Solver: Yes, 1999 was an interesting year for the Civ community. SMAC came out at about the same time that CtP did, but it seemed to impress the old players more. Did you also get around to SMAC, and what do you think of it?

Locutus: I've never been an avid player, but yes, I've played SMAC a little bit. It's very understandable that older players enjoy it more than CtP, because it's a lot more similar to Civ2. Many people who dislike CtP dislike it because it isn't very much like Civ2 at all. Though there are many similarities, there are also many differences; CtP1 is a different game. Not so for SMAC, SMAC plays exactly like Civ2, it has the same strengths and the same weaknesses. The only differences are in the Sci-Fi setting, the storyline and maybe half a dozen new features that hardly affect core gameplay (like Social Engineering and the Unit Workshop). If anything, the game is more tactical than Civ2: the 3D terrain make the map feel like a regional one rather than a global one, the Unit Workshop let's you micromanage your unit equipment on a tactical level and Social Engineering lets you fine-tune your government policies. This is opposed to Civ, where you make much grander, more strategic decisions and details like type of unit shielding or strictness of environmental policy are abstracted. But this is only a minor shift in my opinion, other than that the gameplay of both games is nearly identical. Many old strategies that worked in Civ2 work in SMAC as well; if one is a good Civ2 player, one barely has to change one's style of play to excel at SMAC as well. That's why the game got really old really fast for me, but there are a lot of vets out there for whom Civ2 seems to have literally infinite replayability and who wouldn't want to see any part of the game changed, so for them SMAC is a much more attractive game. (Note that I'm a novice SMAC player and I don't know anything about patches or expansion packs, so there may be layers to the game I don't know about -- don't trust on my opinion for a definitive judgement of the game.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying SMAC is a bad game; I think almost everyone will agree that Civ2 is an all-time classic, so any game similar to it can't be bad. There are definitely some cool features in that game that I'm still hoping will be incorporated in future versions of Civ and CtP, like the Planetary Council and the terrain naming feature. I can certainly see why especially people who enjoy the things that make SMAC unique (Sci-Fi setting, storyline) are so fond of the game. I think the large and active SMAC fiction community is proof that it's exactly these things which appeal to the SMAC fans. Although I enjoyed playing SMAC (if I had the time I would probably still play it occasionally and I enjoy Sci-Fi games in general, I personally find a historic atmosphere much more appealing than a good story, and after 6-7 years of Civ1 and 4 of Civ2 I was ready for something new and fresh. To me, no game, however great it may be, has infinite replayability, not even Civ; after a couple of thousand hours of play I'll want something new. That's why I'm so addicted to the CtP series: the mods keep the game fresh, year after year. Or at least they have so far.
 

Solver: Now that you've mentioned CtP being a different game from both the original civ franchise and SMAC... can you give a reasonably short summary of why you believe CtP to be a better civ-game?

Locutus: Short? Surely you can’t possibly expect me to be short? ;) I’ll try but not making any promises here :)

There are many arguments that one could give for why CtP is a better game and I’m sure most of us have heard them over and over again (and if anyone hasn’t, I invite them to dig around in the CtP2-General forum ;)): it has more units, wonders, buildings, civs, governments, etc. It has stacked combat, unconventional warfare, Public Works, Space and/or Undersea layers, cool wonder movies, lots of statistics, a brilliant user-interface, crisp and clear graphics and of course almost unlimited moddability (even completely unlimited, now that we have the source code for CtP2). But what it all boils down to in the end is personal preference: some people will always hate the user interface, while others (including yours truly) will always worship it. Some people will always despise the whole concept of unconventional warfare, others (including moi) will always see it as something that ought to be an essential part of any model of human history. Some will always like stacked combat, Public Works and the future eras, others will always dislike it. I invite anyone who hasn’t given the series a decent try yet to do so one day to see for yourself which how the games compare to other Civ games; you may be very pleasantly surprised (both CtP games should be really cheap now in the bargain bin) But one should take note in advance that CtP is NOT Civ, it’s a different game. So don’t expect it to be like Civ, or you will only be disappointed (or pleasantly surprised, of course :))

But if there’s one thing I have to point out that is a definite advantage that the CtP series has over the Civ franchise, one major asset that other games in the genre don’t have, something that the competition can only learn from -- then it’s the real sense of empire that you get when playing, particularly in CtP2. Whereas your civ in all other Civ-games basically just feels like a collection of cities, it really feels like you’re ruling a true Empire in CtP2. Concepts like Public Works, borders, the trade model, unconventional warfare, etc, as well as the user interface, especially the empire-wide management screens (actually intended to cut down on tedious micromanagement, but doubling nicely for this purpose) and things like empire-wide resource management and unit support all help to make you feel like you’re in charge of a single unified nation of people, who are all working together to achieve Victory. Or not, of course, depending on how happy you’re keeping them ;)