Civilization/FreeCiv

[JDS]

Anybody play (or ever played) any of the Sid Meier's Civilization series, or the open-source FreeCiv?

[Shane]

civ 4 fan here. Will play online :D

[JDS]

Hm, never played Civ 4, what's it like?

I was a big Civ 2 player for years, I always figured it was at least equal (if in different ways) to any other game I've ever played...as evidenced by the fact that I always came back to it.

Lately I've been playing FreeCiv because I went to start a new game and discovered that I couldn't find my Civ 2 CD, so I downloaded FreeCiv and was pleasantly surprised by the level of customization of game settings that it allowed. There are a few things that I don't like, but otherwise, I find it to be very much the game that Civ 2 could have been, had it been able to benefit from years and years of playtesting :D

I'm slowly working through my first game of FreeCiv...I've done what I always wanted to do...create a REALLY enormous map, and set the game to allow me more turns (I've got the biggest map the game will allow, and I set it to continue to 5000 AD instead of 2020 AD). The only mistake I think I made was to set the land percentage slightly too high...I went with 80% land, which has made the bodies of water so small as to make ships nearly irrelevant. Only a few are connected, although I've been working on building cities on narrow isthmuses between bodies of water so as to connect more.

It's really amazing though, how long a turn takes when you've made the game so BIG. I've got something like 300 cities, and I'm not the sort who makes them carelessly and ignores them, I pick the locations out very carefully and put a lot of effort into improving them just right. A turn is now taking me upwards of 2 hours :yikes:

[Bluce_Ree]

Civ1 is one of my favourite ever games. I had a decent Windows port of it a while back but used to play the original on the Amiga. AI moves took minutes though.

have just picked up Civilization Revolution for the 360. quite nice but a bit dumbed down.

[swissdictator]

I've played Civ since the first game (I was about six). Great games! Kinda which they emphasized graphics less in the latest incarnation though, even if my computer can handle it. Still, larger maps get a bit slow later in the game.

Civ I taught me to hate (Soviet) Russia... not because of the people or anything... but they kept invading me with far more advanced units! :lol: After a year or two of playing I started getting good. I remember the first game I won, the Russians were the last civ I conquered! Ah, wonderful vengence for all those times I saw armor land on my continent.

I probably created the largest alternate history mod/scenario for Civ III: Rome in the Modern World (updated with each expansion). I put *a lot* of work into that scenario.

[Jonathan]

I got into this on Civ2 and in my opinion Civ2 is still the best Civilization version available. I've played Civ3, holding off on 4 because of price, which has some nice innovations but I miss the focus on scenarios from Civ2.

I played the main game in Civ2 a lot but what really brings me back again and again are the scenarios. The two that come with the game, Ancient Rome and WWII, are incredible. I love that the scenarios have pre-established cities and units, something Civ3's scenarios do not (they're basically just new maps).

The number of great and in depth scenarios and mod packs for Civ2 available from Apolyton is incredible. There's something to fit every fancy and Civ2's expansion packs provide even more scenario fun. There's no reason to not play it.

Unfortunately I am unable to play Civ2 on my Mac but I do boot into XP, thank you Parallels, and fire it up sometime. I never played multiplayer Civ2 but I hear it is fun. Can you imagine doing multiplayer Civ2 with the WWII scenario? The diplomacy in that would be incredible.