Apolyton Civilization Site
Encyclopedia
Apolyton Civilization Site (abbreviated ACS or Apolyton) is one of the largest web sites on the Internet
dedicated to connecting players of the Civilization
series of computer games and other games in the 4X game genre. It has an extensive archive of news that includes news about developments in the design process for the games it is dedicated to, as well as interviews with developers and other special media that make it an important primary source of news for those seeking to learn more about these games or seeking ways to modify them.
's Civilization (I, II
, III
, IV
, V
, Revolution
), Sid Meier's Colonization, Civilization IV: Colonization, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
, Civilization: Call to Power
, Call to Power II
, Master of Orion (I
, II
, III
), Galactic Civilizations (I
, II) and Rise of Nations
. Existing expansions for these games are also covered.
). Apolyton has an independent, but very close relationship with the developers of the games that it covers. It has frequent interaction with their games' related developers, with postings to the groups themselves or in mentions on the developers' sites.http://www.bighugegames.com/news/archive6.html As well, several staff and community members have been involved in the development of several of the titles covered by the site and are listed in the credits. Several modders from the community now work for the companies making the games. The site has been granted numerous exclusive interviews and features for some of the games that it covers.
Apolyton also runs a number of "democracy games" for Civilization III, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and other games. A democracy game is a gathering of people to play the game in an organised manner, electing governments, political party|political parties, etc.
The site has lively forums where thousands of users can discuss topics ranging from game specific to political
(in the "Off-Topic" forum only). The forums are also home to the Civilization IV Wishlist.
Apolyton has a very popular "Off Topic" forum for any subject not relating to gaming (such as politics or philosophy) as well as an "Other Games" forum to cover games not officially covered by Apolyton. The "Other Games" forum is also host to a multitude of forum game
s which are played exclusively by posting on the forum.
Apolyton has three podcasts, one called PolyCast covering the site, one called Modcast covering the modding community for games covered, past and present and the last is RevCast covering specifically Civilization Revolutions, a console specific version.
An acknowledgement to the site: the last Greek
city in Civilization III, IV, and V is "Apolyton".
. At the time, it covered Civilization 2 and Civilization: Call to Power. Over the first year, it expanded to include Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Civilization 1, and Civilization 3.
It had explosive growth - 6 million hits in the first year, 14 million in the second year, 22 million in the third, and 72 million in the second half of 2002.
After the announcement of Civilization 3, the first of several versions of The List had started to be compiled. The List was a list of fan suggestions for the game larger than the New Testament. This was later be frequently cited by Firaxis as example of the fanaticism of their fan base and the volume of suggestions they get from fans, including by Soren Johnson when he announced Civ4 at GDC04. Years later, a similar list was compiled for Civilization 4.
In late 2006, Markos Giannopoulos stepped down as co-owner. Markos's half of the site was then split between three long time staff members: Locutus, Ming, and Rah. Since then four new staff members have been hired. Also, some changes have made to site including an update of Apolyton's online civilopedia and a return of postcounts to the Off-Topic Forum.
On May 1, 2009 ownership passed to Robert Plomp (formerly know by the nickname "CyberShy") and Jeroen Schweitzer after chief owner Daniel "DanQ" Quick announced his departure from the ownership and administration of Apolyton along with the rest of the administration.
featuring three star game designers, Sid Meier
, Brian Reynolds and Soren Johnson
.http://www.designer-notes.com/archives/2006/07/apolycon_06.htm Hosted over a weekend in Baltimore, and planned since the previous October 2005, Apolyton's convention included a visit to the offices of Big Huge Games
, talks from the designers, workshops, and multiplayer gaming marathons.
The event was recorded, with videos of a multiplayer session featuring some game designers, a game design workshop and a game modding feature being released, among others.
