More developed version of Civ 1

I think that after all those years since Civ1 came out on the market, its a pity that no one amateur programmer has tried to make a more developed version of Civ1. With that I mean for example more developed dialogues between Civs, more city-improvements or more civs to choose between.

Civ1 should be an excellent platform for "experimenting" for hobby-programmers, if you understand what I mean. I am Swedish, so excuse my bad English

I mean.. todays computers have a whole lot mor RAM, harddisk-space and speed than the one existing when Civ1 came out (you cant even compare it). So it should be a task for anyone that is addicted to simple game-programming to make new alternative versions of Civ1

I would be interested to even buy such a game.

Freeciv is in my opinon, to difficult even at the easieset level.

Rickard77 said:

Civ1 should be an excellent platform for "experimenting" for hobby-programmers, if you understand what I mean.

I mean.. todays computers have a whole lot mor RAM, harddisk-space and speed than the one existing when Civ1 came out (you cant even compare it).

I would be interested to even buy such a game.

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Well, you can. They're called Civilization II to V...
I think it's pretty hard for a single hobby programmer to come up with anything even approximately comparable to a professional product like Civ I. And Microprose / Firaxis did and mostly still do a great job delivering new professional versions to use the improved computer hardware. Have a look at all the great mods people came up for any of the professional Civ sequels. There are quite a handfull of talented programmers vastly improving Civ IV coding right now. From my point of view it would be a shame to see people rather spending time on efforts recreating / reengineering (in a rather amateurish way) something that allready exists.

Innategamer had a try at coding a new Civ1 but it isn't going anywhere, I guess in the end he gave up on it, check out his posts he also has a blog. He tried to advance the random map generator to a PhD level and lost all will ...

Yes it would be great to improve Civ1, get rid of some bugs, improve AI, make it more customizable etc. Similiar like Civ-Evo is to Civ2. Civ2-5 are new games, but you can hardly compare Civ4 and Civ1. I like the simplicity of civ1 and Civ2, I just newer got in the newer versions ...

gps said:

I think it's pretty hard for a single hobby programmer to come up with anything even approximately comparable to a professional product like Civ I.

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Just look at freeciv, which is a clone/expansion of Civ II. It's been in development for 16 years and still isn't preferred over the original, at least to my knowledge.

Thanks for mentioning my blog. I've been trying to make good AI and I had a plan that I should basically study how the brain works and then go from there. This was very hard to do and I'm not quite sure how to proceed. Also I've been busy looking for a job lately, looking for a half time job is a full time job, if I found a job I would probably have more peace to do work, ironical as that may seem. Well there were no jobs posted today so I think I'll work for a while.

I don't think Civ 2-5 is the same thing as a more full fledged version of the original, I'm desperately seeking after that amazing feeling that I had when I first saw Civilization, a feeling that disappeared when I learned that it's a mere simplistic game. I remember when my friends mom (she was involved in the gaming for some reason, many years ago) I remember when she said something about forcing peace by putting a canon outside one of the AI's cities, but it turns out the AI simply isn't smart enough to recognize such a threat and any peace treaty they might have got was merely a coincidence.

I'm searching for a certain feeling, something special, something, a special feeling that I wanna have when I'm playing. I have been playing some Civil War Generals 2 lately and although the game is way to easy I'm not complaining, ♫I wish I was in the land of cotton...♫♫♫, we'd still have slavery the way I'm licking Sherman, ha-ha-ha. However CWG2 is somewhat simplistic, but it's a great way to learn history and it's a break from strategy games where you have to build an empire, if you just want the fisticuffs to commence, look no further than CWG2. I discovered the game on ioaz81's youtube channel.

I don't like the way the AI places cities in freeciv and the diplomatic options are, well, usually everyone is at war against me. If only I could figure out the secret behind AI everything would be fine.

gps said:

I think it's pretty hard for a single hobby programmer to come up with anything even approximately comparable to a professional product like Civ I.

Click to expand...

The most well-done hobbyist-created Civ I clone is Steffen Gerlach's open-source/freeware C-Evo. Unlike Freeciv--which I personally do not care for--C-evo is essentially a one-man project and a lot more cohesive than Freeciv.

