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OLD NEWS/MARCH '99

OLD SITE NEWS
31.Mar Chat transcript posted
30.Mar Part 2 posted!
28.Mar Modification impressions; special resources info
26.Mar Preview multiplayer game screens posted!
18.Mar New poll
17.Mar Two new unit animations; overhauled units section
16.Mar Final remarks on the manual
13.Mar End game sequence stills; Archived older news
11.Mar More info, more impressions
9.Mar Interesting parts from the manual(pg. 1)
7.Mar Latest impressions from DanQ
6.Mar More impressions from MarkG
4.Mar First impressions from MarkG and DanQ
3.Mar Civilizations list and Preview Index page redesigned.
1.Mar Info for all 35 wonders
MAPS AND MAP EDITOR VERY SOON
(Mar. 31) In case you didn't notice, C:CTP has shipped without a map/scenario editor and any pre-made maps and scenarios. Those will be available on the internet soon. Especially a package with the maps and the map editor is only a couple days away. The equivalent scenario package will follow soon, and the demo shouldn't be far away. In the meantime play some random games and read yesterday's chat transcript...

STRATEGIES & F.A.Q. FROM THE SOURCE
(Mar. 31) Starting today for the next eight days, Activision is posting new and exclusive strategies from Designers Winnie Lee, James Farley, and Brad Santos, along with Production Tester Ian Stevens. Today's installment: "The Early Game" by Lee.
Turing to other news now... On the heels of CTP's release, Activision has started their official CTP Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) file. Presently, it discusses topics such as resolution difficulties and how to load units onto your Space Planes.

PREVIEW: PART 2 POSTED (Mar. 30)
"PART 2: PLAYING THE GAME, THE REAL THING" is finally finished. Read on and give us your comments!

CIV: CTP SHIPS (Mar. 29-30)
(Mar. 30) CTP has start appearing in stores! If you find it somewhere, please post on his thread.
(Mar.29) Activision, Inc. announced today that the eagerly awaited Civilization: Call to Power is in manufacturing and will begin shipping to stores March 30, 1999. The game is expected to reach full distribution throughout the United States and Canada the week of April 5, 1999.

EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW: PART 1 (Mar. 1-28)
(Mar. 28) To help tide you over until the second part of our preview arrives, Markos wrote down his first impressions of modifying the ways in which CTP 'works'. Attention would-be scenario creators: this is for you! This concludes Part 1, so you can probably guess what's next!
(Mar. 26) Over the past 10 days, we've been hard at work on Part 2 of our preview, amongst other things, especially Markos! Brief as it was, we were able to get a multiplayer game going a little while back. Dan captured a couple of screens in the process. There's a shot of what Dan saw in the pregame setup (184k) and the very moment that the game started (134k). Oh, and there was no winner... :)
(Mar. 16) We bring you the last in our series on the interesting portions found in the manual.
(Mar. 13) Stills from each of the three end game sequences are now available for viewing: conquering the world, the Alien Life Project and, the one which we're certain not many would welcome in a game, bitter defeat.
(Mar. 11) More parts of the manual and new impressions from MarkG.
(Mar. 9) Another day, another page with info, from the manual this time.
(Mar. 7) DanQ keeps the ball rolling by reporting on his busy Day Two.
(Mar. 6) MarkG continues to explore the CTP world... Days Three and Four.
(Mar. 4) Things that made go "hmmm" :) MarkG's Day One and Two and DanQ's Day One impressions.
(Mar. 3) We continue our preview with more info. Today, the full list of all 42 civilizations with lots of info for each of them.
(Mar. 1) You read right! Today, we are proud to unveil the first part of our comprehensive, exclusive preview of CTP -- most of the information, such as what you can start browsing through today, has never been before publicized on the Net.

We can already guess one hot question that's on all of your minds right now: do we (MarkG & DanQ) have a build of CTP in our possesion. The answer is yes; special preview copies to be exact. :-). Let's begin!

PRE-GAME STRATEGY (Mar. 26-28)
'Official CTP Strategy Guide' Cover (Mar. 28) Dan updated the Terrain Reference Sheet with additional information on where each one of the 17 "special resources" appear in the game (more details still to come).
(Mar. 26) BradyGames has published the official strategy guide to CTP (see box at right). It was written by two staffers at Computer Gaming World. Activision has stated on its site that it is "filled with great information", and that it is a "whopping 340 pages long" -- yet, a quick visit to the ordering page for the guide lists its page count as 'only' 216. Hmmmm!
Released only three days ago with a retail price of $19.99US, its online distributor, Macmillian Publishing, is already out of stock! Feel free at anytime to browse their catalog to see if more copies have arrived. We also recommend that you check with your nearby computer dealer for more localized availability.

