate it. guess what AH will do then?

City View
NOOOO... I HOPE that the writer meant the CTP type city management screen. I loved the city view demonstrated. I think I can pick out the colliseum, temple, and barracks. In addition to the city walls, aqueduct, and lighthouse more obvious. and is that a coastal fortress facing the sea?

on to the city screen...

COOL!! I actually have the mag, so I can see it a bit better than those scanned shots.
there's 16 heads, and the food barsays 20 per turn, and I think 12 eaten? could be 16 or 18 eaten, but that doesn't jibe with the before and after parts of the food line, but 2 or 4 surplus would jibe with the expected growth in 15 turns.
lost 1 shield and 2 trade arrows to waste. familiar.
it appears that of the 2 lines of stuff in the top right corner, the top line is production oriented resources, and the second line is all luxury oriented resources. the second line is duplicated exactly in the luxury line at the bottom.
2 questions:
1. where are the harvest grain and shields and arrows on the map?
2. why is the improvements list twice - side by side?

Image 1

-Roads effect borders (1 square on both sides)
-The irrigation (i) has changed. It looks more like swamps now
-The terrain is still too randomized (unfortunatly. IMO, firaxis should divide the map into three parts. The top and bottom 3rd can have arctic, tundra, etc, but no deserts. The deserts are in the middle 3rd. This is the way it is on our planet and any radnomized map should work the same way. Its too random how you can have a desert next to a tundra.)
-Resorces: gold, cows/deers?,emeralde/gems?, whale, and some green thing on a hill
-If you look at the big road junction carefully, you can see that they arent all inter-connected like in CivI or II. Rather, they twist and turn. It might be hard to maneuvre your troops along these curvy roads. It also seems that there are roads which go only to irrigation/farms. Perhaps this is to increase food production
-The units don't have a strength bar. Im not sure what this could mean
-Theres some sort of Tireme and a few foot soldiers.

Image 2

-The city view has dramatically changed. Where in CivII, a wall was represented by a small gate, here, it goes all the way around.
-The buildings are (look hard): Aqueduct/resevoir (not sure if they are built at the same time), City wall, barracks, temple, colloseum,some sort of fortress,houses and The Lighthouse (WoW)
-There is a fal look. I doubt that this will change with the seasons, because each turn is at minimum one year.
-There may be more and more houses as your population grows
-Almost directly in front of the gate, is a sort of clearing and a slope which goes down into the water. This could be where the harbor/dock is placed. If its a tile improvement, then it might be shown there too.
-When building wonders, the forest in the backround probably has to be cleared to make way for it. I hope that theres enough room for at least 10 (!) wonders.
-With all of these wonders around, maybe it'll block the view of everything inside the city.
-The fortress could also be a wonder (King Richards Crusade)
-This civilization seems to be in the Renaissance period.

We're gonna skip Image 3 because theres nothing to comment on.

Image 4 (NB i used photoshop to zoom in)

-On the top pict (the city view which i will call pict 1), i will first concentrate on the new city bar. Starting on the left, there is an improvements toolbar. There are identical ones next to each other. I dont know why they are identical. Under that is something titile 'Garrison' and it has the list of troops defending. Its kiinda small box, so i dont know if theres gonna be a unit limit or not. To the right of the garrison is the pollution box. This city has 4 pollution, denoted by the Civ2 symbol. In the middle are three production bars in three colors. Blue (production0, yellow (food) and green (trade) Then, there is the unit/improvement bar. Baltimore is building an aircraft carrier.

-In the map view (where it says Queen Amanda of the... and city of Balifmorf =). There are the heads of the citizens. In the top left, there are the resorces. THe first line has bananas and grain, and the second one has gold, and stones. There is a bi-plane, but for some reason no city icon.
On the left, there are heads of some people. It could be the heads of some governors, or mayors, or civil servants, or of your "special leaders" and they advise you or maybe are just there as a remidner to how mant you have.

