Solver:	I take it, thus, that you are strictly opposed to the idea of the AI "ganging up" on the human player, as it would always do in CivII?
Sirian:	Strictly speaking, I'm not opposed to that. Sometimes there is nothing I enjoy more! As part of the CivIII Succession Games community, I was part of the first succession game where the human team (playing a single civ) declared war on everybody, all the AIs, and took on the whole bloody lot of them. That was a glorious experience! The problem is that even the richest flavor of ice cream can "grow old". Variety is the spice of life, and there ought to be more to an AI than any one dimension, no matter how "good" that dimension may be. The CivII AI is better than the CivI AI. Both have some common flaws, though. If the CivII AI had been stronger at the economic side of the game, things might have gone differently there. The CivII AI doesn't gang up on the player, per se. It gangs up on the strongest civ. If you are a skilled player, though, then that translates in to you always leading and always being the target. Ideally, an AI should not back itself in to a corner like that. It should be more versatile. "Always oppose the strongest player" is a reasonable sounding principle, but it turned out to have side effects.
Solver:	So, back to CivIII. After its release, you became a very active member of the community, and your work also included writing various articles on the game. Tell us more about your activities at the time!
Sirian:	Playing a variant in Diablo, spring 2000. That sorcerer was only allowed to wear Cursed items that would lower (harm) his stats. You are looking at highest difficulty, the final battle. I have been around internet gaming since its outset. I founded gaming leagues and ran them. I collaborated with other determined players to craft better and stronger gaming groups. I played a variety of games, both single and multiplayer. Doing any of these things on the net requires a website. I was not initially good at building a site or maintaining one (some may say I'm still not!) but I picked up bits of experience here or there. Eventually, my urge to write burst out and spilled on to the net. My fansite for Diablo II became rather popular and drew lots of attention. I had some significant impact on that community via my writings. CivIII happened to come out at the right time. I was fresh off the Diablo 2 period and had the time and energy to produce game writings. So I moved from doing this with Diablo II to doing it with CivIII. I played the game and wrote about my experiences and thoughts, my insights. I hung out mostly with fellow Diablo players from the core Diablo community in which I had gotten involved, and we brought our Diablo sensibilities to CivIII. Chiefly, this came in the form of "variants". Diablo was a solid game and loads of fun (I'm speaking of the original Diablo, now). Yet it only had three character classes and a limited amount of levels and monsters, items, etc. So to get more out of the game, I and others like me would add on our own rules, to craft new character classes, new challenges, etc. These became widely known as "variants". After a couple of months of playing CivIII "the normal way", we started to create some CivIII variants. This seemed to entertain the readers and lurkers, and we were having fun, so it sort of started to spread in to a "variant culture". One look at the succession game community (at Civilization Fanatics Center) and you will see how far this "cultural infection" has spread. I also had a hunger for tournament play. I started out with the second game of the Apolyton [Civilization Site] CivIII tournament, which was being run by Markos. CivFanatics' game of the month is a good tourney, but it wasn't quite my speed. I'm a variety addict, and I wanted games that would try to be different and new, rather than try to support a meaningful scoring system across many games. The Apolyton tourney just kind of faded away, though, leaving a vacuum. So... I set out to create my own tournament. (I had been seven years "cold turkey" with no civ, mind you! I NEEDED A FIX! Like, really, really badly!)
Solver:	What about the Sirian's Great Library you ran for CivIII?
Sirian:	That's my website. I took advantage of the CivIII fansite kit and crafted some imagery to decorate the site, then in typical Sirian fashion, never gave another thought to the eye candy. It's all about the content! There's nothing on the site but my writings. 95% of it is game reports. I'd play, document the events in notes or screenshots, then write up a narritive and dot it with illustrations. I put enough care into the reports that readers could almost feel like they were playing the game with me, or in my place. At least some tell me that. I would also open a window on my thoughts. I would talk strategy at times, or make jokes. If I had fun with the game, that would come through, and if I had some frustrations, that would come through too. What you see is what you get. I tried to bring readers along for a ride. Apparently, some of the Firaxians were reading. ... But that's almost its own subject.

PAGE 1 | PAGE 2 | PAGE 3 | PAGE 4