15 replies to this topic

[Japofran]

http://www.freecol.org/

How come nobody has requested this? Freeciv is on the site. Is it becuase it's still in version 0.x? Maybe the makers will polish it, but it will be the same game.

If it's apt for addition I'd be willing to review it.

[Eagle of Fire]

To be frank, I don't particularly like the graphics. What's the problem with remake games made by indies (like FreeCiv too) who just can't understand the very simple concept of "keeping it simple"? What was wrong with Colonization graphics if they managed to bring you everything you needed in a single screen (colony screen)?

I'm looking at the screenshots and all I see is a remake made only to have better graphics and poorly designed...

[Phaedris]

Freecol is more then just new graphics it adds features to Colonization like multiplayer across internet and lan, they are also improving the AI and after version 1.0 is released they will be adding in all the requested stuff like new nations better battle system ect.
Its one of the best remake projects I've seen  

[Juni Ori]

I strongly believe I've seen it multiple times in The Thread when I maintained it, but apparently it isn't anymore. To be honest, I don't like FreeCol even nearly as much as the original. It's a game that should had been spiced up instead of polishing and interface update, which in my opinion even failed.

[DeathDude]

Japofran, on Jan 15 2008, 07:57 PM, said:

http://www.freecol.org/

How come nobody has requested this? Freeciv is on the site. Is it becuase it's still in version 0.x? Maybe the makers will polish it, but it will be the same game.

If it's apt for addition I'd be willing to review it.

I could've sworn this was already on the list, or at the very least requested, anyways this can go up on the site, the game is actually quite far ahead in development.

Japofan you are free to review it if you like.

[Japofran]

To be honest I have the same feelings about the graphics and whatnot. Well you'll read what I think in my review soon enough --although I'm not going to be harsh altogether.

Okay I've just read the submission guidelines since this is my first contribution. Where should I send the review and screenshots once I'm done? Maybe you'll want to tell me via PM. And what about the snippets/ thumbnails, do you want me to make them?

[Eagle of Fire]

Quote

Freecol is more then just new graphics it adds features to Colonization like multiplayer across internet and lan, they are also improving the AI and after version 1.0 is released they will be adding in all the requested stuff like new nations better battle system ect.

None of those make sense or are really justified, especially the new battle system. The battle system is more than fine in the original Colonization game, in fact it's way better than Civilization II and up! Perhaps even better than Civilization...

[Japofran]

Eagle of Fire, on Jan 16 2008, 05:47 PM, said:

None of those make sense or are really justified, especially the new battle system. The battle system is more than fine in the original Colonization game, in fact it's way better than Civilization II and up! Perhaps even better than Civilization...

What do you like about the original battle system and what do you like or don't about the others you mentioned. Please tell me so I can have other opinion before writing the review.

Actually I myself kind of totally hated the original battle system in Colonization. It's one of the two things that prevent that game from being perfect, in my opinion of course, and the only one of the two which the developers are to blame for (the other being the memory limit on the total number of units). Not the bases of the system about unit strengths and modifiers, which are the same story as in Civilization, but the randomness and the strange trends. You could attack a pathetic Indian village with a dozen of Spanish artillery (14) in a row and lose every time, and your fortress (15) could be attacked by soldiers (3) and they could succeed many times in a row. Also one curious fact was that when you had one single ship it got only damaged every time it lost, never sunk. If you had many ships they lost much more often, but besides they almost always got sunk; so every time you attacked the enemy with a large navy, it got inevitably pruned back to a couple of warships or a single one in no time. It was impossible to rule the seas or to apply blockades.

So firstly the combat resolution was hugely random, to the point of causing very unreallistic results, and of beating the purpose of unit strenghts and modifiers. I don't like this in a strategy game because it's unrealistic and actually beats the purpose of any strategy. However I know a lot of people actually prefer it this way. But at the same time, in Colonization the randomness was not random, it felt as if there were additional hidden modifiers which you weren't told about in the Combat Analysis window, again beating its purpose completely. This second trait was completely unwarranted and in the end loathsome, in my opinion.

After playing Freecol it seems to me that the combat is much the same, and still quite random and any result is possible even when the unbalance of forces is great. But the strange trends don't appear --no wonder since they were undocumented in the original game--, and I can't but be happy about that.

