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.
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.
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-hoseat multiplayer working nowawdays, but well-worth it.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
The key here is seeing this mentioned and not time traveling forward until 6 AM Saturday morning.
Hi all, OpenCiv3 founder here. Thanks for the support! Check us out on Civfanatics or Discord to keep up with the project.
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.
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-hoseat multiplayer working nowawdays, but well-worth it.
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.
3 is my favorite in the series, but maybe that's not a popular take.
Here's one perspective on "why civ 3": https://youtu.be/IOvWgfZiHGo?si=uvTWTaRQsfxE_ffN
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.
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.
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.
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/
[2] https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv
> 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.
I actually preferred Civ 3 to 2 and 4. It scratched a certain itch.
3 is still my favourite of the series. 5 was good too, but 3 overall feels complete and had great graphics.
Is 3 the one with forced retirement?
Not sure, I only started the series with 4.
Civ 1 and 2 have already been done, so if you want to play those, hit up freeciv.
I'm aware. But why rebuild 3 rather than 4, in that case?
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.
Civ 3 was good but I remember the code being slow.
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.
Any chance the AIs will be easily extensible?
How does this compare with https://freeciv.org for game play =3
Not sure, when Civ2Civ3 is now the default ruleset in Freeciv.
https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Civ2civ3
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.
uh oh
yeah, that's dangerous for me, this is the ONE that got me started