Whither scenario design?

[techumseh]

I'm thinking it might be time to have a frank discussion about the state of scenario design and, by extension, this forum. I will admit to being disappointed by the lack of response to my latest, 1937 - Japan Invades China. But I look at response to other scenarios and it's often the same. And I am as guilty as anyone else for not commenting. A couple of reasons (excuses?) come to mind. Scenarios are so complex these days, it takes a lot just to learn how to play them. It sometimes feels that it's a bit too much, to be honest. And some of them take a lot of time to finish, to put it mildly.

I've though for some time that our problem comes not from a lack of good designers, but from a lack of players. I'm impressed by the number of excellent scenario designers we have, and the stuff they produce. But it seems we have a shortage of customers. Not that many civers still have ToT on their machines. Is there anything we can do to promote ToT and the excellent scenarios we are producing? How can we improve the playability of our scenarios? Thoughts please.

 

[Patine]

I'm thinking it might be time to have a frank discussion about the state of scenario design and, by extension, this forum. I will admit to being disappointed by the lack of response to my latest, 1937 - Japan Invades China. But I look at response to other scenarios and it's often the same. And I am as guilty as anyone else for not commenting. A couple of reasons (excuses?) come to mind. Scenarios are so complex these days, it takes a lot just to learn how to play them. It sometimes feels that it's a bit too much, to be honest. And some of them take a lot of time to finish, to put it mildly.

I've though for some time that our problem comes not from a lack of good designers, but from a lack of players. I'm impressed by the number of excellent scenario designers we have, and the stuff they produce. But it seems we have a shortage of customers. Not that many civers still have ToT on their machines. Is there anything we can do to promote ToT and the excellent scenarios we are producing? How can we improve the playability of our scenarios? Thoughts please.

Excellent points, and very difficult problem to solve. My offline line has been quite busier than normal the last couple years, and recovering from a dislocated shoulder on my on-hand's arm in November has made typing and manipulating bmp files a chore (though doable with slow, patient effort). The growing complexity of scenarios (and possibilities) of scenarios are both an evolution of the game, but it impedes the frequency of new products. I START far more games than I FINISH, for various reasons, mostly involving offline and time constraints. And, as @Blake00 has pointed out, the lack of legal availability, outside shareware, of Civ2 and ToT, hamstrings attempts to expand to new players.

 

[Blake00]

Yeah it's a big issue.. so many thoughts come to mind (about your last paragraph in particular) that's prob gonna turn into a wall of text sorry lol...

The short version:
1 - Civ2 & ToT back in stores and (if it happens) us doing our part to lure people here will help, 2 - Better welcome information (I'll keep working on that draft) and helping newcomers find here & make the transition to ToT will help, 3 - Promoting your excellent work around the web bringing people here will help.

The long version:
1. Yes the biggest problem is lack of mainstream availability. EA finally got off their butts a week ago and put Alpha Centauri and all the classic Command & Conquer games on Steam (if only 2K would bloody do the same) and seeing the huge influx of returning players in the Steam forums hungry for mods and conversation has been lovely to watch (with SMAC steam, I & others have been in there posting CivFanatics links to get some of them coming here). This is of course what I have dreamed about for this place with the getting Civ1 & Civ2 back in stores project. I personally don't need Civ1,2&ToT on Steam & GoG and none of you guys do either probably as we've all got our discs however this community needs them and Steam in particular (love it or hate it, as it has by far the biggest customer base) as classic Civ games on the largest modern digital game stores will put it in front of countless eyes again and bring back so many players. If I ever have success on the Civ1&2 back into stores project I'll be in here very fast letting you guys know and I hope that people will join me over there in the new GoG & Steam Civ2/ToT forums constantly promoting this forum (eg every time someone asks a question, instead of telling them there, just say "you can find the answer here" and link to whatever CFC thread answers the question) luring people here. I recently did another big post run across all Civ groups on social media promoting the 2 year anniversary of the project and it looks like we've gathered a few more thousands votes on GoG which is nice but sadly no big news. I got an insider tip a year ago that there were talks going on between GoG & 2K but I've heard nothing since sadly although he did say to be patient and not hold my breath as these things take time lol.

