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OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

996 points by klaussilveira 9mo ago

bigstrat2003 9mo ago
I love that the community is doing this, though I'm curious why Civ 3 in particular. My understanding was that "classic" (for lack of a better term) Civ fans tend to prefer either 2 or 4, and that 3 was considered to be not as good. But perhaps I was mistaken as to the community's opinions on the games.
- toast0 9mo ago
  FreeCiv covers civ 1 and 2 more or less. Personally, I didn't play much of 2 or 3, so I don't have strong feelings either way.
  - zozbot234 9mo ago
    Freeciv's point of interest is that it's not trying to exactly replicate any one of the original Civs: it has its default ruleset plus others that are closer to the original games, but it's very easy to make your own.
    - LargoLasskhyfv 9mo ago
      Which FreeCiv? The one you install locally, or the one you play via browser on the Web? https://freecivweb.com/ https://freecivweb.com/ The latter has more, like Multiplayer 2.4 Dragoon, and Multiplayer 2.5 Elephant(in development), which weren't available locally when I last looked. There is also https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21 https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21 which has an acceptable local client, and finally does not slow down so much when playing larger maps with many AIs, like both FreeCiv and FreeCivWeb tend to do. https://longturn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html https://longturn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html I tried that, recently, and barely espcaped a relapse. (Phew!)
  - culi 9mo ago
    UnCiv covers civ 5 as well so I think there's a place for something in between especially since openciv3 aims to fix some of civ 3's shortcomings
    - bpye 9mo ago
      Til! I should give UnCiv a try, I've sunk a lot of hours into 5 but didn't know about this.
- warmwaffles 9mo ago
  I actually preferred Civ 3 to 2 and 4. It scratched a certain itch.
  - data-ottawa 9mo ago
    3 is still my favourite of the series. 5 was good too, but 3 overall feels complete and had great graphics.
    - warmwaffles 9mo ago
      The modding community was gigantic for 3 and was simply amazing being a part of it.
  - yxhuvud 9mo ago
    3 has a really nice feel when you manage to get the early timing attacks off against the neighbours, but the later half of the game is too solved - the game ends with infantry + artillery stacks being the only units you need, and with the 3x4 city grid bring optimal. 4 in contrast had a bunch of different paths to power, and those worked even on high difficulties. There were also no optimal city grid the same way (though still being denser than civ5).
- afavour 9mo ago
  > with capabilities inspired by the best of the 4X genre and lessons learned from modding Civ3. Our vision is to make Civ3 as it could have been Looks to not be a straight remake. I wonder whether 3 is a preferable target because things like graphical complexity in >= 4 is too much.
  - WildWeazel 9mo ago
    Well, "capabilities" is carrying a lot of weight there. One of the main objectives is to design it for unrestricted modding to accommodate all of the wishlisted features, but "out of the box" the default game mode will be 1:1 in mechanics with some QoL improvements. The inspiration is mostly for designing systems in a way that can be easily reconfigured or extended to behave in other ways. We hope that by the time we reach feature parity, people will have already built some mods to do things that were impossible with Civ3. As mentioned above this was started by Civ3 modders, and we all have our passionate reasons for preferring it over other entries, but you're not wrong that doing this with a 3D engine would be a whole `nother ballgame. There are actually Civ4 and Civ5 remakes underway which have both opted for 2D implementations.
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  Is 3 the one with forced retirement?
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    Not sure, I only started the series with 4.
- TheRealPomax 9mo ago
  Civ 1 and 2 have already been done, so if you want to play those, hit up freeciv.
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    I'm aware. But why rebuild 3 rather than 4, in that case?
    - apothegm 9mo ago
      Because 4 was a travesty unless you’re REALLY into religion. 3 was a great game for those who prefer building over war, and the first one with a proper non-military victory option.
    - TheRealPomax 8mo ago
      Because the people who work on this aren't a game studio, they're Civ enthusiasts making a free version of the game they love? If you want to see a free equivalent of 4, you know what to do: start the effort.
- packetlost 9mo ago
  3 is my favorite in the series, but maybe that's not a popular take.
- caminanteblanco 9mo ago
  I can definitely vouch for the 2 or 4 narrative, those have always been my favorites of the 'Modernish' civ games, but my favorite will always be CivNet (Civ 1 with multiplayer). There is some real simplicity in Civ 1 that makes it much better suited to a multiplayer experience than the later entries. It is a real pain to get any non-hotseat multiplayer working nowawdays, but well-worth it.
  - dr_dshiv 9mo ago
    I love civ 1 so so much.
  - npunt 9mo ago
    Agree, wish there were quality of life improvements to Civ1 that kept the simplicity and aesthetics fully intact, while modernizing some of the tedious mid/late game stuff like managing each city in a large empire based on some straightforward goals like 'more science' or 'fastest path to rocketry' or whatnot. Freeciv unfortunately has none of the charm of Civ1.
- WildWeazel 9mo ago
  Because it was born out of the Civ3 modding community which has been wanting a remake for 20+ years. Sounds like you've been listening to Civ4 fans. ;) 3 is just as active on steam and has a very active and loyal multiplayer league.
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    Fair enough, thanks!
- stodor89 9mo ago
  Here's a perspective on "why civ 3" by one of the best civ 3 players: https://youtu.be/IOvWgfZiHGo?si=uvTWTaRQsfxE_ffN https://youtu.be/IOvWgfZiHGo?si=uvTWTaRQsfxE_ffN
  - II2II 9mo ago
    Thank you for the link. It is enlightening for someone who likes to play the game, but is not obsessive about a particular version. (I like the idea of Civilization, and will play it for that reason alone. More often than not, I will choose an older version simply because it is faster to load and play than for the intrinsic merits of the ruleset itself.)
- thrance 9mo ago
  There's Freeciv [1] for IV, and Unciv [2] for V. I doesn't have many fans, VI is too recent, and VII, well... Let's not talk about VII. > Civ fans tend to prefer [...] I'd say, each entry in the series gets love. The saying goes: "Your favorite Civ game is the first one you ever played". In my experience, that's pretty true (Still stuck on V). [1] https://www.freeciv.org/ https://www.freeciv.org/ [2] https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
  - bee_rider 9mo ago
    Yeah as a Civilization: Call to Power fan I have to say the “first game in the series I tried” affinity bonus is overwhelming. Alpha Centauri was objectively the best though.
    - GaryBluto 9mo ago
      Interestingly enough, the Call to Power series was unaffiliated with Sid Meier's Civilization and was developed after Activision licensed the name from the board game Civilization was unauthorizedly based upon. There was a sequel called just "Call to Power II" in case you missed it, which had it's source code released in 2003 in case you're feeling nostalgic. https://www.zdnet.com/article/civilization-ownership-disputed/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/civilization-ownership-dispute...
