Civilization Fanatics Center

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Civilization Fanatics Center (abbreviated CFC and CivFanatics) is a fan web site for the Civilization series of computer and video games published by a variety of companies (depending on the game), including Atari, Firaxis, and Microprose. It is owned and operated by user Thunderfall, who founded it in 2000. As one of the largest Civilization websites, it is mentioned on the main Civilization IV site.[1]

Civilization Fanatics' Forums is the 191st largest bulletin board on the World Wide Web as tracked by Big Boards, with over 4,500,000 posts and 100,000 members.[2] It was voted second best fan web site of 2005 at Voodoo Extreme.[3]

Contents

[edit] History

In 1998, CivFanatics was created as a small personal homepage hosted by GeoCities. The host was changed to XOOM in 1999. The old site title was Civilization Fanatics' Page, and was part of the Thunderfall Impressions site. After the site was moved to Strategy Gaming Online in March 2000, the site's name was changed to Civilization Fanatics' Center. The current form of the CFC web site took shape after the move to Strategy Game Online, as server resources were no longer an issue, thus being able to offer bulletin boards and file downloads.[4] The forum initially catered to players of Civilization and Civilization II, while later on experiencing the first big influx of new members just prior to and during the release of Civilization III. A subsequent influx has arrived due to the release of Civilization IV.

[edit] Games

CFC currently mainly supports the fan communities of the following computer games:

Also the following fan communities are present to a certain degree:

[edit] Forums

[edit] Forum rules

The forums have a comprehensive list of rules, along with a number of moderators. CFC is "family friendly" and threads which do not conform to the rules have been known to be deleted before even accumulating any replies.[5]

[edit] Forum structure

The forum is split into seven main groups, each containing individual forums. Each of these subforums may contain further subforums, and, in some cases, sub-sub forums.

The Civilization subforums were created to facilitate conversations about MicroProse's and Firaxis' games Civilization I, II, III, and IV. Each game has its own subforum group which includes subforums for strategy, ideas and suggestions, creation and customization, multiplayer, and demo games. Along with the forums for the Civilization games are subforums for other games like Galactic Civilizations II, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Rise of Nations and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Other Games is also home to a subforum for forum games. This sub-forum does not contribute to post count and allows the members to play many small games.

The Colosseum section contains subforums for topics not covered in other sections of the forum. It includes Off Topic, home to almost a third of all posts at the forum. It is a place where people go to discuss non-Civilization related topics. These topics range from 'light' such as "favorite music style" to 'very heavy' like "Should abortion be legal?" The majority of the topics are either news-items, religious discussions, political discussions, or general interest topics. The Colosseum section also includes subforums for World History, Computer Talk, Sports Talk, and Humor and Jokes.

There are two other subforum sections; The CivFanatics group is home to the subforum for site feedback and the discussion of front page news. Site feedback allows active member feedback regarding CFC. Forums in the Project & Mod Development are hidden. The forums here consist of mods in the Private Beta Version stage, where only the specific mod-development teams can go to work on their mods away from public criticism and outside ideas. Private forums allow teams the ability to formulate his or her mods without being constantly bombarded with questions and unsolicited help. However, some mods are developed in public, most of which are for Civilization IV.

[edit] Other activities

[edit] Game of the Month

The "Game Of the Month" (or GOTM) was a concept first started in February 2001, for Civilization II - the Civilization II GOTM. The idea behind this concept is for a number of players to play a game, all using a common starting save file. Players then compare their results and discuss strategies. The competition has now been extended to Civilization III GOTM and Civilization IV GOTM, and most recently to a Civilization (original) GOTM. Medals are given to the highest scorers and awards are given to the fastest finishers for specific victory conditions.[6]

[edit] Succession games

Succession games are games played by a team of several players, often with some variant. Each player plays about 10 turns at a time, with discussion between sets. These are commonly played for Civ III and Civ IV. The game of the month and succession game ideas have been combined in Civ III and Civ IV Succession Games of the Month.[6]

[edit] Democracy games

The first democracy game (played in Civ II) started in December of 2001, just after the release of Sid Meier's Civilization III. CFC has hosted seven Civ III democracy games ("demogames" or "DG"). A Civ IV democracy game began in January 2006.

