SteveThaiBinh

But I don't know any progranms, of any genre.

I remember Benson and I remember Soap, too, but as they're not late 80s to tropical I hesitated to mention them. Not strictly speaking tropical, but very 'sun, sea and sand', there's always the BBC soap Eldorado.

This is probably too late, but good luck anyway. I hope you have fun and a chance to mix with the local people. I'd be interested to hear more about the project when you get back.

Thanks, I'll pass then. I hesitated over joining the last game, too, as I can't be sure that I'll have internet access beyond September.

How long would you expect a normal game to last? In real time, I mean, not game time.

Congratulations. Now enjoy! It's a great game.

It's made of gas. They shouldn't really use phrases like "If you stood on the planet's surface..." - they're trying to make the story more accessible, but it's just misleading. You can't stand on the surface. The planet might, like Jupiter and Saturn, have solid moons.

If you have expansion packs, you get the Celts. They're green, too. It's not the same 7 civs all the time. Have you actually played this game?

I'm glad the guy's OK, too. That video is very strange. Why did the soldier turn his back to the origin of the bullet in order to move behind the car? Why didn't the shooters shoot again?

Why not? Political systems have always spread like wildfire. And not just that you can change to it, but that for a while, your population (especially if already not too happy) will be even more unhappy if you don't change to it.

That's often the case, but not always. The French Revolution lead to political unrest in the UK, I think, and the Russian Revolution led to increased power of, and unrest by, Communists across the Europe in countries that were the Great Powers of the time. The so-called Third Wave of democratisation we've recently experienced didn't start with the fall of communism in Russia - arguably it started in Portugal.

Are we going to see a Tide of History or domino effect in Civ IV? It's been a factor in history that when one country changes - from Monarchy to Republic/Democracy in America, or to Communism in Russia, there's popular pressure - sometimes violent - to go the same way in other countries, and sometimes a wave of transitions across the world. It will be interesting in this age of the decline of the state whether Civ IV incorporates non-state actors such as terrorists and multi-national corporations. I also liked GalCiv's approach in which trade also gave you income, making it very important to form stable alliances and defend your allies when they are threatened. More espionage options would be good. Again from GalCiv, there's the idea that a foreign population has an opinion of your country, which you can discover through espionage and is affected by your relative social development, type of political system, and history of wars, alliances or trade links. Public opinion has always been a factor in wars and diplomacy, and in modern democracies it's arguably becoming the dominant factor.

No. KQVIII was the last official game made by Sierra and Roberta Williams. There's a fan sequel in the works. It looks like it's making progress and might actually be released, but with fan games you can never really know.

Rail makes the map look modern as you head into the modern era. I don't think it will be good if Civ4 has lots of virgin territory in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it would be better if they showed cities expanding, with houses gradually filling the catchment area. You could even have 'urban' as a terrain type.

I posted this before when we were discussing very similar issues. If you're at a Uni or otherwise have access to research publications, there are some intersting articles listed here. My impression from skimming a handful of them is that there isn't a clear link between playing video games and performing violent acts, but there are subtler links between playing video games and aggressive feelings.

Sell five units instead of four to make the complete set, thus increasing profits. I remember this show was a great novelty as a new eco-friendly cartoon, even making it into the mainstream news as such. Imagine the surprise when it turned out to be utter rubbish. As we've ascended to the dizzy heights of children's TV, does anyone remember Secret Valley, an Australian kids TV series? Oooh, way of entering italics has changed!

It's possible. We'll probably have to wait for Chris Avellone's autobiography before we know the truth.

I think it's reasonable to be hopeful about Obsidian's games, based on the very real strengths of its first game, Kotor 2, and other games that Obsidian employees have worked on. It's certainly reasonable to reserve judgement until you have more than one game by which to judge the company. We'll see when NWN2 is released.

It is indeed true. The Sabbat are the bad guys. Actually, I think it would have enhanced the game to have the option of siding with the Sabbat, but I got the impression that they didn't have a clear goal or leader, so I guess it's just too complicated to make work.

Every time I see a reference to 'Star Wars Cannon' I imagine George Lucas: The Human Cannonball being shot over a lake to the sound of the 1812 Overture.

We don't know if EnderWiggin is GroinOfDespair, but then we don't know that EnderWiggin is always EnderWiggin. Someone posted a really dumb poll a while back, then appeared on-line later claiming "Oh, it wasn't me, it was my brother logging on as me." There could be people who swap passwords and log in as each other, which sounds like more fun than I could handle, and I still maintain that some of the 'people' on this board are actually undergraduate AI projects.

This was a problem, yes. It's good to have a flexible system so that if your character starts out as a Consular, you can choose to take him in a different direction (as a melee fighter, for example), but you need to have penalties so that he doesn't become super powerful. How would you overcome it? Make Force Powers less effective when you're holding a lightsaber? Make choosing combat-related feats come with a Force Points penalty? Make increasing Force Points have a defense penalty?

As a general rule, I agree. But overall, I'd like to see fewer, tougher fights if there has to be combat. I don't think I'll get what I want though, because there seem to be a lot of people who think cutting through wave after wave of papier mache monsters is fun.

V was hilarious, a sort of sci-fi Dynasty. Diana-Lydia catfights!

Another thread bites the dust, and still no patch. It's supposed to be this week as well. Only four days to go, Obsidian.