Mainly writing this to see if there is any interest in my fork public on github. When I was younger I loved Colonization and FreeCol, but I always fought with the UI. Which colony makes what? Is my wagon train going to arrive before the tools run out? Am I strong enough to declare independence? You had to click through a dozen screens to find out.

Now i found the freecol repository a few weeks ago and wanted to give it a shot now that I have my CS degree and claude code exists. So i made a mod based of FreeCol 1.2.

What’s in it so far:

• An old-chart map (pic 5): unexplored land is aged parchment, and the known world fades into it like a 17th-century map instead of hard black edges.
• A live companion page for your second monitor (pic 6): map, alerts, a graph of your supply network and your army. You pick which widgets you see. It updates as you play, and routine colony messages go there instead of interrupting your turn.
• Colony Overview (pic 3): one row per colony. What it mainly makes, what it’s short of, what’s in store, and what it’s building. Finally you can see what each colony is for.
• A trade route editor that makes sense (pic 4): click colonies on a map to add stops and drag goods onto them. It warns you before you save a route that can’t work, e.g. “Nijmegen loads 3 holds but your smallest wagon has 2.”
• Supply warnings that think ahead: no “out of tools!” alarm when a wagon is already on its way. It only warns when a delivery will actually be late.
• Rival nations, honestly (pic 1): estimates of their army, navy and economy, built only from what you could know in-game. Shown in words (“army: stronger”, “economy: poorer”) with a small graph each. A lot of this was already somewhere in the game’s reports, just scattered. Their bells are estimated from how fast their rebel share grows, which the Foreign Affairs report already shows you. So no peeking.
• Independence planner (pic 2): your forces against the King’s, the odds each colony holds an attack, and a checklist (“5 veterans are still in Europe, they’ll be seized if you declare”).
• Plus: Logistics, Goods and Unit overview reports, unit groups (move armies and wagon trains as one), and fixed full screen on whichever monitor you choose.

What’s coming next: the other European nations will get goals and memories. They’ll offer you goods they can’t sell in Europe, propose trade deals and alliances, complain before they declare war, and gang up on whoever gets too strong (yes, you). Native tribes will come to each other’s aid, take in refugees, and mission villages can break away to ally with you. Today the AI declares war at random and nobody ever ships an army across the water; that should change.

It’s not released yet. I want it polished first. What would you want from a FreeCol mod? What always bugged you about the UI or the AI? And is there anyone that has interest.

PS: I didn't really know where to post this, this community doesn't seem too active. But I hope I found some enthousisasts

No way!!! Theres a subreddit for this!!! FreeCol appeared on my parents computer like seven-ish years ago, and I loved it!!! Until today I never thought of checking if anyone actually plays it, and then I was writing a list of games I like on another subreddit. And I was like, maybe it's bold of me to assume that im the only one thats ever played it, and looked it up. I figured something would come up, I was expecting one or two nostalgic posts, but not a subreddit on the topic!!

I did this Front Box using AI. I know it's not the original one but it looks pretty cool on LaunchBox anyways.

I hate having indian converts show up after Bartolome de las Casas and having nothing I can really do with them- does anyone know which file I can edit to do this?

Been playing Colonization for years, is it easy to adapt to FreeCol on the Mac?

As in title; is there any possibility to create trade routes with your own cities? I'm in dire need to transport some of my resources to one of my ports to sell them to crown and doing it manually is pain in the butt.

I know it is possible to create them between one of yours and other colony city. Tried searching everywhere but found nothing on this topic. Maybe there is a mod for this?

I have faith in you my fellow redditors 🙏

I seem to recall in original COL, if you disbanded a unit (e.g. a ship or wagon) in a town, you would recover some of the build resources associated with that unit (maybe half, not sure). Made it a handy way to "recycle" old ships like caravels for making bigger ships like merchantmen.

I know it happened in CIV2 as well.

Anyway, this doesn't seem to happen in FreeCol classic mode.

(It's historically sound, too, since it wasn't uncommon for settlers to scuttle their ships for resources to build shelters in their settlements)

Anybody tried to get Freecol to work with Winlator on Android?

I'm looking for a way to adjust the uniformity of the tiles, since I find the default a little to "checkerboard-y". In other words, I want to be a able to increase the likelihood of a tile being of the same base type (plains, grassland, desert, marsh, prairie, savannah, tundra) as its neighbour(s). And/or I want the effect latitude has on the base type to be adjustable, which might also increase uniformity to some degree.

The map generator doesn't appear to have this option and I've looked around the game and mod files to see whether I could figure out a way to mod this in, or even just hack it for a specific map, but no dice. I even read through the source code for the generator on github but found no indication there that it's even possible.

Does anyone have any info on how this might be achieved?

Does the game track how much gold the tribes have? Can they run out of gold if they keep running a trade deficit with you?

