More than 50% of the entire AOEIII thread is dedicated on speculating civilizations, and when the game comes out, I bet so many idiotic people would go "Awwwww, but I wanted civilization X." I personally am within the rioting lot, and I think ES should reconsider their Game structure for once.
IMHO, ES should make a civ editor, in addition to a "map editor".
1. You have brilliant people out of ES that can make greater products themselves. An example? Crj and his marvelous AOC scenarios. They are all better than all ES made scenarios combined together. 2. More ideas, more outside the box thinking. Certainly, one of the stupid factors in previous AOE version was that ES historians made certain historical innacuracies (like when this government actually tried to jail some ES personnel for historical innacuracies) and justified the mistake by saying "oh, but we can't do anything for the fun factor", "oh, but so what?", "oh, but we already have too much civ". Nobody cares, they were wrong. So rather than arguing against irrefutable facts, why not join them? 3. People like games when their ideas are being put into play. This is so obvious that I don't think I need to explain this further. FE, a community could come up with their own civilizations and love it. The game would fulfil satisfaction more flexibly, doing it's job. 4. Nobody would complain, especially for Historical Innacuracies. If they have one, they could make their own civilzation. Just that simple. If they don't have time, too bad. 5. Free civilizations. ES won't have to waste much time making stupid patches and changes. They could just receive the best civilization from contests and use them. It's a no-one lose situation. 1. Takes more time. So? It would be an excellent renovation to the AOE series. A lot more people would love it, because it's so flexible. 2. People can hack this and use it to create clone Cd...bla...bla....more blahs. Well, if they have the ability to hack, they'll do it anyway. Duh. Just because some smartasses are hacking, doesn't mean a bunch of honest people who want to enjoy the game should lose their priviledges. So in the end, ES should make a Civilization Editor. Who's with me? [This message has been edited by pospher (edited 04-01-2005 @ 03:33 PM).]
EDIT: Added point 5 by me.