Civ3 Expansion Pack Announced!

[grantnoelsucks]

It kind of shocks me to see everyone so happy and willing to pay for what should have been in civ3 from the beginning. I'm however open to the idea of an expansion pack, but i do think basic multiplayer with turns should be released free in a patch. Then they can put their new multiplayer mode and scenarios and other things in an expansion pack. We were promised multiplayer and I don't want to have to pay for it, I want to feel that I'm paying for something else

 

[etj4Eagle]

On whether or not Firaxis is screwing us over by giving us MP in an expansion pack I am noticing I distinct divide. I am guessing on one hand those who are incessed about it are those who had followed Civ3's development closely and so developed expectations of what Civ3 was going to be like. And on the other hand you have people who approached Civ3 at the end of its development (or even post release) and who evaluated the game on what existed there at the time.

I have found too often that following closely a game's development and making expectations based on that (or the final form of a prequal with all its expansion packs) just leads to dissapointment. Since inevidatably some things will be dropped or pushed back to an expansion pack (single player mode for XvT, the fancy resource model in TA:Kingdoms).

Yes it is a shame that MP appears that it will only be available if you buy the expansion pack. However, that in itself is not a reason to dislike the expansion pack. Instead evaluate the pack for what else it will give you (and best to wait till it is actually released) and then decide if it is worth the money. I myself have no interest in MP, but will likely by the XP for what else it offers.

Another thing as others have mentioned shop around to avoid being burned. Instead of paying $50 for the game at EB go to Walmart and pay $40 and if you don't like it, then recupe some of your losses by selling it back to stores like EB. Do it right and you might only be down the cost of seeing a pair of bad movies. And at least this program stable than programs I use which cost hundreds or thousands of dollars for a single use liscence per year.

 

[ChrTh]

It's time for my selfish response:

I don't play MP, so I'm glad I didn't have to wait 6 or more months for them to develop it for the game. So

I don't understand y'all. Have you not been paying attention to the gaming industry? Do you complain every time the Sims come out with a new expansion? Or Command and Conquer? This is no different than what happened with Civ 2...so why are you surprised? The entire industry works this way. You're upset because there are bugs...there are always bugs. My company is paying millions of dollars for Oracle Applications 11i and I've spent half of my working hours of the last six months just patching the thing...and we haven't even gone live yet!

Not everyone plays MP. Some people don't have the time, some can't afford the connectivity, some people just don't like doing it. We knew before the game came out that it wouldn't have MP...so you're complaining now? Why did you buy the game? If you wait 2 years you'll be able to buy Civ III w/XP (maybe even more than 1) for $19.99 US. So why don't you wait until then? You act like Firaxis owes you something. The only thing they owe you is an active monitoring/patching of their software--which they've done. How many companies do you know spend their time posting on message boards where they're being derided half the time? They've already released 3 patches in just over 6 months. That's practically unprecedented! Yes, there have been problems...but at least they've been making the effort to address them.

You're right, though. They should've waited until the game was perfect and MP was integrated...that way they could go bakrupt three years hence and never put out the game.

 

[D. Boon's Ghost]

Since I purchased this game (Limited Edition, $60 or so), I have been in full support of Firaxis. This expansion pack deal, though, is just too much.
How many complaints have been made concerning the editor, or lack of one, these past 5 months? It turns out the reason a fully functional editor was not included in the first place was because they were going to charge extra for it.
Why did they not just say so? I had thought Firaxis was built on better principles than that.

You may want to talk about the economics of entertaining yourself, but if you saw a video game on a shelf for $100, what would you think?
After all is said and done, that is exactly what alot of us will be paying.

Infogames has taken it for granted that you, the civ fantatic, will pay whatever they decide.
$100.00 for 24 civs, 8 additional units to the original batch (if the 8 new civs has unique units), an editor, and multiplayer?

No matter how good the gravy, its job is to compliment the meat - not cover it up.

The large number of people hugging themselves over this news, while understandable, is somewhat disheartening.
Infogames, as it turn out, had the right idea all along.
Firaxis: "What do you mean it must be released now? There isn't multiplayer...or a scenerio editor? These people are gonna flip!"
Infogames: "Don't sweat it. Two words, my man, two words...Expansion. Pack."

 

[Shoegaze99]

Multiplayer?

Oddly enough, I actually *read about* games before I purchase before I purchase them to ensure what I plunk down my $40 or $50 on is something I want. I knew Civ III had no multi-player when I bought it, as amazing as that sounds.