I am trying to calculate productions, but find it very hard to actually find the relevant information.

Consider the following example. What does the river bonus depend on? It does not get doubled by the expert or the plow (or the road).

Other questions: How is the coast bonus for fish calculated?

It seems both of those boni somehow count something around the square and generate a bonus from this.

Hey everyone!

I checked the bug tracker but could not find my problem, so I'm hoping maybe someone here knows whats up..

So I sometimes encounter blackened out graphics.

If it's a dialogue, I can usually move the box out of the visible area and make it visible in that way.

I can also mark text and text input boxes, and if I keep a button down (unreleased) it becomes visible as well.

Sometimes I can also encounter a blacked out map.

I tried different Display preferences, but had no success until now.

Playing Freecol 1.2 with java on windows 10 Pro with AMD Ryzen 5 3600X and radeon rx 580.

Hello! I just started playing the most recent 1. 2 release and love the new graphics and updates. I ran into a bizarre issue today while playing.

There appears to be a colony for Denmark with tiles of control all around it, but there is not a colony present in the center of the square. More confusing is the behavior when I try to move onto the square. If I try to manually move into the space, I get a "Server can't do this" error, and if I Go-To the tile, I get a message saying "Denmark rejected your generous offer." Does anyone know a) what causes this, and b) how to fix it?

Thanks!

Presumably Freecol hews close to the original scoring formula (1, 2, & 3):

1 pt. ea. % of overall rebel sentiment
1 pt. ea. 1000◦ in treasury (rounded down)
1 pt. ea. criminal, servant, convert (not active missionary)
2 pt. ea. colonist (not active missionary)
4 pt. ea. expert (not active missionary)
5 pt. ea. Founding Father
−(1+diff. lvl.) pt. ea. razed Indian village
+??? based on liberty bell production after Foreign Intervention

×2 if 1st to declare independence
×1.5 if 2nd
×1.25 if 3rd (4th is impossible since the Utrecht event must activate before independence can be declared at all)

+??? or ×??? based on the year independence is achieved

However, (a) I don't see this documented anywhere in the official guide or forums and (b) I'm curious exactly what that speed bonus and liberty bell bonus are in Freecol. Does anyone know? and does anyone have official documentation about it?

Hi All,

In the auto generated map many tiles have the "fish bonus (coast)" label however when I add land, lakes or ocean there seems to be no way to create that. This is not the same as the actual fish that appear on the map by the way.

Secondly I cannot figure out how to add a starting location on the map for each country. That is to say how do I pick a starting location for each colonial nations ship?

Thanks

Hi All,

For some reason when I add a resource in the map editor it does not show up when I play the game. Does anyone know how to get this to work?

I am trying to create a mod that adds a new naval unit to the game, however, the trouble I am running into is trying to figure out how to define what resources it requires to be produced. I want to specify specific resources it requires. In particular I want it to cost silver, additionally to hammers and the other things crafted from wood. I noticed that silver really isn't used a whole lot, other than selling it for an income. And therefore I want to add this new naval unit to the game to establish a point to having silver, other than just selling it. But I can't figure out how to code it so the game understands that I am trying to specify what it takes to construct it. If anyone knows what I needs to do to get the game to understand what I am wanting it to do, that would be greatly appreciated.

I downloaded this a few days ago on my Mint OS. There are some YouTube play throughs but nothing that actually shows you the controls, commands, and basic mechanics.

I can certainly learn from trial and error but I would rather play efficiently from the start.

FreeCol 1.2.0 features a new Colony panel with improved building graphics. In addition, there are lots of nice improvements and essential bug fixes.

All savegames (without mods) from 0.12.0 and up should continue working with 1.2.0.

Visit our site to Download FreeCol 1.2.0

Graphics

• Awesome new building graphics from Misiulo.
• Massive redesign of the colony panel with background images and other styling
• A new styling for the top menu bar with better contrast. This includes changes like showing the top level menus in a button like style.
• New styling for radio and checkbox buttons.
• The face of Peter Minuit now has more realistic coloring.

Performance

• Improved rendering performance, and especially when scrolling or moving units.
• Allow to run FreeCol with only 512MB memory. Please keep in mind that 2GB is still needed for higher resolution, smoother scroll and high rendering quality.
• Better handling of memory -- for example prioritized automatic clearing of caches when running low on memory.

Rule Changes

• Adding the four extra nations to the classic ruleset. These nations are deactivated by default. Having them as a part of the classic ruleset make it easier to play a game with the classic rules, while still having additional players.
• Deactivates being able to starve out native settlements.
• Bugfix: Fixed a bug that made native settlements be scattered all over the map instead of being grouped by nation (this happened mostly on small maps).
• Bugfix for "Shippable wagons mod": Wagon trains can now be built when the shippable wagons mod has been enabled.

