Tuesday, May 30, 2006

FreeCiv version 2.0.8 and other Civ projects

Taking a break from Civ 4 and want the classics?

The free open-source Civ game now works well on Windows and has improved AI compared to previously. Much more like real Sid Mier's Civ.

It is still necessary to modify the default rules to prevent "smallpox" - nearly always building settlers and not developing cities, from always being the winning strategy. There are also two rulesets - Civ2 and Civ3 included in the Windows binary download to more closely match the Civilization games.

To make it a more development game and not who can churn out the most size 1 and 2 cities with the default rules change these settings when you setup a game.

unhappysize=1or2,
cityfactor=12-14
empire_size_inc=2
citymindist=3
fulltradesize=2or3
notradesize=1
angrycitizen=Y
borders=2or3
happyborders=Y

These play best on the small maps - earth72x36, earth80x50, random size 4 and below, can be changed for larger as long as you keep penalties for size 1 and/or 2 cities.

This causes players to develop infrastructure to manage unhappiness and prevents size one cities from helping toward progress. Technology slows down in the early years - no more end games before 1 AD. This does have the early Civ 3 feature where once you expand beyond your limit conquering cities gives no benefits.

Very worthwhile download, if you like Civ 1, 2 and 3 try FreeCiv out. The game keeps improving, is very customizable, has online play, and plays on old PCs.

Download FreeCiv. - Manuals and articles.

Graphics are not up to Civ 3, let alone Civ 4. Most online games are smallpox friendly because kill, kill, kill and conquer are more popular than keeping citizens happy and also makes for faster games.

Meanwhile progress on C-evo is very slow as one guy is doing nearly all the programming and wants it that way. This was an attempt to have accurate non-cheating A.I.'s which the game treated just like human players. This is very biased toward strategy not simulated random gameplay which I applaud but not the slow devlopment.

C-Evo

Another team is also making progress on better AI in a Civ type game which is a major limitation on strategic computer games now.

Clash of Civilizations

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Even More Classic Game Software

Mark Kinkead bought the licenses for the classic early PC strategy games Perfect General and Empire. He has converted them to modern code to run on Windows and be playable over the internet. Demos are available for free download and new enhanced internet editions are available for purchase.

If you look around the internet you might find free old versions of the games before his conversion and they should run on your machine. I have a Perfect General 2 that does after I downloaded and burned a CD for it. I also just found a very old style Empire conversion on a Russian site, not nearly as good as Kinkaid's new versions but free. This was developed in 2001 by Jimmy Maher in Texas.
Electronic Game Addiction a growing problem

So far it is worst in South Korea, the electronic gaming capital of the world.

WP - When Escape Seems Just a Mouse-Click Away.

I just called Brent an evil mind dope pusher for sending me a link to FreeCiv which is now working on my computer. Not as addictive as straight Civ - the genuine hard stuff because FreeCiv is home-brewed and the recipe isn't refined, yet. Still, it is getting close to giving you the hit that Civ does.