Post by MrFlibble on Feb 18, 2014 10:44:22 GMT -5
I was browsing the old pages of C-evo (archived by the Wayback Machine) when I stumbled upon a link to another clone of Sid Meier's Civilization called Great Nations. While the website was preserved intact by the Wayback Machine, the downloads did not work. The screenshots however showed a very nice-looking game in a retro style. Googling a bit I found information that the game was developed for Windows and Amiga by Toni and Jani Wilen from Finland, and was distributed as shareware. Toni Wilen confessed in an interview that Great Nations was abandoned because he "lost interest" in it and moved on to other projects. The latest version of the game, v1.6.2, was released in 2003, but at first I could find no working downloads. Eventually I located a link to the development website of the game, which thankfully had the downloads preserved by the Wayback Machine:
The game has the following features:
Gameplay Features
Network Features
Tech/Editing Features
[Edit] Forgot to mention that the date of the initial release is pretty hard to find, but this source states that v1.0 (presumably for both Windows and Amiga, but not sure) was released on Dec 11, 1997. I think it may be considered accurate because it mentions later releases of Great Nationsas well, with the release dates identical to those found on the official website.
- v1.6.2 (Amiga): gn_amiga_162.lzh
- v1.6.2 (Win32): gn_win32_162.zip
The game has the following features:
Gameplay Features
- flying units with variable height
- unit automove and automated road building
- unit experience and damage precentage
- ranged fire
- units grouped to military, transport and civilian units
- goverments
- relations (peace, war, etc.)
- spying
- trading (unit,building and invention blueprints, towns and real units)
- town build queue
- nation borders
- statistics screens
- help screen
Network Features
- max. 8 players
- multiple players on same computer (also server)
- support for "chaining" and mixing IPX and serial network
- savefile only saved to server, platform independent
- saved games loadable during a game
- time limit
Tech/Editing Features
- realistic line of sight (3D visibility calculation)
- world size limited only by available memory (10 bytes per map square)
- number of units and towns limited only by available memory
- support for unique terrains, units and inventions
- completely customizable maps, terrain types, units, buildings, inventions and town names (only map editing in unregistered versions)
- a customizable random terrain generator
[Edit] Forgot to mention that the date of the initial release is pretty hard to find, but this source states that v1.0 (presumably for both Windows and Amiga, but not sure) was released on Dec 11, 1997. I think it may be considered accurate because it mentions later releases of Great Nationsas well, with the release dates identical to those found on the official website.