    - spiritplumber 9mo ago
      https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ This you may appreciate
  - chocochunks 9mo ago
    I think the first Civ I played WAS III (maybe II at a friend's house once before?) and it ain't my fav. It sits below IV and V and even VI and I don't really like VI all that much either...
- acessoproibido 9mo ago
  For me the most classic one is Civ III by a mile. 4 was way too modern/ flashy for me and 2 too old school. But maybe I was just born at the right time for 3.
  - rpiguy 9mo ago
    You can turn off a lot of the Civ 4 flash and it will feel more like Civ III. But to each his own. Civ 4 was the first one that really, really hooked me.
    - rmunn 9mo ago
      For me it was Civ 4's modability that made it the best for me. Because when I got tired of playing Civ 4's normal game, I could install the Fall From Heaven mod and play a completely different game. Wizards, golems, angels, demons, spells, wild animals instead of barbarians (which could be tamed and turned into your own units if you had units with the right promotions)... it made for a completely different gameplay experience. If I hadn't quit computer games cold turkey (when I realized I was showing all the signs of addiction) over a decade ago, I would still have Civ IV installed and still be playing it today. It just didn't get old, because of how varied the game could become.
      - SomaticPirate 9mo ago
        How old were when you stopped? What made you realize you had an addiction?
        rmunn 9mo ago
        Around 30 to 35, don't remember which year it was exactly. And the thing that was largest in making me go, "Yeah, this isn't good for me, I need to quit" was that it was consuming my thoughts all the time. When I wasn't in front of the computer gaming, I was thinking about the game and planning the strategy for my next move. (I usually played turn-based games rather than action games). Which is fine in small doses, but it was taking over my mind when I was at church wanting to focus on worshiping God, when I was at work (and distracting me from getting work done), when I was trying to read... Basically, I realized that it was an unhealthy focus for me, and taking over way too much of my attention that I wanted to be able to spend on a much wider variety of things. So I quit. First year was the hardest, second and third years were hard too, but by now I've gotten used to reaching for a book to read rather than a game. And the book, I can put down anytime I need to, without feeling that empty-ish feeling that says "Awww, I want to get back into the game..." That letdown when I exited the game was another clue, BTW: it matched how I'd heard drug addicts (specifically, former addicts who had kicked their habit) describe the feeling of coming down off a high. I've never used drugs myself so I can't compare it directly, but it was similar enough to the descriptions I'd heard from them that I said "okay, that's probably not a good sign either."
- TheGRS 9mo ago
  Can I tangent on your question here and ask what others think of Civ 7 now? When I learned about it I thought it was a day 1 game purchase for me for sure, but I held off when I saw a stream of bad reviews. I figured I'd come back when they ironed the problems out (as they've done in every major Civ release to my memory). Haven't taken the plunge yet.
  - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
    I'm holding off on 7 myself. I think they deviated too hard from the formula such that it doesn't look like it's even still a Civ game. And while I'm open-minded enough to try it, I wasn't going to drop $70 on a game I had reason to suspect I would dislike. I figured I would wait until it was on game pass, or on sale for $5 someday. More recently I read that they are going to update the game such that you don't have to switch civs. That's a good start (though I still don't think I will like the era system at all), but reading the initial reviews a year ago I found out that the game cuts off abruptly in the mid 20th century, rather than going to the information age like normal. To me, that is blatantly unfinished, so I'm not planning to get the game until they fix that as well.
    - JojoFatsani 9mo ago
      Civ is like TOS Star Trek movies: You can mostly avoid the even numbered ones!
      - apothegm 9mo ago
        With the exception of Civ2, which was excellent.
      - dragonwriter 9mo ago
        With TOS Star Trek movies, the usual claim is that you should avoid the odd numbered ones.
        JojoFatsani 9mo ago
- daotoad 9mo ago
  Anecdata: I'm a Civ3 hater, give me 2 or 4 any day. 3 is my least favorite version of the game. But, OTOH, my wife is ride or die for Civ3.
- cyphar 9mo ago
  I must admit that there is a certain sense of nostalgia I get from playing Civ 3 that I never got from any of the other Civ games, but that's probably just because it was the first Civ game I played and got really hooked on as a young kid.
- GaryBluto 9mo ago
  I very much enjoy Civ 2 and 3 and would've played 3 more, but the 3d rendered sprites make it much more of a pain to add anything graphical to.
- danielparsons 9mo ago
  civ 5 is now the most popular among hardcore civ fans. still in the top 100 games on steam. more than 2x the player count of its sequel
  - distances 9mo ago
    It is a great game, and the Vox Populi mod has given it so much more life. VP has hands down the best AI that the Civ series has ever seen. My "wow" moment was when the enemy parachuted to my hinterlands to pillage my critical resources. In comparison, the official AI couldn't even pull off an amphibious attack.
  - Gagarin1917 9mo ago
    It looks like Civ 6 actually has twice the player count compared to 5 on Steam.
- sevenseacat 9mo ago
  that was my first thought, I was gonna show my husband this but he's a Civ 2 ride or die
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tfehring 9mo ago
Civ III is still my go-to activity for long flights with no internet - I've yet to find a better way to instantly time-travel forward 12 hours. I haven't tried OpenCiv3, but I'm glad it exists - getting vanilla Civ III running on MacOS is a hassle and still has issues with e.g. audio and cutscenes. I also hope it leads to a way to improve worker automation. Managing your workers well is important, doing it manually is tedious, and the built-in Automate feature is really bad.
- colechristensen 9mo ago
  The key here is seeing this mentioned and not time traveling forward until 6 AM Saturday morning.
  - donw 9mo ago
    Yeah, that's what Factorio is for.
    - ssl-3 9mo ago
      Factorio is a game about bird songs.
    - skeltoac 9mo ago
      You won’t get me this time.
    - playa1 9mo ago
      Sleep is the bottleneck.
- mikeaskew4 9mo ago
  There goes my weekend…
- kilroy123 9mo ago
  How did I not ever think to do this? Such a good idea.
- 9mo ago
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
Any chance the AIs will be easily extensible?
- WildWeazel 9mo ago
  Hopefully yes, because so far none of us are AI programmers... but seriously yes everything about the game will be designed for customization
Joel_Mckay 9mo ago
How does this compare with https://freeciv.org https://freeciv.org for game play =3
- dleslie 9mo ago
