Re: What to do with Xconq

[Ed Roskos <roskos at home dot com>]

Hmm.  It may very well be interesting to know whether or not others have
created game modules and modified the game, but never got around to
publishing the changes.

I have known and played Xconq since the days of xc5, and have spent
many, many hours writing a series of modules for that game.  When xc7
came out, I also got to work.  My first step was to tweek existing games
such as time to allow priests to "convert" enemy troops, add more
unit types, etc.  A whole new module I wrote emulated Babylon 5, complete with
Omega/Hyperion/G'Quan/T'Loth/Shadow/Vorlon/
Primus/Drahk/Earth-advanced-destroyer/Brakiri/Vree/Drazi/3rdSpace
/the-others-I-forgot warships, many fighters, troops, and built starting maps
with ships in various areas, alliances, etc.  It was a large module
with tuned parameters, firing with different ranges, detonating mines,
even Babylon 5 itself.  Oh, I forget White Stars and Excalibur.  So, where
is this module?  That's another story :-)  I didnt backup the game, since
I don't backup games in general, and a HD crash toasted much of it.  I still
have an earlier version and the graphics which I can toss out if others are
interested.  Ok, I kicked myself enough on this point :-)  It has been on
my plan to re-build a balanced game once Civ emulation was in and
somewhat documented.  Others may very well have such games to
put together which we don't know about.  I am about to join a new
startup, so my time is going to be very limited, but maybe I should
sacrifice a weekend or two here and there and rebuild the darn game,
if others would find it interesting.

Now a little about how I believe XConq can become more popular.
I first want to say that XConq is one of the most awesome games I've
have ever played around with.  Stan, I can't thank you enough!
I "discovered" Civ2 after Xconq.  I played a great deal of Civ2 over the
past few years, and have found the following objective comparisons between
XConq and Civ2:

1) XConq allows many more players and units and larger maps than
    Civ2.
2) XConq hex map is much nicer than those diamonds of Civ2.
3) Civ2 AI seems much better than XConq, especially in diplomacy.
4) Civ2 has sound.
5) XConq is infinitely more configurable in unit-to-unit fighting and
    terrain interaction, as well as unit capacity.  Different city types rule.

Point (4) is relatively minor.  But (3) is a major issue.  In XConq, I have
always emulated politics and diplomacy by saving the game and
editing the save.xconq file.  I typically also edited the source file to
be sure mplayers didn't wimp out on me too soon :-)  CivCTP died in
strong part to the machine players flakey diplomacy.  It just killed the
game.  I am not sure I was ever able to understand how to write my
own AI from the given documentation, and so resistance to digging
into it won out.  But perhaps some better AI's, and adding diplomacy,
could improve the "fun" of XConq.  Multiplayer is fine, but single player
can win the hearts of many :-)

Well, what do you folks think?  Hopefully, my statements above are
clear, as it has been a LOOOOOOONNNNGG day :-)

--Ed.