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Games Entertainment

Sid Meier's Civilization III -- announced! 54

Posted by Hemos from the mmm-more-then-alpha-centauri dept.
Daniel Boese writes "From: breynolds@firaxis.com (Brian Reynolds) ... be interested to learn that we have just announced (at E3 last night) that we will be developing Sid Meier's Civilization III as one of our upcoming products. This is a brand-spanking new development, so I'm not ready to go into loads of detail just yet, but I do plan to stay in touch on the newsgroups during the development of the game, because I think every Civ fan has an idea in his/her head about what Civ 3 should be. We'll do a "call for features" once we have a serious prototype we like. Firaxis Web Site " Jeez-this is just what I need. Alpha Centauri has siphoned more then enough time away. Ah well-who needs spare time?
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Sid Meier's Civilization III -- announced! More

Sid Meier's Civilization III -- announced!

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  • NOT! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Alpha Centauri rules. I've always wanted to start off where I left off at the end of Civ2 after getting "Future Tech xx". ;-) Kinda gets boring after there's nothing new to discover and you've conquered Earth 300 times.
  • I believe their partnership with Hasbro Interactive will allow them to use the name "Civilization." If I remember correctly, didn't Hasbro recenty buy Avalon Hill which published the original Civ board game? Or am I completely wrong?

  • No, just for Linux (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    :^)

    I doubt it will be open sourced...
  • When they want a "call for features", open your mouths! If CTP and Alpha Centauri are going to get replaced by this, it's gotta be GOOD... do your part by telling them what's good/bad/needed...

    --

  • So, is this going to be available for GNU/Linux or not?
  • Posted by DrZaius_III:

    actually, yes they did buy avalon hill (makers of Advanced Civilization), but Micoroprose owns the rights to the name because they purchased the company that made the original Civilization.

    Microprose has close ties with Sid Mier and, if memory serves, has acted as publisher for firaxis in the past.

  • Maybe that should be something that you can solve through technology. Perhaps a Life-extending genetic or cellular treatment of some sort. That would be cool and still stay within the bounds of the other games.

  • When you have really great game designers, just when you think a game can't possibly get any better, it gets much better. I think that with so many people giving their input and ideas, and with Firaxis doing the work, it will improve substantially.

  • I was reading an interview with Sid Meier sometime last year (don't remember where) and they had a list of the games he's done. Now my method of buying commercial games (as opposed to shareware) is: I won't buy a game until I've had a chance to play it on someone else's computer or something and I know that it will last me quite a while. Well, looking over the list of games Sid Meier has done, I discovered that with the exception of Dune 2, every game (non-shareware) that I have purchased in the past was done by Sid Meier. Oh yeah, and Starflight -- he didn't do that one either. But yeah; if it has Sid Meier's name on it, you know it'll have good gameplay. Course, I never played Colonization, but still, Sid Meier is a pretty safe bet.
    -----
  • I've created an icon using The GIMP to use with GNOME (but I see no reason why you can't use it in KDE) for Civ: CTP.

    Here's [fearby.com] where to get it. It's a 48 x 48 PNG file - 5.6k
  • So that Civilization - Call to Power box that turned up on my door-step the other day isn't version 3?

    Ah well, who cares - it's working flawlessy. I love it! And now Myth II is going to be ported to Linux!

    Now must be the "Renaissance" of the GNU/Linux world!

  • what more can they do? (Score:4)

    by Foaf ( 1882 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @12:47PM (#1886319) Homepage
    I thought Civ2 was pretty well rounded except for the lack of multi-player. If they incorporate all the good stuff from the old Civs + Alpha Centauri (never played it but I hear it's great) the game should be awesome. But what other features could there be?

    What more is there to total world or galactic domination?

    I'd like to see a Civ world that lives on the net - we all get an island or a piece of land and get to develop it, trade with others etc. Sort of like a cross between CivNet and a MUD

    Just my 2 cents

  • Nope, I had never heard of it. It looks pretty cool! except it apparently needs Windows... :(
  • I love the idea of having a net-based, "civ"-type world, I have always wanted to hack something together along these lines.

    Diplomacy and trade would be great with live players, as would the military side (goes w/o saying).

    If anyone's interested in starting a project, email me...
  • Wasn't Civ II miles above Civ?

    Nope.

    /El Niño
  • That is the big question right now. I certainly doubt it. It is going to be wierd with two "Civ3" games floating around.
    I dont want to complain, because any linux game is a good linux game, but it certainly will be a glut of strategy games for linux... after RR tycoon and all...
  • How much better could CIV 3 be than CTP, really? CTP is already a great game and has multi-player ability.
    I couldnt imagine them making it good enough to convince people to buy it. I think most people that would have bought it already would have purchased CIV CTP....
  • Well, how much can they stray from the original, and keep the existing fans happy? I can understand when you are undertaking an entirely new project, such as Valve did with Half-Life, but how much different is Quake2 from Quake and Q3, really? How much better can you get it?
  • You are probably right to say that he will guarentee a good game. Solid fun gameplay... But, will it be significantly better than CTP? I hear (no, I havent played it) that CTP is a very good game very solidly on par with Civ 1 and 2.
  • I thought Firaxis didn't have the rights to produce a game with the word "Civilization" in the title (hence Alpha Centauri, which is the true CivIII in my opinion.)

    can anyone clarify this? Has Firaxis bought the rights back?