Funny, I learned a long, long time ago that feature lists for games virtually never match those same lists given in previews prior to the game's release. That's the nature of things.

And stunningly, even in this day and age of free official add-ons, I *expect none* and am thrilled when I do get them. Even more bizarre, I learned some time ago that expansion packs are a part of the biz, tools to milk more money from a franchise or not. And if I like the game enough, I'll buy them.

Odd, I know.

I doubt I'll play MP more than a few times, though certainly I'll try it. New civilizations are certainly nice, though probably don't make it or break it for me. (Though the thought of Mongols and Vikings is quite delightful) What *does* sell me is the idea of scenarios. If they're good, I'm there.

 

[Selous]

i dont think u understand ChrTh ... we WERE promiced a nice powerful editor ... and now it looks like we will have to pay for it ... and im willing to bet u will have to have the expantion to play any user created games made by this new fangled powerful editor ... so to play the user created stuff ... u must have the xpantion .... and while some of u sprout that they have to make money (and no one disagrees with that) there is such a thing as reputation! ... firaxis and even the great sid himself seem to have resigned themselves with mediocraty ... nice rep to have ... yup .. we produce good dependible medocre games ... medocre at its best ... also coupled with poor support

not exactly what they intended i think

and btw ... i always see games for $100 .. that is what they cost over here .. and funily enought ... that damn game is still the same price

and how many people think that we will get to PLAY another 8 civs? or that there will just be another 8 civs to choose from at the start ... im betting on the latter and not the former .. that would take programming and effort

 

[AD_KB]

SHOEGAZE:

once you've tried multi player you wil never go back to single; if only perhaps as practice for the REAL THING(multi)...

i know this from past experience in civII... hotseat is especially fun as talking to the person while you play or are waitin gyour turn is enjoyable(although my friend always makes me "not look" / "turn around" and diplomacy and chat with humans will bring a whole new dimension to the game not to mention someone who will play at your rate (where as in civ3+2 at harder levels, rather than computer playing better they just make life easier for em and harder for you ... this leads to people rarely playing deity etc.. because of pop2 of city being unhappy etc..)


as for the people who talked about countries splitting in half.. .this was the case in civilization I (under good old microprose.. civ1 also had the retirement playback movie of that game's history as well) ... what happened was if the capital of a large empire was captured the country would split in 2... although this is a good idea.. you cannot make civs that will appear only through country splitting (e.g. Americans from English) as this would mean americans would be unplayable by people.. (americans are a massive consumer of civ3).......

In civ1 they would randomly pick a civilization that was not already in the game and give them approximately half the cities... when these events happened it actually looked good and excited me..!

 

[Hellfire]

Originally posted by ChrTh
It's time for my selfish response:

I don't understand y'all. Have you not been paying attention to the gaming industry? Do you complain every time the Sims come out with a new expansion? Or Command and Conquer? This is no different than what happened with Civ 2...so why are you surprised? The entire industry works this way. You're upset because there are bugs...there are always bugs. My company is paying millions of dollars for Oracle Applications 11i and I've spent half of my working hours of the last six months just patching the thing...and we haven't even gone live yet!

Why are we complaining? Because we are consumers and we are allowed to complain.

If you haven't been able to implement Oracle due to all those bugs, then you better as hell complain to them.

Now there are two parts to this response. Features and bugs.

Features

When it comes to features, its about expectations and needs. I could tell you that I could write you a program that printed "Hello World" 1000 times on your screen in and get it to you in 1 minute. Your expectations have been set and I can meet them. It might fulfill your need for a little entertainment and you'd think it was cute for about 5 seconds and move on. But it made you happy and you go about your day looking for your next endorphin shot.

However, say I claim "THIS WILL BE THE GREATEST PROGRAM IN THE WORLD IT WILL HAVE A NEURAL INTERFACE THAT SOLVES ALL YOUR PROBLEMS AND MAKES YOU HAPPY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE BY SHOOTING ENDORPHINS DIRECTLY INTO YOUR BRAIN!!!!"

Now say you had a terrible day and really needed something to cheer you up and you saw this claim and came to me asking for my cool software.

Okay fine, then I show you a program that prints "Hello World" 1000 times on a green and black computer screen. That doesn't meet your expectations, and because I made you expect something that would solve your problem this doesn't give you any entertainment. You look at me with this look like "what kind of idiot are you?" I only reply, "Well I didn't have time to do what I said I could, so I gave you this instead."

Now I haven't even injected what happens when you include money in the equation. Imagine me charging $5 for my program, after promising what it could do and then saying "Give me 6 more months and $50 and you can have what I promised in the first place." You've have found a chair and put it through my skull at that point.