[Eagle of Fire]

This last reply of yours puzzle me much Japofran. There is certainly no hidden or unwriten rules in Colonization, nor have I ever noticed incredible streaks in any of the games I played. And let me tell you that I did play a lot of games since I bought this game.

I noticed too that your ships seem to sunk more often when you have many of them and that you can't sunk the last ship of a nation (or have your last ship sunk). This is however not an unwritten rule, but a feature coded to prevent the player or a computer controled nation to lose a critical asset in the game: being able to go to the old world to get new colonists and supplies. I am not certain anymore if it was written in the book, but I think it was. I'd have to read it again for it been well over 10 years that I last perused it. What I think through experience though is that when you have less than two ships, the chance of having it sunk when it lose a battle is 0%, and that percentage increase as you get more and more ships in your fleet. I don't understand why you're saying that ruling the sea and applying blockades don't work, it's my standard strategy in all my games and it works wonders. Especially since my fleet is mainly composed of privateers and after you get Drake in the congress...

The combat in colonization is far from random. It's very well made at it's base (as you mentioned yourself) and is built to favor defenders over attackers. Cannons are not really made to attack natives (even if I think I remember they get a bonus for attacking settlements) but works way better at defense. The whole offensive game is built on Dragoons and horses. I played a whole game without losing a single musket a few days ago only by using Dragoons who got back to base when they got defeated to get new horses.

Also, there is no hidden combat modifications in Colonization, and that alone is what make me say that the combat system in Colonization is better than Civilization. In Civilization, it get very obvious very fast that pikemen and the like get bonuses against cavalry units but it is not written anywhere. Not in the booklets, not in the pedia, not in the units descriptions, nowhere. In Colonization, all the possible modifiers were listed in the booklet manual which came in the game and I remember that booklet to be quite thick in comparison to most other games in the same era. And there is no stupid 50% defense bonus for defending on the other side of a river either...

The only thing I have no choice to agree with is the unit memory limit, but even that have a good reason to back it up. Maybe you were not aware of that, but Colonization was made to run on a 486, in a time that 80megs HD were commonplace and that computer ran on so little memory a modern pocket calculator would laugh at it in superiority. This is the single reason why there is a limit, because the creator of that game had to think about the end users who would have problems running the game. And I do remember that the game ran pretty slow on my own 486 computer at end of turn, but worked swell in the actual turn. The only thing I always thought was stupid was that you can't access the custom house unless you have a mouse, and at the time I didn't have one and had to play the game with keyboard only...

But even then, I never reached said limit in any of my games. The game is just not made for a player to have more than about twenty colony anyways. The game is centered (and again, it was well pressed in the booklet) about having independance as fast as possible, and the game give you a huge score bonus (if not multiplier, if I remember well) if you manage to declare independance before 1400. That's the whole point and goal of the game...

[Japofran]

As I said I'm aware that the developers weren't to blame for the memory limit, and it's true that it didn't interfere with a normal game. It's only that after playing dozens of normal games I played one à la Civ, trying to build an empire as big as possible, and being loyal to my king who charged me a 75% tax. Who cares since there are no costs in this game and in the end you always ended up with too much money.

Well I for one noticed a lot of strange things in combat. Like I was attacking a colony/settlement and half a dozen of my units were defeated in a row despite having great advantage according to the combat analysis. Then I ended turn and afterwards attacked with the rest of the units and all of them won... Things like these. May have to do with the seeds used to generate random numbers, I don't know.

But it seemed to me very strange, maybe it's that I get tired of too random combat resolution, for example that's why I haven't ended a game of Battle for Wesnoth. My standard of randomness for combat resolution would be Panzer General or, talking about Microprose games, Civ2. And sea combat sucks in Colonization, having a colony turning two tiles' worth of forest into warships only to have a caravel sunk them after a service life of four turns, gets on my nerves really fast.

Artillery gets a huge penalization when fighting in the open (outside a colony and not fortified or attacking a non fortified enemy), but it's the best unit to attack colonies/settlements and fortified units. Actually if you resort to the manual you'll see that it's stronger in attack (7) than in defense (5). Not that it matters since it can still be defeated when attacking an unarmed brave in a village whenever the random number generator feels like it.