In the second caption, there are a lot of units yet to be revealed.
-4 modern day weapons (from top to bottom) :sherman, mech infantry, Abrams, artilery, Panzer.
-Boats: Tiereme, Spanish Galleon
-Other (in any order): Archer, phalanx, legion, catapult, canon, chariot, light cavalry, heavy cavalry, pikemen, and the rest are indistiguisable foot soldiers

quote: Starting on the left, there is an improvements toolbar. There are identical ones next to each other. I dont know why they are identical.

They are identical because in every early stage, some developer has to check how the screen manage to fit lots of elements, while he/she only has a bunch of elements ready to test.

Easy answer is to duplicate things to fit as necessary; I did it a lot of time, years ago (not developing games, I'm afraid, only boring business application).

Or, wait... it shuld be our First Reported Civ III Bug!

Yin26, where are you, when we need you and all the Bug Buster team?

cgw5.gif

it's not that intresting which is why i didn't post it earlier, it's just the leaders, three of which were already on the firaxis website, but it adds a couple of more.

16 leaders? Not so many, if Firaxis isn't ready to add some monthly, downloadable for free on its site.

But they are smart, they are ready to do right this, aren't they?

quote: Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia on 04-02-2001 08:01 PM The leaders are: -Mao Tse Tung (China) -Ramese II (Egypte) -Julius Caesar (Rome) -Mahatma Ghandi (Indian)<----- pain in the @ss in Civ I and II -Joan of Arc (France) -Queen Elizabeth II (England)

You're *mostly* correct; two of those are incorrect (but I'm not telling which ones) and you also forgot Abraham Lincoln.

The first picture, is definatly Mao (says so at the official website)
Second one, which i said was Ramese II, is definatly egyptian. Now, he could be Ramses II, or Ramses I, or Tut, or that Ashkan... (can't remeber spelling.)
Third one is Lincoln
4th could be Caesar, or another Roman, or it could be some sort of Greek..ooohh Alexandre the Great (he has a conquerors look on his face)
the 5th is Mahatma Ghandi (thats how he looks)
6th. The only woman i know who dressed like that was Joan of Arc.
The last one is Elizabeth I, or II.

quote: Originally posted by Trachmir on 04-02-2001 11:54 PM Actually I'm quite worried about these leaders... it seems very unlikely that they are going to include a lot of civ's if each one needs this diplo-animation (let alone 2, unless each civ is to be gender specific)... I also wonder about mods to add new civs, and how difficult and/or incomplete it will be.

Our goal has always been quality and not quantity. We're putting a lot of effort into the default set of civilizations and units, but we fully expect that players will be able to create whatever civs, units, scenarios, or whatever else they wanted that we just don't have time to create.

Just as we're going to have provisions for scenario makers who want to create custom units without the complexity of articulated, animated units, there should be some sort of provision for custom civilizations. I'm not sure what the specific plan is, but I'd imagine we'll have a couple of discrete emotion slots and you'll be able to just drop static images into each slot (or the same image in each if you so desire). Someone skilled with a video capture board could probably use TV footage to add any number of personas into the game without much difficulty.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

quote: Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia on 04-02-2001 10:09 PM Wait a minute... The first picture, is definatly Mao (says so at the official website) Second one, which i said was Ramese II, is definatly egyptian. Now, he could be Ramses II, or Ramses I, or Tut, or that Ashkan... (can't remeber spelling.) Third one is Lincoln 4th could be Caesar, or another Roman, or it could be some sort of Greek..ooohh Alexandre the Great (he has a conquerors look on his face) the 5th is Mahatma Ghandi (thats how he looks) 6th. The only woman i know who dressed like that was Joan of Arc. The last one is Elizabeth I, or II. Dan?

I can neither confirm nor deny any of those! (Well, except for Mao and Abe) My lips are sealed! #5 may or may not be Gandhi... he could be someone else entirely! Or not! Isn't the suspense just killing you?!?! Wow! Don't you just hate it when people end every sentence with exclamation points?!?!

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.