Freeciv-2.0.0 Stable Released 557
Settler writes "Freeciv 2.0.0 has been released upon the world! A big thanks goes to the people who made it all come true. Remember to read about the exciting news and hurry up and get it here.
To see what this game looks like, check out screenshots here and here. This goes to show what a great game an open source project can create."
Coral Cache (Score:5, Informative)
Let's go easy on their servers, eh?
http://screenshots.freeciv.org.nyud.net:8090/gallGreat open source game (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Classic games. (Score:1, Informative)
See some here [tt-forums.net]. The latest ones are here [tt-forums.net].
Now let's go hang out in #openttd on freenode!
two words (Score:1, Informative)
Changelog text (since it seems to be slashdotted) (Score:5, Informative)
From Freeciv
(Redirected from NEWS-beta)
WARNING: This is a tentative list, by no means exhaustive. See the NEWS or ChangeLog files contained with the source for more information.
WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 1.14.2
Rules changes:
* (Beta2) Research cost has doubled, effects of science buildings doubled. SETI now improves Research Labs instead of giving free Research Labs to every city. Isaac Newton's College now improves all the player's universities.
* New units: AWACS and Workers.
* New option: national borders. Units inside your borders do not cause unhappiness under Republic and Democracy.
* It is no longer possible for one player to be in alliance with a player who is at war with another player you are allied with.
* The Civ2 ruleset now has waste. Default ruleset does not.
* Incite costs changed, now cities closer to capital, with units and with buildings have much higher incite cost.
* Killing a defending diplomat now costs you 1 movement point.
* Units now have multiple, configurable veteran levels.
* Team mates now pool their research. You may opt out and research individually by cancelling the 'Team' treaty.
* Server has voting on commands and options. You need over 50% of votes.
* When moving a unit from a transport on an ocean tile to a land tile, you lose all movement points.
* You can specify a list of players that you would like to share victory with, using the 'endgame' command.
* Nations added: Swiss, Afghanistan, Ethiopian, Assyrian, Columbian, Elvish, Galician, Hobbits, Indonesian, Kampuchean, Malaysian, Martian, Nigerian, Quebecois, Sumerian, Taiwanese, Austrian, Belgian, Phoenician and Mexican.
* New wonder: The Eiffel Tower. Makes AIs love you and improves reputation.
* The building requirements of several buildings have been changed.
* The whale special is reduced to 2 food, 1 shield and 2 trade.
* Settlers / Workers / Engineers can never get veterancy.
* Trireme's high sea loss now considers veterancy level (green 50%, veteran 25%, hardened 5%, elite 0%) before being divided by 2 if you have Seafaring or 4 when you reach Navigation (previously only fixed at 50% before being divided).
* Glacier terrain is now unsafe for land units (15% chance per turn of being lost). Also doesn't count as coastline for Trireme safety or Fish and Whale generation. Roads/railroads can be built but all unit (worker too) get 15% chance per turn of being lost any way!
* King Richard's Crusade now made obsolete by Robotics (previously Industrialization).
* Fixed tech costs based on the number of prerequisites of the tech in the tech tree.
* Nations have preferred nations to fork off when civil war occurs.
Gameplay changes:
* AI is much improved, and does not use 'double-move' any more.
* AI now conducts diplomacy with you (and against you).
* New difficulty level: Novice. It severely handicaps the AI players.
* Smarter autoexplorer and autosettler code.
* Modpack options vastly improved: You can customize buildings, add buildings as requirements to units, restrict technologies to certain nations, have split technology trees, gold upkeep for units, new units and terrain flags and lots of other options. (This is still done by editing configuration files with a text editor.)
* Fewer popups (eg choose the new government from the menu directly)
* Alternative map topologies, e.g. real support for isometric and hexagonal maps, "donut" map wrapping.
* Incomplete support for drawing civ3 graphics. See the civ3gfx (ftp://ftp.freeciv.org/freeciv/contrib/tilesets/ci v3gfx/) tileset.
* Global observer can observe the entire game.
* New method of settings map dimensions: Just use 'size'.
* Modified map generators.
* Initial units can be selected with a server option.
* 'Home' key centers on
Re:what a great game an opensource project can cre (Score:5, Informative)
Well, how about:
No Gravity http://www.realtech-vr.com/nogravity/
Vegastrike (and mods) http://vegastrike.sf.net/
Bzflag http://bzflag.org/
glest http://www.glest.org
cube http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/
globulation http://www.ysagoon.com/glob2/
foobillard http://foobillard.sunsite.dk/
trigger http://www.positro.net/trigger/
netpanzer http://netpanzer.berlios.de/
I just don't know what you are talking about.
There are plenty of good games out there.
Can anyone else remember some good ones?
Re:I don't get it .. (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? Graphic engine was completely changed in Civ 3.
Civ 2 had a flat 2D view to the world while Civ 3 is 3D, has animations and other improvements.
Here is a Civ 2 screenshot [atpm.com]. Here is a Civ 3 screenshot [ugo.com].
If Freeciv would have Civ 3 style graphics, it would be a lot more attractive to the new players.
Re:what a great game an opensource project can cre (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not another freecraft... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I wonder how the AI is (Score:1, Informative)
This is a problem in Freeciv 1 (and also Civ 2). In Freeciv 2 the rules have been changed quite a bit to solve it.
