The History Of FreeCiv

dizzyPhoenix writes: "O'reilly net is running an article on FreeCiv and how the game came about." As is often true on O'Reillynet, the article's well-thought and interesting reading.

Comments

Why freeciv?

[Naum]

I recently bought Civ3 but I still find myself playing freeciv as much if not more. Civ3 is a "pretty" game as far as graphics go (with the animations and all, though I still have a hard time distiniguishing gold from barbarian villages and a few other nuances) and there's been some nice improvements strategy wise. OTOH, Civ3 has evolved into "Civ for the masses" and to me thus far, there seems to be less variation in strategy (Age of Empires style tech tree, corruption, unforgivable bugs like tech trade exploits, air superiority bugs, etc. ...).

Anyway, here is a list of reasons why I'm still playing freeciv over civ3.

• Performance - my box is well above the "recommended" civ3 requirements and it generally runs good UNTIL the map is loaded up with units. Then it is a dog and I really miss the rapid keystroke progression possible with freeciv. I can complete a game in freeciv in the fraction of a time of a similar civ3 game.
  
• Superior user interface - I'll probaly get flamed here, but I prefer the freeciv interface. The civ3 GUI is "pretty", but civ style games are all about information. I hit F1 in freeciv, it pulls up a city report where I can easily examine and edit worklists, center on any city, sort by any possible report category and customize report, briefly scan for cities in state of disorder, instantly pop in the help browser informing me of what benefits of potential city improvments or what unit stats are for build consideration. Yes, it's sort of there in civ3 - but a lot of space is devoted to giving rows of bread icons instead of giving me a simple readout. And finding cities in civil disorder is a challenge - especially when I have a message log in freeciv, but that's all gone in civ3. And the civlopedia deal is nice in civ3, but it hits the CD drive and there is a second or two delay - not a lot but not the instant retrieval I'm accustomed to in freeciv. And not all of the unit commands are even labeled in freeciv or on the civlopedia. I guess it's a part of "safecopy" protection or something, but a lot of the unit commands are only available in the manual.
  
• Infinite customization - 61 civs to play with (current count), and you can easily add any tileset, ruleset, techset desired. The graphics are not the greatest, but you can easily change them and there are a variety of tilesets available now - and you can go with the isometric view or the old-style civ1 flat view. Instead of selecting from a general parameter palette (60%, 70%, 80% ocean coverage), you can set whatever generator percentages you desire - sure, some of the settings might be really wacky, but hey, it makes for much more replay value. And if you don't like something that can't be changed or added on by creating a new unit, building, tech ruleset, then you have the source so you can dive in and change however the game works for yourself.
• It runs on Linux - I usually am in Linux but reboot into Win-doze (like many others) for games - however, with freeciv available it allows me to play without rebooting. Freeciv is also available for a bunch of other platforms (Windows, BeOS, etc.), though I've not had experience with them.
  
• Improved multiplayer - freeciv was setup to be multiplayer. The AI is good - the "easy" AI is probaly too good - will smack down the inexperienced player, and the "hard" AI probaly isn't enough of a challenge for the expert player. Only negative is that the AI doesn't do diplomacy so it's either conquest victory or race to space (if enough map space for the number of opponents).
  

If I had the time, I would love to contribute to the freeciv project (I don't know current state of developers - I know that it is a dynamic deal, with new developers joining and old ones departing ), so I'm not sure if there is enough dedicated enthusiasm for development of a civ3 ruleset and/or revising the AI.

This is not flamebait

[chazzf]

At the risk of losing any karma that I might have, let me make a few points here:

Freeciv is a very nice game, and very fun to play. However, all things considered, it is nothing more than a souped-up version of Civilization II-minus the graphics, sound, and impressive documentation. Building queues and simultaneous turns are great, but really don't represent evolution.

As far as the eye-candy goes, I consider it to be PART of the gameplay experience. I have played the Heroes of Might and Magic series for a long time not just because the gameplay is good but because the game is visually pleasing.

Finally, I have to ask why the Linux/GNU/FreeBSD/Open Source/Free Software community is so obsessed with trumping the "closed" community by producing open source replicas of hard work. Don't you think that Sid Meier, Brian Reynolds, or Jeff Briggs are geeks, hobbyists, innovaters. They created this game. You've reverse-engineered. The open community ought to dedicate itself to creating something original, something that it can call its own.

Sensible replies please, no flames.