1BC Civ Forums / Off Topic Discussions / Other Sim Games / General Gaming Discussion

Colonization

Comedy Dave — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 08:08:07 GMT

Colonization was such a great game of the early/mid 90's.

Was having some nostaglia for it the other day, but haven't had a chance to dig it out and have a play!

I wish they'd make Colonization 2. Failing that, when I get Civ 4, it would be great if it could be modded to simulate the colonial era.

Anyone else remember this classic?

Edit: It always amused me how trusting the natives were. Ah well, bang goes another village... ;)

OH. MY. GOD.

Roadkill — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:24:06 GMT

-I just bought Europa Universalis III and cracked open the manual. Turns out it's over 140 pages long, very few pictures to cut down on text and an extremely small text size. I'm very scared now...

:P

My Spore Review

Leo — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:46:53 GMT

My Spore Review

Or…Promise me the moon, give me a Moon Pie

I want to start my review by saying a few things. First, I love computer games. I’ve played computer games now for as long as they’ve been around, really. Second, I did not follow the hype for Spore. Three years ago now, my son came to me, radiant in the glow of his newly-discovered Next Best Thing. Throughout those years, he would follow each press-release, movie of some celebrity playing Spore, and review of promised features and salivate. Spore would revolutionize gaming, he said! They promised him lots of things…from what I half-listened to, it sounded good. Evolution where your choices proved fundamental in the evolution of your species, from one cell to Space Empire.

I didn’t listen all that hard, because I didn’t want to be disappointed. I knew it was being made by Maxis and the Sims people which was okay, but the Sim line after Sim City, to me, has become rather blasé, with an almost reality-television level of gruel. But, Wright was talented, so I was willing to give it a shot. Then I discovered that EA was involved…

I became filled with a sense of dread. Unless you like sports games, EA should be an immediate warning flag. They are a simply awful company. Their killing of Earth and Beyond was a smack in the face to their customers, but their buyout and destruction of Westwood Studios, one of the Grand Old Dames of the gaming industry, was inexcusable. I’ve not heard a good thing about EA since then, when I swore to never buy another EA product.

I wish I had stuck to my guns…Spore is…well, it’s misspelled…it should have been Spoor.

It’s *pretty* and well-dressed spoor, but it’s still droppings that have been left by other computer games. If you have played Asteroids and Pac-man, then you’ve played the cell stage. There was apparently going to be a water stage, but it somehow fell off the game, and you go from cellular to land stage and make your creature. Your creature stage is E.V.O. but with three dimensions and a peaceful route to go. The tribal stage is next, followed quickly on its heels by the civilization stage. If you have played *any* RTS game, Age of Empires, Starcraft, Dune 2 (by the now-dead Westwood; thanks EA!), you’ve played these stages. Then it’s on to the space stage. If you’ve played Master of Orion II, you’ve played this segment of the game.

Now, you might be saying, hey that sounds neat. Okay, I will give you that if this game were these stages all done *well*, then it would have been pretty awesome when you throw in the fact that you get to use a low-to-medium complexity 3D modeling program to make your creature. But sadly, it’s more that if you took those games and then made a VERY limited demo of them and then strung them together, that’s what you would have. The name of the game in Spore is “Limited Choices.”

Other than the Creature Creator itself, which most of the poor sheeple that got suckered into buying the retail game had already bought, there is a resounding lack of choices to be made.

Let’s start with clothing. You get a matrix of 4 by 4 clothing items to be used by your creature once you get to tribal stage and then it expands a bit in the civilization stage and the space stage but all in all, the amount of choices you get for these things are ridiculously small. Then, instead of being able to color your clothing, your only coloring choices are determined by changing the coloring of your person/creature’s body. That doesn’t make any sense. Beyond that, in the realm of clothing, getting clothing to cover your creature is only accomplished by slapping on multiple bits of junk. How about you give me a texture that I can color? Like spandex…I don’t even get spandex? And good luck getting a mask to work as a mask.

Then, when we’re making our buildings and land units in the civilization stages, you get one land, one sea and one air unit, and the possibility of having 9 if you capture the other two types of cities (military, religious and trade). The buildings are one type of house, one factory and one entertainment…and turrets for defense. So let me get this straight…I’m playing Age of Empires with up to 9 units and 3 building types? Woo. Let me get my heart medicine. And your strategy for fighting? Heard of the Zergling rush, now known as ‘the zerg?’ That’s it. Zerg for the win. Oh hooray…where’s my confetti?