Soren Johnson
, AI programmer of Civilization 3 and lead designer of Civilization 4, had learned through Apolyton that Firaxis had some opening positions for programmers. http://apolyton.net/misc/column/227_oneciv-1.shtml
In 2004, Firaxis had started recruiting prominent Apolytoners as pre-alpha testers for Civ4, some of which had ended up being hired by the company (Jon Shafer, Alex Mantzaris, Robert Thomas). http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=88 Others had ended up doing freelance scenario design work on the game. (Martin Isaksen, Dale Kent, Wouter Snijders, Gabriele Trovato) Jan van der Crabben had used his experiences to get a job as a designer by Creative Assembly
. Apolyton had provided server resources to support game testing, and is listed in the credits of Civilization 4 when the game was released.http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/sid-meiers-civilization-iv/credits
Firaxis continued its policy of including members of Apolyton in the beta testing of subsequent Civilization 4 expansion packs. When the first patch was released for Civilization IV: Warlords
, some updates to the AI developed by Apolyton member "Blake" Walsh were included. He was also responsible for much of the AI in Beyond the Sword
. http://pc.ign.com/articles/796/796807p2.html Blake was subsequently hired (via telecommuting from New Zealand) by Firaxis to be AI programmer on Civilization IV: Colonization along with Kenneth "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland another Apolyton member as the projects UI programmer. Alex Mantzaris served as Lead Programmer and Jon Shafer created the original prototype, thus a record total of four Apolyton members were employed on a single project.http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=1:65518~T3
took a small scripting language which was added to the game to drive the tutorial, as well as some text files with settings, and used them to design increasingly complex mods. This had encouraged Activision
to expand the modding capabilities of the game in patches.
When Call to Power II
was announced, the top CtP1 modders from Apolyton were asked to alpha-test the game. The testers had helped make CtP2 become the most moddable strategy game until Civ4 was released. In fact, Civ4's modding capabilities were based on/inspired by CtP2. Civ2/CtP1 modder Harlan Thompson had done freelance design work for the game to create its Alexander the Great scenario. Apolyton had provided server resources to support the game's testing, and was listed in the credits of the game when it was released.
In 2001, Activision end all support of the CtP series a month after the games release, but had referred customers who were in need of support to Apolyton. In 2003, Activision had released the full source code of CtP2 after months of lobbying by the Apolyton community with the support of the former lead programmer Joe Rumsey, which had led to headline news on mainstream websites like Slashdot and the BBC.http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/0211230
From 2005 onwards, the Apolytoner Stan Karpinski, with some help from other Apolyton members, had developed an unofficial sequel to CtP2, Ages of Man. He attempted to get it published, but Activision refused to cooperate. The game was then distributed through Apolyton free-of-charge and development continued on Apolyton, which hosts the game's website and forums.
In 2005, Apolyton had started Age of Nations, the first-ever machinima series for a strategy game, based on the Rise of Nations engine.
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
dedicated to connecting players of the Civilization
Civilization (computer game)
Sid Meier's Civilization is a turn-based strategy "4X"-type strategy video game created by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley for MicroProse in 1991. The game's objective is to "Build an empire to stand the test of time": it begins in 4000 BC and the players attempt to expand and develop their empires...
series of computer games and other games in the 4X game genre. It has an extensive archive of news that includes news about developments in the design process for the games it is dedicated to, as well as interviews with developers and other special media that make it an important primary source of news for those seeking to learn more about these games or seeking ways to modify them.
Games Covered
The games covered are Sid MeierSid Meier
Sidney K. "Sid" Meier is a Canadian programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games, most notably Civilization. He has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry...
's Civilization (I, II
Civilization II
Sid Meier's Civilization II is a turn-based strategy computer game designed by Brian Reynolds, Douglas Caspian-Kaufman and Jeff Briggs. Although it is a sequel to Sid Meier's Civilization, neither Sid Meier nor Bruce Shelley was involved in its development.Civilization II was first released in...
, III
Civilization III
Sid Meier's Civilization III, commonly shortened to Civ III or Civ 3, is the third installment of the Sid Meier's Civilization turn-based strategy computer game series. It was preceded by Civilization II and followed by Civilization IV. The game offers very sophisticated gameplay in terms of both...
, IV
Civilization IV
Sid Meier's Civilization IV is a turn-based strategy, 4X computer game released in 2005 and developed by lead designer Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and Meier's studio Firaxis Games. It is the fourth installment of the Civilization series...
