Gameplay (C-evo)

C-evo is an empire-building game, dealing with the history of humans from the earliest permanent settlement to the Space Race. The game starts with the development of the wheel, and ends when the first player has successfully constructed the first off-planet spaceship headed out into the Solar System.

Components[]

The game includes aspects of:

exploration and expansion
cultivation
agriculture
industry
research
administration
war and diplomacy
pollution

Decision-making[]

Players must constantly make decisions such as:

whether and where to build cities, roads, irrigation, and fortresses
whether to seek an alliance with a neighboring nation or risk attacking it
whether to devote resources to education/research/production, warfare, or the well-being of the populace.

A successful player manages to find a balance among these choices.

As the game progresses, the player finds that the building of factories, for example, leads to increased pollution, which reduces production and therefore should be cleaned up and could be reduced or eliminated through development of cleaner technologies.

At all stages, cities that grow larger than size 4 have reduced productivity because of unrest until suitable buildings or police are in place to keep the populace under control.

C-evo1 — Examining a city screen selected from the cities menu at an advanced stage of the game

Numbers of nations and players[]

The game can be played in Single or Multiplayer (hotseat) or Supervisor mode with a total of 1 to 15 player nations: computer-controlled players, human players, or both. The opening screen offers three difficulty levels, with the option of specifying the level for each AI or human player.

Map[]

The game map, with isometric tiles and Arctic and Antarctic regions (just as for Civ2), can be any one of a wide range of sizes (the largest about eight times the size of the smallest), and can be randomly generated (with the percentage of land tiles selected by a player) or designed (one tile at a time) by a human player, with an easy interface for design and the ability to save a map under a new name for future selection.

Most of the popup windows appear superimposed on the main map and can be moved around if you drag them by their title bars. Here's a picture of the report of a fairly productive city at the start of a turn where cities that have experienced some notable change are displayed one at a time:

Client-server[]

There is a limited client–server architecture, and C-evo can be played easily over either a LAN or the WWW using Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol when the game is run from a game server.

Versions[]

The above screenshots are from version 1.0.0. By early 2013, version 1.2.0 was the standard download. A few of the changes from 1.0.0 are:

Many more maps are listed. One called "World" is basically Northern Hemisphere (and not all of that), with starting points real-world capitals but only two in America and possibly too many in central Asia. One called "Concept-Equal", at 183% size for exactly 12 players, is a good attempt at giving every player the same size and shape of map to start in; but maybe it has too little forest and too many tiles for spaceship parts! Another called "(TF) Great Aviator" also gives players very even starts; a variant called "(TF) Great Explorer" is the same but without the mountain barriers, and a related map requires early Navigation. One called "MIFUDD_2ContinentsNormalMap14" looks very good for the human player on a 56% size with 14 opponents.
Political map is updated for every tile you have seen even if the latest change occurred after your last viewing.
City list is more informative, with bars to indicate progress in growth of population and building work.