Space stage was *almost* awesome. It was very pretty, and used a 3-D star map a la Star Control…and done differently might have been worth buying the whole game for. But, alas, such was not to be. Your ship is the ONLY ship you get…kind of like Star Control 2…wow, look, another game that I loved, but stripped down and crammed in…in an empire that rapidly spans star systems, you are the only means of defense and transport. Your ship. That’s it. So after you make a couple of colony worlds, ANY time pirates or enemies attack you must RACE back to the world and defend it. Too bad that you were doing a quest somewhere for someone, and there’s no way to keep track of what you were doing before being interrupted. The main commodity you trade is spice (which was, honestly, a nice homage…back to Dune again…oh wait, and EA killed Dune 2’s creator Westwood studios…now I’m upset again), but this commodity is only made on the planets in limited quantities and YOU must pick it all up if you want to trade it to anyone. You have no defenses for these colonies but land based turrets at first, which are ridiculously easy to kill, forcing you to come back to defend. Later on…much later…you get an automated weapons platform that you can leave on colony worlds that is *almost* enough to defend against anything, but it’s outrageously expensive.

So, to build your empire you must constantly run back and forth collecting spice to trade to capricious AI worlds (or your own) in a sort of reproduction of Taipan (you’re OLD if you remember that game), while defending against raids and eradicating diseased creatures until you have enough money to buy these uber-turrets. Meanwhile you’re building up the abilities of your ship, like how powerful it is and how far it can travel (a point that will become painfully pointless, by the way, at the end of the game).

Even so…as frustrating as it is, the Space game might have been cool enough to buy the game for. Except once again, limitations abound. Why can I not get a list of my worlds, what type of spice they produce, and whether they have an uber-turret or not? Why can’t I see what animals inhabit my worlds?

Oh, why would I care about inhabitants of worlds? I’ll explain…a world is usually found in a non-habitable state, and you have to terraform it. Which sounds way cool, but in execution, is not. You have to adjust atmosphere and temperature, which is cool, but then you have to populate it with one large, medium and small plant type…and then two herbivore animals and one omni- or carnivore. And there’s three levels of habitation acceptability. So that’s 9 plants, and 9 animals. They must all be unique types to fill a niche. That’s complex and really cool and is kind of fun…

Except you get no list of what your planets have on them already. And you can’t just go into orbit at a planet and say “Give me one biota load including everything on this world.” Oh no, instead, you have to swoop down and tractor beam up one of every niche biota…or many if you want to terraform lots of places. But sometimes, a creature for that niche is not actually present on the world…having been eaten by the rapacious carnivores…so you have to fly around while waiting for them to repop. Invariably…and I mean it’s like an immutable law of the game…you will have a raid or biodisaster on some world while you’re trying to do this, leading to immense amounts of frustration.

Even so…I could put up with all of this really unnecessary annoyance (unnecessary if you know the other games that are out these days) if at the end of the space game they didn’t commit one of the cardinal sins of gaming theory…taking away an accomplishment for no reason other than to extend the monotony of your game. In pen and paper RPG terms, the Gamemaster takes away some of your stuff.

At the end of the space stage, no matter how well you’ve done, you have to make it through V’rix…er…Antaran…er…Borg…ah yes, Grox space...to get to the planet Orion…oh sorry, the center of the galaxy, to win. As you enter Grox space, you are eventually attacked. You fight in space without actually fighting, you see your ship and their ships and there are flashes and booms…and you usually beat the ships…but you take damage. That’s okay…I’m sure I’ll be okay, you think.

Until the game pulls that ultimate sin. Uh…because our game really doesn’t feel long enough and we want you to grind out at the end we’re going to…oh wait, uh…the navigation system is uh…having issues with…um…gravity, yes that’s it…and we’re going to uh…restrict our jump range for…hmmm…safety, yes that’s it!

