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First impressions of a Civ2 player
I know the game isn't striving to be a straight clone of Civ 2, but I noted the following differences in several hours of play:
1. Building a road or city on a special that yields 1 or more trade arrows provides an additional arrow in Civ2, no extra arrow in FreeCiv.
2. In FreeCiv, my cities seemed to grow as soon as the food box filled; Civ2 fills up the box and loses extra food. Example: 18 food in the box, 3 food surplus. In FreeCiv, the city grows to size 2 with one food in the box; in Civ 2, the box is filled to 20 food, and the city will grow next turn.
3. In Civ 2, units with no attack factor (e.g. settlers and explorers) can occupy undefended cities. Since AI explorers didn't occupy my empty cities, I assume that doesn't hold true in FreeCiv.
4. Once you select an advance to research in Civ2, you can't change it.
General comments: I liked the carry-over of extra shields; it removes a lot of the micromanagement burden. Delaying settler production until a city grows is a nice touch. Initially, I had trouble recentering the screen, but it worked fine once I figured it out.
I missed the bar graph displays for gold, food, shields, etc. in the Civ2 city screen. All of the same information is presented numerically in FreeCiv, but I find the pictures in Civ2 easier to read at a glance.
The AI seems to share the Civ2 AI's preference for food above all else. Since shields seem to be rare on the FreeCiv map, I think there should be a greater emphasis on production. I played the early stages of several games, and was able to outstrip the AIs by using forests and plains to build lots of cities while the AIs were concentrating on building up population in their few cities. The AI seems to share the Civ2 AI's indecisiveness about wonders, constantly starting a wonder and then changing its mind.
I didn't play a game far enough to have any real combat with the AIs, but once I built Sun Tzu's I wouldn't expect them to put up much of a fight.
I don't mean this post to sound unduly negative; this is a remarkable programming effort. The game seemed commendably bug-free, and is better than Civ2 in some aspects. It's different in enough small ways to frustrate a veteran Civ2 player somewhat, but I think I could learn to like it.
1. Building a road or city on a special that yields 1 or more trade arrows provides an additional arrow in Civ2, no extra arrow in FreeCiv.
2. In FreeCiv, my cities seemed to grow as soon as the food box filled; Civ2 fills up the box and loses extra food. Example: 18 food in the box, 3 food surplus. In FreeCiv, the city grows to size 2 with one food in the box; in Civ 2, the box is filled to 20 food, and the city will grow next turn.
3. In Civ 2, units with no attack factor (e.g. settlers and explorers) can occupy undefended cities. Since AI explorers didn't occupy my empty cities, I assume that doesn't hold true in FreeCiv.
4. Once you select an advance to research in Civ2, you can't change it.
General comments: I liked the carry-over of extra shields; it removes a lot of the micromanagement burden. Delaying settler production until a city grows is a nice touch. Initially, I had trouble recentering the screen, but it worked fine once I figured it out.
I missed the bar graph displays for gold, food, shields, etc. in the Civ2 city screen. All of the same information is presented numerically in FreeCiv, but I find the pictures in Civ2 easier to read at a glance.
The AI seems to share the Civ2 AI's preference for food above all else. Since shields seem to be rare on the FreeCiv map, I think there should be a greater emphasis on production. I played the early stages of several games, and was able to outstrip the AIs by using forests and plains to build lots of cities while the AIs were concentrating on building up population in their few cities. The AI seems to share the Civ2 AI's indecisiveness about wonders, constantly starting a wonder and then changing its mind.
I didn't play a game far enough to have any real combat with the AIs, but once I built Sun Tzu's I wouldn't expect them to put up much of a fight.
I don't mean this post to sound unduly negative; this is a remarkable programming effort. The game seemed commendably bug-free, and is better than Civ2 in some aspects. It's different in enough small ways to frustrate a veteran Civ2 player somewhat, but I think I could learn to like it.
. Unlike civ 2 freeciv is not static; new features appear!
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