, V
Civilization V
Sid Meier's Civilization V is a turn-based strategy, 4X computer game developed by Firaxis, released on Microsoft Windows in September 2010 and on Mac OS X on November 23, 2010...
, Revolution
Civilization Revolution
Civilization Revolution is a 2008 iteration of Civilization developed by Firaxis with Sid Meier as designer for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and iOS. A Wii version was originally expected but was put on indefinite hold...
), Sid Meier's Colonization, Civilization IV: Colonization, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the critically acclaimed science fiction 4X turn-based strategy video game sequel to the Civilization series. Sid Meier, designer of Civilization, and Brian Reynolds, designer of Civilization II, developed Alpha Centauri after they left MicroProse to join the newly...
, Civilization: Call to Power
Civilization: Call to Power
Civilization: Call to Power is a PC turn-based strategy game developed by Activision as a successor to the extremely successful Civilization computer game by Sid Meier. It was ported to Linux by Loki Software....
, Call to Power II
Call to Power II
Call to Power II is a PC turn-based strategy game released by Activision as a sequel to Civilization: Call to Power, which was, in turn, a game similar to the Civilization computer game by Sid Meier. The game could not have "Civilization" in its title because the word is trademarked by the makers...
, Master of Orion (I
Master of Orion
Master of Orion is a turn-based, 4X science fiction computer strategy game released in 1993 by MicroProse on the MS-DOS and Mac OS operating systems. The purpose of the game is to lead one of ten races to dominate the galaxy through a combination of diplomacy and conquest while developing...
, II
Master of Orion II
Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares is a 4X turn-based strategy game set in space, designed by Steve Barcia and Ken Burd, and developed by Simtex, who developed its predecessor Master of Orion. The PC version of the game was published by Microprose in 1996, while the Apple Macintosh version was...
, III
Master of Orion III
Master of Orion III is a 4X turn-based strategy game and the third in the Master of Orion series. MoO3 was developed by Quicksilver Software and published by Infogrames on February 25, 2003.-Backstory:...
), Galactic Civilizations (I
Galactic Civilizations
Galactic Civilizations is a turn-based strategy computer game developed by Stardock and released in March 2003. The game is a remake of a vintage OS/2 series of the same name. An expansion pack entitled Altarian Prophecy was released in July 2004...
, II) and Rise of Nations
Rise of Nations
Rise of Nations is a real-time strategy computer game, developed by Big Huge Games and published by Microsoft on May 20, 2003. The development of the game was led by veteran Brian Reynolds, of Civilization II and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Concepts taken from turn-based strategy games have been...
. Existing expansions for these games are also covered.
The Site
The site is one of the two oldest and largest Civilization-related community sites (the other being CFCCivilization Fanatics Center
Civilization Fanatics Center is a fan website for the Civilization series of computer and video games published by a variety of companies , including Atari, Firaxis, and Microprose...
). Apolyton has an independent, but very close relationship with the developers of the games that it covers. It has frequent interaction with their games' related developers, with postings to the groups themselves or in mentions on the developers' sites.http://www.bighugegames.com/news/archive6.html As well, several staff and community members have been involved in the development of several of the titles covered by the site and are listed in the credits. Several modders from the community now work for the companies making the games. The site has been granted numerous exclusive interviews and features for some of the games that it covers.
Apolyton also runs a number of "democracy games" for Civilization III, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and other games. A democracy game is a gathering of people to play the game in an organised manner, electing governments, political party|political parties, etc.
The site has lively forums where thousands of users can discuss topics ranging from game specific to political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
(in the "Off-Topic" forum only). The forums are also home to the Civilization IV Wishlist.
Apolyton has a very popular "Off Topic" forum for any subject not relating to gaming (such as politics or philosophy) as well as an "Other Games" forum to cover games not officially covered by Apolyton. The "Other Games" forum is also host to a multitude of forum game
Forum game
A forum game is a text-based multiplayer game played on an Internet forum. Simple examples include word association, hangman, "Count to a Million", "what are you listening to?", "which do you prefer?", and variations of Photoshop contests....
s which are played exclusively by posting on the forum.
