More Accurate Historical Scenarios and Take 2 Revenue Opportunity

[Eagle_Over_Time]

Merry Christmas to you all and hope you are enjoying Colonization!

We shall find out how we like it on Christmas Day!

Meanwhile, what is the future for the Civilization IV franchise? What do you want to see?

I cannot tell you for I know not the future and am not one of their decision-makers, but I hope it is more like Colonization.

While some enjoy the free-play scenarios, I enjoy retracing history in the historical scenarios, but some of the games or mods do not appear particularly balanced or tend to drag on forever, i.e. Alexander the Great and Vikings.

For example, I really enjoy the AD 1000 scenario, but Spain almost never makes it to the New World and the Russians can't get to the far east of Siberia. The (Fan Scenarios) Rhyes and Fall of Civilization and World War II mods were not particularly rewarding either and should allow hotseat play, but I can provide more details later if you wish.

I would need more time to draft an interesting and comprehensive desired list of scenarios and civilizations, but let me throw out a few as food for thought:

---Shorten the play length and historical duration of the scenarios to reach the desired outcomes.
---Create new stand-alone, mostly-bug-free products that sell every six months for about $30 with ten or so scenarios with a representative sampling throughout history.
---Inclusion of mod materials and instructions to encourage low-cost development costs and improved fan input for TakeTwo

Some scenarios might include:
--The American Civil War
--Desert Storm
--Limited World War II Scenarios, like Desert War
--Cold War Jubilee (50 years, using the geographic map from AD 1000)
--Cold War 1945-1955 (including Korea, any could turn hot in Europe)
--Cold War 1955-1978 (including Cuba and Vietnam)
--Cold War 1978-1992 (USSR liberalization)
--various Arab-Israeli and Indian-Pakistani Wars
--various World War I scenarios
--American Westward expansion
--Saul's Israel
--David's Israel, etc.
--Arthurian Britain
--Campaigns of Julius Caesar, etc.

but many more could be listed through modern and ancient history.

Let me know what you think, and we can help . . .

 

[zyphyr]

Frankly, I doubt they could get enough people to pay $30 for 10 scenarios to cover the development costs.

 

[Eagle_Over_Time]

Frankly, I doubt they could get enough people to pay $30 for 10 scenarios to cover the development costs.

Thanks for your reply. $30 and ten scenarios semi-annually were arbitrary figures. I was just trying to come up with a reasonable avenue for discussion, which they might read, to maintain cashflow.

Are you suggesting that scenarios are not attractive enough or that ten might be too many? Unless I am mistaken, the Warlords (8) and Beyond the Sword (8+3) expansions did have some game enhancements in addition to scenarios and sold for about $40-$50 and annually, if my memory is correct.

I think the usual range of software offerings are in the $20-$50, but I have been willing to pay $125 for Steel Beasts PRO PE, which is more of a modern armor training simulator than a computer game simulator like M-1 Tank Platoon 2. Unfortunately, I have not been able to dedicate the time to fully enjoy it, but I like variety in my spare, relaxing time, too.

 

[Supr49er]

There are many fantastic mods and scenarios here.

Welcome to the Forums Eagle_Over_Time.

 

[zyphyr]

Are you suggesting that scenarios are not attractive enough or that ten might be too many? Unless I am mistaken, the Warlords (8) and Beyond the Sword (8+3) expansions did have some game enhancements in addition to scenarios and sold for about $40-$50 and annually, if my memory is correct.

Most people, though obviously not all, really don't consider the Scenarios to be all that important. The game enhancements are what drive most of the sales.

As a particular example, every few weeks someone will post a thread that goes like this :
1st post : "I have the base game, which expansion should I buy?"
half a dozen responses of "The only thing from Warlords that you don't get in BTS is the scenarios"
Original poster again "Thanks, BTS it is."

Anyway, as supr49er said, there are a fair number of fan made mods and scenarios here to try out.

 

[MrCynical]

Zyphyr sums it up well. I've never really been that interested in the scenarios. They might be fun to play through once or twice, but that's about it - there isn't the variety of the sandbox game. Add on the fact there's a vast number of mods and scenarios around for free, and there really isn't much incentive to pay for a scenario pack. With the expansion packs I'm after improvements to the main game, mechanics and so on, which is why I was so disappointed with Warlords. BtS was a rather better effort on that front (particularly as it included all the relevant stuff from Warlords).

 

[r_rolo1]

I believe that a lot of people would be interested in nice offcial mods ( hey, some people spent 30 € in CivCol ( like me ), that is no more than a Civ IV mod ) if they were any good

 

[Speaker]

I wouldn't expect anything else out of Firaxis in regards to Civ 4.

 

[Ringan]

The (Fan Scenarios) Rhyes and Fall of Civilization ... should allow hotseat play

You can find the multiplayer version of Rhye's here