Demo 8.1 Download

This version of the game is a demo of design concepts. It is not even close to the completed version, but its a bit of fun already! The design of the game is likely to evolve in later versions. We are continuously testing out ideas to see if they work, or if we should replace them with something else! If you have any comments on Clash of Civilizations, then please post a message on the Clash Forum at Apolyton.

Features:
Demo 8 Main Features:

1. Government/Social Model -- One of the long-standing goals of the Clash project has been to have the player interact with the people of their civilization, and not just issue dictates. Now you can negotiate with power blocs in your civ to determine Government policies with the Ruler Panel. Negotiated policies include tax rate, ethnic discrimination for conquered peoples, and a host of other things. (Note that "hookups" of many policies such as civil rights and private property to the rest of the game will have to wait for Demo 8.1.) Conquered peoples can riot or revolt, depending upon how they are treated, giving the player interesting strategic decisions to keep a multiethnic empire together. The new Social scenario introduces the government and social aspects of Clash, and lets you, like Alexander the Great, combine military conquest and the rule of a multiethnic civilization!

2. New AI -- We have taken the first steps toward our ambitious AI goals in this demo. The AI now adapts to some changing circumstances, such as identifying the need for siege weapons to attack fortifications. You can check out the behavior of the new AI in the various scenarios. You can also see how it operates in the Reinforcement test scenario or you can watch the AI change its planning and execution due to new circumstances. The AI isn't anywhere near where we want to be yet, but this is a major step forward in the AI code!

3. New and revised Scenarios -- Many other scenarios have been modified, especially to make them more challenging. If you are not familiar with Clash you should start with the Dawn tutorial scenario. You can also create your own detailed scenarios even now! All scenario information is in XML files, and we'll have an editor in the future. If you have a really fast computer or a lot of patience, you can check out the Ancient Middle East scenario by Alms. It is not fully developed at this point, and is really stretching the limits of what Clash can do now, but gives an idea of where we’re headed!

4. Numerous new small features and bug fixes -- One example is our efforts to reduce micromanagement involved in taking territory and hunting down enemy military units. For now, taking the capital of a province gives the winner in the whole province. However, squares that contain enemy military units will still remaining in foreign control.

The Demo has many intuitive aspects, but we also have not yet made it as user-friendly as the final product will be. Please play the "Dawn" tutorial scenario Before you make comments here so that you know how you are supposed to work things. For further information, you can check out the manual, linked to off the download page.

Also, please look over the bug reports and feature requests docs that are posted below this. Otherwise you could spend a lot of time telling us something we already know.

I would like to thank especially Laurent for his work on the Demo. Without his persistence and contributions this demo certainly wouldn't have happened. Alms and others have put in significant amounts of time on the demo, and I'd like to also thank them here for it! Great Job!

For what is coming soon, please check out the Demo 8.1 Goals and Plan thread here on the forum. To influence what goes into the next demo, you need to tell us what you want, like and don't like! Do that in this thread, or in the relevant model thread.

Let us know what you think!

What's New in Demo 8.1?
This demo contains a few changes from D8.0, mostly:
More precise social model, a smarter ai (will now move ships among other things), the various policies have more effect in-game (slavery provides more production, private property has an effect on economics,...), minimalist diplomacy and more. Details are in the Demo 8.1 Goals and Plan thread. The next major evolution should be save/restore.

This version of the game is a demo of design concepts. It is not even close to the completed version, but its a bit of fun already! The design of the game is likely to evolve in later versions. We are continuously testing out ideas to see if they work, or if we should replace them with something else! If you have any comments on Clash of Civilizations, then please post a message on the Clash Forum at Apolyton.

These instructions are for Windows machines. However, the demo can in principle be run on a wide variety of OSs because Java is cross-platform. (You can try running the .jar file and see what happens. Failing that try to find out what users of your OS do to run a "Java 2" program. If you have success with a particular OS please tell us what to do to run it, and we'll include it in the instructions. For Mac OSX just put the jar on the desktop and run it.) The download instructions are listed below. Use Step #1, then go to (you guessed it!) #2. (manual only available thru link above for now).

1. (Skip if you already did this for Demo 7, although if that doesn't work, try doing this step first).

Go to http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html and go to the link Download J2SE JRE, and Download the JRE. It is called the "JRE file" below.

2. Install the JRE file to the default directory.

3. Reboot if required

4. Follow Download Step #2.

1. Click on the hyperlink below (Download Demo 8.1 Now!).

2. Unzip the contents (you don't need to do anything with the .bat file for now).

3. IMPORTANT: Clash MUST be in the Windows Desktop folder for now.  Please extract ClashD8.jar there.

Note: When you unzip the ClashD82.jar file to the MS Windows (TM) desktop, make sure you have "Use folder names" unchecked since otherwise you will end up with the jar file in ...\desktop\Clash Demo\ which will do you no good!

4. To start the game, double-click the file and give it about 10 seconds to load. If you have problems, let us know. 

ATTENTION:If you follow these instructions and the the program "bombs", please try the following:
   a. Create a directory called ClashDemo on C:\
   b. Copy the ClashD8.jar file from your desktop into the new ClashDemo directory.
   c. Extract that batch file in the zip to the new ClashDemo directory.
   d. Run the batch file (double-click the file named "Run_D8.bat")
   e. If it works, great. If not, please send Mark Everson and Laurent Di Cesare the error message from the DOS window.

For Mac Users wanting to run the demos, please see the discussion in the Running Clash on Macintosh thread. The short answer is that for OS X you can run the .jar file directly, for OS 8 and 9 please read over the thread to get an idea of what's involved.

Other OSs should be able to run Clash Demo 8. If you can find out how to execute a .jar file with "Java2" on your system, then you have all you need to run the demo. Please help others by telling us how you run Clash if you have an OS that isn't mentioned above.

For those who want a blast from the past here is a link to the Demo 7 Thread.