Freeciv, CCTP and SMAC

telex4 · l33t Joined: 21 Sep 2002 Posts: 704 Location: Reading, UK

Ahoy!

I've been playing Freeciv for ages now against the AI, and I'm really getting bored of how poor it is. I've been monitoring the Freeciv site for news of 1.14.1 and 1.15 which will bring AI diplomacy and possibly the SDL client (see: http://freeciv.org/screenshots/1.14.1/) but there's no indication of how far away they are, and I doubt they'll be as good as the commercial games.

I've had a look at CCTP and SMAC and I can't work out which is better, nor whether it's worth shelling out £30 on either of them.

What are people's thoughts?

cato` · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 6:54 pm Post subject:

All I know is that those screenshots look nice

cato` · Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2003 11:46 pm Post subject:

Ok.... I've tried to get freeciv CVS to work with SDL, but I gave up :roll:

I had the same problem as this guy.And I don't have a clue what to do with the SDL_ttf-devel package... :oops:

Nuwen · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Mar 2003 Posts: 123

There's an ebuild for sdl-ttf, but it sounds like it's not up to date enough from the sound of it.

As for the original question, I'd recommend just playing the demos and checking them out. CCTP had some pretty cool special units and about the best combat model I've seen in a Civ game, but the interface wasn't so great in a lot of places, so it doesn't really hold up as well. SMAC is less radical, I never thought it did too much as far as gameplay, but I think it's generally the more popular of the two. It has lots of good features, and the interface is quite a bit more familiar.

I'm not sure they're worth that much, though. IIRC neither of them had particularly good AI, and the graphics kind of suck by today's standards. If dual booting is an option, Civ3 is much better IMHO.

nalin · Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:00 am Post subject:

First and foremost i swear on my mother that freeciv ai has got dumber in recent months, it used to be that youd "set ai hard" and the ai players are working on the pyrimids in round three nowadays they start about the time Im working on Leonardos workshop. Anyone else notice this, i think it corresponded to the release of the version that had extra content on the city dialouge (and no thats not ambiguous

...err a one of the recent versions)

Anyway, im a fan of CCTP though I have never played the linux port, if memory servers it was one of the early games ported to linux and though casting your cash vote might not carry the currency it once did, its a good game...the slashdot review is exceedingly positive and mentions that some of the porting enhanced the interface (over windows).

man those screenshots do really have me drooling

as an aside anyone remeber the original civ where looking up book page xxx and clicking the correct graphic was the anti-piracy feature...boy have we ever come a long way
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charlieg · Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2003 12:06 pm Post subject:

No no no... freeciv can be played over the net, it's designed to be played over the net.

Get a community of freecivers going before considering a switch to the Dark Side (tm).
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telex4 · l33t Joined: 21 Sep 2002 Posts: 704 Location: Reading, UK