Preview on IGN

[yoshi]

Where did you read that? I've read in a preview that gunpowder weapons will be accessible for Japan clans after contact with Europeans. Maybe you can't research that tech by yourself and have to buy it?

Right, and where are the Europeans? Do they have a city on the Japans or are they on a nearby island? The point is that without events, they can't just appear out of nowhere on a ship. [Using Events you would do as follows (Civ2ish format):

@IF
RANDOMTURN
parameters=x(turn)/x(turn)
@THEN
CREATEUNIT
unit=Explorer
owner=Dutch
@AND (new; so that two units do not randomly appear in two different spots)
CREATEUNIT
unit=Caravel
owner=Dutch
randomlocation=xx,xx/xx,xx/xx,xx/ect.
@ENDIF

The Clan lucky enough to make contact with the Dutch first can negotiate with them for the Gunpowder advance.
[For this to work, a civ (i.e. it units) should be able to exist without having a single city on the map. This would require a very slight program alteration.]
______________
Historical Note: The Gunpowder advance should actually be "Firearms." The use of gunpowder in cannon-like weapons was already known to the Japanese.
Did you know that the Japanese developed the tactic of firing muskets in vollies 20 years before the tactic was first used in Europe?
______________

The reason why I knock the proposed C3C scenarios is because given enough time Civ players who are into scenario-design will be able to top anything offered in any expansion (as long as the new scenarios themselves aren't hard-coded). Such scenarios would then be made available on the net (through Civfanatics, for instance). So players who just want to play and not design would not be dependent on only the "official" scenarios.
What people like me want is to have more play/design options, better AI and a faster game play. Developer-designed scenarios are just filler for a lack of the real goods.

You do realize that Firaxis uses a very expensive graphics editing program, and that even a cheap one would be very expensive to include standard (although I do think one will encourage even more mod makers)

Yes, and that leads to the question: why did Firaxis use such a high-grade graphics program for a turn-based, non-3D game? But as nothing can change that now, I'd be willing to fork out the bucks for an included graphics editor. I'm not willing to do so for other far less expensive --for the developer-- additions that should have been included into PTW (or Civ3 for that matter) and weren't.

 

[rangers85]

Originally posted by yoshi

The reason why I knock the proposed C3C scenarios is because given enough time Civ players who are into scenario-design will be able to top anything offered in any expansion (as long as the new scenarios themselves aren't hard-coded). Such scenarios would then be made available on the net (through Civfanatics, for instance). So players who just want to play and not design would not be dependent on only the "official" scenarios.
What people like me want is to have more play/design options, better AI and a faster game play. Developer-designed scenarios are just filler for a lack of the real goods.

Possibly, but not every person that has bought Civ3 knows about CivFanatics or a comparable site. So does that mean Firaxis should leave them out in the cold without scenarios?

Yes, and that leads to the question: why did Firaxis use such a high-grade graphics program for a turn-based, non-3D game? But as nothing can change that now, I'd be willing to fork out the bucks for an included graphics editor. I'm not willing to do so for other far less expensive --for the developer-- additions that should have been included into PTW (or Civ3 for that matter) and weren't.

You may be willing to pay an extra $30 or whatever to get the graphics program added, but will most Civ3 players? No.

 

[yoshi]

Possibly, but not every person that has bought Civ3 knows about CivFanatics or a comparable site. So does that mean Firaxis should leave them out in the cold without scenarios?

No. After all, mods/scenarios are a big selling point for most expansions. I am saying that they should not focus so heavily on scenarios because unlike other games (e.g. RTS), the Civ franchise has recieved much of its popularity from its "mod-ability" (few people actually played the scenarios that shipped with Civ2). Additionally, the core game needs a lot of work (the large number of patches is a testament to that) so why not focus at least 50% of "Conquests" on dealing with fixes, changes and most importantely (although AI improvement is the most important point for me) to additions; i.e. new stuff.

You may be willing to pay an extra $30 or whatever to get the graphics program added, but will most Civ3 players? No.

You'ed be surprised --just look at the huge number of sites dedicated to scenarios and mod creation for Civ2 alone.

Part of the reason why many have not made the jump from Civ2 scenarios to Civ3 scenarios is precisely because of a lack of those things mentioned above (i.e. graphics editing and events scripting).

For all of its raving about C3C, the IGN article does not address these issues.

 

[warpstorm]

so why not focus at least 50% of "Conquests" on dealing with fixes, changes and most importantely (although AI improvement is the most important point for me) to additions; i.e. new stuff.

