Cavewars by Avalon Hill

pchang · December 26, 2000, 21:01

I find the AI much better in this game than in most others. Too bad the AI from this game can not be adapted to other games.

Urban Ranger · December 26, 2000, 21:33

What's Cavewar?

St Leo · December 28, 2000, 02:53

It's an abandonware game I haven't tried yet.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
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St Leo · December 28, 2000, 02:54

It's an abandonware game I haven't tried yet.

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St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

pchang · January 4, 2001, 02:21

Cavewars is a very simple CIV like TBS game where you have a number of different races inhabiting 5 levels of underground caverns. There are real technologies and magic to research. You build and capture cities. Each race has different characteristics. You also need to mine metals for use in building your units.

Urban Ranger · January 5, 2001, 02:54

Is it based on an Avalon Hill boardgame?

pchang · January 9, 2001, 18:28

As far as I know, it is not based on a board game. I think of it as a CIV-lite type of game. Simple city management, research in 7 different areas, but only 5 discoveries per area. It goes by much faster than CIV. I tend to play it when I don't have a lot of time to spend.

tonic · January 10, 2001, 20:01

I've been browsing one of the abandonware sites, the underdogs and Cavewars is one of their Top Dogs with a rating of 8.71 and this short review:

"One of the most original but underrated strategy games of all time, Cavewars is a refreshing fantasy wargame that adds the Z-axis to the traditional two-dimension game map, adding a whole new dimension (pardon the pun) to familiar turn-based play. Each of the depth-dwelling races you can lead also has unique characteristics that call for different strategy to win, With unique and compelling gameplay, tough AI, random maps, and the variety of monsters and spells you can research, make Cavewars one of my most favorite fantasy strategy games".

[This message has been edited by tonic (edited January 10, 2001).]

Colon™ · January 13, 2001, 18:06

I downloaded and unzipped the game, but it fails to work. Does anyone have an idea what might be wrong?

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Q: How many economists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Eight. One to screw it in and seven to hold everything else constant.

Urban Ranger · January 15, 2001, 02:42

St. Leo,

You're from Toronto? Would you happen to know the local gamers there?

pchang · January 22, 2001, 14:41

The game requires the CD to be in the machine. Unless you have a hacked version. Another problem is that since the game is old, it only supports SVGA video drivers. My new machines (laptop and desktop) have LCD screens and have XGA drivers. I can only play this on my old machine (5 year old Win95 box).

Urban Ranger · January 25, 2001, 12:23

Nothing wrong with running games on older computers. In fact, I am going to take one of my old computers, set it up with DOS so it can run all the old computer games.

pchang · January 25, 2001, 18:14

Colon: After unzipping, did you run the setup.exe?

pchang · January 26, 2001, 01:49

One of the best things about this game is that the AI can figure out when it is hopelessly outmatched and will offer to surrender. In CIV, even though you will clearly win, the game forces you to scour the map to find those last couple of AI cities. Iusually just quit out of boredom at that point.

Colon™ · January 26, 2001, 12:12

Yep, I did that. I get somesort of error message after I try to start it. (all kinds of weird technical text)
I think the reason may be because files are missing, I had it before and it wouldn't surprise me if it were the case now.
But I wouldn't worry about it, actually, I don't have the time to play this game anyway.

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Economists are people who are too smart for their own good and not smart enough for anyone else's.