At a glance, Freeciv is a Sid Meier's Civilization clone, but when you look closer you see that it is so much more than that. For anyone wanting to revisit the days of Civilization and Civilization II, that is no problem, because you can set the game to run with the same "rulesets" as either of those, in addition to the standard Freeciv ruleset (and any number of custom rulesets). Unlike Sid Meier's Civilization and Civilization II, you can also play it in a network game against human opponents if you want.


For anyone not familiar with the Civilization games, you control a tribe, starting in the year 4000BC. Over time you have to lead your tribe to global domination through growth and military, commercial and scientific progress.

The game is turn based, and each turn you get to move your units for as much as they can on a given turn, and control cities in which resources to gather, and what units or structures to build. At the same time you also research new technologies which give you access to superior units and/or structures.

A balance has to be made between spending on different aspects of your civilization. Focussing only on military power will soon leave you with outdated units, while only focussing on research will leave you vulnerable to attacks from enemy civilizations.

• Freeciv website
• Wikipedia entry

At least 40MB RAM
At least 100Mhz processor

An internet connection for multiplayer games