So now…looking again to the center of the galaxy…you have to make 40-80 jumps while getting another 2-3 enemy ships on you that you really can’t fight other than watch the flashes, which are, by the way, making it really difficult for you to target the next star. If you *do* for some reason try to make the masochistic charge to the center of the galaxy, make sure that as soon as you start the space stage you start buying repair kits for your ship. You will not be able to buy enough, ever, I bet. The alternative is to kill Grox colonies from time to time to make a base that you can fly back to, ONE PARSEC AT A TIME, to repair at. The Grox empire is huge. You would never be able to take them out. Or maybe you can…this might be the stupid “hardcore gamers can find a secret ending” that EA “let slip.”

Anyway, so you got enough repair kits…or you opened up the cheat panel in frustration…and you’ve made it to the center of the galaxy. Congrats! Now they give you a Genesis Device that can remake planets to an ideal level for you.

Forty-two times. That’s it. I’m sure that’s an homage but come on…I’ve attained supreme cosmic power and fought my way through to the center of the galaxy for a 42-charge Genesis Device and a time-share spiel? And you come back out at the center of the galaxy where the hostile Grox are still looking to kill you.

Okay so that’s the over-arcing critique. Now let’s get into the Going To Drive You Nuts Because All Other Games Have This Stuff But Not Spore list:

• No autosave function

• No ability to remap keys or control functions, and the control functions change each level

• No Big Useful Lists…like what type of city my city is…what type of spice my colony makes…what type of animals live on my planet

• No ability to rename your planets or stars, other than by cheating…built into the cheat menu, but you can’t have it, not yours

• No way to take in-game notes as to what you were doing when you got called back to Irregularis IV to fix the governor’s hangnail.

• No way to set waypoints or forwarding for units in Civ stage, no way to forward spice production to closer to your end of the galaxy in space

• No way to save templates for colony setup. There’s virtually no real difference between cities or colonies…might as well have the ability to say “give me this setup for all, please.”

• No good way to defend your stuff in space stage without you racing to help

• No way to easily pick up terraforming life forms

• No way to end the monotony of the space level. Oh wait, that’s not a function of other games…but no other game has made me feel like I’m filling out TPS reports like this stage did.

Now let’s go back and talk about evolution. They told us this game would have consequences for choices you made. It’s true, you do get little racial traits that are due to what you did as you grew, and that’s REALLY cool…but how come I can re-design my creature from a bidped with two heads to a quadruped in one jump? That’s not evolution, that’s redesign. Why, if I put 6 level 1 legs on my monster thingy doesn’t it move faster than a critter with 2 level 2 legs?

This game *feels* like it had way more in it and then they scrapped it and went with a stripped-down variety. Like they gave you a Mustang outer shell but a Yugo engine and transmission. Apparently you were going to be able to design plants…you can’t. Apparently there was a water stage…there isn’t. There was a huge list of things that You Were Going to be Able to Do…but they’re no longer in the game.

To be fair, it’s fun making the critters. It’s fun designing the buildings. It’s kind of neat, some of the things that you get to do. It’s very pretty. But the drawbacks are too big. This game is a shell of what it appeared, and was promised, that it was going to be. Wright had this to say about the game…

“We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. “Spore” has more depth than, let’s say, “The Sims” did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for “Sims 2″, which was around 90, and something like “Half-Life“, which was 97, and we decided — quite a while back — that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of “Sims 2″ than the Metacritic and sales of “Half-Life.””

If this game has more depth than the Sims did…and if this game is an indication of the quality of Sims 2, then I am glad beyond reasoning that I never played either of those. I don’t believe for a *minute* that Will Wright is being honest with us. I think EA came in and said “you’ve had enough time working on this…we know it’s not what you want, but what you have is too ambitious, and it doesn’t work. You will strip it down and sell the last working build of this game…NOW!”

It’s a pleasant enough diversion for a thoughtless couple hours…think of it as a sort of glorified Tetris…but as a game…I’m sorry to say, but:

Spore sucks.

We got sold a bill of goods as consumers. I feel truly sorry for you people that have followed this game’s production for three years. If *I* feel disappointed with the game, you folks must be utterly devastated…like Santa Claus just killed a kitten in front of you.

Maybe EA was trying to capture the next Pokemon generation. This game is fit for 8 year olds. If you’re older than this, you’re going to be bored, frustrated, and aggravated. For those of you that have not bought it yet, I implore you; wait until it hits the bargain bin if you must buy it…if there’s any justice in the world, this game will be in the bargain bin next month. It’s worth ten dollars, at most.