  Not sure, when Civ2Civ3 is now the default ruleset in Freeciv. https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Civ2civ3 https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Civ2civ3
- WildWeazel 9mo ago
  Gameplay wise this is a straight remake of Civ3 as a baseline, while allowing much greater customization. Freeciv is definitely an inspiration, but it's kind of its own thing.
jrm4 9mo ago
uh oh yeah, that's dangerous for me, this is the ONE that got me started
reconnecting 9mo ago
Interesting choice of version. I just realised that the actual latest version of Die Ha… Civilization is VII (2025), and for me II remains the gold classic. Both in Civilisation and in Die Hard.
WildWeazel 9mo ago
Hi all, OpenCiv3 founder here. Thanks for the support! Check us out on Civfanatics or Discord to keep up with the project.
- slazaro 9mo ago
  Any interesting insights about using Godot with C#? I love C# and I'm happy using it in Godot even though it's not as seamless as in Unity: in Godot 4 we still can't export to Web if the project is C#, and there's the whole conversion between C# types and Godot types that adds inefficiencies and extra allocations, etc.; it feels like it's a second-class language in Godot. I'm always interested in seeing what people find when developing larger projects in C#.
  - huevosabio 9mo ago
    We were building on C# Godot and I think it is a second class citizen in the sense that 1) you can't export to wasm and 2) they are moving the interface to be handled by gdextension. That said, I think once you get the gist of it and understand the landmines, it is really nice to use vanilla dotnet rather than unity's fork.
  - WildWeazel 9mo ago
    The founding developers were all software engineers with .NET experience, so it was the natural choice even though at the time it was Godot 3.x with Mono. I had used Unity before but not Godot. The project is structured as mostly plain C# DLLs with a relatively thin Godot UI layer controlling it, so the Godot type system is fairly encapsulated. We haven't really seen any issues with those decisions beyond just working out the communication between Godot and DLL. But again we were just working from what we knew so I can't really say if this was the best way to go about it.
  - Arwill 9mo ago
    I have this principle of "5% scripting". If the high level scripting on top of C++ consumes about 5% of frame time, then the language of the script does not matter.
- 9mo ago
bigcat12345678 9mo ago
Yes CIV3 still feels to me the peak Civ experience. The content is a bit lacking though, would see more diversity in tech tree, and units.
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tbmtbmtbmtbmtbm 9mo ago
looks super cool. I'm a lifelong civ player but my first one was civ 4, so this seems like a fun chance to dip into some of the earlier ones. love that they're using Godot for the engine!
d_silin 9mo ago
Another awesome game - Civ II inspired. http://www.c-evo.org/ http://www.c-evo.org/
- axus 9mo ago
  Loved this one; from the same guy who wrote Scanner which was nice before WinDirStat and WizTree. You could add AI plugins which could take the role of a player, without cheating. http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
  - d_silin 9mo ago
    Yep, I even wrote one and made a mod of C-Evo (long time ago).
- PeterBBB 8mo ago
  Updated version of this game here;- https://sourceforge.net/projects/c-evo-eh/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/c-evo-eh/
jlarocco 9mo ago
I don't know about the dedicated Civilization fans, but 3 was the only version I played. I didn't play it much, but when I did I'd play for 6+ hours at a time. I'll check this out later tonight, and might see if I can find the old CD and get the original running.
- sevensor 9mo ago
  Ooof, good luck. Civ3 copy protection was intense. I had to get out my old Win2k disk and stand up a VM. Attempts to rip an iso will be complicated by the fact that they deliberately wrote bad data to the disk. All of this is surmountable, but unless you enjoy a very particular kind of fun, you may prefer to spend $2 on GoG.
PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago
Wake me up when OpenCiv4, but only when there's an option for smart AI rather than boosted fake AI. I remember losing 6pm to 3am playing civ 4 one time. One more turn... (But I'm not sure what I need openCiv for... the steam game is good. Maybe its just useful for the long term.)
- 1980phipsi 9mo ago
  I would love to see someone use modern machine learning techniques to make a kick ass Civ AI.
  - Marsymars 9mo ago
    Genuine question - would that be amenable to fast AI? It's less of a problem on modern PCs running Civ4, but on contemporary systems late-game large maps with many AI/units could really drag during turn-processing.
    - lurk2 9mo ago
      You don’t necessarily need it to learn during the game, it would be enough for it to learn between games. If you’ve played the game long enough there are behaviors you can exploit that wouldn’t work against a human player. They iterated on the AI in Beyond the Sword and fixed some of the more abusable mechanics in Civilization V (e.g. by introducing diplomatic penalties when you camp units next to an AI’s borders), but it’s just inevitable that once you’ve played a game long enough you will find these kinds of exploitable patterns. The customization available in IV makes it basically infinitely replayable, but the AI makes the trajectory of each game too predictable if you understand the mechanics well enough. Lots of old strategy games have been revived by introducing new factions that change the game’s meta; imagine if this process was automated by training the AI on recorded games from the entire playerbase, or on games recorded locally to adapt to the user’s unique style of play.
    - 1980phipsi 8mo ago
      My thinking is that the company creating the game would train the AI in advance (like a generative adversarial network), not that any kind of training would happen on the users' computer. They could periodically send updates or improvements (maybe by having it play in multiplayer or something).
syngrog66 9mo ago
UnCiv is the best FOSS clone of Civ I've played
rl3 9mo ago
It's really cool to see projects like this designed for dropping in assets from the proprietary version. The separation in the first place is unfortunate, but at least the capability exists. Civ III in my opinion had some of the best art of the entire series. The 3D feeling of the successor games are kind of off-putting by comparison.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 9mo ago
  Isn’t that pretty common for the open source remakes? Let the programmers focus on the coding and outsource the art.
  - rl3 9mo ago
    Yeah, I just think it's cool when they achieve drop-in compatibility.
caminanteblanco 9mo ago
For those like myself who have wanted this but for Civ1 (all 4 of us), someone on CivFanatics has made incredible progress, and the game is actually playable now: https://github.com/rajko-horvat/OpenCiv1 https://github.com/rajko-horvat/OpenCiv1
- yobert 9mo ago
  I'm with you-- civ 1 is by far the best! I adore the wonky graphics. None of the new ones hit the same.
- culi 9mo ago
  So there's - OpenCiv1 - FreeCiv (civ 2) - OpenCiv3 - ??? - UnCiv I'm curious why civ 4 is the one that got skipped. I feel like it's the one that is most commonly labelled as the "peak"
  - Qem 9mo ago
    None for Alpha Centauri yet?
    - HiPhish 9mo ago
      There is this one: https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac
  - TiredOfLife 9mo ago
    Those that like civ 4 are still playing civ 4 and have no time left to develop
jmyeet 9mo ago
