[Freeciv] Re: FreeCiv and Call to Power?

["Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Stuckey wrote:

>         Call To Power can be a source of ideas.  I'm not sure how many
> people own it.  I bought a copy and have run it exactly once.

I ran it quite a bit more than "exactly once", but I would agree: the fun wore
off *long* before the fun of CivII did.

IMO they just grafted on lots of "nifty ideas" without giving much thought to
the overall design or the play experience.

For instance, they tried to crowd in so much that you frequently find yourself
going from building legions to building musketeers very quickly, and you get
really odd armies consisting of a mix ancient and modern units.

As another example, they have some really stunning "3D" pix of the various
units.  The armor almost looks like a photograph of a lead miniature, and the
cavalry looks like a photo of a toy horseman.  But IMO these images are totally
inapt: when you have a cavalry unit patroling up and down an exposed coastline,
it looks like you have exactly one man on a horse patrolling your coast.  The
"realism" is misdirected, because it's "realistic" for something other than
what it's actually supposed to represent.

I had better stop before I get warmed up.  But you get my drift: games need to
implement some "design" or "concept", not just a collection of gimmicks that
you can list on the back of the package.  For me, CivCTP is like the recent
spate of SciFi movies: lots of dazzling special effects, but no plot,
characterization, atmosphere, or any of the other things that make a movie
good.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas