NOTE: This is The Column, a regular feature on Apolyton where anyone can write about anything to do with Civilization or the gaming industry as a whole. If you feel like writing, please visit the article submission page.

PREVIOUS ARTICLES

#208 LOST CIVILIZATION Duckman expects more from the future civ3 #207 A BOLD STEP FORWARD INTO THE PAST It's never to early to start discussing Civ4, Ron argues #206 WALL STREET GAMES ONLINE GP would like to live in a branching virtual world. This could be his big chance #205 CIV3`S NOT SO GREAT LEAP FORWARD Civ III's "Great Leap Forward" isn't as great or as forward as Dr Nemo hoped. By.... Dr Nemo #204 TALKING WITH SID AND SOREN Small civ3 details shared by the big heads of the development team. By Jonathan Speelman #203 CIVIII'S BIG MISTAKES A disheartened fan sends a letter of grave concern to Firaxis COLUMN ARCHIVE

Note by the webmaster: This article was written for much larger audience in mind and some parts could appear "introductory" to... "hardcore" civers... :)

    A year-and-a-half ago I bought Sid Meier's Civilisation II, supposedly for my son though I quickly became addicted myself. Chess players are nothing if not competitive and over the next six months I fought away compulsively against the AI until I finally defeated it at the highest "Deity" level and later learnt how to do so reliably.

    In the process, I discovered that many chess players, national and international share this interest and even heard a possibly apocryphal story that one currently top ten player wiped "Civ" off his laptop to avoid being unreasonably distracted during tournaments!

    I was therefore eagerly awaiting the release of Meier's latest offering "Civilisation III" at the end of last year and even arranged to get it early by mail order from the US. When it arrived, I naturally took the macho step of starting at Deity level again. But I was crushed, horribly and repeatedly and after retreating down a couple of levels to "Monarch" still initially found it hard going.

    In the Internet age, there are a number of web sites and news groups devoted to Civilisation. There are some extremely skilled players out there and after reading their comments and some serious endeavour of my own I did eventually manage to win a game at the next up "Emperor"- which seems reasonably "playable" to me: and even one out of dozens, mostly started and then hastily abandoned, at "Deity".

    The impression remained that "Civ III" was enormously difficult at the top levels and on Wednesday April 10th I was able to put this to the inventor in person, when Sid Meier came to London at the end of a six city eight day European tour sponsored by Intel and handled in London by Infogrames.

    I met him in a suite in Claridges together with Soren Johnson the "lead programmer": for Meier didn't code "Civ 3" himself but acted as advisor and tester. It was Soren who was in charge of the AI and he spent "seven or eight months of his life, about half writing and then half testing it".

    As a "virtual hero" I knew shamefully little about Sid Meier as a person and for the record, he is a genial Canadian of 48 who has lived most of his life in the United States, married with an eleven-year-old son and has two rabbits which are looked after by his wife Susan - who also accompanied him on the tour: he "spends a lot of time with computers" but relaxes by reading and listening to music. I was also unaware of the full extent of the extraordinary "stable" of games from simulators of various kinds to strategy games of all sorts which he has built up over twenty years in the business.

    Civilisation I shot him to fame in 1991 and the series has continued with Civilisation II (1996) and the latest Civilisation III last year, published in the US by Firaxis, a company with between 30 and 35 staff. and with such a variety of games available onsite that "it's sometimes hard to persuade his eleven-year-old to go home."

    As a player, the question which most intrigued me about "Civ 3" was: at what level did they test it in-house? The answer is "Regent" the third of the six, since from anecdotal evidence they believe that people start "somewhere in the middle and work their way up until it becomes too difficult". They agreed that they had deliberately stretched out the difference between difficulty levels as compared to "Civ II": which was balm to my battered ego.

    With widespread access to the web, the game is still evolving as official "patches" are periodically released from www.firaxis.com: the latest one came out a week or so after the "Get Civilised" tour. Partly these correct various bugs which have been discovered but there is also something in the nature of a macho competition between the top gamers and the programmers themselves!

    Regarding this, Soren Johnson explained that if they thought a method was "unfair" they had disabled it and cited the technical procedure of repeatedly planting and then hacking down forests in the same place which brought benefit in the original version but "wasn't much fun".

    Perhaps this is better. Though overall it's generally more fun to win than to lose whatever the methods, within reason of course. In any case, It was fascinating to meet the authors of an amusement and/or torment which has taken so much of my time recently and I shall certainly battle on against it intermittently. But having spoken to them, I shall also feel considerably less frantic when, against near overwhelming odds, I am sometimes annihilated.
---------
When not playing civ3, Jonathan is professional chess player and writer

© 2002 Jonathan Speelman.
Not be re-produced without the authorization of the writer

Comment on this article!

The opinions expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect those of Apolyton CS. They are just the personal opinions of the writer.