I have a long history with the Civ series. I spent a massive amount of time playing Civ1. My next most played was Civ4 and most of that wasn't the base game. It was a mod that had a very loyal fan base: Fall From Heaven 2 [1]. I have tried a couple of times to get all this to work on a modern PC but I think I'm played out on the game and I never quite get it off the gorund. I have a ton of nostalgia for it though. Civ5 started the whole hex thing, which I was never excited about. Yes, Civ4 had stacks of doom but Civ5 turned into a puzzle of moving units in order because you could only have one per hex. Anyway, Civ2 and Civ3 never got as much play from me. I'm a little surprised that people had the same enthusiasm. My memory of these 2 was that they just added a bunch of tedium, like I distinctly remember that tile improvement changed to turning farms into supermarkets. It's been a lot of years so I might be misremembering. Maybe I just dind't give them enough time. Or maybe nothing could capture my initial enthusiasm for the novelty that was Civ1. Anyway, i'm always happy to see projects like this. Games really do live forever. Like people will invent software for free to keep running them (ie emulators). The Civ series has kinda defied the usual trend to entshittification. I'm really thinking of SimCity here. It's hard to describe how much EA shit the bed with SimCity %, so much so that it basically launched Cities: Skylines, which itself has had issues with the CS2 launch. Does Civ3 have a massive fanbase compared to Civ1, Civ2 or Civ4? I really don't know. [1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from-heaven-ii.171398/ https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from-heaven-...
- danielparsons 9mo ago
  I love the hex system - adds a lot of tactical depth. Choice of naval vs air vs land focus often comes down to who you're fighting and where. Then you turn around to fight someone else and realize your 20 veteran frigates are near useless despite your new enemy being coastal because all of their cities are tucked away in bays or behind hills...
closetkantian 9mo ago
Really wish someone would do this for Alpha Centauri, my favorite game of all time
- nebalee 9mo ago
  There's https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac but that still has a lot of work to be put into.
cwillu 9mo ago
“Mac will try hard not to let you run this; it will tell you the app is damaged and can’t be opened and helpfully offer to trash it for you. From a terminal you can xattr -cr /path/to/OpenCiv3.app to enable running it.” How far OSX has come since the days of the “cancel or allow” parody advert.
- ceejayoz 9mo ago
  To be fair, the threat landscape changed, too.
  - antiframe 9mo ago
    Not terribly fair. When Windows decided running everything as administrator was bad and to add a visual sudo-like prompt, Apple made fun of them for it, but it was Microsoft reacting to a changing threat landscape then too.
    - klodolph 9mo ago
      Vista gets maligned but UAC is a good feature to have around, and Vista introduced it.
      - Semaphor 9mo ago
        My first thought was "But back then those prompts were constant, making them almost useless", though maybe that did actually help by making software vendors rely less on admin rights?
        pjmlp 9mo ago
        That was the whole point.
        klodolph 9mo ago
        It was a big mess, because users didn’t expect it, developers wanted users to just have everything run as admin, and the UAC user experience wasn’t polished yet. But that’s what you expect from new security features being introduced.
glimshe 9mo ago
I once had 10 civil war-tech troops with rifles lined up against a fort with ONE bow and arrow troop. I lost every single one of my troops and that's the last time I've played Civ 3 in my life. Hopefully they addressed this issue... (PS: once a friend lost a battleship to a stone age militia in the original Civ)
- daotoad 9mo ago
  I lost a nuke to a phalanx in Civ 1. Still salty about that _decades_ later.
  - yread 9mo ago
    It was a dud
- supertrope 9mo ago
  Civ III battles are best thought of as dice rolls like the board game Risk. If you have more modern units you get to roll more dice but there's still a small chance archers defeat musketmen.
- WildWeazel 9mo ago
  tbh that's a civ rite of passage
- nasretdinov 9mo ago
  Civ V definitely solved the issue by separating unit strength and their HP. Not sure about Civ 4, but I think it applies there too.
SPascareli13 9mo ago
Freeciv was what brought me too the civ world, I'm sure this project will be the same for many children of this generation.
rkagerer 9mo ago
Neat! Civ 3 was always my favorite version.
tdrz 9mo ago
Really cool, I want something like that for Railroad Tycoon 2.
- craftkiller 9mo ago
  https://github.com/Trilarion/freerails https://github.com/Trilarion/freerails
mfld 9mo ago
This looks great! Shout out to FreeCol, a reimagined Colonization, that has the same isometric look and is a lot of fun.
mcfedr 9mo ago
wow, look at me stuck in the world of freeciv (civ 2)
miki123211 9mo ago
This feels like the perfect game to add (screen reader) accessibility to. Sadly, I don't think it can be done by us screen reader users, as the Godot editor UI is not really accessible (though they're apparently changing that in the latest version).
isomorphic- 9mo ago
I encourage people to try Unciv. It is the best open-source Civ clone for desktop/mobile. https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
- miclill 9mo ago
  Cool. It seems Unciv is basically Civ V while openciv3 is Civ III, if anyone else is wondering...
ubixar 9mo ago
been following OpenCiv3 with interest. curious if you've been using any AI coding assistants to speed things up, or if it's been mostly vanilla dev? the codebase looks pretty clean
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p0w3n3d 9mo ago
FreeCol / Colonization team FTW
dnautics 9mo ago
I'm one of the weird ones that really wants an open source Civ:CTP. Especially if you can still edit the .ini file to have 255 civilizations on the map.
marcd35 9mo ago
ive never played before. i moved my guys around the map for 6 turns then they just disappeared. also cant figure out how to increase the scaling of the screen
einpoklum 9mo ago
I'm old enough to have played Civ I when I was a child, but have not played since then. So, why didn't this project choose to create a Civ 7 or Civ 6 play-alike, nor a Civ 1 play-alike, but rather Civ 3? What's special about it? More generally - if someone remind us of the major differences between the different versions of Civilization, in a nutshell, we would be in your debt.
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shevy-java 9mo ago
Strangely enough I still think Civilization I is best. Later versions added better graphics, some interesting gameplay choice and elements. But all of them felt much slower gameplay wise compared to Civilization I. I feel in a similar way with SimCity. I liked the follow-ups and they were a bit better in terms of gameplay compared to later Civilizations, but the first version is still by far the best, even if young people today will find the graphics crap. There is something about purity, to get the most basic parts out. Games today are more like movies. They may be fun but they feel more like playing a movie than a game. Little Nightmares was interesting, pretty to look at and fun from a game play perspective too, but ultimately I feel that the modern games lost something fundamental that they may never get back (at the least non-indie games; indie games are a bit more varied).