Spore

Flayum — Sun, 19 Jun 2005 02:13:38 GMT

[URL=http://gamingsteve.com/blab/index.php?topic=721.0]...It...Is...Coming...[/URL]

Best Air Combat Simulation Games

Scipio Africanus — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:31:29 GMT

So I spent $20 on Falcon 4.0: Allied Force and it is a DEFINITE GEM. However, it is SO realistic, will take me a lot of practice to get good. Still cannot even land an F16 properly.

Also dropped $50 for MS Flight Simulator X Deluxe. Yeah, sure. That is cool, but: Don't I get to shoot anything, or cause anything to blow up!?! Geeze. What kinda video game does not involve warfare or combat?

So I also bought this package, that I'm now thinking was a ripooff "Aircraft Powerpack 2" with "two games" in it. One is an add-on to MS flight sim, that adds half-dozen WWII era single-engine prop planes to the available planes in the sim game. Whoop de doo. I don't want to just FLY an A6M5 Zero, I want to shoot down American Imperialists in one!! *yawn* (should it be THIS hard to find a game to fight WWII era fighter-dogfights).

The "other game" in the package crashes. A bit of searching reveals the actual maker did not even put their name on the box "Wild Hare Entertainment." Their site is a joke. No patches, no nothing. Okay so I've got some new aircraft in MS simulator for $20 not a total loss.

But my desire to fly WWII fighter planes into combat remains. Any suggestions?

Falcon 4.0 Allied Force

Scipio Africanus — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:52:09 GMT

Have never played an aviation sim on a PC, or any machine for that matter! This game only cost me $20 on the cheap rack, and it was worth every penny! INCREDIBLY detailed cockpit controls, plane responsiveness, etc. I've made it up through about 6 of the 30-some-odd tutorials to learn how to do missions! Talk about some replayability. Fun to just fly around in an F-16.

I also bought Microsoft Aviation Simulator X Deluxe Edition, and an expansion pack for that which is based on the Guadalcanal Campaign in WWII Pacific. I was shocked to learn that it takes up 15 GB! of HD space. That is almost HALF of my total HD space!

Probably time to buy another HD to run as a slave off of my old one I guess?

I already own an external and have a firewire cable that I've yet to get running (think I don't have the internal cables run properly inside my case) but I would think if I just installed it on an external with a firewire that would be almost as good as it being on an internally connected HD wouldn't it?

Victoria: An Empire under the Sun

Rishbhav — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:41:22 GMT

I just got my hands on this amazing strategy game from Paradox Interactive, makers of the Europa Universalis series. If you've every played those games its in the same vein - economic, military, and political strategy all in real time.

Victoria is one of the few games I've seen based on the Victorian era, and it is by far the best. You literally control every facet of your country's economy, down to individual factories and railroad lines. What I really love about it though is the sheer historical accuracy of the game; nearly every major and minor event of the 19th century is modeled, from the Arastook War to the Arrowhead Incident. This accuracy only increases if you get the main mod out there VIP (Victoria Improvements Project)

If you look for reviews of it in most mainstream gaming sites you'll find them to be harshly critical and negative, which is to be expected - it's not the kind of game that sits well with the twitchy point'n'click FPS crowd. One review that I think does evaluate it fairly is Strategy Gaming Online's: [url]http://www.strategy-gaming.com/reviews/victoria/index.shtml[/url]

The game itself is $20 on Gamersgate (a game download service like Steam or Direct2Drive), plues $10 for the expansion which I would highly recommend as it fixes bugs, adds features, and allows you to run most mods for the game. Both are worth every penny. I really can't recommend this game enough, especially for the hardcore strategy gamers like the people here

Battlestations Midway

Scipio Africanus — Fri, 16 May 2008 22:02:49 GMT

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL8b04QnV8c&feature=related]Wow, looks fun.[/url] Guess I'd have to buy an Xbox though eh?

Patch for XP...

Elu Venius — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 16:25:30 GMT

Here ya go, if you're still looking.http://www.firaxis.com/games/game_detail.php?gameid=7

Pirates! ?

