To much fanfare, Freeciv 2.1 came out this week. Freeciv is a game that tries to reimplement, and then improve upon, the classic computer games Sid Meier's Civilization and especially Civilization 2, with the improvements coming especially in multiplayer games over the Internet.
The game's been in development for years now but, thanks to the game only being worked on by hobbyists in their spare time, for years it has lacked polish and completeness. But now, with 2.1, I'm impressed with how far the game has come.
It feels just so comfortable, so at home for me, that I stayed up far, far too late last night leading Jake Featherston's Confederate States of America to world domination by taking a commanding lead in technology, then grabbing air, land, and sea superiority worldwide, in order to be safe against the world war against me triggered by my (eventually successful) launching of an Alpha Centauri-bound colony space ship.
You don't have to win by the space race, though. You can also win the game just by conquering the whole world, of course, but that can take even longer to play, and any Civilization win can take hours!
It's a great game for the imperialist, world-conquering, oil-stealing Neocon menace in all of us.