After my OS/2 box died (~2006) I was reduced to 10MB surviving as obscure homepage plus a refurbished 60€ Dell Optiplex + 2nd hand Windows 2000 license (more expensive than the Dell box.) Because I didn't resume all old projects to keep me busy I looked for a free game.
Freeciv sounded promising, I knew the old (~1980) boardgame, and I also knew that a commercial Civilzation (the Sid Meier series) existed.
Not sure at which version I got it, presumably 2.2 or 2.1. I tested the tutorial, that worked, and played the
default (now
classic) ruleset. Not completely happy with this alone I also tested some other games and spent about a year with
Illyriad (an almost free online game ignoring the costs for more than 5 GB Internet traffic per month, and various ingame Paypal decorations to support the developers). Mobile broadband sucks, I returned to Freeciv at 2.3, it was fun:
Caveats: Freeciv, Wesnoth, and Illyriad are all seriously addictive, DO NOT USE.
Learning is relatively simple, never ever try the default
"tiles per player" map generation, 100 is far too small (unreported bug). Never ever try
civ2civ3 with the 2.5 defaults, it ends up with 12 players on a map for five players. And it's seriously different from
classic, I already knew that something is wrong when I got the
great library without problems. Learning from the AIs, sometimes they know what's important.
Never ever try
experimental, it is a collection of sub-zero fun-factor features not intended to be actually played. But it's brilliant to get ideas for a personal ruleset,
classic with a static city radius is boring after you tried
experimental with a variable city radius.
Ignore the AI skill level, no matter what it is, the AIs are always better than you until roughly turn 100, and if you still live in turn 200 you'll presumably win. Some mixture of
normal and
hard is acceptable.
There's no compelling reason to tweak the barbarian settings, just get a wall + phalanx + catapult in all cities before turn 60 (
classic,
civ2civ3 has this later), or more precisely, have enough gold to buy the unfinished wall or unfinished catapult in turn 60 or later on demand.
Catapults require
math, and your chances to get
literacy in time for the
great library are slim. If you get it anyway with the
classic ruleset you have won, otherwise try
Newton's College, the AIs do not know that this is a certified winning strategy. If that also fails you're in serious trouble, try
SETI Program at all costs. And no, your riflemen are not good enough against battleships and howitzers. The AIs never try nukes and stealth bombers, it would be overkill.