Scipio Africanus — Sun, 17 Jul 2005 21:42:01 GMT

Anyone else ever play Pirates! any more?After my first round of learning how to play it, and binging on it till all i wanted to do was finish with the highest score I could get, I've been giving it some play time here lately.I'm playing on the most difficult setting "Swashbuckler" and currently experimenting with three different games, playing simultaneously. In one, I'm a French guy, whose speciality is Fencing. That one is definitely the easiest. I'm attacking pretty much whoever is handy (except France) and just accumulating power so far (Dec 1661 in "Buccanneer Heroes").In another one, I'm playing a Spanish "Wit and Charm Expert" named Cassanova Verdi. That one is interesting! Had two ships blown up under me so far!In the last one, I'm playing a British physician, and it was also fairly challenging.Swashbuckler is a definite challenge if you are used to playing at Adventurer or Journeyman!

Medievil II Total War

swordinthestorm — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 04:24:18 GMT

Dont get me wrong i love Civ, but this took me by suprise. With a managment aspect like Civ but with an actual RTS for battles it is like my ideal game. I started a Grand Campaign with my friend. We chose the Holy roman empire and at the start of the game we split the nation between us. We also through adoption and marriage choose our characters. Its started out normally and we began expanding. His generall/heir Prince Jan and my Generall/heir Prince Otto were sent out with armies to scatter the forces darkness in europe in the name of the pope. Needless to say we were promptly excomunicated.

I captured Prague from rebels but a suprise attack from Venice caused tragedy when our Faction leader died. The Venice armies attacked vienna and the New faction leader was killed. Orders came from rome to cease hostilities which we decided would be headed once Vienna and Venice where ours. Otto (me) marched for Vienna with a large army consisting of Mailed Knights. Where Jan set about scatering the armys of venice from italy. It was a dark day when Otto fell in battle but what a huge blow to the defenders of venice. Jan on the other hand smashed a huge Army near Milan and Venice lay within Jan grasp. With a large army marching on a Empty Vienna and a Battle hardened army laying siege to Venice the hope is that we can secure Venice and March on Rome to ensure We are no longer considered enemys of the Church.

Luckly for me Otto had a son the year he died. With two Daughters and a son i have potentially Three Heirs. Phew. What i loved was after war began with Venice the ambused a small troop of Milita in the alps. After we lost the battle they offered us the troops back at a price. We couldnt afford it so they we put to death. When Otto won a decisive victory in the next battle we where given the option to ransom a huge force back to Venice. We executed every last one. The next time we lost Venice made no such offer to us. Now thats a great feature. I really like this game and how well it was designed.

Has anyone here tried this game out? And if you have are there any wise words that i could avail of?

Playing SMAC/AC once again.

Warmax — Fri, 20 Jun 2003 16:53:50 GMT

Its been a long time and its taking some getting used to it (what with Civ3 addiction and all) but I'm starting to warm up to it again. This is surely Sid's best work. Agree?

Would we like "Alpha Centauri 2"?

mik1984 — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 07:58:12 GMT

Would we like "Alpha Centauri 2"?

Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars Demo

basser — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 15:27:59 GMT

Gamespot

Addit: Havn't tried it yet. Not sure If I will considering release date is so close. Mar 26

Anyone who tries the demo; please let me know how it is.

Civil War Generals II

Scipio Africanus — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 11:23:41 GMT

Me, Comedy Dave, Konrad von Richtmark, and maybe also Tosk have been talking about the old Sierra Designs game "Civil War Generals II" in a couple of other threads as tangents to the proper topics there. Here we'll start up a new thread to focus on this game.

[quote] Scipio, in case you have an ideological preference for the Union, I'm fine with playing the Confederacy. But do the sides play very differently? Was not the ACW a very symmetrical war, except for perhaps a higher officer-to-soldier ratio in the Confederate army?

No guarantees though of when I will be ready to play. School has started again, and (as usual) it looks like it'll be a semester From Hell. Add to that, there are several other competitors for my spare time; I just got Doom the boardgame, the WFRP rulebook (hey, didn't you play that too Scip!), and of course, this forum [/quote]

Well, I do have an ideological preference for playing the Union, but I'd still play the Confederacy no matter! It is fun to understand and that is the key thing, even when you get your butt kicked :P