Companies have to balance customer expectations and needs with what they can provide. They need to get customers jazzed in marketing in order to buy the product, but they can't set expectations too high. All to often companies over market games and promise a lot and then don't deliver what they thought they could deliver. Firaxis set expectations too high and couldn't fulfill those expectations. If you do that, then the game is a letdown compared to other games.

Bugs
The fact that software always has bugs is bull. Check the space shuttle, battleship computers, power stations, and anything that is VITAL to the operation of any service you need or anything where people's lives are on the line. You DO NOT get bugs, because you test and test and test and test until you work them out.

Now, obviously, the private sector and games don't have the same level of standards, because no one's lives are on the line, not even money or service. Just entertainment. However, its easy to compare some games to others and see bugs occuring. Civ2 didn't have nearly as many visible bugs that affected a wide range of people. SMAC had a number of bad bugs, but they were made up for by a very impressive game, which is why they were forgiven. Now Civ3 is not as impressive as people first hoped, and there are a number of bugs, some rather obvious. Its great that they fixed them, so there are several of us who enjoy their continued support and think this is great, and yet others who aren't impressed and realize if their car behaved like this, they'd get a new car.

There are other games I play that I barely see any really bad bugs. There are some games that are completely unplayable because of bugs. Its a matter of degree in the entire software industry. Sometimes there are just too many bugs compared to other packages. If Civ3 is good enough for you than fine, but not everyone has your standards and someone who has higher standards than you is not unreasonable if they make the proper comparisons.

And again, I haven't entered into money yet, which is important here. If I think the car sucks and is a lemon, I can return it. If a toaster breaks in 15 days after I buy it, I can return it for a refund. If software sucks and has too many bugs, I CAN'T RETURN IT. Business has totally enveloped this idea. Its not about fixing bugs, its about introducing features, glitz and glamour and making money, and consumers take the hit.

And yet we allow it. Why? Because we want games.

 

[quteague]

While reading over everybody guesses of what the 8 new civs might be, I have yet to see the most controversial one brought up. Atlantis. In my opinion this would be the ultimate to play...All the legends, myths, and stories about it, people still argue even if even existed... Is there no suffecient history to actually include it,probably, would Firaxis surprise everybody if they put it on, definintly. I know this is a long shot, and Atlantis will probably not be in the expansion pack, or any upcoming CIV sequals. But if Firaxis want to sell as many expansion packs as possibele, they need to include something big...Atlantis

 

[Pygzilla]

If we are going with mythological civs why not Rh'ylha or the OLD ONES. Nyarlathotep could be the leader.

 

[Shoegaze99]

AD_KB, I've played plenty of MP Civ II. I've played plenty of MP games, strategy or otherwise. I'm just not particularly interested. And it really is that simple.

 

[Nomad_Wanderer]

Originally posted by Thunderfall
Great news! I hope those scenarios are REAL scenarios, and not just maps.

Can't wait to try multiplayer Civ3!!!

I wonder how much of it is active now. Has anyone who has patched to 1.21f look at the jackal.txt file in the root civ3 directory yet?

It's a list of error codes and their respective messages...

Interesting that quite a few of them have to do with Multiplayer....

I think that multiplayer (or at least a portion of it), is already here, they just haven't flipped the switch yet...


I wonder if we have to wait for them to flip it.... (.i.e They didn't mean for us to be able to create units yet, but we found some undocumented ways to do it....)

 

[quteague]

Ancient Greece was just a myth until they found the destroyed fcity of Troy. Now nobody doughts the existance of Ancient Greece. I Am just sayin. Firaxis deprieved us from MP in Civ 3 and knowing all they would make more money if they sold it in an expansion pac. Hey and why not Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos...

 

[Hurin]

First, I must admit that I only got through two pages of this thread before I just decided to reply.

To those complaining that multiplayer isn't free. . .

When you picked up the box, wandered to the counter, and paid your money, you were buying what was in the box. What Firaxis said would be in the box six months prior has nothing to do with what you were deciding to buy at that moment (those of you ordering online could have cancelled as well). I find it hard to believe that anyone was "duped" and actually thought multiplayer was included at the time they accepted "delivery" of the game.

Face it, you wanted the game. You wanted to play it *now*. So, you decided it was worth your money even without multiplayer. The market placed a price on it (single-player) that you were willing to pay. You got what you paid for. . . and now you're being given the option to *add* to what you already paid for. . . why should you be able to add value to the product you already purchased for free? You can't retroactively go back and say that the money you paid "should have" included multiplayer. You knew darn well it didn't when you bought the game. . . and Firaxis *never* promised a *free* upgrade.