Lone Wolf mentioned that Civilization I is more like chess than its successors; C-evo takes that idea to the next level. Gerlach's goal has been to have a platform for AI development, and this shows in the game design. There are no huts nor barbarians, and all combat is deterministic. Like Civilization I and unlike its successors, the rules are not designed to be modified.

It's an interesting take on Civilization. It, in a lot of ways, is closer to Civ I than any of the official successors are.

- Sam

Whelkman said:

Just look at freeciv, which is a clone/expansion of Civ II. It's been in development for 16 years and still isn't preferred over the original, at least to my knowledge.

Click to expand...

Freeciv in my opinion fails because it suffers from:

• Open source economics
• Too many cooks

It suffers from open source economics because there is no way to tell someone they need to finish what they started. As a result, there are a lot of bits and pieces of Freeciv code which are incomplete, buggy, and poorly or completely undocumented. For example, the SDL full-screen Windows client is crash prone and the city management screen graphics is this tiny unusable thing.

Freeciv also suffers from the too many cooks problem. For example, the game has both a GTK interface and a SDL interface, because there is no one who can say "We are going to concentrate all our GUI development effort on giving this an immersive full-screen UI". As a consequence, it does not have the cohesion the professional Civ games (or, on the freeware side, C-evo [1]) have.

Freeciv, to its credit, did support hex tiles long before Civ V came out. It's also, short of running an emulator, the only way to play a Civ-like game on a modern Linux distribution. [2]

- Sam

[1] C-evo works because it's essentially a one-man project.

[2] I said "modern". The old Loki ports of Call to Power and Alpha Centauri don't work without serious problems (or at all) on newer Linux distros. There are many reasons I have Windows on the desktop instead of Linux, and I'm saying this as someone who knows Linux well enough that I have made my own Linux distribution.

gps said:

Well, you can. They're called Civilization II to V...
I think it's pretty hard for a single hobby programmer to come up with anything even approximately comparable to a professional product like Civ I. And Microprose / Firaxis did and mostly still do a great job delivering new professional versions to use the improved computer hardware. Have a look at all the great mods people came up for any of the professional Civ sequels. There are quite a handfull of talented programmers vastly improving Civ IV coding right now. From my point of view it would be a shame to see people rather spending time on efforts recreating / reengineering (in a rather amateurish way) something that allready exists.

Click to expand...

What I mean is more like.. keep the simple graphics of Civ 1, but develope dialogues, exclude more city-improvements and units + wonders. That wouldnt be to difficult for a hobby-programmer.

axx said:

Innategamer had a try at coding a new Civ1 but it isn't going anywhere, I guess in the end he gave up on it, check out his posts he also has a blog. He tried to advance the random map generator to a PhD level and lost all will ...

Click to expand...

Ok I will check it out.

Yes it would be great to improve Civ1, get rid of some bugs, improve AI, make it more customizable etc. Similiar like Civ-Evo is to Civ2. Civ2-5 are new games, but you can hardly compare Civ4 and Civ1. I like the simplicity of civ1 and Civ2, I just newer got in the newer versions ...

Click to expand...

I dont know why, but i like the simple graphics of Civ 1 more than Civ 2. Like i said in annother thread.. it has more "map-feeling" to it. But i like Civ 3 a lot, the only problem is that Civ 3 is very hard even on the easy levels. To play Civ 3 on level "Chieftian" and the enemy "less agressive" is like playing Civ 2 on Prince level.

Whelkman said:

Just look at freeciv, which is a clone/expansion of Civ II. It's been in development for 16 years and still isn't preferred over the original, at least to my knowledge.

Click to expand...

Freeciv is in my opinion too hard even on the easy levels. When you have built 6-8 cities with Ok defence, the enemies have built 35 and has alot of military units. Al cheats!!!

Rickard77 said:

That wouldnt be to difficult for a hobby-programmer.

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Not quite sure how much knowledge about programming you have, I've done some hobby programming in my days and am working in professional system development - and the mere fact that almost noone really releases Civ clones should give you some hints on how valid this estimation of yours actually is...

Rickard77 said:

I think that after all those years since Civ1 came out on the market, its a pity that no one amateur programmer has tried to make a more developed version of Civ1. With that I mean for example more developed dialogues between Civs, more city-improvements or more civs to choose between.

