-- DRAFT ONLY--
Dear Firaxis,
Like Civers around the world, the scenario design community has waited with baited breath for the release of Civilization III. We have eagerly anticipated the new editing tools and the new and innovative concepts promised. We appreciated it very much when Firaxis relented and provided for more than 8 civilizations, a key victory for scenario designers. Most of all, we were delighted that Sid Meir and Firaxis were contracted to do the design, because we knew the excellence of your work and your sensitivity to our requirements.
So it was with bitter disappointment that we learned that the new game had no events capability at all. Disappointment turned to anger when we learned that it was impossible to place units or cities on the map. Clearly, as it now stands, NO scenarios will be possible with Civ3.
We believe that our community, including the many pioneers who paved the way for us, have contributed greatly to the success and longevity of Civ2. We believe that we can contribute in the same way to Civ3 as well. There are many outstanding aspects to the new game. It shows great craftmanship, but it leaves us standing out in the cold.
We appreciate Firaxis' committment to further improve editing tools in a patch. We would like to outline here what we consider the essential tools for creating good scenarios. If you provide these, we guarantee a steady supply of creative and fun scenarios for the whole civ community!
1. An effective scripting language. Events are essential to a good scenario. No AI, regardless of how good it is, can replicate historical events properly. Events at the quality level of Fantastic Worlds are the minimum, with an increased heap size to at least 100kb in order to deal with up to 16 tribes. We encourage you to go farther and incorporate some of the features found in Test of Time, especially multiple triggers and events that can be turned on and off.
2. We must be able to place units and cities on the map, including homing units to particular cities or to no city. This is basic. So are flat maps.
3. The various tools available in Civ2's cheat mode and scenario parameters are required, or new equivalents. If we can't add improvements to cities, and copy them in other cities, change money, or modify treaties and reputations, we can't make decent historical scenarios.
4. Map visibility is critical. We have to be able to reveal or hide the map at will, and do so from the point of view of any tribe. Revealing the map fully means being able to look into any city of any tribe, and make changes. And it means being able to run complete turns and observe the movements and actions of ALL units, regardless of their tribe.
5. Multiplayer is desireable and was certainly expected. However, PBEM (Play By Electronic Mail) scenarios are rapidly increasing in popularity. These are essentially hot-seat games in which the player takes his/her turn and emails the save game to the next player. Even if true multi-player can't be provided immediately, PBEM capability should be.
Members of our community are chomping at the bit to produce great scenarios with Civ3. Whether historical, fictional, fantasy or sci-fi, lots of scenarios have been percollating in our brains, just waiting for the release of the game. Please give us the tools to do the job! We look forward to your positive response to our suggestions. Thank you.
The Scenario Community,
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) will get an answer!
Well, Apolyton's server is too busy right now..
and a few nice promises (hype) are enough to make it a $$$ magnet.
My Civ 3 is in the mail, and all I could think of was the scenario editor. Now this thread tells me it's not even a feature 
