14 DAY TRIAL // Freeciv, a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, is now at version 2.4.3.
Freeciv is inspired by Civilization I and II from MicroProse, and gamers should find this title quite familiar, since one aim is to have optional modes (called rulesets) with compatible rules. Not many people will remember the beginning of the Civilization franchise, but even if you are a new player, you owe it to yourself to try Freeciv at least once.
"Freeciv is a Free and Open Source empire-building strategy game inspired by the history of human civilization. The game commences in prehistory and your mission is to lead your tribe from the Stone Age to the Space Age."
"The game is maintained by an international team of coders and enthusiasts, and is easily one of the most fun and addictive network games out there! That also means it has very extensive multilanguage support, something rare in games," the devs say on the official website.
According to the changelog, when units are moved in the aftermath of a broken alliance, the client can no longer crash when manipulating those units, the server no longer sends unhelpful information that could trigger the crash in old clients, and the client is robust against this behavior from old servers, the server can no longer leak information about how many units are in an enemy city, players can no longer accidentally receive free technologies at the start of the game due to uninitialized memory, and players who lose their first city before acquiring their second can now get a free Palace in their second city.
Also, games with large numbers of units and/or cities in their history (tens of thousands) can no longer crash, a reason is now provided when players can't attack something, when a trade route is canceled due to a better one being established, the player whose action initiated this is now notified, Diplomats and Spies can now steal Future Tech, the multiplayer ruleset now defaults to an isometric topology, Barbarian players without a capital no longer suffer from crippling (or any) shield waste, and nuclear units in supplied rulesets can no longer gain useless veteran levels from Airports.
Check out the complete changelog for all the updates and fixes introduced in this new version. You can download Freeciv 2.4.3 right now from Softpedia. Please keep in mind that this is the source code and that you will need to compile the game.