Civ-Online™ or Civilization Online is the title of a text-based role-playing game (often known as a MUD) produced by a small English team of three people. Players manage their medieval empires in various High Fantasy territories within the Civ realm. This is the first playable version of the game and is currently in Age I, as Beta. It is a very young project, aging at just several weeks, but has shown promising growth from the launch. It is currently free, however plays may purchase additional in-game items; such as money or turns.

Technical Information

Civ-Online™ is a text-based game built using the third party resources: PHP, MySQL and basic HTML and CSS.

Currently, the game does not use stand-alone clients, but instead uses the player's browser; whether that be Firefox, Internet Explorer or others. Statistically, the most used browser for Civ-Online™ is Firefox. There have been talks of developing a stand-alone client for the game, which would solve all possible technical problems caused by the vast number of different browsers.

History

Civ-Online™ has a simple history, which derives from its founder's incentive to work on his love for Sid Meier's collection of the massively popular PC game series Civilizaion I,II,III and IV. Launched during early January of 2007, The numbers of players slowly yet consistently increase daily, and a successful future is likely to form, creating an interesting history similar to the many other popular text-based mmorpgs.

Gameplay

The basic features of Civ-Online™ resemble other text-based and browser-based role-playing games. Players sign-up and set the foundations to their ancient empire. The races that are prevalent in most text-based strategy games, are shown in Civ-Online™ via the choice of four ancient civilizations:

Ancient Greek

Ancient Rome

Ancient Egyptian

Ancient Ottoman

Each with their own bonuses:

Greek ~ 10% Attack

Roman ~ 10% Research

Egyptian ~ -10% Building Cost

Ottoman ~ 90% Stealth Points

Civ-Online's gaming environment revolves around players interacting with each other over the four fictional territories:

The Great Plains

Western Province

Yuaktz

Shleincyrodil

Each territory has the ability to evade or attack others due to the border system - only civilizations within bordering territories can battle.

Main Functions

Players have a wide variety of variables by which to develop their empires. There are the two common divides within many games: The Economic or The Warfare doctrine. Players may choose to concentrate on growing economically, and hopefully becoming and economic super-power, or they may choose to concentrate on battling and hopefully reaching domination within a region. Each doctrine contributes towards Power - a measurement of each civilization and determiner of a player's achievement.

Alliances can be formed informally within Civ-Online's forums, or formally, via the diplomacy section in-game. Alliances, along with the many other dynamic variables, allow a greater sense of freedom and non-linearity.

Possibly Civ-Online's most proud and most recent update, is the Civ Economy. This mimics, at a basic level, the constant fluctuations in value of commodities. This is achieved by the buying and selling of three essential in-game items:

Land

Turns

Food

Land - The most valuable commodity within the game, can either be explored for, purchased via stock in the economy, or traded in the market section whereby players negotiate personal deals. Land was made such a valuable resource as of the late January updates. The reason for its rarity and value, is the system of which building abides. To construct buildings, and therefore increase one's netscore, a player must obtain sufficient land within his territory. Buildings are particularly land intensive hence the huge demand for land.

Turns - Similar to money as it allows players to progress and carry out actions. Turns can be obtained via personal trading in the market, on the economy or by constructing labs. Labs allow a generation of 10 turns per hour.

Food - The most abundant and therefore least valuable resource. Food can be gained on the economy, market or more popularly - via construction of farms, which generate 100 units of food each. However, the output of farms varies depending on the territory's weather the empire inhabits:

Rain ( 10% output bonus)

Sunny ( 15% output bonus)

Over-Cast (no bonus)

Frost (-25% output)

Each player's civilization depends upon a thriving population. Homes house 10 peasants each, and generate £1000 in tax per household, per hour. Each peasant requires one food unit to survive, therefore a well planned ratio needs to be applied when building homes and farms. Failure to provide enough food results in death and a declining population. To be able to train men, peasants are needed.

Battling within Civ-Online™ is most popular, as each player takes the competitive edge and undergoes the race for top. There are leagues within Civ-Online™ which allow only certain civilizations to battle. Each league is determined by the amount of players and the power of each. Only player's with similar power can battle. Currently, there are twelve leagues.

Each ancient civilization has uniquely named units:

Greek

* Hoplite

* Horse Archer

* Ballista

Roman

* Centurion

* Chariot

* Catapult

Egyptian

* Swordman

* Camel Archer

* Trebuchet

Ottoman

* Jannissaries

* Axe Thrower

* Battering Ram

Above shows each civ's units in format of: light infantry, medium infantry and heavy infantry.

Player Relations

Civ-Online™ has become renown for its personal approach and fast implementation of suggestions, feedback and criticism. The Civ-Online™ Official Forums is a place for thriving feedback and help. Players make their suggestions or any post within the forums, and a member of staff notifies the programmers. The friendly approach means that most members feel they have their own personal control over the game - and according to the owners, they do. The team at Civ-Online™ claim:

"Afterall, this is their game. We listen to the people because they're the players that keep the game running. We do it for them, and this is evident as it's a free game".

External links

Civ-Online™ Official homepage

The Official Civ-Online™ Forums