I am looking for an up-to-date take on the turn-based games of Empire, Strategic Conquest, Xconq, etcetera.
If you’re interested in any way in the Grandpappy of all D&G turn-based games, you might take a look at Angband and various derivatives. They’re all very limited in graphics and don’t support armies of units moving per turn but they’ve been continually updated to maintain playability (and yes, they’re actively maintained with periodic improvements and changes).
Angband is the basic game in which different dungeon levels are text-based.
Fangband and others alter the play rules somewhat and often implement grids where each cell is a graphic.
You might also take a look at FreeCiv which has been around for a <very> long time, in fact used to be a default game back… in OpenSuSE 10.3?
https://software.opensuse.org/package/freeciv
TSU
0ad is a nice FOSS game. Would be nice if they add more civilizations (ummm, pick a Chinese empire please), but it is a fun game.
If I wanted to see Xconq in OpenSUSE, what would I need to do?
The sources appear old, last updated in 2004, but Xconq seems to be the closest to what I’m looking for.