996 points by klaussilveira 9mo ago

bigstrat2003 9mo ago

I love that the community is doing this, though I'm curious why Civ 3 in particular. My understanding was that "classic" (for lack of a better term) Civ fans tend to prefer either 2 or 4, and that 3 was considered to be not as good. But perhaps I was mistaken as to the community's opinions on the games.

toast0 9mo ago
FreeCiv covers civ 1 and 2 more or less. Personally, I didn't play much of 2 or 3, so I don't have strong feelings either way.
- zozbot234 9mo ago
  Freeciv's point of interest is that it's not trying to exactly replicate any one of the original Civs: it has its default ruleset plus others that are closer to the original games, but it's very easy to make your own.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 9mo ago
    Which FreeCiv? The one you install locally, or the one you play via browser on the Web? https://freecivweb.com/ https://freecivweb.com/ The latter has more, like Multiplayer 2.4 Dragoon, and Multiplayer 2.5 Elephant(in development), which weren't available locally when I last looked. There is also https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21 https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21 which has an acceptable local client, and finally does not slow down so much when playing larger maps with many AIs, like both FreeCiv and FreeCivWeb tend to do. https://longturn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html https://longturn.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html I tried that, recently, and barely espcaped a relapse. (Phew!)
- culi 9mo ago
  UnCiv covers civ 5 as well so I think there's a place for something in between especially since openciv3 aims to fix some of civ 3's shortcomings
  - bpye 9mo ago
    Til! I should give UnCiv a try, I've sunk a lot of hours into 5 but didn't know about this.
warmwaffles 9mo ago
I actually preferred Civ 3 to 2 and 4. It scratched a certain itch.
- data-ottawa 9mo ago
  3 is still my favourite of the series. 5 was good too, but 3 overall feels complete and had great graphics.
  - warmwaffles 9mo ago
    The modding community was gigantic for 3 and was simply amazing being a part of it.
- yxhuvud 9mo ago
  3 has a really nice feel when you manage to get the early timing attacks off against the neighbours, but the later half of the game is too solved - the game ends with infantry + artillery stacks being the only units you need, and with the 3x4 city grid bring optimal. 4 in contrast had a bunch of different paths to power, and those worked even on high difficulties. There were also no optimal city grid the same way (though still being denser than civ5).
afavour 9mo ago
> with capabilities inspired by the best of the 4X genre and lessons learned from modding Civ3. Our vision is to make Civ3 as it could have been Looks to not be a straight remake. I wonder whether 3 is a preferable target because things like graphical complexity in >= 4 is too much.
- WildWeazel 9mo ago
  Well, "capabilities" is carrying a lot of weight there. One of the main objectives is to design it for unrestricted modding to accommodate all of the wishlisted features, but "out of the box" the default game mode will be 1:1 in mechanics with some QoL improvements. The inspiration is mostly for designing systems in a way that can be easily reconfigured or extended to behave in other ways. We hope that by the time we reach feature parity, people will have already built some mods to do things that were impossible with Civ3. As mentioned above this was started by Civ3 modders, and we all have our passionate reasons for preferring it over other entries, but you're not wrong that doing this with a 3D engine would be a whole `nother ballgame. There are actually Civ4 and Civ5 remakes underway which have both opted for 2D implementations.
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
Is 3 the one with forced retirement?
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  Not sure, I only started the series with 4.
TheRealPomax 9mo ago
Civ 1 and 2 have already been done, so if you want to play those, hit up freeciv.
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  I'm aware. But why rebuild 3 rather than 4, in that case?
  - apothegm 9mo ago
    Because 4 was a travesty unless you’re REALLY into religion. 3 was a great game for those who prefer building over war, and the first one with a proper non-military victory option.
  - TheRealPomax 8mo ago
    Because the people who work on this aren't a game studio, they're Civ enthusiasts making a free version of the game they love? If you want to see a free equivalent of 4, you know what to do: start the effort.
packetlost 9mo ago
3 is my favorite in the series, but maybe that's not a popular take.
caminanteblanco 9mo ago
I can definitely vouch for the 2 or 4 narrative, those have always been my favorites of the 'Modernish' civ games, but my favorite will always be CivNet (Civ 1 with multiplayer). There is some real simplicity in Civ 1 that makes it much better suited to a multiplayer experience than the later entries. It is a real pain to get any non-hotseat multiplayer working nowawdays, but well-worth it.
- dr_dshiv 9mo ago
  I love civ 1 so so much.
- npunt 9mo ago
  Agree, wish there were quality of life improvements to Civ1 that kept the simplicity and aesthetics fully intact, while modernizing some of the tedious mid/late game stuff like managing each city in a large empire based on some straightforward goals like 'more science' or 'fastest path to rocketry' or whatnot. Freeciv unfortunately has none of the charm of Civ1.
WildWeazel 9mo ago
Because it was born out of the Civ3 modding community which has been wanting a remake for 20+ years. Sounds like you've been listening to Civ4 fans. ;) 3 is just as active on steam and has a very active and loyal multiplayer league.
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  Fair enough, thanks!
stodor89 9mo ago
Here's a perspective on "why civ 3" by one of the best civ 3 players: https://youtu.be/IOvWgfZiHGo?si=uvTWTaRQsfxE_ffN https://youtu.be/IOvWgfZiHGo?si=uvTWTaRQsfxE_ffN
- II2II 9mo ago
  Thank you for the link. It is enlightening for someone who likes to play the game, but is not obsessive about a particular version. (I like the idea of Civilization, and will play it for that reason alone. More often than not, I will choose an older version simply because it is faster to load and play than for the intrinsic merits of the ruleset itself.)
thrance 9mo ago