    Is Firaxis looking to hire a programmer? ;-)

  • Would it just destroy empire entirely to include a few screenshots? Or even a good rundown of the features? There is NO INFO AT ALL on this game, and when you download a client and start it, you're treated to nothing but a rude message about no server running.
  • How much better than Civ3?

    Upgrades of units. Patrol and waypoint orders. Area defend orders. Computer control orders. (AC has all of these BTW). Diplomacy that doesn't look so obviously taken from a chinese menu. AI that doesn't consider diplomatic agreements meaningless.
  • Thank you.

    None of the quakes after the first offered much. I got Q1 to run on a 486 (even tho the box says it required a p75).

    Gotta have that crazy 3d card to run anything new these days. I tried Q2 on my pII 400 256mb ram and it still wasn't as good as Q1 on a p233 32mb ram (no 3d card in either). *shrug*

    I remember a friend of mine telling me how nice the walls and scenery looked in the newer fps games (u, q[2,3],...]). Big deal. If I played quake and spent time looking at the walls I would be fragged in a heartbeat. I only see motion when I play fps games anyway. :)

  • Here's the scoop. (Score:5)

    by DHartung ( 13689 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @01:46PM (#1886333) Homepage
    Sid Meier's Firaxis Games recently made a deal to develop Civ III for Hasbro-owned Microprose, as explained in this Gamecente r story [gamecenter.com].

    In other words, Microprose owns the trademark, but hired the original developer and his company to do the new version.

    Also, the complicated rights situation for the Civilization games is explained (more or less) in this Microprose press release [microprose.com]. In a nutshell:

    * Microprose keeps the rights to Civilization, Civ, and related trademarks.
    * Microprose gets Avalon Hill's non-PC-game rights as well.
    * Activision gets to publish Civilization: CTP under license from Microprose.

    So, this will (apparently) be the last game from Activision to use the Civilization name. Rumors had it that one company would get "Civilization" and the other "Civ", but the final three-way settlement (monetary amounts undisclosed) put that to rest. There is only one company who owns Civilization, and that is Microprose. Anybody else is just licensing the trademark from them.
  • Let us consider the differences between MS Word 6 and Word 7 -- in any design space there is an optimun point. When one expands beyond that point useless feature bloat sets in. The true trick, of course, is determining when one has reached that point. But having reached it a new feature should only be added (within the design space) at the cost of removing an old one.

    The trick here is to step out of the orginal design space. Without alienating the fans of the old form. Has been done, but rarely. And usually not by the same person. (This decreases the antagonism that the old users feel to the new form -- they don't feel betrayed and abandoned.)

    OTOH, CTP looks (from the screen shots-- I don't have it yet) like an updated version of Civ I and Civ II. Nice, but not really different. If Civ III is in line with this, then they will be direct competitors. This would probably allow one of them to expand into a new design space.

    P.S.: What I've really been looking for is a nice plain stategy game in the 45 minute/single player class. Like Strategic Conquest on the Mac. I was really encouraged to hear that Loki may be porting it to Linux.
  • > So that Civilization - Call to Power box that turned up on my door-step the other day isn't version 3?

    I can't tell whether that's a serious question or not. Just in case it is --

    I understand that there has been a three-way fork in the ownership of rights to publish a sequel to CivII, which is why we're being treated to three "CivIII" games in short order.

  • But, will it be significantly better than CTP? I hear that CTP is a very good game very solidly on par with Civ 1 and 2.

    Which is exactly why Sid's Civ III will blow that crap away. Alpha Centauri is not "on par" with Civ and CivII - it's considerably better. Civ III will be even better.

    People as good at what they do as Sid Meier is deserve a lot more respect than this! Of course Civ III will be miles above CTP. Wasn't Civ II miles above Civ?

    'nuff said.
    -stan lee

  • Re:CIV 3 vs CTP (Score:3)

    by sunking ( 19846 ) on Wednesday May 19, 1999 @01:35PM (#1886337) Homepage
    I couldnt imagine them making it good enough to convince people to buy it. I think most people that would have bought it already would have purchased CIV CTP....

    Two Words: Sid Meier.

    I, and many other informed gamers, will buy anything that guy puts on the market. I've never been let down by him, and I serriously doubt I ever will.

    Even Colonization, his worst by my account, is better than most other games I've played.

    -sam

  • How many Civ games are there, anyway?

