Feudalciv is a project I started about 10 months ago, though I did not have time to do much work on it until this past summer.
The main idea was to create an free software historical grand strategy game, along the lines of the Total War games or Paradox's grand strategy games.
It includes a British Isles scenario set in 871AD, immediately following Alfred becoming King of Wessex, and focusing on the Viking invasion of Britain and the conflict with the Great Heathen Army.
The scenario was built up from the greatbritain-350x350 scenario from the GM1530 scenario set, but has more varied terrain including more rivers, more hills, more forest cover, the fens and the Roman road network. There are 24 factions, each controlling around 10 towns.
Currently the scenario only includes factions in what would become England, specifically the factions that make up Wessex, Mercia and the territory controlled by the Danes (including Northumbria and East Anglia). Factions in Wales, Ireland and Scotland will be added later.
The idea is to be focused around strategy, politics and diplomacy rather than 4X. As such, and considering the time period, the ruleset does not contain settlers, but rather has a large number of small towns (192 historical towns and cities in total at the last count), though which growth can occur via development in addition to conquest, though admittedly there aren't currently a very large number of buildings included in the ruleset to use for developing towns.
I have tried keep the scenario and ruleset historically accurate (with some help from a friend of mine), though note that some liberties have been taken with regards to historical accuracy (e.g. Lundenwic is included as London despite the fact that London wasn't resettled until around 886, and there are several towns that may not have actually been around in 871).
More detailed information is on the project wiki on the bug genie
As well as the scenario, notable changes that will be included in the first release are vassals, a trigger system, and population growth that's independent of city level.
Note that due to the changes the AI is rather broken at the moment.
Intended changes for later releases include a combat system overhaul (armies instead of civ-style combat) and fixing the AI.
Edit: Version 0.1, including the ruleset, scenario and the code changes mentioned above, is now available: https://github.com/Feudalciv/Feudalciv/ ... tag/v0.1.0
Source is available on GitHub: https://github.com/Feudalciv/Feudalciv
Issue tracker: http://feudalciv.thebuggenie.com/feudalciv