Players of Sid Meier's Civilization series should feel at home, since one aim of Freeciv is to have rulesets with compatible rules.

Freeciv is maintained by an international team of coders and enthusiasts, and is easily one of the most fun and addictive network or individual-versus-computer video games out there!

That also means it has very extensive multilanguage support, something rare in games.

Features

  • Generally comparable with Civilization and Civilization II
  • Up to 126 players; Freeciv-web supports up to 500 players.
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) computer-controlled players
  • Internet & LAN multiplayer (TCP/IP)
  • Support for a great number of platforms; see Requirements
  • Premade maps & scenarios!
  • More than 50 playable units and over 550 nations
  • Modpack support!
  • Internationalization (i18n): translations for many languages available
  • In-game help system

A little list of some of the advantages Freeciv has:

  • It's free!
  • The source code is available.
  • You are allowed to copy, redistribute, charge money for & modify Freeciv. For more info on this subject refer to the license.
  • A new release every now and then with new and exciting features!
  • You can influence the development of the game dramatically!
  • It uses the very (free software developers) friendly GNU General Public License.

What's New

Windows: When it comes time to uninstall this version, it does so cleanly. Former versions failed to remove some of the Registry Keys they had written. Those keys are harmless, but this failed the expectation that uninstall removes such things from user's machine.

Server / General

  • Silenced some unused entry warnings when loading saved games osdn#47498
  • Long ruleset descriptions are no longer truncated at the client end. Both server and client need to be of new version for this fix to take effect osdn#47658

Changes affecting players (supplied rulesets)

  • Fixed loading non-scenario savegame saved by a tex-AI enabled server, to server that does not have tex-AI enabled osdn#47521
  • civ1. No gold is given to players in the beginning by default osdn#47454
  • civ2. Units in airbase are now shown to their allies, not to the allies of the airbase owner osdn#47655

Changes affecting other rulesets / modders

  • Fixed errors with techs that have never as one of their requirement osdn#46544 osdn#45115 osdn#47574 osdn#47762
  • Improvements to ruleset sanity checking osdn#44613
  • Changing tile via lua scripting now triggers side-effects like bouncing units osdn#46425
  • Clients now receive updated information when player gold reserves have been changed by a lua script osdn#47386
  • Fixed potential crash with Heal Unit action osdn#47603
  • Units hiding within an extra (base) are now shown to their allies, not to the allies of the extra owner osdn#47655

Changes affecting server operators

  • Civil War now respects maxplayers setting osdn#45587
  • Silenced spammy "Did not find a cm solution..." message osdn#47570
  • Wait for the "interrupt" autosave to finish before quitting the program, when threaded save is enabled osdn#47540

General

  • Fixed creation of a directory for map images osdn#47550
  • Optimizations osdn#46534 osdn#45420 osdn#46417 osdn#45744 osdn#45677 osdn#46436
  • Various internal changes which should only affect developers. osdn#46441 osdn#46317 osdn#46313 osdn#46466 osdn#46668 osdn#47308 osdn#47305 osdn#46464 osdn#46420 osdn#46343 osdn#47352 osdn#46445 osdn#47619 osdn#47620