Innovative: Are you Jonesing for some old-school turn-based strategy, but your boss wants you to finish that spreadsheet by tomorrow? Never fear. A developer who goes by the handle s0lly created a working version of the original Sid Meier's Civilization that runs in Microsoft Excel.
Civilization was originally developed for MS-DOS by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley while working for MicroProse. Dubbed [Cell]ivization, s0lly's game is not quite the same experience, but has many of the basic features of the original including the ability to move your units or the camera independently around the field (fog of war included), building multiple custom unit types, two-player support, and more. Even better, since it runs in an Excel spreadsheet, you can quickly tab to your workflow when the boss comes around.
He created the program for this year's OneLoneCoder Community Jam (olcCodeJam2019). The theme this year was "destruction."
"The gamejam's theme is destruction, which is apt for this game's v1.0 iteration, given that the only way to win is to destroy the opposing team," said s0lly.
Right now the game is very basic, but s0lly said that if there is enough interest in it, he will continue adding features. He is already working on better AI, diplomacy and science disciplines, adding gold as a resource, as well as other improvements and bug fixes.
The spreadsheet (.xlsb) is available for free from s0lly's website. Just be sure you have that workflow done by tomorrow.
Image credit s0lly
https://www.techspot.com/news/81816-amateur-developer-made-excel-spreadsheet-runs-civilization.html
