A new major update has arrived for Freeciv

Nov 23, 2014 15:31 GMT  ·  By

Freeciv is a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game that is inspired by the Civilization series. It's still maintained and developed to this day, not to mention the fact that it's the only completely free game of this type.

Freeciv is takes its inspiration from Civilization I and II, which were originally developed by the famous MicroProse studio. These titles were original made 15 or 20 years ago, so only older gamers might find Freeciv familiar. Even if you haven't played the original games, this open source iteration is a good solution to get acquainted.

Now that Linux gamers have a lot more games to choose from, with the advent of Steam for Linux and other platforms, good open source titles are hard to come by. Freeciv is one of the last to follow this model and it's good to see that the development is continuing unimpeded.

Freeciv 2.5.0 Beta 2 shows great promise

This games has been around for a long time and you might think that its developers have managed to implement pretty much everything they wanted until now.

The truth is that Civilization I and II were much less complex titles than Freeciv and devs have expanded the gameplay in numerous ways. This is one of the reasons the changelogs continue to be quite big.

"Freeciv is a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, fighting to obtain the ultimate goal: To become the greatest civilization."

"Players of the Civilization® series by Microprose® should feel at home, since one aim of Freeciv is to have optional modes (called rulesets) with compatible rules. Freeciv 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," reads the official website.

Unlike the Civilization series, this game features support for 126 players, complete Internet support, more than 50 different playable units, and 541 nations.

These numbers are changing all the time and numerous improvements and tweaks are made in each edition. For example, the current version comes with a new island generator, new rulesets, better AI, and improved pathfinding.

Check out the complete changelog for all the updates and fixes introduced in this new version. You can download Freeciv 2.5.0 Beta 2 right now from Softpedia. Please keep in mind that this is the source code and that you will need to compile the game.

Freeciv (10 Images)

Freeciv is a complex game
Everyone stars the same way in FreecivFreeciv starts small
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