FreeCiv

The word “classic” is tossed around pretty casually these days, but it would be difficult to argue the use of that label for Civilization, the early 90’s, turn-based strategy game that put players at the helm of an ancient civilization and challenged them to lead their chosen people into a prosperous modern era while blunting threats from computer-controlled rivals.

For PC gamers of a certain vintage, Civilization was the first game that threatened to take over their lives. It led to thousands of skipped classes and phony sick days. It disrupted sleep schedules. It eclipsed social lives. Civilization shackled players to their computers in the name of world domination (or interstellar colonization, if one took the more progressive route to victory).

FreeCiv, an open source clone of Civilization, was launched in 1995 with the aims of adding a networked multiplayer mode and otherwise improving on the original game. The multiplayer aspect is most welcome, given that the real Civilization series, last updated in 2002, still lacks this now-common feature. FreeCiv, by comparison, was initially a multiplayer-only game and only later added a single-player mode with AI opponents. The latest major release, version 2.0, features a “much improved” AI. Unfortunately, it also features a cumbersome playing experience that seems likely to dissuade all but the most enthusiastic Civilization buffs.

From the outset, I found FreeCiv to be clunky and user-surly. The interface, in particular, leaves a lot to be desired. It’s been a while since I played any of the Civilization games, but I remember all of them being easy to navigate. FreeCiv‘s interface is a bazaar of tabbed windows, drop-down menus, frames and pop-ups that takes way too long to properly explore. In an apparent quest to provide a highly-customizable game experience, the developers have overlooked players who just want to set a few basic parameters and start playing. When starting a Civilization game, one selects the size of the continents, the prevailing climate and the age of the planet from an attractive, graphic menu. In FreeCiv, a crude form prompts the player for values like “Map size (in thousands of tiles)”, “method used to start positions”, and whether to enable the “turn-blocking game play mode”. Huh? I’m sure these are neat options for hardcore players, but some kind of express mode for game setup is sorely needed.

My attempts to join a multiplayer game were unsuccessful. There were about a dozen servers available, and none of them would admit me without a password. I launched a single-player game, and when I arrived at the overhead map that represents the playing field, I attempted to move my first unit with my keyboard’s arrow keys. Nothing happened. As it turns out, all moves, even moves of just one space, require the player to select the destination with a mouse pointer. If there’s a keyboard command for this basic function, a casual search of the visible menus doesn’t reveal it.

Once I learned my way around the game screen, I set about the task of leading the ancient Phoenicians into the third millennium. Most aspects of Civilization are faithfully reproduced, and things proceeded smoothly for a while as the game’s mechanics came back to me. I built cities, directed the production of buildings and military units, guided scientific research, and built “Wonders of the World” to confer special advantages to my civilization. My economy was small but dynamic, and my science community was producing discoveries at a blistering pace that would soon result in my overtaking the AI players. A policy of strict neutrality, in tandem with the construction of some well-selected “Wonders” like the Eiffel Tower, made me the diplomatic darling of my feuding competitors. At least one of them approached me every turn in the hope of enlisting my help against one of its rivals. Each time, I politely declined. A tabbed window next to the map showed me that my civilization was “worshipped” by the others and that I enjoyed a “spotless” reputation.

Despite the in-game peace, my war with the interface continued. Gameplay was repeatedly interrupted by a maddening bug that caused the entire game window to be minimized when I closed certain menus within the game. My final defeat came when I decided to check on the progress of the Hoover Dam, a Wonder that would energize my manufacturing base while helping ensure that the countryside wasn’t polluted by my industrial waste. I selected the city that was building it, noted that it would be finished in just four turns, and clicked the “close” button on the city interface. The game paused ominously… then a Windows pop-up informed me that the game had crashed.

I restarted the FreeCiv client, hoping to resume a saved version of my game without losing too much progress, and was relieved to see that the last save had taken place shortly before the crash. The relief gave way to disappointment when I discovered that the only attributes of my game that had actually been saved were the map, the players, and the possession of cities. My nearly-completed Hoover Dam was nowhere to be seen. Military units I’d never built awaited my orders. My three hours of play were all for nothing, unless I wanted to continue with an approximate recreation of my lost kingdom. I didn’t, and closed the game in disgust.

Since my experience, the FreeCiv developers have released an updated version of the game that contains a number of bug fixes, but I didn’t feel like risking another unfulfilling evening to test them. The FreeCiv team deserves congratulations for putting together a fairly plausible, free alternative to Civilization, but the final product lacks the polish necessary to be seriously considered by casual strategy gamers. Game theory fans (especially those with programming skills) will love the opportunity to get under the hood of this Civilization look-alike and fiddle with the controls. The rest of us are better off hunting on eBay for a copy of the real thing.