2. I have noticed a very slow but steady influx of new or returning people posting questions every few months in the general and tech help areas of our Civ2 forums here but I don't see them coming into the league. So as Techumseh suggests it could very well be (a) the complexities of the advanced work going on here intimidating people a bit, or (b) maybe they just flat out aren't even finding here. With the former (a) I've always said MGE makes a good stepping stone to ToT due to it's scenarios tools and then once people are used to it then try ToT and maybe even LUA etc since lets face it, you know what most people are like on the internet, if it aint easy they won't do it haha, so it's up to us to try and make the transition/learning to ToT easy and if they still don't want then we still wish them well and help as best as we can. While the later (b) can be helped by SL members visiting the other Civ2 sections and promoting the SL in their answers to questions. I also have plans to construct a massive pinned welcome & information thread in all Civ2 sub sections (except the SL as you have your own) similar to the big one I made in the CFC Civilization 1 forums that will heavily promote the SL and all the mods, scenarios, repositories, resources and guides you've all been making over the decades. I've got an early draft but it needs a lot of work still and I've been putting most of my free time into my mod projects lately as I so desperately want to finish them after all these years. Either way once I do finally put the thread up I'll need help from all you guys pointing out the gazillion things/links I will no doubt miss haha.

3. Unfortunately the community isn't really big enough anymore to ensure lots of playtesters as we're all busy working on our mod projects and so stopping work to go play another persons project is a hard choice when ones free time is so limited. So in the end if modders want their mods to be played they're going to need to put on a marketing hat and go promote their work around the web. Which sucks I know as most modders just want to create, but if you want players you gotta work for it lol. Personally I start by taking things I've posted here and posting them on all other surviving Civ forums, I also build pages for each of my mods on ModDB and use it's blog system to promote my work there via dev diaries as they have a large userbase, I also create videos on youtube showing off the work I've done (which I think @JPetroski and @Prof. Garfield do for their stuff too), and because those things are not enough alone I then share them across social media as there are many Civ groups out there across FB, Reddit, and Discord.. and all these posts and content out there all contain links back to here. As a result I've been able to build up some good interest around the net in my work so if I can just bloody finally finish and release my mods after all these years it'll be great haha. As you guys know I finally released the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod here late last year but I actually haven't done any marketing yet on its final release (as I want to finish some other things it references first) so I really didn't expect much as I know all you guys are busy, yet surprisingly it's had 83 downloads here at CFC, 52 at ModDB, and 72 on Internet Archive (although that one may just be views) so I can only put that down to other site traffic and my earlier marketing efforts sharing videos and dev diary blog posts around building up a waiting audience. So I'm looking forward to seeing what happens when I actually DO share the big mod release announcement around the net lol.

Obviously in a perfect world I'd love to be out there promoting everyone's work here and I've been working for years on huge tour videos of heaps of scenarios here that will help to do just that, however because I just have too many plates spinning it's all taking forever (I suspect if I hadn't of taken on the moderator and social media position at CFC I might have finished much more of my videos and mod projects by now but oh well I enjoy the job lol) so unfortunately you can't really rely on me to share all your stuff for you sorry, so you're gonna have to get out there yourselves. I can still help a bit with that though as one of the benefits of me doing some of the social media stuff for CFC is that I've built up a huge link list of external Civ fan groups across social media with literally tens of thousands of members in them and I'm happy to share that information with anyone that wants it. Another area I can help with is that if you want your final mod release posted on the main CivFanatics news page both @The_J and @JPetroski have access to that area (I don't as something went wrong when The_J tried to add me) so if you PM them them a short writeup (what it's about, why it's amazing) and a nice picture and/or video they can consider sticking it on the front page as official CFC news, which then it's part of my job here to take and share across many of those Civ social media groups putting a lot of eyes on your stuff. That's for once off final releases only though as it's a busy news service, so if you want to do lots of promoting/spamming of your development and different earlier stages like I do for my mods to build up interest then you'll need to get out there on your own, which like I said I can give you a link list and am always available for tips/advice if anyone needs them. The added benefit of bringing more people here to try your mods are that it potentially grows this community and brings in people who may want to try other peoples work too. So promoting your own work in this place has the potential to promote everyone else's too. A rising tide lifts all boats kinda thing lol.

 

[tootall_2012]

Hi Tech,

I disagree with your assessment that our scenarios have become too complex or time consuming. Other modern 4x games like Europa Universallis, Crusader Kings, Stellaris, to name but a few, are far more elaborate and players regularly post on Steam that they’ve dedicated dozens and even hundreds of hours of playing time to them (my Battle of Italy, on a complexity scale of 1 to 10, would rate a mere 1 or 2 at best by comparison).

