App Profile: Freeciv Go

marignymatt

Rating: 5/5

This is a good port of Freeciv to iOS. The controls work well, the game looks good, and the AI plays pretty well. It uses what used to be an experimental ruleset, and that is not changeable. It also lacks most of the tabular reports that make a larger empire manageable, especially later in the game. I would imagine that porting the ruleset customization and the missing tabular reports shouldn’t be too hard, so I’m hoping those are in the works.

PopLockKing

Rating: 2/5

There’s definitely a game here that resembles the original Freeciv but this one won’t be much of a hit. For starters the AI on every level is perfect so unless you are looking for an immediate challenge you’ll hate this. Secondly, the algorithm does you no favors and the interface doesn't help. It will just spring things on you with the only indicator of attack being a small red dot or your cities randomly being erased by enemies. The other nations also seem to be constantly buffed. No matter what you do you will have less money then them and your veterans will lose to their green troops. Over all it might be fun if you get lucky by putting it on one enemy and choose islands so that you don’t have 5 horsemen rushing you turn 5 but other than that you won’t find this game to be very fun. It was an attempt but should go into the oven for a lot longer. It’s missing multiple pieces that make rts games fun.

theilkhan

Rating: 3/5

The game isn’t bad, but with attention to a few details it could be so much better. Here are my complaints: (1) No “minimal”, or no way to see some kind of overview map of the whole world. (2) Moving units is a real pain. You have to click the “go to tile” button ever single time, and that is so annoying. It would be a lot nicer if I could just select a unit, and then tap the tile to move to. (3) The game needs to be more in-your-face about some things. When nations want to talk to me, the game just puts a little red dot on the “nations” icon. It is super easy to overlook. It needs to actually pop up a dialog where you can talk with the other nation. (4) Technologies take waaay to long to get at the beginning of the game. It feels like the game starts incredibly slow. (5) It would be nice to be able to play on an actual world map.