Apolyton has three podcasts, one called PolyCast covering the site, one called Modcast covering the modding community for games covered, past and present and the last is RevCast covering specifically Civilization Revolutions, a console specific version.
An acknowledgement to the site: the last Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
city in Civilization III, IV, and V is "Apolyton".
History
The site was founded on 26 July 1998 as an amalgamation of two older, smaller sites; it is privately owned by Markos Giannopoulos and Daniel Quick. Apolyton means "the ultimate" in GreekGreek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
. At the time, it covered Civilization 2 and Civilization: Call to Power. Over the first year, it expanded to include Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Civilization 1, and Civilization 3.
It had explosive growth - 6 million hits in the first year, 14 million in the second year, 22 million in the third, and 72 million in the second half of 2002.
After the announcement of Civilization 3, the first of several versions of The List had started to be compiled. The List was a list of fan suggestions for the game larger than the New Testament. This was later be frequently cited by Firaxis as example of the fanaticism of their fan base and the volume of suggestions they get from fans, including by Soren Johnson when he announced Civ4 at GDC04. Years later, a similar list was compiled for Civilization 4.
In late 2006, Markos Giannopoulos stepped down as co-owner. Markos's half of the site was then split between three long time staff members: Locutus, Ming, and Rah. Since then four new staff members have been hired. Also, some changes have made to site including an update of Apolyton's online civilopedia and a return of postcounts to the Off-Topic Forum.
On May 1, 2009 ownership passed to Robert Plomp (formerly know by the nickname "CyberShy") and Jeroen Schweitzer after chief owner Daniel "DanQ" Quick announced his departure from the ownership and administration of Apolyton along with the rest of the administration.
ApolyCon
In July 2006, Apolyton organized a gaming conventionGaming convention
A gaming convention is a gathering that centered on role-playing games, collectible card games, miniatures wargames, board games, video games, or other types of games. These conventions are typically two or three days long, and often held at either a university or in a convention center hotel...
featuring three star game designers, Sid Meier
Sid Meier
Sidney K. "Sid" Meier is a Canadian programmer and designer of several popular computer strategy games, most notably Civilization. He has won accolades for his contributions to the computer games industry...
, Brian Reynolds and Soren Johnson
Soren Johnson
Soren Johnson is a video game designer and programmer. He was employed by Firaxis Games from 2000 to 2007, where he co-designed several of their most popular games. Prior to his work at Firaxis, he obtained a BA in history and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University...
.http://www.designer-notes.com/archives/2006/07/apolycon_06.htm Hosted over a weekend in Baltimore, and planned since the previous October 2005, Apolyton's convention included a visit to the offices of Big Huge Games
Big Huge Games
Big Huge Games is a video game developer located in Timonium, Maryland. The company was founded in February 2000 by four veteran game industry developers: Tim Train, David Inscore, Jason Coleman and Brian Reynolds...
, talks from the designers, workshops, and multiplayer gaming marathons.
The event was recorded, with videos of a multiplayer session featuring some game designers, a game design workshop and a game modding feature being released, among others.
Firaxis
The connection between the site in developers has evolved to the point where the developer provides a direct link to the site's forum discussions from the game's official site.http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/home.htmSoren Johnson
Soren Johnson
Soren Johnson is a video game designer and programmer. He was employed by Firaxis Games from 2000 to 2007, where he co-designed several of their most popular games. Prior to his work at Firaxis, he obtained a BA in history and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University...
, AI programmer of Civilization 3 and lead designer of Civilization 4, had learned through Apolyton that Firaxis had some opening positions for programmers. http://apolyton.net/misc/column/227_oneciv-1.shtml
In 2004, Firaxis had started recruiting prominent Apolytoners as pre-alpha testers for Civ4, some of which had ended up being hired by the company (Jon Shafer, Alex Mantzaris, Robert Thomas). http://www.designer-notes.com/?p=88 Others had ended up doing freelance scenario design work on the game. (Martin Isaksen, Dale Kent, Wouter Snijders, Gabriele Trovato) Jan van der Crabben had used his experiences to get a job as a designer by Creative Assembly
Creative Assembly
The Creative Assembly is a British video game developer established in 1987 by Tim Ansell and based in the West Sussex town of Horsham. An Australian branch is also operated from Fortitude Valley, Queensland...
