Sid Meier's New Games

Next Generation has an article discussing some of the newly announced titles Sid Meier introduced during his Walk of Game Induction Ceremony. From the article: "Following a time of kabobs and schmoozing, the projector flipped on, the movies began to roll, and the assembly of journalists and industry insiders was introduced to a trio of new Firaxis products (one down from the advertised four): the modern-day remake Sid Meier's Railroads; the CivIV expansion Warlords; and the major new curiosity of the evening, CivCity ROME."

Colonization remake is overdue

[kutuz_off]

I'm surprised they are not updating Colonization. It's as if the game is shelved and abandoned for good.

I hope...

[MaestroSartori]

...this time it gets a decent amount of QA before release. Civ IV felt very rushed, and wasn't even playable on my machine until after the first patch. Looking forward to the railroad game though, I always like those :D

Railroad Tycoon

[NoMaster]

Cool! As fate would have it, I've just spent the last day playing the original Railroad Tycoon under Petit Dosbox [web.jet.es] on my Mac!

(It's a little choppy on my 800MHz G4 though - gameplay is OK, but the sound clicks about once every 10 seconds. Still totally playable. And I'd forgotten about the $32 million 'bug'...)

Re:Colonization remake is overdue

[Physician]

I'd just be happy if they'd release a Colonization with complete WindowsXP compatibility and updated graphics. Just make it a jewel case only game and sell it on the cheap.

Re:Sid who?

[QuantumPion]

What was so great about Rise of Nations? I tried the demo and found it a bit clunky... hard to manage, especially battles. What does it have that's better than the Age of Empires trilogy or other RTSes? I might give it another try.

I was a long time veteran of RoN. In my opinion, it was THE best real time strategy game of all time. The eason was the innovative way the game mechanics are designed. Everything is made in order to get you to utilize strategy and macromanagement as opposed to micromanagement.

For example, when groups of units are fighting each other, if you intentionally micromanage your units to focus fire on the enemy, there is a penalty involved. The law of decreasing returns applies so that the more units fire at one individual enemy unit, the less damage each successive one does.

This promotes macromanagement and strategy as opposed to one of my least favorite strategy games, Warcraft 3, which is all about micromanaging to the extreme. In Warcraft 3, whoever was the quickest with the mouse and being able to micromanage each individual unit would prevail. In Rise of Nations, the victor is the commander with the better unit combinations and manuvering.

There are many other aspects to RoN which I adore, such as the subtle differences between the different countries, the resources system which was similar to Total Annihilation, and the way you have to balance research with military production. I could go on for pages but suffice it to say, RoN's game design was very innovative and just plain fun on a competitive level, unlike Warcraft 3 which was just brutal and painful.

Re:Colonization remake is overdue

[addaon]

The Civ IV engine is more than powerful enough, and more than customizable enough, to easily support a colonization mod. It would be relatively easy to do it as a community mod, given enough support; and I suspect that it wouldn't even get shut down.