FreeCol

Screenshot of the unit selection screen.

In FreeCol the player leads the colony of a European power from the arrival on the shore of the New World into the future, achieving victory by one of two possible victory conditions: either gaining independence by declaring independence and subsequently defeating the dispatched royal expeditionary force or by defeating the colonies of all the competing European powers by the year 1600. To be allowed to declare independence, at least 50% of the player's colonists must support independence. This is achieved by producing liberty bells; 200 liberty bells turn one colonist from being a royalist into being a rebel. To be able to defeat the royal expeditionary force the player must train and build a strong enough army of their own.

Another important factor are the numerous settlements of different Native American nations. Native settlements can be traded with to gain gold or they can be conquered for treasure. Native settlements can also teach the player's colonists and turn them into specialist. Specialists are considerably more productive when assigned in their trade. Most specialists can be trained for gold in Europe or come as settlers for free, but certain specialists can only be trained at certain native settlements.

FreeCol starts in 1492 with two colonists on a caravel on the ocean at the player's disposal. The player is the king's proxy and is supposed to lead the caravel to the shore and found a colony in the New World consisting of multiple settlements. The player gets additional colonists by producing food (200 food units in a settlement generates a new unit), by immigration from Europe, by converting the natives or by capturing unarmed units of competing European colonies.

The player may trade with Europe using various natural resources which are produced in settlements or acquired from trade with natives. In each settlement the player can also build up industrial buildings to convert raw materials into processed goods, which sell for more in Europe, providing a significant economic advance.

The founding fathers are characters that each give a specific bonus. They are divided into 5 types - Trade, Exploration, Military, Political and Religious - and can be acquired one at a time.

When founded, each colony has a set of basic buildings that are tier 1 and can produce goods and other buildings; these buildings can be upgraded up to tier 3. Several other buildings can be built later and upgraded, allowing the player to produce other units and increase his production of goods.

In February 2007 FreeCol was SourceForge's Project of the Month.[1] In 2008 Rock, Paper, Shotgun's game journalist Alec Meer had mixed feelings about FreeCol but still called it: "it's an (sic) remarkable accomplishment, and I'm very glad it's out there." and "FreeCol, though, is here right now, it's free, it's stable, it's pretty much feature-complete and unlike its parent it has multiplayer".[2] In 2010 Alec Meer named FreeCol in Rock, Paper, Shotgun as a better alternative when he was confronted with the later commercial remake Civilization IV: Colonization.[3]

FreeCol became a popular freeware title, which was for instance downloaded over 1,900,000 times on SourceForge alone, between January 2002 and April 2017.[4]

• List of open source games

Wikimedia Commons has media related to FreeCol.

• Official website
• FreeCol on translatewiki.net
• FreeCol on the Civilization Wikia
• FreeCol at Open Hub