20 years later the open source Colonization game FreeCol hits 1.0

> "Colonization 2 would have been"

Isn't this kind of Colonization 2?

sounds good. Does it work on Steamdeck? did you try it Liam?

sounds good. Does it work on Steamdeck? did you try it Liam?

I'm sure it will, but it needs keyboard and mouse.
I'm sure that it has no controller support.

Played that a lot back in the days. That always felt complete. Very good clone that I enjoyed a lot.

Just out of interest, has FreeCiv been updated in the last 10 years.. the last 20 years?

Is FreeCiv seen as complete?
Just thought there were a few rough edges last time I played it.

Not that I don’t appreciate the work on FreeCol. :)

Just out of interest, has FreeCiv been updated in the last 10 years.. the last 20 years?

Looks like the latest release was on Dec 16th:
http://freeciv.org/


Last edited by Phlebiac on 11 January 2023 at 6:27 am UTC

Huge fan of the original game and even more of the Civ IV Dpin-Off, especially with the Alternative Colonization Mod. Unfortunally i couldn't manage to get the setup to Load/Save in my latest installation.

That being said i think that a Colonization Game should say a word or two about History of the Native Americans during the Colonization Era nowadays.


Last edited by Deleted_User on 11 January 2023 at 8:47 am UTC

Seeing 1.0 for FreeCol. Wow! That brings back some memories. I just checked my Projects/SourceCode directory, and I have fcca-0.8.0 in there (around 2008?), mainly to study. I never participated in the project, but I used to love Colonization back in the day, and this game was one I was excited about. I think I used to have an older version, like 0.1 or 0.3 probably from 20ish years ago, but I must have gotten rid of it or it is on an old hard drive.

That being said i think that a Colonization Game should say a word or two about History of the Native Americans during the Colonization Era nowadays.

Totally agree.

I love playing older games, but Colonization was one of the only games I had trouble getting myself back to play due to the ick factor of playing as a colonizing power after learning more about how horrific that period of time actually was.

Seeing 1.0 for FreeCol. Wow! That brings back some memories. I just checked my Projects/SourceCode directory, and I have fcca-0.8.0 in there (around 2008?), mainly to study. I never participated in the project, but I used to love Colonization back in the day, and this game was one I was excited about. I think I used to have an older version, like 0.1 or 0.3 probably from 20ish years ago, but I must have gotten rid of it or it is on an old hard drive.

That being said i think that a Colonization Game should say a word or two about History of the Native Americans during the Colonization Era nowadays.

Totally agree.

I love playing older games, but Colonization was one of the only games I had trouble getting myself back to play due to the ick factor of playing as a colonizing power after learning more about how horrific that period of time actually was.

History is filled with terrible things. We shouldn't shy away from such knowledge, and try to learn to not do horrible things in the future.

Side note; I have seen recently posts from native American ancestors who point out the tribes were constantly killing each other off. The colonizers simply sped up the process. Not sure why Colonization is any more violent and 'ick' as any other strategy game. They all include a virtual mass of casualties.

After playing Assassin's Creed: Odyssey for a few hours, I wonder how many people that were just guarding some random place I had murdered. Must be in the thousands at this point... but hey, I am doing it in a video game.

Great news! Time to check it out again. I hope they fixed the annoying issue of modal windows getting behind the main game window.

Side note; I have seen recently posts from native American ancestors who point out the tribes were constantly killing each other off. The colonizers simply sped up the process. Not sure why Colonization is any more violent and 'ick' as any other strategy game. They all include a virtual mass of casualties.

Nobody said that Col was more violent than other games. But it has a particularly dark and cruel time as background an it should be pointed out, that these aspects aren't reflected accurate within the game, as there was no such intention in the first place.

I have absolut no problem in violance within a fictional setting, kill as many fictional Guards as you wish. But if someone can get the impression that it is simulated history, the devs should point out the limitations of a medium like a video game.

It's also problematic because of the overall situation. If Native Americans are always pictured as an obstacle to white settlers,in books, movies and games, like here, one can learn that this is the truth. It's not the fault of a single source, but emerges from the overall depiction.

Side note; I have seen recently posts from native American ancestors who point out the tribes were constantly killing each other off. The colonizers simply sped up the process. Not sure why Colonization is any more violent and 'ick' as any other strategy game. They all include a virtual mass of casualties.

Nobody said that Col was more violent than other games. But it has a particularly dark and cruel time as background an it should be pointed out, that these aspects aren't reflected accurate within the game, as there was no such intention in the first place.

I have absolut no problem in violance within a fictional setting, kill as many fictional Guards as you wish. But if someone can get the impression that it is simulated history, the devs should point out the limitations of a medium like a video game.

It's also problematic because of the overall situation. If Native Americans are always pictured as an obstacle to white settlers,in books, movies and games, like here, one can learn that this is the truth. It's not the fault of a single source, but emerges from the overall depiction.

So are you suggesting we should have more books, movies, games, etc that are from the native american's perspective? I can agree with that (I swear I saw an open world game where you played an Apache or something). Can you play them in Colonization? Kind of thought you could in the original game, I've never tried FreeCOL.

For what it's worth, Assassin's Creed games have always been set in an historical context. Interestingly the first group of them were against random murdering (the premise, in case you haven't played them) is that you are some descendant of a bloodline of assassin's, that is being used by a corporation to inhabit the memory of an assassin of the past via something like a Iron Long / VR set up (the Animus). So you're supposed to be just seeing the memories to gather information about lost artifacts. So in the original games if you did something 'outside of the memory' (like killing innocents) then you'll 'lose sync' with the memory and 'die' (it kicks you out of the Animus).

Later games seem to have done away with this and made it more like Grand Theft Auto, where if you randomly slay people, you'll get bounty hunters after you.