There's Freeciv [1] for IV, and Unciv [2] for V. I doesn't have many fans, VI is too recent, and VII, well... Let's not talk about VII. > Civ fans tend to prefer [...] I'd say, each entry in the series gets love. The saying goes: "Your favorite Civ game is the first one you ever played". In my experience, that's pretty true (Still stuck on V). [1] https://www.freeciv.org/ https://www.freeciv.org/ [2] https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
- bee_rider 9mo ago
  Yeah as a Civilization: Call to Power fan I have to say the “first game in the series I tried” affinity bonus is overwhelming. Alpha Centauri was objectively the best though.
  - GaryBluto 9mo ago
    Interestingly enough, the Call to Power series was unaffiliated with Sid Meier's Civilization and was developed after Activision licensed the name from the board game Civilization was unauthorizedly based upon. There was a sequel called just "Call to Power II" in case you missed it, which had it's source code released in 2003 in case you're feeling nostalgic. https://www.zdnet.com/article/civilization-ownership-disputed/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/civilization-ownership-dispute...
  - spiritplumber 9mo ago
    https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/ This you may appreciate
- chocochunks 9mo ago
  I think the first Civ I played WAS III (maybe II at a friend's house once before?) and it ain't my fav. It sits below IV and V and even VI and I don't really like VI all that much either...
acessoproibido 9mo ago
For me the most classic one is Civ III by a mile. 4 was way too modern/ flashy for me and 2 too old school. But maybe I was just born at the right time for 3.
- rpiguy 9mo ago
  You can turn off a lot of the Civ 4 flash and it will feel more like Civ III. But to each his own. Civ 4 was the first one that really, really hooked me.
  - rmunn 9mo ago
    For me it was Civ 4's modability that made it the best for me. Because when I got tired of playing Civ 4's normal game, I could install the Fall From Heaven mod and play a completely different game. Wizards, golems, angels, demons, spells, wild animals instead of barbarians (which could be tamed and turned into your own units if you had units with the right promotions)... it made for a completely different gameplay experience. If I hadn't quit computer games cold turkey (when I realized I was showing all the signs of addiction) over a decade ago, I would still have Civ IV installed and still be playing it today. It just didn't get old, because of how varied the game could become.
    - SomaticPirate 9mo ago
      How old were when you stopped? What made you realize you had an addiction?
      - rmunn 9mo ago
        Around 30 to 35, don't remember which year it was exactly. And the thing that was largest in making me go, "Yeah, this isn't good for me, I need to quit" was that it was consuming my thoughts all the time. When I wasn't in front of the computer gaming, I was thinking about the game and planning the strategy for my next move. (I usually played turn-based games rather than action games). Which is fine in small doses, but it was taking over my mind when I was at church wanting to focus on worshiping God, when I was at work (and distracting me from getting work done), when I was trying to read... Basically, I realized that it was an unhealthy focus for me, and taking over way too much of my attention that I wanted to be able to spend on a much wider variety of things. So I quit. First year was the hardest, second and third years were hard too, but by now I've gotten used to reaching for a book to read rather than a game. And the book, I can put down anytime I need to, without feeling that empty-ish feeling that says "Awww, I want to get back into the game..." That letdown when I exited the game was another clue, BTW: it matched how I'd heard drug addicts (specifically, former addicts who had kicked their habit) describe the feeling of coming down off a high. I've never used drugs myself so I can't compare it directly, but it was similar enough to the descriptions I'd heard from them that I said "okay, that's probably not a good sign either."
TheGRS 9mo ago
Can I tangent on your question here and ask what others think of Civ 7 now? When I learned about it I thought it was a day 1 game purchase for me for sure, but I held off when I saw a stream of bad reviews. I figured I'd come back when they ironed the problems out (as they've done in every major Civ release to my memory). Haven't taken the plunge yet.
- bigstrat2003 9mo ago
  I'm holding off on 7 myself. I think they deviated too hard from the formula such that it doesn't look like it's even still a Civ game. And while I'm open-minded enough to try it, I wasn't going to drop $70 on a game I had reason to suspect I would dislike. I figured I would wait until it was on game pass, or on sale for $5 someday. More recently I read that they are going to update the game such that you don't have to switch civs. That's a good start (though I still don't think I will like the era system at all), but reading the initial reviews a year ago I found out that the game cuts off abruptly in the mid 20th century, rather than going to the information age like normal. To me, that is blatantly unfinished, so I'm not planning to get the game until they fix that as well.
  - JojoFatsani 9mo ago
    Civ is like TOS Star Trek movies: You can mostly avoid the even numbered ones!
    - apothegm 9mo ago
      With the exception of Civ2, which was excellent.
    - dragonwriter 9mo ago
      With TOS Star Trek movies, the usual claim is that you should avoid the odd numbered ones.
      - JojoFatsani 9mo ago
daotoad 9mo ago
Anecdata: I'm a Civ3 hater, give me 2 or 4 any day. 3 is my least favorite version of the game. But, OTOH, my wife is ride or die for Civ3.
cyphar 9mo ago
I must admit that there is a certain sense of nostalgia I get from playing Civ 3 that I never got from any of the other Civ games, but that's probably just because it was the first Civ game I played and got really hooked on as a young kid.
GaryBluto 9mo ago
I very much enjoy Civ 2 and 3 and would've played 3 more, but the 3d rendered sprites make it much more of a pain to add anything graphical to.
danielparsons 9mo ago
civ 5 is now the most popular among hardcore civ fans. still in the top 100 games on steam. more than 2x the player count of its sequel
- distances 9mo ago
  It is a great game, and the Vox Populi mod has given it so much more life. VP has hands down the best AI that the Civ series has ever seen. My "wow" moment was when the enemy parachuted to my hinterlands to pillage my critical resources. In comparison, the official AI couldn't even pull off an amphibious attack.
- Gagarin1917 9mo ago
  It looks like Civ 6 actually has twice the player count compared to 5 on Steam.
sevenseacat 9mo ago
that was my first thought, I was gonna show my husband this but he's a Civ 2 ride or die