I'm sure that Firaxis had a lot of ideas for Civ3 that had to be cut out because of time constraints. That doesn't change the fact that you accepted the price of what was in the box the day they shipped it. Just because you *think* something was really important. . . or was something you wanted really bad. . . doesn't mean it should be free.

And finally, every time I've heard about an upcoming Multiplayer patch, the journalist and/or Firaxis has always been *very* careful to say that they were not sure how much the upgrade would cost. They never said it would be free.

Sheesh, just a bunch of socialists around here. . . apparently, everything really cool should be free if you want it bad enough. I bet you spend your entire game using the communist government type.

Best Regards,

Hurin

 

[MCdread]

Originally posted by quteague
Ancient Greece was just a myth until they found the destroyed fcity of Troy. Now nobody doughts the existance of Ancient Greece.

You need to take some history lessons...

 

[Hurin]

Originally posted by MCdread


You need to take some history lessons...

LOL! No crap! That's one of the funniest things I've read in a long time!

And yet oddly depressing. What *are* we teaching our kids nowadays? Are they getting all their history from "In Search Of" at 2:00pm on the History Channel?

Hurin

 

[Discovery One]

In no particular order:


Spain Isabella
Turkey Ataturk
Arabia Mohammed
Polynesia Kamehameha
Maya Hanab Pakal
The Netherlands William I
Mali Mansa Musa
Inka Atahualpa
Mongolia Jenghiz Khan
Choson Korea Yi Se-Jong

 

[ChrTh]

Originally posted by Hellfire


[Bugs
The fact that software always has bugs is bull. Check the space shuttle, battleship computers, power stations, and anything that is VITAL to the operation of any service you need or anything where people's lives are on the line. You DO NOT get bugs, because you test and test and test and test until you work them out.

Uh, Apollo 13...Challenger...the Osprey...Three Mile Island...

I'm not going to be flippant or sarcastic, because your response was intelligent. But at the same time, bugs exist everywhere. NASA et al. have a heckuva lot more manpower than Firaxis does, as well as being under a great burden to make sure no one dies.

Think of Civ III like the Hubble. It was flawed when first launched...but they kept working on it, fixing it, etc...they didn't just let it float in space like a piece of junk--like some companies do with their software.

And that was one kick-ass picture that was on every newspaper a couple days ago.

(I'm an idealist...shoot me! )

(As for Oracle, Oracle recognizes that it is impossible to simulate with their Applications the 10^7 different things its customers want to do with it...so obviously there are going to need to be patches...and they provide them. My point, though, is that if 1 million dollars doesn't deliver a perfect product, how can one expect a $40 (or $100) one to?)

 

[Cybernut]

Originally posted by quteague
While reading over everybody guesses of what the 8 new civs might be, I have yet to see the most controversial one brought up. Atlantis. In my opinion this would be the ultimate to play...All the legends, myths, and stories about it, people still argue even if even existed... Is there no suffecient history to actually include it,probably, would Firaxis surprise everybody if they put it on, definintly. I know this is a long shot, and Atlantis will probably not be in the expansion pack, or any upcoming CIV sequals. But if Firaxis want to sell as many expansion packs as possibele, they need to include something big...Atlantis

Atlantis was never a civilisation. It was a city on the Greek coast that was destroyed when an earth quake struck. It wasn't called Atlantis, although that is the myth that has built up. The earth quake caused mass liquification (the earth turns into a swamp) and a tidal wave that engulfed the land up to 2 kilometres inland.

Over time the water receded and the land remerged. The city of "Atlantis" has recently been discovered, not at the bottom of an ocean, but underground, on the northern part of the Peloponnese.

We already have the "Greek" civ, and I don't think that an imaginary or "mythical" civs fit the realistic ideal of the game. But mythical civs might be an interesting addition at some point in the future.

 

[Cybernut]

Originally posted by quteague
Ancient Greece was just a myth until they found the destroyed fcity of Troy. Now nobody doughts the existance of Ancient Greece. I Am just sayin. Firaxis deprieved us from MP in Civ 3 and knowing all they would make more money if they sold it in an expansion pac. Hey and why not Nyarlathotep... the crawling chaos...

What the **** are you talikng about ... "ancient Greece was just a myth". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

Are you stupid or something. My advice, if you don't know what you're talking about, then DON'T SAY ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH