What about making an open source Civ V?

[OrsonM]

Civ v is awesome possum, amirite folks? Problem: it's kinda pricey and Firaxis is developing the game at... possum speed.

So what about an open source project?

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...what everyone ends up playing...

How hard would it really be?, FreeCiv is around and it's open source, and Battle for Wesnoth was a major influence on Civ V (and open source as well).

 

[Becephalus]

This would take months/years with the type of help you would get in your wildest best case scenario unless you remove elements. Why reproduce work that is already being done?

Battle of Wesnoth was a major influence? I worked on Battle for Wesnoth and I don't see the influence. There are hexes? Tons of games have hexes.

 

[The_J]

This would take months/years with the type of help you would get in your wildest best case scenario unless you remove elements.

Years .
Coding an engine is hard, coding a good AI is even harder, getting some artists who can make decent looking stuff for....for *everything* is hard, and organizing such a thing is probably THE horror.

I don't say it's impossible. But you'll have probably something barely running when Civ6 comes out. For Civ5, a big team of professionals worked 5 years the whole day and the game is still not finished. And a team of unorganized "amateurs" (in contrast to a professional team; the persons themself might sure be pros), doing the stuff in their free time, will sure need longer to get something comparable done. Or at least something playable.

 

[OrsonM]

I remember John Shafer mentioning playing Battle of Wesnoth on one of the podcasts (besides Panzer General).

It's sad to hear how steep is the learning curve to make videogames or how hard it is to actually organize a team effort, even when everyone would already know the end result there.

Anyways, I think the thread was answered well enough.