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tfehring 9mo ago

Civ III is still my go-to activity for long flights with no internet - I've yet to find a better way to instantly time-travel forward 12 hours. I haven't tried OpenCiv3, but I'm glad it exists - getting vanilla Civ III running on MacOS is a hassle and still has issues with e.g. audio and cutscenes. I also hope it leads to a way to improve worker automation. Managing your workers well is important, doing it manually is tedious, and the built-in Automate feature is really bad.

colechristensen 9mo ago
The key here is seeing this mentioned and not time traveling forward until 6 AM Saturday morning.
- donw 9mo ago
  Yeah, that's what Factorio is for.
  - ssl-3 9mo ago
    Factorio is a game about bird songs.
  - skeltoac 9mo ago
    You won’t get me this time.
  - playa1 9mo ago
    Sleep is the bottleneck.
mikeaskew4 9mo ago
There goes my weekend…
kilroy123 9mo ago
How did I not ever think to do this? Such a good idea.
9mo ago

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

Any chance the AIs will be easily extensible?

WildWeazel 9mo ago
Hopefully yes, because so far none of us are AI programmers... but seriously yes everything about the game will be designed for customization

Joel_Mckay 9mo ago

How does this compare with https://freeciv.org https://freeciv.org for game play =3

dleslie 9mo ago
Not sure, when Civ2Civ3 is now the default ruleset in Freeciv. https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Civ2civ3 https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Civ2civ3
WildWeazel 9mo ago
Gameplay wise this is a straight remake of Civ3 as a baseline, while allowing much greater customization. Freeciv is definitely an inspiration, but it's kind of its own thing.

jrm4 9mo ago

uh oh yeah, that's dangerous for me, this is the ONE that got me started

reconnecting 9mo ago

Interesting choice of version. I just realised that the actual latest version of Die Ha… Civilization is VII (2025), and for me II remains the gold classic. Both in Civilisation and in Die Hard.

WildWeazel 9mo ago

Hi all, OpenCiv3 founder here. Thanks for the support! Check us out on Civfanatics or Discord to keep up with the project.

slazaro 9mo ago
Any interesting insights about using Godot with C#? I love C# and I'm happy using it in Godot even though it's not as seamless as in Unity: in Godot 4 we still can't export to Web if the project is C#, and there's the whole conversion between C# types and Godot types that adds inefficiencies and extra allocations, etc.; it feels like it's a second-class language in Godot. I'm always interested in seeing what people find when developing larger projects in C#.
- huevosabio 9mo ago
  We were building on C# Godot and I think it is a second class citizen in the sense that 1) you can't export to wasm and 2) they are moving the interface to be handled by gdextension. That said, I think once you get the gist of it and understand the landmines, it is really nice to use vanilla dotnet rather than unity's fork.
- WildWeazel 9mo ago
  The founding developers were all software engineers with .NET experience, so it was the natural choice even though at the time it was Godot 3.x with Mono. I had used Unity before but not Godot. The project is structured as mostly plain C# DLLs with a relatively thin Godot UI layer controlling it, so the Godot type system is fairly encapsulated. We haven't really seen any issues with those decisions beyond just working out the communication between Godot and DLL. But again we were just working from what we knew so I can't really say if this was the best way to go about it.
- Arwill 9mo ago
  I have this principle of "5% scripting". If the high level scripting on top of C++ consumes about 5% of frame time, then the language of the script does not matter.
9mo ago

bigcat12345678 9mo ago

Yes CIV3 still feels to me the peak Civ experience. The content is a bit lacking though, would see more diversity in tech tree, and units.

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tbmtbmtbmtbmtbm 9mo ago

looks super cool. I'm a lifelong civ player but my first one was civ 4, so this seems like a fun chance to dip into some of the earlier ones. love that they're using Godot for the engine!

d_silin 9mo ago

Another awesome game - Civ II inspired. http://www.c-evo.org/ http://www.c-evo.org/

axus 9mo ago
Loved this one; from the same guy who wrote Scanner which was nice before WinDirStat and WizTree. You could add AI plugins which could take the role of a player, without cheating. http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/ http://www.steffengerlach.de/freeware/
- d_silin 9mo ago
  Yep, I even wrote one and made a mod of C-Evo (long time ago).
PeterBBB 8mo ago
Updated version of this game here;- https://sourceforge.net/projects/c-evo-eh/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/c-evo-eh/

jlarocco 9mo ago

I don't know about the dedicated Civilization fans, but 3 was the only version I played. I didn't play it much, but when I did I'd play for 6+ hours at a time. I'll check this out later tonight, and might see if I can find the old CD and get the original running.

sevensor 9mo ago
Ooof, good luck. Civ3 copy protection was intense. I had to get out my old Win2k disk and stand up a VM. Attempts to rip an iso will be complicated by the fact that they deliberately wrote bad data to the disk. All of this is surmountable, but unless you enjoy a very particular kind of fun, you may prefer to spend $2 on GoG.

PlatoIsADisease 9mo ago

Wake me up when OpenCiv4, but only when there's an option for smart AI rather than boosted fake AI. I remember losing 6pm to 3am playing civ 4 one time. One more turn... (But I'm not sure what I need openCiv for... the steam game is good. Maybe its just useful for the long term.)

1980phipsi 9mo ago
I would love to see someone use modern machine learning techniques to make a kick ass Civ AI.
- Marsymars 9mo ago
  Genuine question - would that be amenable to fast AI? It's less of a problem on modern PCs running Civ4, but on contemporary systems late-game large maps with many AI/units could really drag during turn-processing.
  - lurk2 9mo ago
    You don’t necessarily need it to learn during the game, it would be enough for it to learn between games. If you’ve played the game long enough there are behaviors you can exploit that wouldn’t work against a human player. They iterated on the AI in Beyond the Sword and fixed some of the more abusable mechanics in Civilization V (e.g. by introducing diplomatic penalties when you camp units next to an AI’s borders), but it’s just inevitable that once you’ve played a game long enough you will find these kinds of exploitable patterns. The customization available in IV makes it basically infinitely replayable, but the AI makes the trajectory of each game too predictable if you understand the mechanics well enough. Lots of old strategy games have been revived by introducing new factions that change the game’s meta; imagine if this process was automated by training the AI on recorded games from the entire playerbase, or on games recorded locally to adapt to the user’s unique style of play.
  - 1980phipsi 8mo ago
    My thinking is that the company creating the game would train the AI in advance (like a generative adversarial network), not that any kind of training would happen on the users' computer. They could periodically send updates or improvements (maybe by having it play in multiplayer or something).

syngrog66 9mo ago

UnCiv is the best FOSS clone of Civ I've played

rl3 9mo ago

It's really cool to see projects like this designed for dropping in assets from the proprietary version. The separation in the first place is unfortunate, but at least the capability exists. Civ III in my opinion had some of the best art of the entire series. The 3D feeling of the successor games are kind of off-putting by comparison.

0cf8612b2e1e 9mo ago
Isn’t that pretty common for the open source remakes? Let the programmers focus on the coding and outsource the art.
- rl3 9mo ago
  Yeah, I just think it's cool when they achieve drop-in compatibility.