About Civ, since Civ1 doesn't have pikemen I suppose you mean Civ2. In Civ2 the pedia does mention the pikemen's bonus against cavalry, and the stats for them are 1/2*/1 (the * meaning "doubles against cavalry") and no other unit has that *. Maybe the hits and firepower confused you, they affect combat a lot and don't exist in either Civ1 or Civ3, and in Civ2 the explanation about them was hidden in a certain section of the pedia, but it existed. Anyway the combat in Civ2 has relatively very little randomness, unlike any other strategy game: there was some variation, sometimes the units would lose more or less hits, but still if you provided a little margin you always knew in advance the result of your strategies. Actually the pedia (in Civ2, I think in Civ1 it doesn't) tells you exactly how combat is resolved, that is not only stats and modifiers, but also how they translate into per cent probabilities. I don't remember that Colonization included that information.

[Eagle of Fire]

I don't know much about Civ II, except that I stopped playing it because I became sick of the exact same problem all Civ games have, which is the random battles. But as I said, that's something I never seen in Colonization. My experience in Civ II is so small that I'd be lying to say that I have enough experience to be certain. I just assumed it was the same.

In Civilization III, the combat simulator suck balls. The problem in Civ III is that the computer knows in advance what the result will be and will act accordingly, always using the best result possible even though it's impossible to predict for a normal user. I didn't even bother to try Civ IV, but I heard it's exactly the same but with better graphics. And in Civ III, it's quite obvious that certain type of units have an huge advantage against other type of units. Like for example Archers can decimate defensive units even if the defensive unit is actually stronger and fortified. Pikemen and spearmen hold their ground very well against cavalry units and more often than not cavalry units don't retreat even though they should. Things like that kill though games, and make them bland.

I am hearing a lot about RNG's lately. It seems like a computer is completely unable to really dish out random numbers accuratly, and this is what is explaining the streaks. However, I always played Colonization in either pure DOS or in DOSBox, which may be a reason why I never experienced those strange streaks. I'd not be surprised about yet another strange Windows anyways...

[Japofran]

Really Civ2 is one of the most determinist strategy games I've ever seen, and really my experience with Colonization is the opposite. I've also played it in DOS and DOSBox. Maybe we should start comparing what results we get how many times with what stats but I don't feel like it now.

From what I read once, computers generate random numbers by starting with a number called seed, which may be arbitrary, or sometimes things like the time in seconds in an attempt to add randomness. Anyway then some complex operations are made with the seed, and for example only the last two digits (tens and units) are taken as the random number. The result should be random in practice, although it all depends on how it's coded. Anyway programming languages usually include a function to generate random numbers already.

[Japofran]

Anyone can tell me whether this game can be multiplayed via LAN? See attachment, from it I infer that it can, but I don't have a LAN and don't quite know how it works. It's for the review.

Attached Files

•  multiplay.png   127.96K   59 downloads

[a1s]

I'm pretty sure you can just run a pseudo-lan game on your computer ("localhost") with 2 copies of the game, one server, one client. (and BTW, I think you can play all over the Internet, not just your LAN).

downloading the game now to test this idea.

Ok so the process goes as follows:
1. someone hast to create a game by choosing the "start multilayer game" radio button.
2. then he and he alone gets the ability to change the map and other game settings. also chose his nation.
2.a the first person also has to find out his IP address should he not know it by heart (or if it is dynamically updated).
3. then the other person has to connect to the first person PC by choosing the "Join multilayer game" radio button, and writing first person's IP in the "host" box.
4.after joining he can chose his nationality. nothing else. interestingly enough you can be of the same nationality, but you'll still play against each other.
5. after both players check the "I'm ready" checkbox the first player can start the game.

scree by screen guide of the process

[Japofran]

a1s, on Jan 19 2008, 12:52 PM, said:

and BTW, I think you can play all over the Internet, not just your LAN.

Yes, I said in the review I submitted that the game supported multiplay over the Internet, it's that I didn't include LAN and then I thought it was also supported and you seem to agree. After all I think a LAN and the Internet are the same kind of networks, only one hanging from the other. I guess the only way that Internet multiplay was supported and LAN wasn't would be that you couldn't act as server only client.

So let the updaters include this detail about LAN support...

EDIT: I don't see the files I uploaded any longer so I guess they've been sent forward.