Project History
After requests from some people new to the CivProject I have summarized the history of the project. As I wasn't along from the beginning, there might be some errors in the history, but they should be minor. If you was along and do find an error, no matter how small, please let me know at jonno@civproject.net.
- Jonno
2003-02-27
Velusion launched "Advanced Civilization - The Expansion Project" (abrevated ACEP). At this point nothing was finished, though he had begun working on most components of the game. The civilization advances was available for download from the very start, but they have been gradually extended and modified since, and an extended rulebook was available, but no other components was ready.
However, right from the start there was a huge difference between CivProject and most other fan sites on the net. The CivProject was aimed at providing a complete game from the beginning to the end, not just an addition to the existing one, making it much freer to manipulate old rules to fit better in the extension.
2003-03-14
A first draft of the 13-player map was finalized by Velusion, but not released on the website not to have it start circulating the Internet until a high resolution version was finished.
2003-03-17
The counters for the originally 13 player civilizations hit the website.
2003-03-28
A full sets of 16 Calamities (2 per stack) and 27 Commodities (3 per stack) was done.
2003-04-04
The minor calamities was introduced to compensate for the extra set of Commodities.
2003-04-09
The first full fetched CivProject game was run and was a success.
2003-04-29
Thanks to Daryl Luciano the Calamities and Commodities was made to look much nicer, this was the first of many steps to ensure that the final product of the CivProject would look as from a box and not just home-made.
2003-05-07
The high resolution paneled map started to hit the website
2003-09-11
Thanks to Martin Brodén the high resolution map reached India, and thoughts of making the CivProject an 18 player game emerged.
2003-09-18
The CivProject got it's own domain on Internet: civproject.net. This was also the beginning of the name change from Advanced Civilization - The Expansion Project (abbreviated ACEP) to Civilization: The Expansion Project (abbreviated CivProject).
2003-09-25
The CivProject is mentioned in the "Press" for the first time, in a humor article on Spielboy (spielboy.com/diapers.php).
2003-10-16
Thanks to Martin Brodén the map from Spain to the tip of India is done, allowing 18 people to play the game.
2003-12-14
The first important CivProject milestone reached as the rulebook is now at a state Velusion are considered "done". This does not stop him from promising improvements though...
2004-01-10
The Apollo 18 play-by-email test game starts on redscape.com, providing tons of feedback to Velusion. The game did not end until 2005-07-17, 18 months later.
2004-04-08
The new and revised rulebook 2.0 is released. In addition to mayor changes to the rules it also features a total rewrite to make it more open-ended and simplify the extension of the game to 18 players. It also featured a completely reworked credits system much simpler than the original (necessarily as to accommodate the 51 civilization advances, a figure more than double of the original 24), but there was a large problem with adjusting the exact size of the credits, and it wasn't really playable until 2004-05-31.
2004-05-13
Thanks to Martin Brodén the CivProject reached it's second important milestone. The map is redone almost from scratch and is now a very nice 83" x 38" rectangular map including both the AST and the trade stacks. From now on, the CivProject actually looks better than the original game!
2004-05-31
Thanks to Daryl Luciano the Commodities accompanies the map with a remake and extension to five sets with a total of 45 nice looking cards.
2004-11-26
As Velusion didn't had time to work actively on the CivProject it was lingering at a standstill from June until Jon Severinsson became active maintainer in November. Soon revised rulebooks and quick charts was published on the site again. However, the progress is much slower, and any revolutionary changes is put aside for a later date.
2005-01-15
On the little spare time Velusion had he finalized the 18 sets of counters, making the game complete! Even though this was not a major update, it is still a huge milestone as all components now are up to date and ready for the 18 player game of Civilization: The Expansion Project.
2005-06-23
Velusion rejoins the development effort!
2005-07-25
A new version of the rules (2.06) is released. This is not simply an incrementally update to the current
rules, but rather an important milestone as the CivProject finally is leaving the cradle of the original
game. Changes to the fundamentals of the original game is no longer taboo, and some of the original 8
civilizations is dropped in favor of new ones. The rulebook also leaves the old format and some chapters
are moved to other sections.
Due to the large changes in this version all components is updated,
though some did not make it in time to be published together with the other changes.
What's down the road?
The rules of the game is now most likely quite finished, only waiting some fine-tuning, but that's not the end of the story: The future holds lots of additions and expansions.
The scenario handbook is finally in development, after being promised for more than two years, and a PBEM version of the game is under beta testing. Another thing that really thrills me is that people unrelated to the CivProject is staring to make extensions and variant games of the CivProject rather than of the original game! Currently there is work being done on a Mesopotamian map and on Hellenization. There has also been talk of an Imperial China and a Medieval Europe version, but as far as I know no one has started working on them yet.