Gamespot PTW impressions

[Alex]

I know this is in the news section, but since no one seemed to be discussing it, I thought about posting Gamespot's first PTW impressions. Here it goes:

"Infogrames gave us a tour today of Civilization III: Play the World, its upcoming expansion pack for the popular turn-based strategy game Civilization III. The expansion is being developed by Firaxis, the game studio headed by Sid Meier, and it will add a number of new features to the game, including new single-player elements, new scenario editor features, and several multiplayer modes.
The expansion will add eight new civilizations to the game, along with their respective leaders and unique units. Infogrames' Jeff Morris showed off the Mongols, a new race led by Genghis Khan, and their unique keshik unit, an elite mounted warrior that carries lots of weapons and equipment. Morris then showed off the Spanish, led by Queen Isabella, and the unique conquistador unit, a mounted warrior that uses firearms, lances, and a large war dog companion to defeat enemies.

Morris also demonstrated some of the new structures featured in the expansion. The new outpost structure can be built outside of city boundaries in order to dispel the fog of war for a certain distance that varies according to the surrounding terrain and elevation of the outpost. The new airfield structure expands air operations beyond what is possible through cities alone, and the new radar tower adds a combat bonus to units within range.

The expansion will also include stacked unit movement for both land- and sea-based units, making it easier for players to keep units with different movement speeds together during journeys across the map. It will also add a new autobombard command that lets players order units to repeatedly bombard a specific target, and an improved cycle feature that gives players more options when searching for units or cities. For instance, players can cycle through specific types of units, or easily find the cities that are currently in civil disorder.

In addition to the new civilizations and gameplay features, Play the World will include new unit sets for use in the editor. The new sets include a medieval Japan set and a World War II set, and they will feature 17 units each. The developer is considering additional sets, such as a dinosaur-themed set. The expansion will also have new winter and European terrain sets. To make it easier for players to create fair maps, the editor will include a balanced start option that makes sure all sides have equal access to resources.

To support the game's mod community, Play the World will add a modification manager to Civilization III that lets players easily add and remove custom content. The manager will have a preview mode that lets players see exactly what effects a mod will have before they use it.

For the multiplayer mode, the developers wanted to support the players that enjoyed the Civilization games' previous multiplayer modes and the marathon gaming sessions that often resulted. To this end, Play the World includes turn-based, simultaneous, play-by-e-mail, and hotseat modes. To also appeal to Civilization players unwilling to take part in extended multiplayer matches, Firaxis is adding a new "turnless" multiplayer mode along with short game types such as regicide, elimination, and capture-the-flag. The turnless mode results in a much faster game by eliminating the A.I. phase and setting a very short time limit on turns, which can dynamically extend itself as the game's complexity increases with additional cities and units. According to Morris, the turnless mode gets as close to a real-time system as a turn-based game can get.

Civilization III: Play the World is scheduled for release in October. We'll post more information about the expansion as it becomes available."

By Trey Walker, GameSpot PC [POSTED: 05/22/02]

What do you think?

[dunk]

Originally posted by Alexnm
To support the game's mod community, Play the World will add a modification manager to Civilization III that lets players easily add and remove custom content. The manager will have a preview mode that lets players see exactly what effects a mod will have before they use it.

This is what I'm most interested in. Add and Remove custom content. Add civs? I hope so. Add buildings? I hope so.

I am looking forward to this expansion.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Alexnm
The new outpost structure can be built outside of city boundaries in order to dispel the fog of war for a certain distance that varies according to the surrounding terrain and elevation of the outpost. The new airfield structure expands air operations beyond what is possible through cities alone, and the new radar tower adds a combat bonus to units within range.

I think outposts will be about as useless as colonies. Any map I play on is usually wall to wall cities by the year 1AD. I guess if they are quick to build I might use them in the ancient era. I think I've built exactly ONE colony since I started playing, and that was in my first game before I realized how useless they are. They should restrict city from being built in tundra and desert and jungle... then we'd need colonies all the way to the end of the game.

Airfields are a welcome addition, and the radar tower sounds interesting - giving a combat bonus. It would be nice if they would add AWACS to the mix of aircraft to do the same for your bombers/fighters. Send the AWACS on a recon mission, and subsequent air attacks on that area would get a bonus for that turn.

