Several years ago, after high school, during university studies, I remember how some nights, before going to sleep, I turned on the computer thinking "well let's play Civilization for an hour, before going to bed, so to go to sleep". After moving my armies, attacking neighboring populations, making peace talks, founding a new city, discovering new technologies and solving public order problems, I turned off the computer and discovered with surprise and terror that the 6 in the morning ... This was Sid Meyer's Civilization, a masterpiece in the history of video games that never tired and that made you spend hours and hours in front of the screen without being aware of it. Civilization can be played on the PC and also online via the internet for free .
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For those unfamiliar with Civilization, I say briefly that it is a turn-based strategy game in which it is necessary to develop a civilization from scratch and make it grow faster than rival countries. Obviously, civilization with advanced technology will eventually beat all the other nations to conquer the world. But you don't necessarily have to play as conquerors, you can also build a peaceful relationship with all the neighbors and live in peace or live on an island, armor it and be quiet in isolation.
The ability to simulate Civilization's political and military scenarios is considered by many to be a true test of a person's leadership skills and a geographic test of how the distribution of resources can dramatically impact a country's prosperity. Despite some flaws and some bugs in the artificial intelligence of the opponents, the game makes an extremely realistic simulation on political and commercial relations between peoples and is extremely instructive.
The official Civilization game can be purchased in stores in the 2019 Civilization 6 version.
Those who want to play the first Civilization for free can instead connect to the Play Classic Games site, where there are the original versions of Civilization 1 and 2, free online.
Those who don't want to pay but enjoy this incredible game, for free, can instead download the open source versions of Civilization for free, absolutely identical to the original. These are FreeCiv and C-evo, two free games, also translated into Italian, equal to the true Civilization, to be downloaded and installed on Windows, Linux and Mac PCs and also to be played online. FreeCiv is the liveliest project, truly comparable to the original Civilization, also playable online on the browser at play.freeciv.org
If it is true that open-source games usually have horrible graphics, FreeCiv, from this point of view, is saved with nice and nice graphics .
Before starting a game you have to choose whether to start with a randomly created Earth and play alone against the computer or whether to join a game that has already started and play on the net. Among other options, you can configure the number of opponents to fight against and how intelligent they should be (therefore the level of difficulty). Furthermore, for the Earth on which you then start playing, you can also decide how large it must be, how much percentage of trees, water, oceans and small islands, the average of the temperature and then the general guidelines on the economy, sociology, science, military regime. This type of possible alteration makes it very fun to experiment with different types of worlds and social trends. Then you have to choose which country to lead and which leader to impersonate .
In the list are the historical heads of state for each country, both of modern states and of ancient or medieval civilizations. When the game starts, you only see a group of illuminated boxes with dark around them. It means that the world must be explored and discovered as we develop and move forward in the game. The first thing to decide is the location in which to found the first city and start development.
The movement of the characters can be done with the keyboard or with the mouse and, by right clicking on each box or object, you will see detailed statistics and tabs. The game is turn-based but if an explorer is told to go 20 squares up, the movement will be automatic until it reaches its destination. The game therefore, even if it is all done with reasoning, can also run fast if you already had clear ideas on what to do. Every time you click on a city, you will find all the information related to the production of resources, the levels of happiness and much more.
Each city can be improved with new buildings, then new roads can be created in its territory to make military or commercial units move faster, defensive barriers or irrigated fields can be created. When you come across other civilizations, diplomacy begins with a dialogue between the leaders that can bring peace and trade agreements or declarations of war. Each leader, according to the people he meets, has a different character, he can therefore be more aggressive, expansionist or peaceful. During development, scientists, depending on the resources provided, discover new technologies that can be oriented towards war or religion, philosophy, culture and trade.
Those who have played Civilization in the past will find FreeCiv absolutely up to par while those who have never played it, I can only advise you to try and fall in love with this masterpiece that has made the history of video games for PC.
If you don't like FreeCiv, an excellent alternative is FreeCol open source clone of another game called Colonization, similar but with some difference compared to Civilization, based more on a colonization of a new world than on the creation of civilization. Settlers must therefore be attracted with money or religious freedom, collaborate with Europe, choose whether to become a friend or enemy of Native Americans, to prey on them or to make them collaborate in the birth of the new world.
FreCiv was on my list of free games for Windows, Linux and Mac PCs.
