Opensource fan made Civilization II rebuild

[Blake00]

For anyone who's ever wished there was a opensource rebuild of Civilization 2, it turns out there is one! A talented member of the Civ community named Axx has worked on and off over the years on a Civ2 clone build and has recently been answering questions and posting links and pictures from his project here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/m...t-15983617

Before anyone says it yes there's FreeCiv and C-Evo but they're not 1:1 Civ2 clones (that attempt to replicate everything Civ2 does). They're their own Civ games that have a bit of Civ2 feel to them but are written completely differently and contain bits from multiple Civ games as well as using their own unique features & ideas.

Civ2's original source files were apparently lost in the downfall of Microprose, so it would be interesting to see what the fan community could do with an opensource Civ2 rebuild.

Screenshots from his project:

[HansLemurson]

I think FreeCiv does have a ruleset that is a proper copy of Civ2's, but the UI and "feel" of the game is nonetheless very different.

I wonder how he intends to implement the AI...
Maybe I should just read the civfanatics thread!

[Blake00]

I think FreeCiv does have a ruleset that is a proper copy of Civ2's, but the UI and "feel" of the game is nonetheless very different.

I wonder how he intends to implement the AI...
Maybe I should just read the civfanatics thread!

Exactly.. plus you can't run any civ2 scenarios and mods with it as it's a totally different engine not designed to replicate civ2's functions. Plus any 3rd party mod for FreeCiv (eg there actually was a Civ2 graphics mod for Freeciv made by a Russian fellow a few years ago) usually stops working the moment they release a new version (which is pretty often) so there's quite the graveyard of dead mods for FreeCiv from the last 20 years.

I just had some rude idiot on fb trashing the project because he felt FreeCiv with Civ2 rules turned on was all you need lol. Once I and others had shut down that argument he switched to "just play civ2 in dosbox" demonstrating his clear lack of knowledge of Civ2 (or anything else for that matter lol) considering it was a windows game lol. I thought about correcting him to say that running the game in a VM would be what he wanted but I wasn't gonna help his trolling haha.

Anyway, yup I just asked Axx about AI and sure enough he hasn't tackled that beast yet. Often a fan project killer sadly!

[HansLemurson]

Yeah. Unlike the game systems themselves, which are fairly transparent and well documented, the AI behavior generally has to be "guessed at".
Though with how buggy the Civ2 AI is, I'm not even sure I'd want to copy it.

One dream I've had for a long time would be to play Civ2 against a decent opponent, so that "Trying" didn't seem like a waste of effort. The AI is so broken that even on Deity, some AIs will just spin in circles in the corner. I once had a game where an AI had a decent start, but then decided that it had a divine mission to build a 2-wide chunk of road out into the wilderness across the continent before finally settling.

Civ3 was the first game with an AI that was actually dangerous.

[Brian Shanahan]

Yeah.  Unlike the game systems themselves, which are fairly transparent and well documented, the AI behavior generally has to be "guessed at".
Though with how buggy the Civ2 AI is, I'm not even sure I'd want to copy it.

One dream I've had for a long time would be to play Civ2 against a decent opponent, so that "Trying" didn't seem like a waste of effort.  The AI is so broken that even on Deity, some AIs will just spin in circles in the corner.  I once had a game where an AI had a decent start, but then decided that it had a divine mission to build a 2-wide chunk of road out into the wilderness across the continent before finally settling.

Civ3 was the first game with an AI that was actually dangerous.

I never realised they coded Civ 2 with the Langton's Ant AI.

[HansLemurson]

Yeah.  Unlike the game systems themselves, which are fairly transparent and well documented, the AI behavior generally has to be "guessed at".
Though with how buggy the Civ2 AI is, I'm not even sure I'd want to copy it.

One dream I've had for a long time would be to play Civ2 against a decent opponent, so that "Trying" didn't seem like a waste of effort.  The AI is so broken that even on Deity, some AIs will just spin in circles in the corner.  I once had a game where an AI had a decent start, but then decided that it had a divine mission to build a 2-wide chunk of road out into the wilderness across the continent before finally settling.

Civ3 was the first game with an AI that was actually dangerous.

I never realised they coded Civ 2 with the Langton's Ant AI.

You would be surprised.

Note the road from Delhi to Bombay, and the location of Madras.  I think it was only the placement of Pisae and lack of bridge-building that broke its trance.