Obviously Blake is the leading authority on the subject matter and his post above is worth reading where he accurately rates the lack of availability of the game as the number one issue. At the very least, the ability to post newly released scenarios on the CFC front page would certainly help on the marketing side. Nonetheless, even if Civ2/ToT would end up on the Steam or GOG platforms one day, I still strongly suspect that a 25 year old game would always remain a small niche market. It doesn’t mean all attempts shouldn’t be made to make our beloved game more accessible to a wider audience but simply that expectations should be tempered.

As I wrote to Knighttime in a PM after he released his Medieval Millennium mod: “…since Civ 2 is a 20 plus year old platform that we will never have the same kind of audience as the more recent Civ IV to VI games which can garner thousands, ten of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of downloads for newly released mods. At best we can expect a few hundred members prepared to play our projects hence my comment that designing for Civ 2 is first and foremost a personal journey, i.e. creating mods or scenarios that we want to play.”

Why do I still design and play Civ2 scenarios in 2024 because though the more recent iterations of the franchise are great at allowing designers to create fantastic mods, in my humble opinion, Civ 2 far exceeds them all in the ability to create fun, innovative and challenging historical or fictional scenarios.

As such, from my own point of view, if I’m going to spend hundreds of hours on a project it has to be because I’m not only passionate about it but because it’s the scenario that I want to play!

My latest creation BoI currently stands at only 137 downloads to date but I still would have worked on it even if it had only 1 because I personally had an absolute blast not only designing it but playing it as well. If other members who've played it have had a similar experience I'm more than happy to hear it.

In the end, if my goal had been to garner fame and fortune, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen Civ2 as my medium to do so!


NOTE: BTW, I did have an opportunity to play a little bit of your latest version of 1937. I love how you handled the use of artillery. A very original approach. To play through the entire scenario is still on my bucket list, but it's simply a matter of finding the time to do so.

 

[Blake00]

That's another very good point I didn't touch on.. even if the games never come back to mainstream stores.. even if all efforts to promote our work fail.. and even if no one plays our stuff.. we do it for the joy of creating things and making the scenarios that each of us wanted to find and play. When I finish my mods, I play test them and have an absolute ball, because well.. it was my dream to play a Heroes of Might & Magic Civ2 scenario.. it was my dream to play a Red Alert 2 Civ2 scenario etc etc.. and now I can.

So if people feel your work deserves more attention and you want to try and help grow this community as well.. and you believe you can do it and make a difference like I believe, then put in the efforts outlined above.. and if not then be content that you created something awesome that you always wanted to exist and enjoy the time we have left here together as nothing lasts forever. I just regret that I wasn't here or at Poly 20+ years ago with you guys when the Civ2 community was rocking... they looked like such good times!
.

 

[techumseh]

Blake00: Excellent information. It's not a scene I'm familiar with. I have a couple of questions. First, is there anything we as a community can do to help encourage Steam etc. to include ToT on their sites?

Second, in addition to promoting individual scenarios, could we do more to promote our specific hobby and this forum? I'm thinking a promotional video might be very useful in this regard.

 

[techumseh]

Tootall: I agree that designing and building scenarios is its own reward, but having and active forum where peers discuss and challenge each other's work, or just simply express appreciation for all the work that went into a scenario, is vital. And it's something that has largely been lost, imo. None of us does this in a vacuum.

The degree of complexity that's acceptable is a matter of personal preference. I'm interested in exploring events that incorporate tactical complexity into the scenario without getting in the way of smooth play. I tried to do that in 1937. I hope to continue to develop that in my next project as well.

 

[Fairline]

Blake00: Excellent information. It's not a scene I'm familiar with. I have a couple of questions. First, is there anything we as a community can do to help encourage Steam etc. to include ToT on their sites?

Second, in addition to promoting individual scenarios, could we do more to promote our specific hobby and this forum? I'm thinking a promotional video might be very useful in this regard.

Steam is a storefront that will sell pretty much any game, as will GoG for that matter. The decision to sell Civ 2 and ToT lies with 2K/Firaxis who hold the rights according to this thread (ironically enough from a thread on GoG asking for them to sell civ2!)

How is the legal status of Civilization II? Who owns the rights?, page 1 - Forum - GOG.com

Download the best games on Windows & Mac. A vast selection of titles, DRM-free, with free goodies, and lots of pure customer love.

www.gog.com

Steam is a virtual monopoly for digital PC games sales, and civ2/ToT being on sale there would be massive in terms of sales and popularity, as Blake says. If it turned up on GoG, they specialise in tinkering with old games to make them compatible with modern computors and they might be convinced to bundle the totpp.

