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1996 · Freeciv Team · Arcade · Simulation

FreeCiv

Freeciv is free and open-source world domination strategy game along the lines of Sid Meier's Civilization I and II.

Released: 5 January 1996
Platforms: Android Linux Windows macOS
Genres: Arcade Simulation Strategy Turn-based strategy
Developers: Freeciv Team
Publishers: —
Modes: Co-op Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Fantasy Historical 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate)
Engine: Simple DirectMedia Layer, GTK
Country: Denmark
Age ratings: ESRB E

About

Freeciv is a single- and multiplayer turn-based strategy game for workstations and personal computers inspired by the proprietary Sid Meier's Civilization series. It is available for most desktop computer operating systems and available in an online browser version. 0-or-later, Freeciv is free and open-source software. The game's default settings are closest to Civilization II, in both gameplay and graphics, including the units and the isometric grid.

However, with a lot of multiplayer games being played in longturn communities, rulesets and additional variants have evolved away from the original ruleset. Freeciv is playable online on various public and private servers.

Keywords

exploration
world domination
turn-based
military
open-source
tank
mining
tactical turn-based combat
world map
difficulty level
tech trees
world building

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Development

At the computer science department at Aarhus University, three students, avid players of XPilot and of Sid Meier's Civilization, which was a stand-alone PC game for MS-DOS, decided to find out whether the two could be fused into an X-based multiplayer Civilization-like strategy game. The students—Peter Unold, Claus Leth Gregersen and Allan Ove Kjeldbjerg—started development in November 1995; the first playable version was released in January 1996, with bugfixing and small enhancements until April. The rules of the game were close to Civilization, while the client/server architecture was basically that of XPilot.

For the developers, Freeciv 1.0 was a successful proof of concept, but a rather boring game, so they went back to XPilot. Other players and developers took over; they made the game available on many other operating systems, including Linux, Solaris, Ultrix, AmigaOS, and Microsoft Windows. Linux distributions started to include Freeciv.