Re:I don't get it .. (Score:5, Informative)
Mirrordot (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the freeciv advantage (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.civ3.com/support.cfm
Has all the patches, just be sure to get the right one as they don't do the best job of separating out the expansion pack patches and the original patches...
Good Luck!
Re:Originality (Score:4, Informative)
SM's Civilization's theme might not have been new, but the game was highly original and creative.
-Erwos
Re:what a great game an opensource project can cre (Score:4, Informative)
Most of them have been around for at least a year, some of them more, some less. If you never heard of them before, you should probally visit:
* http://www.happypenguin.org/
Which has those and a lot more.
Informative? (Score:3, Informative)
Please read some of the FAQs on CIV, the AI while not overly complex, is many times more complex than you state... perhaps in the first CIV that's the way it worked but it has not been that way in many years.
Re:what a great game an opensource project can cre (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Create (Score:3, Informative)
So are 95% of the latest commercial releases.
That's a bit exaggerated (Score:5, Informative)
Now we could aggree that on the average the chance to pick a good game has went down, and doubly so for the chance to pick an _original_ game. But claiming that no game in years even came to the level of "decent", no, sorry, that's just not true.
I'll also argue that judging a game _only_ on replay value is a piss-poor criterion. That excludes from the start any story-based game, and a lot of us actually like those. Pick your own favourite movie or book: could you see that movie or read that book, again and again each day, for years? Probably not. Does it make it automatically a bad book or movie? I'd say definitely not. Well, then I'd say the same ought to apply to games.
Anyway, if we're talking about no good games being released in years, just off the top of my head (and bearing in mind that my favourite genres may not match yours), I can think of games like:
- Tropico (and more recently Children Of The Nile, as a clone of it set in ancient Egypt). Very nice game, and very nice job of simulating your subjects as living beings instead of building statistics.
- Knights Of The Old Republic. Not only a very nice RPG with a very good story, but also a better prequel to Star Wars than what George Lucas ever made. I'm not even a SW fan at all, and I found the game to be worth every cent on its own merits as an RPG.
- Fable (ok, so it's not yet released on the PC.) I was _very_ weary of buying a PM game again, after the shameless fiasco that was Black & White, but I can honestly say that Fable was one of the most entertaining things I've ever done with my pants on.
- The whole Europa Universalis/Victoria/Hearts Of Iron/Crusader Kings series. "Real Time Strategy" doesn't only mean "Dune 2 clones", you know. Paradox's games are actually about _strategy_ and at a strategy level. Very welcome change, if you ask me. (And BTW, they still have 2D graphics.)
- Vampire Bloodlines. You know, this is one game which I really didn't play because of the graphics. See, I had the resolution set to 1600x1200, 8x FSAA and 16x aniso, so the game engine compensating by a piss-poor texture resolution and polygon-count level-of-detail, to keep the frame rate playable. So I had graphics that looked debatably worse than in some Playstation games, if the PSX character had stuck his/her face in a clogged toilet. Even in that context, I found the game most entertaining to play.
- Die Gilde ("Europa 1400 - The Guild"). Very nice take on the business strategy sim genre, and probably taking third place as number of hours played among the games I've played. (Right after The Sims and Fallout 2.)
- "Rome: Total War". If you ignore the RT combat (i.e., skip them and let the AI play for you), it _is_ a turn-based Civilization-type game. A very nice one, too.
Etc.
I realize by now I could go on for hours. (That's what not having a life and buying almost every game released will do to one.) So let's just say, a lot of us _do_ find good games to play, among all the crap being released.
Re:I don't get it .. (Score:2, Informative)
When I tried it I also found that the graphics was difficult to interpret, not to mention that the steps needed to setup a game would make most people give up even before the game begins.
A 1 out of 5 star rating from me.
Re:I wonder how the AI is (Score:2, Informative)
Re:the freeciv advantage (Score:2, Informative)
If that's the limit of the changes you want, then you can do that in Civ 3 with the included "construction kit", which lets you rewrite most of the game's rules.
Freeciv only gains an advantage in this area when the changes you want to make exceed the bounds of what the Civ 3 editor is capable of. (For example, you could easily modify the interface in FreeCiv, while in Civ 3 I think you're stuck with the one they give you. Or you could modify FreeCiv to be hex-based, but Civ 3 is firmly tied to the square grid model.)
Re:the freeciv advantage (Score:3, Informative)
You were playing wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
Wesnoth is not about all powerful characters. Yes a level 3 character is powerful (some get to level 5, but most stop at level 3), but a few level 1s can take it out. Wesnoth is designed so that those high level characters die once in a while. You should always have some low level characters moving up so you can afford to sacrifice those high level characters without losing much.
As for tight passes, Don't fight in them, retreat a little so you have some room to work. They can only fight on low level character at a time. Keep wearing them out.
Not all the maps are balanced. If you were not playing the Heir to The Throne map, start there because it is generally the best balanced. Some maps are impossible.
Your other criticisms are by design. Part of the game is working around limits. The game is designed so that you cannot use overwhelming numbers to win. In fact getting 2000 gold is generally a sign of a map that isn't working anyway. You should be fighting an enemy that is for the most part equal to you. (except for the controlling intelligence)
Re:what a great game an opensource project can cre (Score:1, Informative)
http://happypenguin.org/show?Glest
That should point you in the right direction. Unfortunately, there is no network play yet. Now that it's GPL'd it probably wont be long before MP is there; the code is being cleaned-up as we type.