    At E3 I saw a demonstration of Civilization II:The Test of Time, which allows you to play on multiple maps at the same time. For instance, you can play on Alpha Centauri after the spaceship launch, or a fantasy world with underground, surface and air maps for pseudo-3D play. It looked good, too.
  • I disagree. Quake was a great game, and I still play it occasionally. Quake 2 was even better (more balance, etc), but lacked a few things that I wanted from Q1 (the speed mainly). Quake3 brought all of the prettiness of Q2 (and then some) and all of the fun of Q1 (and then some). Id has again perfected the FPS and I can play the game for hours. Which is a bad thing right now (damn finals). I can't wait for Q3 to be released so God^H^H^HJohn Carmack can start work on Trinity.
  • Actually, Sid did work much more on Gettysburg than on Alpha Centauri - AC is (mostly) a Brian Reynolds game like Civ 2. Just for information. :)
  • If we can get more and more game publishers to put out thier games on the Linux platform, the end results can only be better for linux. The game industry is really what is driving the hardware industry at this point, if more and more games are being released for linux then the number of hardware vendors who will create drivers (both open source and binary only) for the platform will increase as well as well as the acceptance of the platform among mainstream consumer buyers (the idea of seeing another operating system installed on a CompUSA computer other than Windows 98 would be great.) It is also a cycle that as more hardware would get supported, more games and general applications like Word, Quicken, etc would get ported as well. It would mean more choices for everyone.

  • There is a Civ that lives on the net - it's called Empire.

    It is just what you want - realtime multiplayer, you get thrown on a planet which you explore and develop and of course you get to fight wars with other players, do complex diplomacy etc.

    It's an old game from time way before there was Civilization on PC. But be warned: it's dangerously addictive!

    Check out Yahoo's Empire links [yahoo.com].

  • Hey, whats about every node (or virtual) representing an own Planet with spetial environment?! First all at the Planet begin at the same time, with emerging technology you can discover and trade and so forth with all the others on the net!
    Man, that would be funny!
  • Yeah, but Alpha Centauri is TOO EASY if you've played civII 300 times. It certainly has some very good elements in it, like good multiplayer options and lots of variation in technologies, but the AI has no real skill (at least not compared to CivII on Diety).
  • Civilization: Call To Power was released by Activision and not officially endorsed by Sid Meier. Only the original Civilization and Alpha Centari are official Sid Meier titles. Sid Meier never did any work on Civ II which was really just an updated Civilization.
  • If they're going to make it multiplayer over the net, ideally i'd like to see freely distributable linux based server code... Run a civ3 server anywhere in the world! the problem with games such as ultima online is that whilst its a shitload of fun, playing them in australia is a truly expsnive proposition. most home users are on traffic limited accounts, but traffic to peering points is FREE. simply run a server on an ISP local to you, and most of the state you live in is sorted. and playing against local people is always more exciting than against people all over the world... creates more of a family feel to things i find :)

    I know this may only apply to Australia, I'm not sure if other countries generally get charged per mb for bandwidth, but i still think it's a good idea.

  • ah, I'm looking forward to this. I believe I have bought 4 different incarnations of civilization; civ, civnet, civ2, and just monday civ2 gold (civ 2 + expansion + multiplayer)... civ2 just reemerged as my biggest time waster (overtaking Quake3). the deal with there being so many civs was that everybody had a small portion of rights to the name except sid himself, who really deserved all of it - anyway, I'm happy about this. i expect with all the civ clones running around out there now he will do more than just polish the original civ. ah. i feel good now :)
  • Well, if you ask me, I think that (no matter how bad it is) it is probably going to get somewhere along the lines of a 99% review in PC gamer (Just look at the trend, Civ 2 97%, Alpha Centauri 98%). What really bugs me about this is that Civ 2 wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, and Alpha Centauri seemed just an updated version of Civ 2 really. So giving it the best rating that PC Gamer has given anything is really agrivating (they should save the top ratings for revolutionary games: ex. Descent, its old, but it was one of the very first games with true-ish 3D effects). Well, thanks for hearing me out. . .
  • Well, all the civ are limited to one planet, that could be cool to have several planets to control (with a switch button to move through planets). Also starbases would be usefull.

    And a REALLY important feature I want : unlimited time to play ! I hate having to hurry to win because of this stuppid "retirement" time. I'm a slow player, so what, if I win ?
  • Yes, and even with that you are supposed to retire (pretty soon compared to Civilization).

    I don't know why there is a time limit there. Some people play agressively and win fast, some people (me included) prefer to develop first, then crush the enemy with high-tech weapons. That takes time, and I don't know why this strategy should be penalized.
  • When I was told that Civ3 was out and it was great I suddenly thought... WOW! Civ3.. Since i played Civ alot and other Sid Meyers games.

    I always thought Alpha Century was Civ3 until i noticed CTP. And now they're releasing the real "Civ3" ?



    Sid Meyers is my idol in strategy games and I follow him. Doesnt matter what Activision is doing, Sid Meyers owns Civilization in my point of view.



    If this game will be out soon, im there!
  • When I was told that Civ3 was out and it was great I suddenly thought... WOW! Civ3.. Since i played Civ alot and other Sid Meyers games.

    I always thought Alpha Century was Civ3 until i noticed CTP. And now they're releasing the real "Civ3" ?

    Sid Meyers is my idol in strategy games and I follow him. Doesnt matter what Activision is doing, Sid Meyers owns Civilization in my point of view.

    If this game will be out soon, im there!

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