caminanteblanco 9mo ago

For those like myself who have wanted this but for Civ1 (all 4 of us), someone on CivFanatics has made incredible progress, and the game is actually playable now: https://github.com/rajko-horvat/OpenCiv1 https://github.com/rajko-horvat/OpenCiv1

yobert 9mo ago
I'm with you-- civ 1 is by far the best! I adore the wonky graphics. None of the new ones hit the same.
culi 9mo ago
So there's - OpenCiv1 - FreeCiv (civ 2) - OpenCiv3 - ??? - UnCiv I'm curious why civ 4 is the one that got skipped. I feel like it's the one that is most commonly labelled as the "peak"
- Qem 9mo ago
  None for Alpha Centauri yet?
  - HiPhish 9mo ago
    There is this one: https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac
- TiredOfLife 9mo ago
  Those that like civ 4 are still playing civ 4 and have no time left to develop

jmyeet 9mo ago

I have a long history with the Civ series. I spent a massive amount of time playing Civ1. My next most played was Civ4 and most of that wasn't the base game. It was a mod that had a very loyal fan base: Fall From Heaven 2 [1]. I have tried a couple of times to get all this to work on a modern PC but I think I'm played out on the game and I never quite get it off the gorund. I have a ton of nostalgia for it though. Civ5 started the whole hex thing, which I was never excited about. Yes, Civ4 had stacks of doom but Civ5 turned into a puzzle of moving units in order because you could only have one per hex. Anyway, Civ2 and Civ3 never got as much play from me. I'm a little surprised that people had the same enthusiasm. My memory of these 2 was that they just added a bunch of tedium, like I distinctly remember that tile improvement changed to turning farms into supermarkets. It's been a lot of years so I might be misremembering. Maybe I just dind't give them enough time. Or maybe nothing could capture my initial enthusiasm for the novelty that was Civ1. Anyway, i'm always happy to see projects like this. Games really do live forever. Like people will invent software for free to keep running them (ie emulators). The Civ series has kinda defied the usual trend to entshittification. I'm really thinking of SimCity here. It's hard to describe how much EA shit the bed with SimCity %, so much so that it basically launched Cities: Skylines, which itself has had issues with the CS2 launch. Does Civ3 have a massive fanbase compared to Civ1, Civ2 or Civ4? I really don't know. [1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from-heaven-ii.171398/ https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from-heaven-...

danielparsons 9mo ago
I love the hex system - adds a lot of tactical depth. Choice of naval vs air vs land focus often comes down to who you're fighting and where. Then you turn around to fight someone else and realize your 20 veteran frigates are near useless despite your new enemy being coastal because all of their cities are tucked away in bays or behind hills...

closetkantian 9mo ago

Really wish someone would do this for Alpha Centauri, my favorite game of all time

nebalee 9mo ago
There's https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac but that still has a lot of work to be put into.

cwillu 9mo ago

“Mac will try hard not to let you run this; it will tell you the app is damaged and can’t be opened and helpfully offer to trash it for you. From a terminal you can xattr -cr /path/to/OpenCiv3.app to enable running it.” How far OSX has come since the days of the “cancel or allow” parody advert.

ceejayoz 9mo ago
To be fair, the threat landscape changed, too.
- antiframe 9mo ago
  Not terribly fair. When Windows decided running everything as administrator was bad and to add a visual sudo-like prompt, Apple made fun of them for it, but it was Microsoft reacting to a changing threat landscape then too.
  - klodolph 9mo ago
    Vista gets maligned but UAC is a good feature to have around, and Vista introduced it.
    - Semaphor 9mo ago
      My first thought was "But back then those prompts were constant, making them almost useless", though maybe that did actually help by making software vendors rely less on admin rights?
      - pjmlp 9mo ago
        That was the whole point.
      - klodolph 9mo ago
        It was a big mess, because users didn’t expect it, developers wanted users to just have everything run as admin, and the UAC user experience wasn’t polished yet. But that’s what you expect from new security features being introduced.

glimshe 9mo ago

I once had 10 civil war-tech troops with rifles lined up against a fort with ONE bow and arrow troop. I lost every single one of my troops and that's the last time I've played Civ 3 in my life. Hopefully they addressed this issue... (PS: once a friend lost a battleship to a stone age militia in the original Civ)

daotoad 9mo ago
I lost a nuke to a phalanx in Civ 1. Still salty about that _decades_ later.
- yread 9mo ago
  It was a dud
supertrope 9mo ago
Civ III battles are best thought of as dice rolls like the board game Risk. If you have more modern units you get to roll more dice but there's still a small chance archers defeat musketmen.
WildWeazel 9mo ago
tbh that's a civ rite of passage
nasretdinov 9mo ago
Civ V definitely solved the issue by separating unit strength and their HP. Not sure about Civ 4, but I think it applies there too.

SPascareli13 9mo ago

Freeciv was what brought me too the civ world, I'm sure this project will be the same for many children of this generation.

rkagerer 9mo ago

Neat! Civ 3 was always my favorite version.

tdrz 9mo ago

Really cool, I want something like that for Railroad Tycoon 2.

craftkiller 9mo ago
https://github.com/Trilarion/freerails https://github.com/Trilarion/freerails

mfld 9mo ago

This looks great! Shout out to FreeCol, a reimagined Colonization, that has the same isometric look and is a lot of fun.

mcfedr 9mo ago

wow, look at me stuck in the world of freeciv (civ 2)

miki123211 9mo ago

This feels like the perfect game to add (screen reader) accessibility to. Sadly, I don't think it can be done by us screen reader users, as the Godot editor UI is not really accessible (though they're apparently changing that in the latest version).

isomorphic- 9mo ago

I encourage people to try Unciv. It is the best open-source Civ clone for desktop/mobile. https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv

miclill 9mo ago
Cool. It seems Unciv is basically Civ V while openciv3 is Civ III, if anyone else is wondering...

ubixar 9mo ago

been following OpenCiv3 with interest. curious if you've been using any AI coding assistants to speed things up, or if it's been mostly vanilla dev? the codebase looks pretty clean

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p0w3n3d 9mo ago

FreeCol / Colonization team FTW

dnautics 9mo ago

I'm one of the weird ones that really wants an open source Civ:CTP. Especially if you can still edit the .ini file to have 255 civilizations on the map.

marcd35 9mo ago

ive never played before. i moved my guys around the map for 6 turns then they just disappeared. also cant figure out how to increase the scaling of the screen

einpoklum 9mo ago

I'm old enough to have played Civ I when I was a child, but have not played since then. So, why didn't this project choose to create a Civ 7 or Civ 6 play-alike, nor a Civ 1 play-alike, but rather Civ 3? What's special about it? More generally - if someone remind us of the major differences between the different versions of Civilization, in a nutshell, we would be in your debt.

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shevy-java 9mo ago

Strangely enough I still think Civilization I is best. Later versions added better graphics, some interesting gameplay choice and elements. But all of them felt much slower gameplay wise compared to Civilization I. I feel in a similar way with SimCity. I liked the follow-ups and they were a bit better in terms of gameplay compared to later Civilizations, but the first version is still by far the best, even if young people today will find the graphics crap. There is something about purity, to get the most basic parts out. Games today are more like movies. They may be fun but they feel more like playing a movie than a game. Little Nightmares was interesting, pretty to look at and fun from a game play perspective too, but ultimately I feel that the modern games lost something fundamental that they may never get back (at the least non-indie games; indie games are a bit more varied).