Looks like Firaxis is missing a trick here; I found an Ebay advert for civ Chronicles, a compilation including MGE and ToT (not on sale digitally and long since out of print) for quite a hefty sum:

Sid Meier's Civilization Chronicles (2006) - MobyGames

A grand collection of the Sid Meier's Civilization games brought together in this compilation. For the game collector or new to the Civilization games, this is your chance to get them all in one buy. Included in this collection are these game: Sid...

www.mobygames.com

 

[tootall_2012]

Tootall: I agree that designing and building scenarios is its own reward, but having and active forum where peers discuss and challenge each other's work, or just simply express appreciation for all the work that went into a scenario, is vital. And it's something that has largely been lost, imo. None of us does this in a vacuum.

Oh, I don't disagree with you on that point. In the same PM thread I was writing to Knighttime, I commented on how I didn't necessarily believe all members fully understood how much work went into these projects,

But at the same time, I was also trying to manage our expectations, as I don't necessarily believe they owe designers any particular debt of gratitude either. As you mentioned, ultimately we do it for our own reward. But if members feel like leaving a note of appreciation or constructive criticism on a project that's very welcome as well.

The degree of complexity that's acceptable is a matter of personal preference. I'm interested in exploring events that incorporate tactical complexity into the scenario without getting in the way of smooth play. I tried to do that in 1937. I hope to continue to develop that in my next project as well.

Once again I agree. I grew up playing boardgames like Third Reich, World In Flames and Advanced Squad Leader which were considered to have high degrees of complexity. It's the kind of games I very much enjoyed and it's the kind of scenarios I try to emulate to a degree in my own designs. If some of our members find my projects too complicated for their tastes that's okay as well.

One of the great thing about the Civ 2 community is that there is such a vast array of scenarios to choose from which cater to a whole set of personal preferences and playing styles.

 

[Buck2005]

- Hello, John!

- Hello, Peter!

-Oh, John, your scenarios are great!

- Thank you, Peter, your scenarios are incomparable! You and I are magnificent geniuses!

- I agree John, we are creating miracles! John, I love your scenarios!

- I also adore your scenarios, Peter, they are incomparable!

- John, we have a problem, not enough people play in our scenarios.

-It's not a problem, Peter, my scenarios have been downloaded as many as 850 times.

- But they said nothing, John, and never praised me!

- It's not a problem, Peter, there are a lot of stupid people who don't realize the benefits of our platform. They are so poor that they use primitive MGE.But the wonderful Sam told me that somewhere out there, far away, there are a lot of people who want to play our scripts, but just don’t know about them. There, in distant places, there are sites where hundreds and thousands of players are ready to play the scenario. They just don't know about them. We need to tell them.

- That's a brilliant idea, John, let's do it! I think if you tell them how primitive and wretched the MGE platform is, they will immediately understand that they wasted decades of their life playing it.

- I agree, Peter, you are magnificent as always! I love your wit!

- Thank you John, you are brilliant, your work is beautiful!

 

[techumseh]

Can someone get rid of this guy?

 

[Patine]

Can someone get rid of this guy?

*Offers techumseh vauldeville show hook*

 

[techumseh]

Bye.

 

[techumseh]

I thought it was Buck you were griping about.

It was. Don't worry Pat. I'm pretty used to you by now.

 

[Patine]

It was. Don't worry Pat. I'm pretty used to you by now.

I realized that, and my post was deleted. Occassionally untagged posts through me for a loop (especially after a tiring day like today).

 

[techumseh]

Now that bit of drama is behind us, I think there's a valid point there. This forum used to be a place where scenarios and scenario concepts were debated, sometimes hotly. We don't see that any more. There are huge developments in scenario design with Lua and all, but not much discussion about where it's leading us for good or bad. I think it's one of the reasons this place seems to be languishing. More critical debate on the latest scenarios would increase interest in the hobby generally, imo.

 

[Dadais]

There are huge developments in scenario design with Lua and all, but not much discussion about where it's leading us for good or bad

Doesn't it go with totpp and lua development as well ?

I mean, building a scenario with "twice" the content is way more than twice the time spent on it.

Plus, to discuss features, design orientation and such, it is quite helpful imo to experience it via gameplay.
Thus the difficulty. I've already spent thousands hours on various projects these last years, for a hundred or two playing.
I shall confess, I couldn't give Napoleon, BfI, HoF and your last one the time they diserved to playtest it properly.

I couldn't give it this time when having tens of rough ideas in first shape, 4 majors project not far from release yet still with many ajustments to make.

Then, proposing a good debate about my vision of new features, how they alter gameplay etc.
Somehow, time is lacking, even if I sometimes try to post a small review of some other creations, I feel like I'm already lacking on that side for my owns.

