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"Remember Salzburg!" -Austrian Premiere

An email from Timothy Pintello:
"Could someone other than Nordicus e-mail me any files that he has attached to his e-mails? I am able to get the text of Nordicus's messages, but not anything that he attaches to them."

quote:

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Seriously, though, I don't know what you mean by "3-D" terrain. CTP has 3-dimensional terrain.

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You too! Gawd, my mom also had one--it was white, and an 80. My dad had a 79 little Datsun truck--not for long: it started rusting ("Damn, Jap crap!" he'd grumble) and breaking down.

Thall:
I meant 3D-looking.

quote:

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SMAC certainly does have 3D terrain...

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WilliamD:
Yeah, me too. It took a while. But it grows on you...sorta like moss but good, sweet-smelling, healthy & addictive moss!

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"There can be no maximum of creation without a concomitant maximum of destruction, no supreme good without supreme evil"--Heller, paraphrasing Nietzsche.

"The more passion for the argument, the less evidence for it"--Russel.

2. Best TBS?
Now this is harder? I have played hundreds of them the past 18 years and I won't even try to rank them as many of them is greater than the others in some way. But I would like to mention games like Battle Isle 3 and EFS(Emperor of the Fading Suns).

Some SMAC vs CTP comparison:

Graphics: I would't care at all. I play for the challange not the eyecandy. It could all be made up in ASCII codes with signs running across the screens for all that I care. Sure it is fun to play with good looking graphics but if it has been to the cost of gameplay it is just sad.

Diplomacy: SMAC diplomacy is just wonderful compared to CTP and Civ2.

Borders: Not much to compare. SMAC has borders CTP does not.

Combats: Here CTP wins big way. Though combat in SMAC has improved alot from Civ2. In SMAC their still is unit against unit but now not whole stacks are lost just because one unit lost it's fight(they only take collebratal damage).There are also artillery as there is in CTP. But this has been much better utilized in CTP where stacks fight eachother.

Units: CTP has the classical already defined units while in SMAC you can create your own units from parts wich you have researched. While this seem like a great feature for SMAC it could have been much better done. (Though I like the Special abilities you can give the units).

Scenarios/Mods: This is by far the most important factor for me. And that is what makes CTP far better than any other Civ type game. Actually I haven't played Civ2 the whole game since 1997 when I discovered all the great scenarios on the net. CTP will make great scenarios since you can modify so many things. SMAC also allows you to modify gamefiles but not to the degree of CTP.

Kyle:
Thanks for your vote Anything you like about CTP?

Thanks for the comments

Gotta run.
Later.

*BUMP*

CTP has a better combat system. (It's almost as if armies are fighting. Not quite there yet, but almost.)

Ctp had (but no longer has it appears) a crappy interface, while smac has a great one. (Ctp has some features I sure would have liked to see in smac, like riot warnings.)

Smac's design workshop makes you dance with joy. Customizing units for the job at hand is just great. Gotta love it. (Esp in multiplayer, where you can expect some wicked combinations in return.) I never really liked static unit types again after that. (Off course, the best design workshop, as well as the best ai, goes hands down to a weird old game called Stars! (Of which there soon will be a new, and amazingly enough, commercial runnerup, Stars! Supernova.)

AI-Well, I never played CTP long enough to see how badly it cheats. I enjoyed that people who couldn't see cloaked units couldnät figure out who was responsible for the eco-rangers.
Smacs ai-well, it could have been better. But it was pretty good, best I have seen. (Lack in-depth analysis of ctp here, remember that I have some 400 hours playing smac behind me now.

Civilization feel. Well, I didn't quite enjoy all the things in smac, but neither did I like the entire tech tree in ctp either. A draw.

Movies-smacs wonderful, often sarcastic and humourous, movies win every day of the week. (Not that it matters much, but the beautiful filming from the inside of a chicken factory when you build cloning vats makes me heart warm every time.)

Best civ game- Neither!
Civilization, the very first one, wins it hands down. No contest. Ain't even close. Ok, if you play it today it sucks.
Neither would Da Vincis models make a very big impact today, but for it's time it was THE ´best game.
You have to compare it to contemporary games and technology. Nothing in ctp or smac is revolutionary in any way. They do not make use of modern development to any extent at all. (While civ had some nifty world building routines, which I think they pioneered back then.)
It just had the most bang for it's age. (A catapult hasn't got much to say in the modern age, but it sure dominates the game for quite a while.

Civ is the best civ game. Really. What are we debating here?

Now, I sure prefer playing smac today. (Might even get turned on to ctp now that some of the most tedious elements are gone.

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"There can be no maximum of creation without a concomitant maximum of destruction, no supreme good without supreme evil"--Heller, paraphrasing Nietzsche.

"The more passion for the argument, the less evidence for it"--Russel.

I am not at all sorry I bought CTP. And it still greatly amuses me that so many CTP bashers frequent the CTP forum. What, are you having a bad day and need to take it out on something?

Just because we enjoy CTP doesn't mean that we're imbeciles.

I played SMAC for about a month or two, and got tired of it because it was so much like civ II.
The social engineering model was very good. It really made you think. This was about the only major improvement though, imo.
The diplomacy had more options, sure, but the attitude and actions of the AI was essentially unchanged from civ II.
The 3d terrain loses its novelty after a while, and the unit design shop gets to be a pain after a while.
The design shop and the faction advantages are from MOO2, btw, which I played for over a year, so maybe that is why they grew stale for me.
Utrecht's gripes are all valid, but most all of them have been corrected my the mod-makers here.

About SMAC: Look inside the AI cities- you'll see the same ineptitude that is in civ II. There is no co-ordination between the settlers and the cities, the improvements they build are stupid choices, a lot of their force disposition is the same way. If you could look at the source code for SMAC, I bet at least 90% at the AI routines are copied from civ ii. It's sad, because the effort put into the storyline, improvements, Planet and all that is very, very impressive. But you strip away the few added features, and it's just civ ii with new graphics, and the things from MOO2 I mentioned earlier. CTP out of the box wasn't any better, but it is now with the work the people here have done on it, and it just keeps getting better.
CTP's interface takes time to get used to, and could probably be improved, but a smooth interface don't mean beans if the AI is so incompetent it's insulting, and that's what civ II's became after I knew enough to evaluate it throughly.

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Yeah, can you believe it. I got wiped out on chieftain. -Don Blevens (aka Scorpion59)

This last one is from the CtP II forum:

quote: But I think a few will eventually give it another go--how old is Civ2 already? And if they don't, oh well. They'll probably be that way until they're toothless old men, sitting in a park, yelling out to passers-by: "When I was young...Civ2 was the best! And SMAC is still better than this new-fangled Civ8 they have out now...."

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"There can be no maximum of creation without a concomitant maximum of destruction, no supreme good without supreme evil"--Heller, paraphrasing Nietzsche.

"The more passion for the argument, the less evidence for it"--Russel.

"If you don't agree with me, you're in denial."