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Ludovic Hirlimann · Jun 24, 2004, 06:50 AM

Anyone know if civ III sales where good enough in order to have a mac version of CIV IV ?

madmacgames · Jun 24, 2004, 10:02 AM

well I dunno what "good enough" is but until just recently, it was our #1 best selling game. And it is still selling strong, now being #2 for us.

xi_hyperon · Jun 25, 2004, 03:30 PM

Civ IV? I didn't know that there was a Civ IV... is it in development for PC right now?

Neo.cmg · Jun 25, 2004, 04:14 PM

Originally posted by xi_hyperon:
Civ IV? I didn't know that there was a Civ IV... is it in development for PC right now?

Yes, it's currently in development for the PC.

Neo.cmg

djohnson · Jun 26, 2004, 09:53 AM

Yup, pretty cool. Now if they would just bring out networking support for the Mac......

dreilly1 · Jun 26, 2004, 10:07 AM

In case you didn't know, there's a thriving Civ community at http://www.civfanatics.com/ with a significant Mac representation. I haven't been there in a few months, with Real Life� getting in the way and all, but I'm sure if you look there you'll find everyhting you'll ever want to know acout Civ 4.

xmacintosh · Jun 27, 2004, 07:19 PM

We didn't see the Conquests Expansion for Mac... Why will we see Civ IV??

xi_hyperon · Jun 28, 2004, 10:34 AM

Ok, I read up on what's out there so far, which isn't much. Looks like they will get rid of things like pollution and corruption, but outside of that it's all pretty general. If they began work on it late last year, I would assume it's still a couple years away. Hopefully we'll start see more specifics on it in the next months.

dreilly1 · Jun 28, 2004, 11:04 AM

Originally posted by xi_hyperon:
Ok, I read up on what's out there so far, which isn't much. Looks like they will get rid of things like pollution and corruption, but outside of that it's all pretty general. If they began work on it late last year, I would assume it's still a couple years away. Hopefully we'll start see more specifics on it in the next months.

Corruption on Civ III is a real pain. I appreciate what they were trying to accomplish -- making vast empires more difficult to control -- but the least they could have done was make the effects diminish with commmunication advances, since it would be easier for a central government to admininster their far-flung territories with advances in communication...

P · Jul 5, 2004, 08:32 AM

Originally posted by dreilly1:
Corruption on Civ III is a real pain. I appreciate what they were trying to accomplish -- making vast empires more difficult to control -- but the least they could have done was make the effects diminish with commmunication advances, since it would be easier for a central government to admininster their far-flung territories with advances in communication...

It gets better with each update. The problem is that the entire production system could use an overhaul. Why don't shields flow over to the next thing in the production queue? Why can you change production on the fly without penalties (Answer: because the AI does this all the time, which is why it is so easy to beat the AI in SMAC if you push them around a bit. It would be better if they fixed the AI, though). Production should rely more heavliy on the infrastructure. If the infrastructure gets trashed, you can't build as quickly. They also took a lot of the freedom of movement out of the game when they made Capitalization suck so much and made buying improvemnts so expensive. Now you can't move production around your empire anymore, which is a shame.

For an example of a good production system that does not work like Civ, look at MoO III. I know that a lot of people hate MoO III, but this part of it works fine. Production points (PP) are created by taking ore + gold. Ore can be transported between colonies, but not PP. Each planet has a production capacity. The planet can produce PPs up to that capacity for 1 gold/PP. If you try to produce more PPs (overdriving industry), they cost 2 gold/PP up to double the capacity. It goes on like that until 6 times the capacity. The cost for overdriving is lowered by some advances. In practice, you tend to overdrive all but your core planets. This is then balanced by a morale figure - planets can be content, restless, revolt or subjugated.

MOO goes on to make a very complex population usage formula for all "Dominant Economic Acitivties" to produce the Production capacity, but this is not necessary. If you assign a certain number of people to production (like you can make them scientist or entertainers today) and multiply this with some factor (150% if you have a factory, 200% if you have a power plant, etc) you get a nice and understandable production model.