Civ1 should be an excellent platform for "experimenting" for hobby-programmers, if you understand what I mean. I am Swedish, so excuse my bad English

I mean.. todays computers have a whole lot mor RAM, harddisk-space and speed than the one existing when Civ1 came out (you cant even compare it). So it should be a task for anyone that is addicted to simple game-programming to make new alternative versions of Civ1

I would be interested to even buy such a game.

Freeciv is in my opinon, to difficult even at the easieset level.

Click to expand...

In south korea they are remaking civ into a MMO game.

'm not sure what you mean by making it better then. If Free-Civ or C-evo is to difficult for you on even the easiest level then isn't Civ 1 enough?
Also on C-evo you can download custom, easier and harder AI's!

Otherwise there is as they said Civ 2-4:ish

The Civ ancestors (II-V) are all great, but some of us just do enjoy playing the original. Freeciv and the other newer takes of Civ 1 weren't anywhere close. A new modified version of the Civ1 would be great> i'd like these add ons retaining the same in game rules, graphics and sound
More civilizations with variable leadership options
Map Editor before game (during game is too much temptation)
A couple extra units, archers etc
Civilization specific building or strength
Veteran 1 (25%) Veteran 2 (50%) Veteran 3 (75%)
Maybe even the vassal city idea where if your enemy is down to his last city, he can surrender to you, handing half his city trade to you. And still be a prime foreign trade route
More pre game options including an option to play the original
Too many changes would spoil it. No loading games in game. Keep the sneaky settler trick. Hit points might be more realistic, but if you want realism, go join the army.
That said, I'm still playing the original 17 years on. The ship isn't broken, so it doesn't need fixing. I would enjoy the pre game map editor though.

I don't see any need whatsoever to make the game more elaborate. Play a later title for more units, buildings, promotions, and diplomatic mechanics. The simplicity of the graphics doesn't bother me either (again, play a later title).

I guess there is one feature, which the AI has, that would cut out grind for the human: overflow. If science overflows into the next research, food into the next stockpile, and shields into the next build, this would greatly reduce useless micro. Building queues and incremental buying are also already in the game for the AI, so the player might as well have access to these features as well.

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The question is, do you want Civilization, or some new game? More features, and even removing certain existing "features" such as the limits on cities and units imposed by the savegame database, would make it so that it just isn't Civ 1 anymore.

If there is anyone with some relatively good programming experience, I might talk to them about this project.

A short wish list I would go down, if it was up to me:

a. MUCH larger maps. The world must be bigger.

b. Ability to create build lists, so that you can "set" a city and forget it for a bit. Just too much micro managing once you get 30-40 cities going.

c. A more smooth continuum of levels. Emperor is so much harder than King it's off-putting.

danheskett said:

c. A more smooth continuum of levels. Emperor is so much harder than King it's off-putting.

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If you want some lulz, you can hex edit a difficulty that's +1 of Emperor. It's the highest you can go before cities are "born" in disorder.

In terms of gameplay, I would not change a thing.

Now, talking about extra features that do not change gameplay, I would love to:
- Have the possibility to label the map, for example giving names to continents, oceans, peninsulas, large mountain ranges or large deserts and rivers;
- Be able to draw a frontier line in the map, just for visual purposes, i.e. without affecting gameplay;
- Be able to print the map in a A3 or bigger size;
- Have a time counter to tell me exactly how many hours (days?) I've spent with each particular game;
- Have specific messages to appear on the screen when I'm playing for too long like "Maybe you should stop now", "When was the last time you took a bath?", "What will your boss say in just a few hours?", "Quick! Go, now! Grab a sandwich and come back before barbarians invade from the sea!" or the classic "Get a life!".

Perhaps the statistics could also be bettered because they are hard to understand and some interesting data is missing, like population density or combat statistics (how many battles won and lost and not just how many units lost would be great).

Finnally, I think that a feature to determine the shortest path between two squares (either on land or sea) would also be interesting because sometimes, in longer distances, it is hard even for veteran players to determine the best route. Just imagine how it would be great to use Google Maps on your Civilization world map.

I love Civ just the way it is

There's just something about the simplicity of the graphics that make the original civ so charming. I don't like Civ 2 or FreeCiv because the graphics just aren't the same.