[Slax]

Gamespot says they have 14 PTW screen shots for GameSpot Complete registered readers.

Has anyone seen these?

[Slax]

Oops. I was able to see them, and its essentially two copies of the same 7 shots.

nevermind...

[TechWins]

To support the game's mod community, Play the World will add a modification manager to Civilization III that lets players easily add and remove custom content. The manager will have a preview mode that lets players see exactly what effects a mod will have before they use it.

This is what I'm most interested in. Add and Remove custom content. Add civs? I hope so. Add buildings? I hope so.

I think this reflects what a mod will change in the Civ3 directory. Many mods will add certain things to the game that will change the original content, such as the civilopedia. This tool will probably enable you to replace the changed content with the original content easily and vice versa. At least that's my interpretation of it, which I think will be very useful with all of the mods and scenarios to come (and that are already here).

They should restrict city from being built in tundra and desert and jungle

I doubt they would make this change in the game, but it should at least be added as an editor option.

I think I've built exactly ONE colony since I started playing,

Colonies should start out having a tile culture radius (the tile the colony is in itself). Then after x amount of years the cultural borders of the colony could grow.

[Me thinking out loud]

Btw, I still think Civ3 should have a cultural border and a national border. The cultural border would stay as is. The national border would work somewhat like the SMAC borders did.

[/Me thinking out loud]

[Spiffor]

I think colonies are fine as they are. It's just a useful thing if a zone is completely unreachable with culture, or if the zone is remote and the cities here wont build temple anytime soon. I had a colony until the end of the game on the world map given with the game (the iron tile in Scandinavian mountains were almost unreachable with culture), and the AI uses it often, when it knows the culture of others won't expand (like, in the middle of the steppes, where there are only some remote cities, but where the unclaimed horses are interesting).

Don't think of it as something useful, think of it as something convenient when you really can't place a city here. I agree more terrains should not be "settlerable", and I hope this will be editable one day.

[Carver]

The map being wall to wall cities by 1 ad hugely reduces the value of colonies and outposts. I often thought what Stuie said, make some land unsettleable. It would at least be cool to play a few games this way. You could have perpetually unsettled areas (north and south pole anyone?) where barbarians continued to pop up and where you had to build colonies and outpost, and defend them.

[Andrew Cory]

Originally posted by Stuie
I think outposts will be about as useless as colonies. Any map I play on is usually wall to wall cities by the year 1AD. I guess if they are quick to build I might use them in the ancient era. I think I've built exactly ONE colony since I started playing, and that was in my first game before I realized how useless they are. They should restrict city from being built in tundra and desert and jungle... then we'd need colonies all the way to the end of the game.

Hmmm, one thing that would make outposts usefull is if city radius removes fog, but cultural border does not. That way, you need an outpost to be able to "see" even inside your own borders. I wonder if the outpost will have a combat value...

[Zoid]

Morris also demonstrated some of the new structures featured in the expansion. The new outpost structure can be built outside of city boundaries in order to dispel the fog of war for a certain distance that varies according to the surrounding terrain and elevation of the outpost. The new airfield structure expands air operations beyond what is possible through cities alone, and the new radar tower adds a combat bonus to units within range.

I like this! But it should have been included in the original package IMO. It is a welcome addition nevertheless.

The expansion will also include stacked unit movement for both land- and sea-based units, making it easier for players to keep units with different movement speeds together during journeys across the map. It will also add a new autobombard command that lets players order units to repeatedly bombard a specific target, and an improved cycle feature that gives players more options when searching for units or cities. For instance, players can cycle through specific types of units, or easily find the cities that are currently in civil disorder.

Also great. But again, should´ve been included in the original package.

In addition to the new civilizations and gameplay features, Play the World will include new unit sets for use in the editor. The new sets include a medieval Japan set and a World War II set, and they will feature 17 units each. The developer is considering additional sets, such as a dinosaur-themed set. The expansion will also have new winter and European terrain sets. To make it easier for players to create fair maps, the editor will include a balanced start option that makes sure all sides have equal access to resources.

Medieval Japan is great, but WWII?? It was in CivII. Come on Firaxis, a little effort please? And dinosaurs?? Although I laughed my ass off when I saw it in CivII-Gold Edition, it isn´t really playable. Give us a Alien invasion scenario or something instead