At the same time, we noticed that BradyGames has its own "mini-site" for CTP. A lot of the information contained is specific to the guide, or reiterations from before, but it does include some handy charts for various aspects of the game. We have mirrored them here, which you browse directly off of our Features page.

EUROPEAN AVAILABILITY (Mar. 27)
The UK branch of Game Ltd. has included a listing for CTP under their "Releases" Section. The date? April 1st (no fooling :)). The price? £34.99. From this site, you can not only buy but also reserve a copy -- all you have to do is fill out some general information about yourself (postal address, telephone, email address) and indicate where you could like to pick it up! (Thanks for the note Nick).

In addition, just a few days ago Peter Karpas, Activision's Senior Product Manager, posted the following note about international CTP shipping dates to various Usenet newsgroups:

I had thought that April 2nd was the ship date for Europe and Australia/New Zealand. Actually, it's their STREET date (meaning, the day it's actually in stores).
What I learned: in N. America we talk SHIP date (March 30th, so it will be in some stores on the 31st and in wide distribution until days later) whereas everywhere else it's STREET date (April 2nd in Europe and Australia/New Zealand).

LINUX RELEASE DATE SET (Mar. 26)
Loki Entertainment Software has announced its CTP Linux port will be released April 26. Loki wants the time to incorporate all of the last minute changes that went into the final Windows version, which was delayed until the end of this month by Activision. Consequently, the beta test which was originally due to end today has been extended to an indefinite future date before this port of CTP goes gold.

BETA IMPRESSIONS & BUGS (Mar. 24)
Crusader posted his inital impressions of the Linux CTP beta over at linuxgames.com. They are as follows:

To give a better idea of what one can expect interface-wise in the final release, Crusader also took the liberty of capturing some screenshots. Not surprisingly, it is remarkably similar to that sported in the Windows version. standard map view (122k); opening menu screen (191k); race selection screen (148k); research dialog (136k); civilization status dialog (137k); technology listing in the Great Library (140k) and units listing in the Great Library (143k).

If you're one of those lucky enough to have a copy and you're having difficulties with the beta, visit Lokisoft's Beta page. Included for product support are two updates: one released a week ago (90k), and another just yesterday (5MB). From here you can also submit a bug report, but be certain to carefully examine the Known Issues documented beforehand.

RELEASE PARTY MARCH 30TH! (Mar. 23)
Guess what you will be doing on March 30th? Well, beyond buying C:CTP (well not anyone, Americans only), you could be chating with members of the C:CTP development team. The place: our irc channel, the date: March 30th, 1PM PT(4PM EST, 9PM GMT). See the chat page for details, and be there!

GONE GOLD! (Mar. 22)
At long last, CTP has gone gold! The notice was posted in our CTP forums by Lt. John, Activision's Associate Product Manager, earlier today.

"Yes, both our US and international versions are gold! Congrats to the team for all of their hard work! The game will ship from manufacturing on March 30th, and will be in some stores as early as the 31st! Here's the official announcement: Activision would like to announce that Civilization: Call to Power has code released and a gold master of the game has been sent out for manufacturing. Product is expected to be in full distribution the week of April 5.".

Hours later, he also released the final minimum system requirements for CTP labelled on the box, which you can find in the FAQ table to your right.

On behalf of the Apolyton team, GameStats and anxious Civ fans around the world, congratulations Activision! With all those late, sleepless nights down the road, be sure to stock up on the coffee and soda pop!

BETTER THAN CIV2?? (Mar. 19)
Thomas van Kooten reports that German computer magazine POWERPLAY, has a review of C:CTP. They rated it 89% for solo play and 93% for multiplayer. The rating for SMAC in a previous review were 84% for solo and around 87% for multi, but the suprise is that back in the May 1996 issue(Thomas keeps an archive, and he checked it, isn't he a great visitor? :)) Civ2 got 88%!! Part of the preview(in German) is posted on the magazine's site. Our big thanks to Thomas.

ALMOST GOLD! (Mar. 18)
Peter Karpas posted this on the newsgroups yesterday:
"I wanted to let everyone know that the team submitted the "final" gold candidate to QA. This means that unless QA finds something over the next few days, we will officially go gold and code release the game."

