FreeCiv - are we really that civilized?

I recall when I started gaming on my Pentium 133 laptop, just when Blizzard's Diablo was hitting the shelves.

Oh, MAN what a game! I was hooked. Warcraft II was also out and I remember the hours I used to spend wasting away in front of the computer. It got to be too much. Round about the time I convinced my mother to buy me a $5000.00 Dell workstation for Christmas (with the world-legendary Pentium 4 (!) inside) to play Starcraft with, I was spending hours every day just clicking away, drones, zealots, marines, siege tanks...

That's when I hit the wall. My Diablo CD had been missing for some time and I found it under my mattress - it was like picking up the flawed vacuum crystal leaking evil essence into the world; TIME TO GO OLD SCHOOL AND PLAY DIABLO AGAIN. I did, all night, went to school the next day, then did an all-nighter again the second night. The third day I was reeling, but drinking down the coffee and determined to make it through hell (literally). That night I finished the game, at 4 or 5 in the morning, watched the ending video, and sat back, lifeless and empty.

It dawned on me with horror that all those lost hours of sleep hadn't done a single iota for me; no one had paid me to do it, I had to hide it from my mother and had to stay awake at school now and fight the excruciating need to sleep for another 18 or so hours. All just to see some low-resolution end-game video which in reality was just the first promotion for Diablo II.

Did I stop playing computer games? Yes, for a time. Eventually, practicing my denial tactics, I became like one of those ex-junkies who raise their chin and sniff in disgust when they hear the bad word. Warcraft III? Ugh (I WANNA PLAY!!) World of Warcraft? what a waste of time! (psst - How much did you say the membership costs?) All in all, though, I managed to stay mostly clear.

Then came my switch to Linux on my own laptop, and the beginning of work as an IT consultant. Suddenly, I was alone in my own apartment, dealing with a sometimes frustrating job... (can you see me piling up the excuses already?) On my Linux distro, I found freeciv.

Freeciv is an open-source strategy game very much like Civilization or Age of Empires, if you've never heard of it, you'll find it at http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.

The funny part of this is that freeciv is not high-resolution, it's not immersive, it's actually quite tedious sometimes. But for some strange reason it was so addicting that I found myself locked inside the house the entire weekend doing nothing but, and coming to work Monday looking like a Holocaust survivor.

In the end, I can only chalk it up to geekness. I love freeciv because of how complex it can be sometimes, how well-balanced the game play is (and as a result, how many different ways there are to win the game), how realistic in that a lot of historically successful real-world strategies will work inside the game, and how downright nightmarish it can be sometimes to keep track of the thousand and one details going on during your turn, especially during the latter phases of the game.

I've even started trying to wean my little brother off his WOW heroin, by providing replacement Freeciv methadone, a practice with dubious results at best - when he sees the subject of government or happiness looming, he's ready to quit and get back to mangling monsters. Each to his own, I guess.

In the end, all I can say is that I have it pretty well justified: a Freeciv match is like playing chess with an opponent, it hones strategy and potentially increases IQ... but the truth is that sometimes I just need a break, and for geeks that just may be diversion in the form of planning conquest of other civilizations, AI or (preferably) human.