I just got the half-hour demos of MOO3 and Civ3 in
the Infogrames meeting room. It's hard to tell
what a game will be like when you are only
watching a presentation and not playing the game,
but I was struck by a couple things:

Of the two, MOO3 looks to be much more of a "new
game" than Civ3. Colony management, combat, and
the general flow of gameplay look to be much
different from its predecessor. Civ3, on the
other hand, seemed to be a polished version of
Civ2 with better animations, a slightly improved
interface, etc. I don't see the same "re-think"
that MOO3 obviously got. That's probably
understandable when you have one of the greatest
(if not THE greatest) series in gaming. Change
too much and you risk alienating people. Still,
the contrast was sharp.

I watched the combat in MOO3 and saw the real-time
system in action. The level of control you have
is at the "task force" level. You control the
formation and composition of your task forces. A
single combat can have multiple task forces on
each side. These task forces can contain many
different ships, and these all fire independently
based on various parameters. You can tell the
task forces where to go on the battle map, but the
individual ships move and fire on their own.

An interesting mechanic is the idea of "Imperial
focus points." Each turn (turns are simultaneous,
btw) you get a certain number of IFP to use in
such areas as designing ships, changing colony
production, etc. So in effect you may not be able
to give orders to all your colonies in a single
turn because you don't have enough IFPs. This is
an old boardgame concept and with old boardgamer
Alan Emrich in charge, I can guess who came up
with this idea. It could be quite interesting in
practice.

You can build a reserve of IFPs. Turns are
simultaneous, and the longer your opponent takes
to do his turn, the more interest you earn on your
IFP reserve. Obviously, this works both ways.
This could have interesting implications in
multiplayer.

The game crashed and this cut the demo short, but
I'm going to go back and talk to the producer some
more, since there were other things I wanted to
find out about the game. Likewise, I'm going to
go back and check Civ3 out again as I may be
selling the game short and not noticing the
improvements.

Guys, would I be alone in thinking that just updating one of the best game formulas I've ever played was still a pretty good thing? If Civ III went too far off-course, would it still be Civ?

Bruce, thanks for the update on MOO! I've been looking forward to it, if it's a good game.

Is the IFP feature active during single player or is this a multiplayer feature ?

I don't like the idea of being rushed into making a move decision or having time limits.

I think I'd like to play Tom, Bub, and Bruce in MOO3. Considering the state the Alpha Centauri game ended up in, we'd all be making 200% interest per turn in IFP's. :-)

Bruce,

Was there any evidence of the "culture" addition to Civ 3 that's been mentioned in some of the initial previews? The idea being that every city has a culture that includes a national identification. So if you take a city by conquest it doesn't automatically become loyal to you as in the previous games. This could have an interesting effect on gameplay that might not be evident in a brief demo.

Still, I agree, MOO looks like the more interesting title right now.

My understanding was that the IFP feature is active in the solo game as well as multiplayer. I'm going to stop by again today so I'll confirm that.

Yes, there was some "culture" addition mentioned but it wasn't explained. It may be as you state. I'll ask. There seemed to be some streamlining being done to make the game have a "wider appeal" and thus some of the micromanagement was being eliminated. For example, there are no longer any trade routes for goods: once a certain source (wine, gems, whatever) falls within your national boundaries, you get credit for it, with no need to create trade routes.

I was very underwhelmed by Civ 3 also. I asked Jeff Briggs what they planned on doing about the tedium in the game in the latter stages and he showed us a technolgy tree. What? Then I asked if the results from Civ 3 would feed into SMAC as it was originally planned back when the Sweep of Time triology was announced. So he mumbled something about how the Dinosaur game had been cancelled. What? What's that got to do with Civ 3 and SMAC? Sheesh.

Hmm, sounds like Civ 3 will be.....Civ 2. This is further reinforcement of my pet theory that Meier is a screw-up who has been riding on Brian Reynold's accomplishments for about a decade.

When's the last time he actually *wrote* a game?
Is his chief job "imagineering" them?

I have two words...

Empire Earth

I did an interview with them first thing this morning, and man I'm loving that game. It looks damn good, seems to have a lot of interesting play mechanics at work, and can appeal to everyone from the AOE to the Starcraft crowd. Looks like you can play a quick or extended game. Great variety of units... 300 or so. Looks killer, to me.

In response to Aszurom's two words, I have three.

Sid Meier's SimGolf

That pretty much says it all for me.

