OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III

Posted by klaussilveira 12 hours ago

OpenCiv3: Open-source, cross-platform reimagining of Civilization III(openciv3.org)

568 points | 160 commentspage 3

PlatoIsADisease 9 hours ago|

Wake me up when OpenCiv4, but only when there's an option for smart AI rather than boosted fake AI.

I remember losing 6pm to 3am playing civ 4 one time. One more turn...

(But I'm not sure what I need openCiv for... the steam game is good. Maybe its just useful for the long term.)

1980phipsi 9 hours ago||

I would love to see someone use modern machine learning techniques to make a kick ass Civ AI.

Marsymars 5 hours ago||

Genuine question - would that be amenable to fast AI? It's less of a problem on modern PCs running Civ4, but on contemporary systems late-game large maps with many AI/units could really drag during turn-processing.

lurk2 4 hours ago||

You don’t necessarily need it to learn during the game, it would be enough for it to learn between games. If you’ve played the game long enough there are behaviors you can exploit that wouldn’t work against a human player. They iterated on the AI in Beyond the Sword and fixed some of the more abusable mechanics in Civilization V (e.g. by introducing diplomatic penalties when you camp units next to an AI’s borders), but it’s just inevitable that once you’ve played a game long enough you will find these kinds of exploitable patterns.

The customization available in IV makes it basically infinitely replayable, but the AI makes the trajectory of each game too predictable if you understand the mechanics well enough.

Lots of old strategy games have been revived by introducing new factions that change the game’s meta; imagine if this process was automated by training the AI on recorded games from the entire playerbase, or on games recorded locally to adapt to the user’s unique style of play.

JojoFatsani 5 hours ago||

Civ4 is super cheap on Steam BTW

jmyeet 9 hours ago||

I have a long history with the Civ series. I spent a massive amount of time playing Civ1. My next most played was Civ4 and most of that wasn't the base game. It was a mod that had a very loyal fan base: Fall From Heaven 2 [1]. I have tried a couple of times to get all this to work on a modern PC but I think I'm played out on the game and I never quite get it off the gorund. I have a ton of nostalgia for it though.

Civ5 started the whole hex thing, which I was never excited about. Yes, Civ4 had stacks of doom but Civ5 turned into a puzzle of moving units in order because you could only have one per hex.

Anyway, Civ2 and Civ3 never got as much play from me. I'm a little surprised that people had the same enthusiasm. My memory of these 2 was that they just added a bunch of tedium, like I distinctly remember that tile improvement changed to turning farms into supermarkets. It's been a lot of years so I might be misremembering. Maybe I just dind't give them enough time. Or maybe nothing could capture my initial enthusiasm for the novelty that was Civ1.

Anyway, i'm always happy to see projects like this. Games really do live forever. Like people will invent software for free to keep running them (ie emulators).

The Civ series has kinda defied the usual trend to entshittification. I'm really thinking of SimCity here. It's hard to describe how much EA shit the bed with SimCity %, so much so that it basically launched Cities: Skylines, which itself has had issues with the CS2 launch.

Does Civ3 have a massive fanbase compared to Civ1, Civ2 or Civ4? I really don't know.

[1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from-heaven-...

danielparsons 4 hours ago|

I love the hex system - adds a lot of tactical depth. Choice of naval vs air vs land focus often comes down to who you're fighting and where. Then you turn around to fight someone else and realize your 20 veteran frigates are near useless despite your new enemy being coastal because all of their cities are tucked away in bays or behind hills...

jlarocco 10 hours ago||

I don't know about the dedicated Civilization fans, but 3 was the only version I played.

I didn't play it much, but when I did I'd play for 6+ hours at a time. I'll check this out later tonight, and might see if I can find the old CD and get the original running.

sevensor 8 hours ago|

Ooof, good luck. Civ3 copy protection was intense. I had to get out my old Win2k disk and stand up a VM. Attempts to rip an iso will be complicated by the fact that they deliberately wrote bad data to the disk. All of this is surmountable, but unless you enjoy a very particular kind of fun, you may prefer to spend $2 on GoG.

Joel_Mckay 11 hours ago||

How does this compare with https://freeciv.org for game play =3

WildWeazel 10 hours ago||

Gameplay wise this is a straight remake of Civ3 as a baseline, while allowing much greater customization. Freeciv is definitely an inspiration, but it's kind of its own thing.

dleslie 10 hours ago||

Not sure, when Civ2Civ3 is now the default ruleset in Freeciv.

https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Civ2civ3

jrm4 10 hours ago|

uh oh

yeah, that's dangerous for me, this is the ONE that got me started