Now, as to your question, it was, overall, an asymmetrical war in the sense that the Union had vastly greater industrial, manpower, diplomatic, and resource reserves to tap in to. However, the Confederates had SPIRIT! Basically, the Confederates felt that their traditional way of life was under attack by the "Yankee aggressors" and interlopers. Their traditions included slavery, but they saw it in a much broader scheme to include agrarianism, less big money, and big industry, and traditional family and social hierarchies too. They saw the Union agenda as being one of interference, and forcing them to change their social institutions and impose a foreign, "modern," less moral, and less honorable way of life into their society, and on this basis they took great offense with the Union, and for many southerners this was a fight about them having the right to retain their way of life. In this sense, the Confederates started the war with probably a higher degree of esprit du corps, and their tenacity, ingenuity, persistence, self-sacrifice, and general fervor in prosecuting the war was considerably more impressive during the first year or two of the war. From the first days of the war the Confederacy had inspired leaders like Lee, Jackson, Longstreet, Davis, who were like cult figures for the common soldier and citizen. The Union on the other had was politically divided (including radical anti-slavery abolitionists, business men who really did want to "take over" and financially exploit the south, moderates who just wished it could all be over, pacifist anti-war protestors who adamantly wanted it to be over, hawks, etc.), and lacked truly good leadership (with the exception of Lincoln, who gradually became more and more effective as the years drug on) in the early years of the war.

So, while the POTENTIAL for it to be "asymmetrical" was present right from the beginning, the capacity for the Union to actually effectively mobilize and tap in to its potential to be a far greater force took literally years to gear up. This coupled with a lack of resolve to FORCE the Confederacy to surrender and return to the Union contributed to a strategy of mixing diplomacy and aggression for the Union early on. This proved to be an extreme failure, as the Confederates went from stunning victory to stunning victory in the early years. Gradually, leaders in the north began to realize the full horrific implications of the situation, and realized that the Confederates were totally serious about becoming a separate nation, and that they were not going to be cajoled back in to the fold without being utterly defeated. By about 1863 or thereabouts, the war was becoming more like a WWI style conflict in which targeting of resources, citizenry, and the elimination of chivalry from battle field considerations was increasingly true. Gradually, it became a Total War nightmare in which the Confederacy struggle desperately to hold out just a bit longer in hopes of making the costs to defeat them fully sufficiently terrible that they could force the Union to offer more satisfactory terms that unconditional surrender.

Road Rage

Netbug — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:02:29 GMT

When I am playing this game it is so fun. Sim Road Rage is a game that is played when you are so board. This game is played like this you pick a person that you are going to play in this game and then you pick a Sunday drive. Then you are ready to start the game. When I play this game I am a bad driver and I drive in the school and I hit all of the teachers and stuff like that. I am a bad driver because it is so hard to drive. And I like to play this game. When this game is started you have to be really carefull because you are going to have to play against some man and if you get one of his people [so called people] he will follow you and he will try to come after you and bump in to you :hehe: and he will try to see what you are going to do. When you play this game there is a bus that will bump into you and try to knock you off the road. :crying: That bus is a mean little thing that goes after you. Most off the time the man that goes after you is also a mean man. This is one game I really suggest.

CivCity Rome? anyone played it? how is it?

thegoldenboy — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 18:53:53 GMT

I'm just wondering if anyone knows anything about civcity rome? it sounds and looks really cool to me, so i guess i'm just wondering if it's any good, or how in depth it gets....

Imperialism II

Serrataur — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 10:20:50 GMT

Bought this in a bargain bin for 97 pence (approx $1-50). Cheapest I've seen any game ever.
Quite interesting as it has a random map generator and you have to build improvements on tiles according to the technologies you have researched and transport them via roads or sea.
First you have to "discover" the resources. Then comes the maddening bit - creating the transport system. You can't use resources if you don't have the ships or the right sort of roads, and you can't build these if you don't have the resources.
Life's too short isn't it? :crazy:.

Bet someone out there likes it.

Pirates!: Expansion Pack?

mik1984 — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 16:30:24 GMT

What about adding some new features and maybe improving some in the game?

E3? Woohoo?

Immortal — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 19:21:46 GMT

[quote]2K Games, a division of Take Two Interactive Software (Research), will put most of its muscle behind "Bioshock," a highly-anticipated action-horror title. [b]Three new games from Sid Meyer (the "Civilization" franchise) will also be on display.[/b][/quote]

Whole article is here
[url=http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/24/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/][/url]

Edit: I can't get the URL to work I do something wrong and they spelled Meier wrong

Rise of nations

tomdog315 — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 19:08:14 GMT

Anyone ever played Rise of Nations? I see some strong relations to the age of empires, and even a hint of civ:cool:, except a more tactical edge over strategic, as well as much faster-paced gameplay.:D

Heritage of Kings: The Settlers

cleopatra143 — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:16:12 GMT

I was looking around on the xfire free downloads page and found the demo for this game. I played and then went to walmart and bought it! lol Its really kool too, similar to ages of empires/stronghold. Anyone else?