. Apolyton had provided server resources to support game testing, and is listed in the credits of Civilization 4 when the game was released.http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/sid-meiers-civilization-iv/credits
Firaxis continued its policy of including members of Apolyton in the beta testing of subsequent Civilization 4 expansion packs. When the first patch was released for Civilization IV: Warlords
Civilization IV: Warlords
Civilization IV: Warlords is the first official expansion pack of the critically acclaimed turn-based strategy video game Civilization IV.-Features:Warlords added many new features to the original game...
, some updates to the AI developed by Apolyton member "Blake" Walsh were included. He was also responsible for much of the AI in Beyond the Sword
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword
Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword is the second official expansion pack of the turn-based strategy video game Civilization IV. The expansion focuses on adding content to the in-game time periods following the invention of gunpowder, and includes more general content such as 11 new scenarios, 10 new...
. http://pc.ign.com/articles/796/796807p2.html Blake was subsequently hired (via telecommuting from New Zealand) by Firaxis to be AI programmer on Civilization IV: Colonization along with Kenneth "Impaler[WrG]" Ferland another Apolyton member as the projects UI programmer. Alex Mantzaris served as Lead Programmer and Jon Shafer created the original prototype, thus a record total of four Apolyton members were employed on a single project.http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=1:65518~T3
Activision
Apolytoners who had modded CtPCivilization: Call to Power
Civilization: Call to Power is a PC turn-based strategy game developed by Activision as a successor to the extremely successful Civilization computer game by Sid Meier. It was ported to Linux by Loki Software....
took a small scripting language which was added to the game to drive the tutorial, as well as some text files with settings, and used them to design increasingly complex mods. This had encouraged Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
to expand the modding capabilities of the game in patches.
When Call to Power II
Call to Power II
Call to Power II is a PC turn-based strategy game released by Activision as a sequel to Civilization: Call to Power, which was, in turn, a game similar to the Civilization computer game by Sid Meier. The game could not have "Civilization" in its title because the word is trademarked by the makers...
was announced, the top CtP1 modders from Apolyton were asked to alpha-test the game. The testers had helped make CtP2 become the most moddable strategy game until Civ4 was released. In fact, Civ4's modding capabilities were based on/inspired by CtP2. Civ2/CtP1 modder Harlan Thompson had done freelance design work for the game to create its Alexander the Great scenario. Apolyton had provided server resources to support the game's testing, and was listed in the credits of the game when it was released.
In 2001, Activision end all support of the CtP series a month after the games release, but had referred customers who were in need of support to Apolyton. In 2003, Activision had released the full source code of CtP2 after months of lobbying by the Apolyton community with the support of the former lead programmer Joe Rumsey, which had led to headline news on mainstream websites like Slashdot and the BBC.http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/29/0211230
From 2005 onwards, the Apolytoner Stan Karpinski, with some help from other Apolyton members, had developed an unofficial sequel to CtP2, Ages of Man. He attempted to get it published, but Activision refused to cooperate. The game was then distributed through Apolyton free-of-charge and development continued on Apolyton, which hosts the game's website and forums.
Big Huge Games
In 2002, Apolyton was granted an exclusive interview/preview with Brian Reynolds at his summer home about Rise of Nations. In 2003 an exclusive preview, (featured on Slashdot) for Master of Orion III was published. As well, the Apolytoner and Rise of Nations modder Kevin Chulski (known as DarthVeda on Apolyton) had joined Big Huge Games as a designer, and worked on Rise of Legends.In 2005, Apolyton had started Age of Nations, the first-ever machinima series for a strategy game, based on the Rise of Nations engine.
Educational efforts
The site has hosted the Apolyton University effort, started in 2002.http://www.ltss.bris.ac.uk/interact/31/INTERACT_31.pdf It is a project that involves students coming together to collaborate and learn over the internet using the Civilization 3 game as a tool to that end. The project has been held up as an example of a means to reform education systems to take advantage of the unique opportunities offered by new technology.External links
- Apolyton Civilization Site
- ApolyCon 06 First convention for fans of the web site