When is Reynold's announcing his newest game?

I have three words!

Sim Gaming Journalist.

The HORROR, the HORROR!
Cover your eyes!
Run!

Is "SimGolf" really a word though? :)

Seriously though, I'm not a golfer, so I wouldn't know, but do most golfers walk around wishing they could design their own golf courses? (And I'm not talking about things like, "I wouldn't put a sand trap there, what a dumb place to put a sand trap!" *while reaching for sand wedge*) To me, it would seem like designing a golf course could only be fun to someone who plays golf, while designing a city could be fun to more than just people who are urban planners or whatever. Maybe I just don't get it. Or is there more to the game that is supposed to give it wider appeal that I missed hearing about?

I too am looking forward to Empire Earth. Anything that has Corsairs (of the gull-winged variety) in it is automatically cool with me. (CFS2 was pretty disappointing though...)

"When is Reynold's announcing his newest game?"

I sat in a room with the head of Microsoft PC games this morning and got a look at their upcoming games, and he told me they were close to making Brian Reynold's next game public.

MS's Sigma was interesting, an RTS in which you can mix the head, legs, and body of animals to create your own new creatures with new unique characteristics. Age of Myth's also looked pretty cool, with a new storyline with cut-scenes and enough new features to look like more than AOE 3.

While there were a few highlight here and there, and I had a few really good meetings, in general this was a really weak E3 for the PC. The consoles clearly dominated the show, even in traditionally PC focused booths. And the PLaystation 2 looked surprisingly strong. Xbox looked "challenged", and I'm one of the few that is just unimpressed with the Gamecube when I look at actual games (as opposed to rolling demos.)

Also - PC sports looked dead. I saw ONE PC sports game on the floor, and nothing much behind closed doors. Ugh.

Gotta run...

I'v heard how the consoles sort of dominated E3 this year but how is that exactly? It seems to be in just raw numbers. I havnt read about any really big games coming out for the consoles. Where as the pc has sequels to some of the greatest or at least most well known series of all time civilization,warcraft ect.

Thanks for the report, Bruce!

As far as the old-school TB Civilization III goes, from what I've read on other sites, the resource model (building certain units requires control of certain resources) and additions of culture and nationality look like they might significantly alter the gameplay. Not to the degree MOO 3 looks to be reengineering things, but enough to get me more interested in Civ III than I had been previously.

And hey, if you got a chance to check them out, how do the sequels to Disciples and Age of Wonders look?

--------------

Aszurom wrote:

"Empire Earth... seems to have a lot of interesting play mechanics at work, and can appeal to everyone from the AOE to the Starcraft crowd."


"The AOE to the Starcraft crowd." Hmmm, is that your idea of a wide range of gamers?

I kind of dread the idea of playing an RTS rendition of Civilization... Sounds like the Ultimate Clickfest in the making. But I guess RTS just isn't my thang.

--------------

Re: SimGolf and the non-golfer. I don't play golf (except occasionally on the N64), but after reading the various E3 previews, I will probably be picking up SimGolf when it comes out. Managing the club aspect a la Rollercoaster Tycoon, setting up holes, watching how people play them, and then watching my "character" play them actually sounds like a lot of fun.

Hey, I had a nice long look at Freedom Force today. I'm sold on it based on what I saw. Good intuitive and unobtrusive interface, doesn't break the "comic book feel", and has a neat dose of personality. God, I hope it doesn't get... I won't even say the word.

Hey, what's with the guy wearing the "It's all about Tom" shirt? I thought I was his only groupie!

I loved Freedom Force. It's very much a comic book. It's basically an action/tactics game.

Well any game made by Irrational has GOT to be good... i mean they were the people who made System Shock 2! Best game ever! imo of course...

etc

"Also - PC sports looked dead. I saw ONE PC sports game on the floor, and nothing much behind closed doors. Ugh."

Oh I am really sad about that - not. :-)

Bruce Whats the space battle graphics like on moo3.

Bruce may be out of town. I saw MOO3 at E3. The space battles are in real-time and the ships are tiny. Although it's hard to tell much from a 15 minute demo of the game, my guess is that the space combat may disappoint a lot of fans. It looks like it's designed so that players won't have a lot to do.

One of the other new wrinkles in the game is "imperial focus." Basically, as the emperor you can't micromanage everything, so you get focus points to spend each turn. Each focus point will let you micromanage something. Space combat's one of the things you can manage in this way if you want to spend one of the focus points to do so.