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#152 WHAT CIV3 SHOULD LOOK LIKE Raingoon stands by his conviction that since Firaxis is spearheading CivIII's development, it should play as it looks. #151 HOW AND WHY DO BAD GAMES GET MADE AND PUBLISHED Ex-Activisioner David "Pyaray" Ray gives us an exclusive look at his work that investigates games from bad to worse. #150 GOODBYE ACTIVISION; NOW CIVERS, LET'S GET TO WORK It's time to face facts and move on with the Civilization series, says MarkG. #149 APOLYTON: THE TRULY INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY Apolyton is a glowing example of globalization at its best, touts Shadowstrike. #148 A LOOK AT A DIFFERENT TYPE OF ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE Winborne chooses to discuss exactly what the title suggests: a different kind of artifical intelligence. COLUMN ARCHIVE

I have read posts regarding the future Civilization III game from Firaxis with eager anticipation. From what I have read so far from potential customers like myself as well as from some staff working in Firaxis offices, Civilization III could possibly surpass Civilization II by far. But I feel that one question from the forum and from Firaxis seems to be neglected, and that is, "How will military maintenance be implemented in Civilization III?"

When I bought Call to Power a couple of years ago, I fell in love with the way military maintenance cost was implemented. The entire empire was responsible for military cost - not the individual cities. This I believe allowed for a more realistic creation and use of a powerful military force. Once I fell in love with Call to Power (not Call to Power II), I looked back at how Civilization II implemented military maintenance cost and realized they could have done better with that concept. Do not get me wrong - I definitely enjoyed Civilization II in the years before Call to Power came out, but now that I have seen how great Call to Power implemented military costs, I believe Firaxis should really consider changing the military costs system.

Maybe Firaxis could emulate Activision's concept of military maintenance costs for the entire civilization or maybe Firaxis could find something else that is better than the restrictive military maintenance system that was based on each individual city in Civilization II. I truly believe that this was one of those great improvements Activision made over Microprose. I realized I could utilize different strategies that were made possible in Call to Power that were not really possible in Civilization II because of Activision's concept of making the entire civilization accountable for military expenses, and not through individual cities.

I believe this question is important for these three reasons:

1) with individual cities responsible for their own units costs, it took longer to produce each successive unit, which I believe is ridiculous once I played Call to Power.

2) overall military forces are too limited or constrained with individual cities responsible for military costs -- one city could only support so many units

3) each city in Civilization II could only support a certain maximum number of units, which is very limited compared to that of a military maintenance system for the whole civilization

based on these three reasons, I hope Firaxis has considered or will consider improving the military maintenance costs system.

The military maintenance costs system based on the entire civilization can only do one thing in my opinion - increase the fun factor in Civilization III. It will be up to Firaxis if they will consider this idea to increase the fun factor of their future-release of Civilization III.

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About the author: "Veteran player of Civilization and Call to Power games".

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