Posidonius
Civherder
In CivWIN i can see the omalos, but didn't see mention of it on this forum's decade+ of archives. Makes me wonder: can you see it in the DOS version? Some civvers have seen the Seam In The World, the longitudinal parallel across which you can not connect roads, but nobody has talked about the omalos, and most folks here play in DOSbox. Every detail of gameplay is identical in CivWIN, the only differences are presentational. I am certain that the omalos exists in the DOS version as well, but no one ever talks about it. Makes me wonder, have a growing suspicion, that you can't see it in CivDOS?
Don't know what it's supposed to be called, but i call it the "omalos" after the Greek concept of the Bellybutton Of The World. Most old cultures had the same idea. Aztecs considered the Temple Of The Sun in Tenochitlan to be the navel of the world, and the Subcontinent is littered with stupas which are all copies of one very ancient stupa, which Hinduism considers the navel of the world. Naturally, ancient Australians thought it was Ayers Rock, and ancient Americans thought it was at Devil's Tower.
In CivWIN i can see an odd square, as a distortion of the mouse cursor. It acts like there's a unit there which i can move, but there's not. Sometimes it's on open ground, sometimes the omalos is on a rival's city, can even find the omalos inside tracts of darkness covering squares not discovered yet.
For years, was always just "hey that's weird." Then i thought the omalos was marking a spot at a balance point of the world's population, your rivals included. Later, realized that i never saw the omalos on water, so logically it can't be a midpoint for any collective human statistic, duh? Then one game, i found the omalos early on, and the next rival i conquered? That color respawned right on top of it.
At first the Civ1 omalos was a complete mystery to me, but now i (think i) understand that it is the AI's programmatic "hook" into the gameboard. Think about it, in 4000 BC if you are the first player to move, then there are no cities planetwide. The AI has units, but no centers to expand from. Just like booting an OS, there must be an initial process thread for everything else to branch off from. The omalos seems to be a very early branch in Civ1.
Observed phenomena led to testing, and now i know that it's tied into how the game decides where to locate a newly spawned rival civ. Before you knock over the capital of a 1st-of-its-color rival, the AI has already decided where to locate the replacement's larval Settler. In a game where there are rival civs but no rival cities, where is the omalos? You guessed it: on the larval Settler who is highest in the turn order. That spot is the AI's prime directive. From a game design standpoint, that really sounds like a part of the initial idling process, the base AI, the ghost in the machine.
And the omalos moves. Early, had no idea why it moved. Then connected the shifting omalos to reports of overseas wars. But when i learned how to kill off rival civs and settle islands in a certain order, i finally learned how to move the omalos by myself.
Haven't the foggiest how to mod it, can mildly hack it, but there's no mention of it on this forum, except for one possible hinting Q many, many years ago which went unanswered. That makes me wonder if the omalos is invisible in CivDOS? Is it just a quirk of CivWIN's broader range of cursor styles over DOS, making the omalos visible only in CivWIN?
Don't know what it's supposed to be called, but i call it the "omalos" after the Greek concept of the Bellybutton Of The World. Most old cultures had the same idea. Aztecs considered the Temple Of The Sun in Tenochitlan to be the navel of the world, and the Subcontinent is littered with stupas which are all copies of one very ancient stupa, which Hinduism considers the navel of the world. Naturally, ancient Australians thought it was Ayers Rock, and ancient Americans thought it was at Devil's Tower.
In CivWIN i can see an odd square, as a distortion of the mouse cursor. It acts like there's a unit there which i can move, but there's not. Sometimes it's on open ground, sometimes the omalos is on a rival's city, can even find the omalos inside tracts of darkness covering squares not discovered yet.
For years, was always just "hey that's weird." Then i thought the omalos was marking a spot at a balance point of the world's population, your rivals included. Later, realized that i never saw the omalos on water, so logically it can't be a midpoint for any collective human statistic, duh? Then one game, i found the omalos early on, and the next rival i conquered? That color respawned right on top of it.
At first the Civ1 omalos was a complete mystery to me, but now i (think i) understand that it is the AI's programmatic "hook" into the gameboard. Think about it, in 4000 BC if you are the first player to move, then there are no cities planetwide. The AI has units, but no centers to expand from. Just like booting an OS, there must be an initial process thread for everything else to branch off from. The omalos seems to be a very early branch in Civ1.
Observed phenomena led to testing, and now i know that it's tied into how the game decides where to locate a newly spawned rival civ. Before you knock over the capital of a 1st-of-its-color rival, the AI has already decided where to locate the replacement's larval Settler. In a game where there are rival civs but no rival cities, where is the omalos? You guessed it: on the larval Settler who is highest in the turn order. That spot is the AI's prime directive. From a game design standpoint, that really sounds like a part of the initial idling process, the base AI, the ghost in the machine.
And the omalos moves. Early, had no idea why it moved. Then connected the shifting omalos to reports of overseas wars. But when i learned how to kill off rival civs and settle islands in a certain order, i finally learned how to move the omalos by myself.
Haven't the foggiest how to mod it, can mildly hack it, but there's no mention of it on this forum, except for one possible hinting Q many, many years ago which went unanswered. That makes me wonder if the omalos is invisible in CivDOS? Is it just a quirk of CivWIN's broader range of cursor styles over DOS, making the omalos visible only in CivWIN?
...just reminding the thread title of yours is 