What makes you think that they aren't? The main game has not been forgotten in this expansion.

I would think that most people who are at all interested in graphic modding have the tools. Any paint style program better than MSPaint is up for the job.

I use a cheap graphics program myself.

 

[Slax]

Originally posted by yoshi


Right, and where are the Europeans? Do they have a city on the Japans or are they on a nearby island? The point is that without events, they can't just appear out of nowhere on a ship.

Not true. It could be quite simple to have a technology that, when researched, gives the Japanese civs access to techs from Europeans. The tech could be called "Foreign trade" and it would allow musket units, for example.

This would mean no other civs are required.

 

[FlakJacket]

Originally posted by Novaya Havoc
I agree here, it ought to be:

Expansionist/Seafaring -- English
Commercial/Seafaring ---- Dutch
Militaristic/Seafaring ------ Viking

Sorry, but got to disagree with people on this. Yeah we did knock over a quarter of the world. But you have to look at the basis of why we did it. It wasn't just a case of waking up one morning and thinking "Hey that looks nice. I'll take four."

Two words, trade and money. Look at how we came to own places like India, Hong Kong or South Africa/Rhodesia. All of them grew out of economic trading interests. Hell, the first half of India and Rhodesia were taken over by private trading companies out to make a profit. We just bought them out and nationalised them later.

 

[squeaky]

Who gets this unit? Looks sweet Too bad those intricate details will be lost when it is shrunk down

 

[Ozymandous]

My ancient history is very sketchy but that looks like something from the Middle East, Assaryian (sp?) maybe?

 

[thestonesfan]

The Hittites will most likely get that unit.

 

[yoshi]

Not true. It could be quite simple to have a technology that, when researched, gives the Japanese civs access to techs from Europeans. The tech could be called "Foreign trade" and it would allow musket units, for example. This would mean no other civs are required.

You're right it will probably be something like that, but my point was that the article mentions nothing like events scripting, considering how scenario-based Conquests is meant to be.
Events allow scenarios to perform beyond what the map and AI can offer. The mockup example of Events scripting I gave above is meant to include other elements into the game without necessarily interfering with game-play; i.e. In the Japanese scenario Europeans only appear from time to time to trade, nothing more. Without Events the Europeans must be an active player on the map and that would interfere with relations between clans (aside from being historically inacurate).

Aside from events, the article makes mention of few improvements to the Editor, and the improvements to the core-game (some new unit flags like "Stealth Attack" which should have been there from the start, some changes to the interface, some new improvements, ect.) are minimal.

Not even somthing as simple as a new "Pick-Up" unit flag which would apply to air transport units (Helicopters) and would allow the unit to target a selected unit, load it, and fly it back to the re-base coordinates.
Sounds simple enough. Most players want it. It seems like alogical request --if you can drop-off why not pick-up?
Yet even so, no mention of this or any of the many , many other logical (and sometimes necessary) requests posted and re-posted ad eternum on this site on a seemingly daily basis.

Either we're all in for a surprise and Firaxis has all that stuff and more ready for release and they're just not telling us, or C3C will be yet another PTW, which as we all know was a POS! I must admit that, considering CIV's history concerning player requests, optimism is a few eras too far away for this Fanatic.

 

[superisis]

why can't the dutch be an active civ?

I thought that they were stantioned on a small island of the japanese coast (they weren't aloud to settle on the main island, being so strange as they were) and that they traded with them as much as they could. My info could be wrogng though

Jonte

 

[yoshi]

My point is as follows:
The IGN article mentions nothing even remotely associated with events scripting. As far as I know, Firaxis has not mentioned anything concerning events scripting. Events scripting is what made Civ2 scenarios so popular. Civ2 became popular because of scenario design. If Conquests is going to base itself around scenarios and this pig is to fly (successful expansion), then judging by Civ2's success, Events will have to come into it somewhere. If events are not included, the scenarios will not be able to improve significantely on the regular game.
As for the regular game (the core game), many changes and additions are just itching to be incorperated into it. But according to this article and others like it, none of this is anywhere near being included into Conquests. And based on the Civ3 story so far, this is likely to be the case until Civ4 comes out.

why can't the dutch be an active civ?

They could be. They may be. But what if you don't want the Dutch to be in the picture beyond a limited presence?
What if you have a WW2:Europe scenario and want to reproduce the overflow of American units in 1943? Or Soviet forces coming in from Siberia? Or you just want to reproduc events (e.g. an attack) that took place historically at x time in x place? Or you want the AI to declare war on x turn? There are plaenty of examples --just check out an average Civ2 scenario.