I'm not a hippy, but I game like one.

September 25, 2009 1:37 PM

Is there a browser based Civilization clone that's any good?

shmegegge asked it first on the blue, but I'm asking it here =)
I loved Civ2 the most, and I currently play KOL, AdventureQuest and Cities (RPGs, but mentioned to give you an idea of what I like). What I don't like is being forced to duel other players or protect my land from them. I only wanna fight the game!

And it doesn't have the be a civ clone as much as have building and research be a big part of the game play. Facebook games are good, too.

posted by soelo to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Also, I have not played it in a long time, but Ikariam was fun while I played it, but I got annoyed at the constant attacks from other players.
posted by soelo at 1:42 PM on September 25

could 'free' or 'darn near free' be added as a criteria?
posted by Think_Long at 2:11 PM on September 25

Well, there's FreeCiv, but it's not a browser game. But it is worth the download.
posted by cmgonzalez at 9:39 PM on September 25

Browser based is pretty much my top criteria. I know there are lots of downloadable ones, but I split my computer time between lots of different machines. And free is always good. The post that this question came from was about how Evony pretty much sucks unless you buy the "optional" stuff.
posted by soelo at 10:20 PM on September 25

I really enjoyed Immortal Cities: Nile Online while I was playing it. I think it's a pretty good design. I stopped playing as my work for my dissertation got more intense and I also had gotten to a point where I felt like victory was inevitable, but that's because I had gone in with a bunch of friends and that made resource acquisition really easy, especially as I had joined a few weeks later than they did.

You start out with a city with one luxury resource as well as clay, wheat and reeds. With those basics you can make bricks, pottery and baskets. That will let you build things just fine for a while, but eventually you'll need to start getting luxury goods to continue to advance, and to found new cities, but you'll need to trade or make allies to get the ones you don't have. Also, you can build up to four cities, max, and there's 8 kinds of luxuries, so you're always going to need to deal with trade and/or diplomacy.

Once you've grown a good bit, you'll also need stone, which you have to get from monument sites out in the desert (all the cities are along the Nile, you see). While cities are immune from any PvP play, monument sites are not. They usually start out occupied by bandits, so you'd need to build up an army to clear those out, but other players can also attack them.

Monument sites are also where you can build monuments! Either a pyramid or a Sphinx (really just an aesthetic difference). They can boost your production and also improve your score and are necessary elements to reaching the end game status of immortal.

Markets and trade are kept pretty local. Your market's range up and down the river is determined by the level of market you've built up, but even with huge markets you're limited to 10 - 12 nomes in either direction. Also, the further away a trade partner is, the longer it'll take to reach them (up to a max of 24 hours). This is also the case for sending troops, but the ratio of land resources (city sites & monuments sites) is such that you'll really only need to worry about immediate neighbors starting fights with you. There's not much profit in sending troops far away to cause someone trouble, especially since troops cost a lot in upkeep.

In theory, you should be able to play the game and complete it without paying anything. When you start the game you're given a number of scarabs, which are the currency required for a number of advances. Building up your city past a certain size costs a scarab. A new city costs a scarab. Building a monument, etc. The free scarabs are enough to complete the game, in theory, but it'd be fairly difficult. Buying scarabs isn't that expensive and you really can play the game just fine without doing so. They also do provide some aids to game play, but nothing that gives a spendthrift player a game breaking advantage.

All in all, one of the better designed browser civ games I've seen.

Also: The wiki
posted by ursus_comiter at 2:43 AM on September 26

Also, the pace of the game is such that you just log in once, or maybe twice a day after you've gotten started up. There's no need to babysit and if you miss a day, eh, you've possibly maxed out production of something. No biggie.
posted by ursus_comiter at 2:45 AM on September 26

Another vote for Nile Online. Ursus more or less nailed it. I left when everyone switched from the test server to the official one and I lost half my trading partners.
posted by Hactar at 10:17 PM on September 26

I started playing Nile last night, so thanks ursus_comiter. It seems a lot like ikariam.
posted by soelo at 8:37 AM on September 28