IN THE MAIL (Mar. 16)
Loki Entertainment has shipped the beta copies of CTP for the Linux platform. In the end, they ended up sending them out to more than 300 recipients in 50 countries. They have also promised that international pre-orders for this product, historical due to the fact it is the first game to be ported to the alternative platform, will be available soon.
For those who have occassionally been unable to access their site, Loki has moved to a new ISP and has had a mirror site setup, courtesy of a prominent Linux gaming site.

DIFFERENT PROSPECTIVE (Mar. 16)
GamePen takes a different on a different perspective of CTP in their 8-page preview than other ones in recent memory have. Excerpts from it include "…this game is clearly something different", "...the developers have added a waypoint system that allows units to move on their own…", and "…the balance is harder and the diplomacy more important...". The 'fresh' screenshots round out a preview worth a glance.

JUST AROUND THE CORNER (Mar. 13)
CTP Linux Boxart The 200 x86 beta testers for the Linux-flavoured CTP have been chosen, half of whom were chosen by testing experience/hardware and the remainder at random. These l ucky recipients are having their beta copies shipped within the next few days. Its public release, scheduled for April 1, is priced at $49.95. Yes, several sites are still accepting pre-orders and at discounted prices -- 10% off at GameCellar for example (U.S. residents only). Loki Entertainment, the developers of the port, admits that while they don't have any control over what retailers charge for our games, their suggested retail prices and wholesale prices are identical in the US and Europe.
Loki also posted additional information and a few screenshots(one, two, three, four) from the game earlier this week. The Linux version will ship with support for X. Loki may support SVGALIB in the future and possibly GGI and MGL as well and, if so, a free upgrade will be made available for download. The hardware requirements for the Linux version, such as processor speed, will be the same as in the Windows version (see menu at right). And yes, the manual and box will both be specific to the Linux version. One final bit of news: additional testers for the PowerPC and Alpha CPU ports will be chosen later.

CTP NEWSGROUP IS BORN (Mar. 8)
Usenet groups come and go everday, but today is special. We are happy to pass along that alt.games.civ-call-to-power has been born. Fire up the ol' newsreader or head over to Dejanews to read up on all the buzz... but that's no excuse to stop coming 'round here! {grin}

MARCH 30TH, OFFICIALLY (Mar. 9)
Peter Karpas posted on the newsgroups that the release date has moved to March 30th.
The reason is simple -- we received some really good feedback from the beta testers, and wanted to integrate it. This is Civilization, after all, so we figured it was worth 2 weeks to add that extra bit of polish.
Also, according to him, this delay will "make more likely a simultaneous ship across more countries" in his own words.

PRE-ORDER FOR PC AND LINUX (Mar. 6)
If you're convinced that you'll get CTP, you can pre-order to pc version at EB World and the linux version at Game Cellar(thank to John Kramer for the news tip). Meanwhile, and this is a bit worrying, EB has March 31 as the release date for the PC, while GC April 1 for Linux. As soon as we have something from Activision we'll let you know.

NT SUPPORT PROMISING (Mar. 5)
Sr. Activision Product Manager Peter "Enjolras" Karpas recently posted the following in the alt.games.civ2 newsgroup in response to an inquiry regarding CTP's WindowsNT compatability:

Not definite yet, but the odds are VERY good we will support NT. The current version of the box does indeed list NT as being supported, but you never know until it's out of QA. :-)

EARS & EYES OPEN (Mar. 4)
Peter Karpas from Activision wants you all to know that they are listening to your suggestions! Just a few days ago in fact, he made this announcement:

We have changed the Genetics advance to have a pre-requisite of Electrification (Advance 6 along the Construction line for those of you who have pre-ordered and gotten the poster).

I didn't want to say anything until now because we've been play-balancingthe change -- we wanted to make sure the change was fun first. We elected to make the pre-req Electrification versus Electricity (which is itself a pre-req for Electrification) because: a) the play-balancing worked out better that way, and b) it also seemed to make more sense. Thanks for the input!

LINUX VERSION BETA TEST (Mar. 3)
Loki has started a beta test for the linux version. Sign up here. According to Patrice LaFlamme who mailed us(thanks!) there is a lot of people trying to get to the site so if you experience problems see this "mirror" page.

NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF FEBRUARY '99...
NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF JANUARY '99...
NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF DECEMBER '98...
NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF NOVEMBER '98...
NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF OCTOBER '98...
NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF SEPTEMBER '98...
NEWS AND SITE CHANGES OF AUGUST '98...

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