CFC has participated with its own team in the Civilization III Play the World Multisite Democracy game (MSDG) and the Civilization III Conquests Intersite Democracy Game (ISDG). The MSDG consisted of eight teams in a straight fight for the crown, and the ISDG consisted of 2 semifinals of 5 teams, with the first 2 teams eliminated from the semifinal eliminated from the competition. CFC was placed fifth in the overall positioning in the MSDG after the game was abandoned, and was eliminated in the second semifinal in the ISDG finishing fourth in the game of five. The opponents were teams from other Civilization fan web sites, as well as a team formed by Firaxis, the creators of the game. CFC also participates in a 14 fansite Civilization IV Intersite Democracy Game. Due to the number of participating teams there are 2 semi-finals of 7 fansites. The game itself is hosted by a different Civilization fansite: Evolution games.

In addition to competing against other teams, CFC also hosts a Multi-Team Demogame (MTDG) which hosts democracy games with all the teams consisting of CFC members. There is one for Civ III and one for Civ IV.[6]

The first Civ 3 MTDG finished with MIA, playing as the Greeks, being victorious.

[edit] Hall of Fame

Through all the releases of Civilization, players have been able to track their conquests, exploits and wins in a personal hall of fame screen. CFC Halls of Fame (HOF) extend on this principle, where single player games are ranked in tables against one another. This started with the II High Score HOF. III HOF originally started as a high score table, but was later enlarged to include tables for each victory condition and mapsize. It's also the home of the QuarterMaster's Challenge, where players must complete every victory condition, win at every difficulty level and play every mapsize. IV-HOF is currently in Beta, as the permanent site is under construction.

[edit] Chat room

Civfanatics also has an official IRC chatroom: #civfanatics on irc.irc-chat.net. While the chatroom is intended to Civilization-based conversations, it often strays off topic. The chatroom community is significantly smaller than the forum community, including a number of forum lurkers.

[edit] Modding community

Modding refers to the art of making modifications for a game. This can involve a change of gamerules, adding new unit, making scenarios or anything else that changes the game. Due to the XML, which acts like a giant database of everything in the game, Python, a scipting language, and the release of most of the game source (the SDK), Civilization IV is incredibly moddable — something which is being exploitated to the full by the modding community.

The main purpose of the modding section of the forum is to allow users to change the game to their own specific tastes. There are a whole range of tutorials to help modders to do anything they want with the game, like adding new units or technologies, creating new graphics and many other things. As well as making a lot of minor mods for individual users, some big projects have emerged which completely change the game. The most notable of these are Fall from Heaven (FfH), a fantasy mod which turns the game into an RPG, and SevoMod which adds to the game in hundreds of little ways, but there are also countless others which concentrate on a specific period of human history. Some of the mods made there have even been added to the official Civilization IV site,[7] and a selected few were included in patches made by Firaxis.

[edit] Trivia

  • A nod is made to Civilization Fanatics Center in Civilization 3, where the last Viking city name is "Thunderfall", the name of the site's administrator.
  • Both the Civilization Fanatics Center and Apolyton are mentioned in detail by Civ4 lead designer Soren Johnson in a newly-released printed book titled Chronicles of Civilization as part of Sid Meier's Civilization Chronicles. Book excerpt and Amazon.com link.
  • On April 1, 2007, as an April Fool's Day prank, the administrators of CFC and Apolyton announced that the two sites would be merging into a new site called CivJunction.[1] This prompted a massive outcry during which members of the Civilization Fanatics Center jokingly formed their own insurgency, declared independence, and created the Civilization Players Center in protest.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Civilization IV. Retrieved on November 1, 2006.
  2. ^ Big Boards. Retrieved on February 11, 2007.
  3. ^ Howarth, Robert 'Apache' (2005-12-19). 2005 VE3D PC Game of the Year Awards. Voodoo Extreme. Retrieved on November 1, 2006.
  4. ^ About CivFanatics (2006-10-28). Retrieved on November 2, 2006.
  5. ^ CivFanatics Forum Rules v4.1. Civilization Fanatics Center. Retrieved on May 27, 2006.
  6. ^ a b c Johnson, Soren (2006-10-16). "One Civ, Many Worlds", Chronicles of Civilization. 2K Games. Retrieved on November 6, 2006. 
  7. ^ Mod Central. Retrieved on November 1, 2006.

[edit] External links

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