Freeciv: A Free Strategy Game

Sid Meier’s Civilization is one of the most popular games ever. The chance to build a society from scratch, fight wars, and get to space is irresistible for some. Naturally, some game players run Linux for more serious pursuits. What is interesting is that for some of those players, one of their serious pursuits became creating the game.

The Freeciv project was born in November 1995, about a year after the release of Civilization 1. Freeciv 1.0 came out six weeks later, though a flurry of updates produced v1.0f three weeks later. By the time Civilization III came out in October 2001, Freeciv was up to v1.12, and v2.0 was released in May 2005. openSUSE 10.3 includes a beta of v2.1.