Sim City 4

Comedy Dave — Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:04:06 GMT

Ahh, got Sim City 4 last weekend for the bargain price of $20 Australian - that's about US$15.

Been playing a lot this week, since finishing up my last Civ3 game.

I'm really enjoying it so far. Finding it a lot harder to turn a large profit, compared to the old games. I normally make maximum profit of $300-400 per month.

I've also been playing with the mass transit options. Not much luck with buses, but not too bad with trains - but they only seem to get 10-20% usage.

Also I find I run out of map space very quickly! Yes I know there are small, medium and large size maps - have been mainly using the medium sized ones so far.

Anyone got any tips?

Cheers,

Dave :)

AC

Grishnak01 — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 17:21:51 GMT

All right... someone give me a brief rundown on what 'Alpha Centauri' is (besides the star, smart-asses). How does it play and what does it have in common with Civ?Thanks!

Great deal for AC at best buy

Ceo_Morgan — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 01:30:00 GMT

Ive been looking to start playing my favorite game of all time, but it must be gaining value as a collectors item, upwards of 20 dollars for AC and 20 for expansion on ebay.. I found this on the pc games shelf at best buy, however.The Laptop Collection (big box)includes:Alpha CentauriAlpha centauri planetary pack(which includes alpha centauri and expansion - so yes, you have 2 copies of alpha centauri)Sim City 3000Red Alert 2Tiger Woods PGA Tour collectionTotal Price: 8.99I already have red alert, so ill likely ssell that, tiger woods, sim city, and the sole alpha centauri CD on ebay - make a tidy profit.Red Alert and Tiger woods come in one of thsoe double-unit jewel cases, Sim City and both alpha centauris come in a sheeth.I only saw one copy, and I got it, but if you lost your old CD (or it got scratched to hell like mine) this is worth looking out for..(now if I can just remember how to make those terran.exe errors that are kicking me out of the game stop - this happens to me around 50 years in, and every 3-10 turns after that if I auto save a couple of years back.. is this an XP problem?)

Iron Man pulls me back...

mik1984 — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 16:20:34 GMT

When I started to talk about this Iron man, I started to really, really miss it. I'm reinstaling SMAC:AC on my laptop. No way a civ without the Iron Man can be better. :cool:

Civil War Generals 2 by Sierra

Scipio Africanus — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:12:05 GMT

Since I still don't have a working machine at home, except for my wife's ancient IBM 586 (which reads as having "~10MHz of processor speed" in Diaxdiag!!). So I uploaded this old jewel and gave it a whirl.Weird thing is, previously when I'd loaded this game, I could never get the bottom edge of the screen to show up, and all the controls are down there, so I just gave up and put it on the shelf. I bought it for about $10 in the bargain bin I think.For whatever reason, it views just find on this old, and nearly dead laptop, and I had a good time playing with it last night.Pretty complex tactical Brigade/Regiment level hex-map game with VERY detailed maps of all the American Civil War battles, campaign games etc.After another Saturday working, looking forward to playing tonight :)I recommend it if you are into tactical wargame type of games. Decent graphics compared to some of the other wargames I've seen.

"Wonder Videos"

catullus79 — Mon, 02 May 2005 22:33:10 GMT

Does anyone know where I could find the wonder videos for Alpha Centauri? If its even legal to obtain them without the game.

Alpha Centauri Dgame

bluice — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:43:53 GMT

I always thought a Democracy Game with Alpha Centauri would be awesome as it is so complex but unfortunately there seemed to never have the right amount of interest as Civ 3 has...

SMAC on Win XP

eire021 — Sat, 15 May 2004 18:05:18 GMT

I have not been able to get SMAC to work for XP, is there any way to get it to run or am I out of luck? :confused:

Playing SMAC again

eire021 — Tue, 23 Dec 2003 13:04:57 GMT

This is still one of my favorite games of all time, now that I am home , I definitely need to play it a few times! :)