Sun, Sep 02, 2001 02:24PM -0600

Yes I know I should be studying.

But I thought this was cool.

If you've ever played Civilization by Microprose (I wasted a vast number of hours of my undergraduate career playing these games), you might want to check out Freeciv. It's meant to be played as a multiplayer game, but you can easily play single player games as well.

If you've never played Civ, the point of the game is to take your band of settlers and build a nation in an attempt to either take over the world or reach the stars. The original Civ allowed you to take the reins behind one of any fourteen civilizations (Romans, Babylonians, Chinese, etc.). The sequel expanded the number of different civs you could play with (as well as letting you play with female characters). But Freeciv has a pretty eclectic group of civilizations to choose from. Aside from the big names, you can play as a Catalonian, a Boer, a Dunedan (from Tolkien's Middle Earth), or, get this, a Filipino. And if this isn't something, the pregenerated characters you can play with include Ferdinand Marcos (of course), Sergio Osme±a, Jose Rizal, and--what I thought was cool--Luis Taruc of the Hukbalahap.