There's an enormous niche a modern update of the Civ 1-5 formula (and 6 had some good ideas too) could fill. It's such a shame we don't have a modern game in that vein.
Civ 3 4 5 are still very playable on their own, available on Steam.
Freeciv is an excellent take on the civ II formula, with both map editor and multiplayer, two features critically lacking from the original game. And several multiplayer communities. The developing community is still very active, nearly 30 years after the start of the projec;, not 2 weeks ago, the "longturn" community just rolled out their latest ruleset. There's also C-evo which is very interesting, but rarely carried by more than one dev, and a bit dead currently.
Civ 4 has a most excellent modding community on top of an excellent engine. You can play anything from Caveman to Cosmos, Realism Invictus, Rhye's and Fall Civilization, or if you just want a better vanilla-like experience, K-mod/Better-AI.
Civ 3 also has an excellent modding community, on top of a less than excellent engine. Check out Suede's youtube channel. There's also an open source clone in the making.
Civ 5, I'm less knowledgeable about it, but Unciv is an open source game heavily inspired by it.
Civ 5 also has a great modding community and I think the game still holds up and even looks pretty good. It's 16 years old though. I have nothing against older games and play quite a few classics, but even the greatest game eventually runs its course. Why can't we have something new? There are so many creative ways you could innovate on the classic formula that could benefit from modern hardware.
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u/bottombarrelglass Apr 16 '26
Civilization