To summarize. Time ?

 

[Lord_Hill]

Test of Time is particularly challenging because it was the Civ 2 'black sheep' even back in the day (my memory of that time was that no one I knew was particularly keen on effectively rebuying Civ 2 after playing it so much already). So you're trying to convince people to try a version that isn't well known, and isn't what the majority remember playing back in the day. And on top of that, it's not available digitally either, so even if you read on here about how wonderful it is, you can't just grab it in a couple of clicks, you have to go out and find it. It's a tough sell.

Something similar happened in the Civ 1 forum as well, back in 2008(ish) someone cracked the save & graphics format for the poorly received windows 3.1 port of Civ. But this didn't inspire a new wave of mods on a newer engine, in fact nobody even noticed until I started messing with it a few years ago. But it's the same issue, everyone knows the DOS version, none of the versions are available digitally, all of the scenarios are made for the DOS version.

 

[Civinator]

My latest creation BoI currently stands at only 137 downloads to date but I still would have worked on it even if it had only 1 because I personally had an absolute blast not only designing it but playing it as well. If other members who've played it have had a similar experience I'm more than happy to hear it.

In my eyes 137 downloads in this short time is an astonishing high number considering the following facts:

1. In my eyes the most important obstacle is, that Civ 2 Tot and earlier versions of Civ 2 are not available at GOG and steam. This reduces the number of players mostly to players, who still have their old CDs - and of course not only those CDs become older and older, but their owners, too. Therefore this number is massively decreasing and not increasing, compared to the situation when Civ2 ToT (and MGE) appeared.

2. The option to update the Civ 2 ToT exe to version 1.1., that is needed for the installation of ToTPP, is at least severly reduced by the more modern versions of windows. I had big problems when I tried to update the Civ 2 ToT exe of my CD on my Win 10 pc. In short: This was not possible until I remembered that I had a very outdated old Win XP laptop in my cellar, that was able to do that job.

3. The remaining Civ 2 ToT players after having mastered all these hurdles, must still find ToTPP at CFC. For an update to a new version of TOTPP they again need a Civ2 ToT exe updated to version 1.1. and for this update they again need an ancient pc or laptop (and the number of these otherwise not needed pcs and laptops is becoming smaller and smaller with the ages).

In my eyes it would be a great help, if the Civ2 ToT exe 1.1. would be freely available - but this is considered piracy. Piracy of what ?? Of a game that isn´t been sold for decades of years and where the creators seem to have absolutely no interest to bring it back to the market ?

4. The in numbers steadily decreasing lobby for Civ 2 additionally is split (as the in my eyes ironically post by Buck2005 is showing). There are civers who love MGE and think that Civ 2 ToT seems to be the root of all evil.

5. Nearly all members of the scenario league are modders themselves and have only little time for playing the scenarios created by other modders as their own projects consume nearly all of their free civ time. This is not so much concerning the number of downloads, but the number of reports about playing the game.

----------------------------------------

Conclusion: Of course the best option would be that Civ 2 TOT would appear at GOG and steam. Otherwise there should be no protests if at least the Civ 2TOT v1.1 exe is posted here. Even with the appearance of Civ2 TOT at GOG and/or steam the following standards of Civ 2ToT should be urgently improved:

a) Only one clack clack movement sound for all units nowadays is stoneage standard for a civ game.
b) The defense animations of Civ 2 Tot should be fixed.

Otherwise I share the attitude posted by tootall_2012: I create the scenarios and mods for my myself (in my case mostly Civ 3 mods and scenarios) and like to share them with other civers. I was very astonished that my CCM 2.5 mod for the also more than 20 years old Civ 3, that I posted in late 2019, now is nearing the 6.000 downloads mark - but Civ 3 Complete is available at GOG and steam.

 

[civ2units]

Otherwise I share the attitude posted by tootall_2012: I create the scenarios and mods for my myself (in my case mostly Civ 3 mods and scenarios) and like to share them with other civers. I was very astonished that my CCM 2.5 mod for the also more than 20 years old Civ 3, that I posted in late 2019, now is nearing the 6.000 downloads mark - but Civ 3 Complete is available at GOG and steam.

Same for me. I've designed 'Age of Reformation' for myself too. The reason why I shared it is because other members from civfanatics supported me realizing the scenario.

Currently we are a small but strong community with very skilled scenario designers, many of them are here since the beginning. In fact, we are all playing a 30 years old game, which looks very antiquated in comparison with nowadays games.