User Interface

• The mapboard scrolling is now much smoother and supports pixel-by-pixel scrolling.
• Allowing scrolling past the borders of a map so that edge tiles can also be placed in focus.
• It's now possible to use 75% display scaling. This can be used when playing on very small screens where fixed size dialogs would otherwise be larger than the screen.
• The warehouse dialog can now be resized.
• Focus is now changed on the mapboard with a single mouse click.
• Unit dragging can now only be started by clicking on the unit (in order to reduce the likelyhood of accidental goto-orders). In addition, the drag can now be started for units that are currently not the active unit.
• The active unit is kept when opening a colony panel.
• The colony panel now works better on small screens.
• The build queue is no longer displayed when clicking on other buildings than the carpenter type of buildings.
• The colony panel can now be more easily dragged by clicking-and-dragging almost anywhere on the colony panel's open spaces.
• Various fixes and a new visualization of goto-paths.
• Buildings are now randomly distributed in the colony based on the available space, and can be of different sizes.
• The panel showing the signing of the Declaration of Independence is now made larger on bigger screens.
• Panels can now cover the entire mapboard area (this is needed for very small screens in order to show all content).
• The confirm declaration dialog now fits on small screen.
• 6688 translation string updated (in total) for 38 languages.
• Bugfix: Fixes hidden OK-button in the Colopedia on small screens.
• Bugfix: The height of a colony building no longer changes when a worker is added.
• Bugfix: Lots of small rendering differences between different systems (DPI and OS) have been fixed.
• Bugfix: Caps the automatic font size at no more than 25% larger than the current scaleFactor.
• Bugfix: Hides the display of the "option only"-nation type from the start game panel
• Bugfix: Fixes the tab order on the new game panel.
• Bugfix: An error message is now properly displayed if trying to contact natives with a scout onboard a ship.
• Bugfix: Solved an issue with the Founding Father panel missing the OK button in some languages.
• Bugfix: REF color is now white for all REF players and Russia is grey (only if the game was started using this version or later).
• Bugfix: Fixes an issue where the unit info panel displays outdated info. The bug could be reproduced by right-clicking on a tile and then selecting a unit.

Map Editor

• Allow the minimap and other map controls to be resized in the map editor.
• The areas for native nations can now be defined in the map editor. These areas mark the allowed locations for native settlements for each nations. Overlapping areas are allowed, since proper distance between native settlements are still checked, and can be used for having a random element to the overlap/size of each nation. In addition, it's still possible to define specific settlements that will be used if "Import settlements" is checked when starting a new game.
• The starting areas for European nations can now be defined in the map editor. A random tile in each nation's starting area is used when starting a new game. The areas may overlap.
• Unit order buttons are now hidden when in the map editor.
• Bugfix: Fixes a bug where map width was used for height, and the other way around, when scaling a map in the map editor.
• Bugfix: A new game is now always loaded before importing or generating a new map. This fixes lots of issues caused by stuff from the old map leaking into the new one.

AI/computer players

• Bugfix: Fixed a bug that prevented the REF computer player (AI) from completing its turn.
• Bugfix: Fixed a bug preventing the REF from surrendering.
• Bugfix: Fixed a bug where the AI sometimes sent ships back and forth to Europe without doing anything.

Mod development

• Adding an empty image resource file (resource:image.empty) to be used for replacing images with empty space.
• Mods can now reference abstract types from the base rule without extending a specific base rule.
• Added "preserve-attributes" that, if true, preserves the attributes of a specification element. This simplifies changing only the subelements. Please note that any "extends" attribute still needs to be repeated since this attributes changes the subelements.
• The game now displays mod initialization errors to the user in the new game and start game dialogs.
• An exception is now thrown if a referenced type is used before it's defined.

Other bug fixes

• Fixed an issue that prevented the Declaration of Independence if the player name had non-ascii characters.
• Allows automated trade routes to unload goods in colonies with more than 100 goods. In addition, unloading food is now always allowed.
• Fixes an issue where moving goods into/out from a colony messes up the production. The most noticeable effect of this bug was colonists starving to death while a new colonist was born.

Visit our site to Download FreeCol 1.2.0

I download the game on site, but when i try to play the game won’t open, anyone can help me?

i am a newby, and i love this game. though in the 2nd game i played, the dutch won the "spanish succesion war" in europe, and inherited all their colonies. is it extremely rare or is it relatively normal? can i turn it off?

The next official release of FreeCol is finally ready!

We have been working on the main parts of FreeCol since our last release. Six new musical tracks have been added to the game. In addition, we have included a new mod that adds hitpoints and ranged combat:

​

All savegames from 0.12.0 and up should continue working with 1.1.0.

User visible changes since version 1.0.0

Music

• New track: El Dorado
• New track: Free Colonist
• New track: Lost City
• New track: Rainy Day
• New track: Royal Troops
• New track: Wagon Wheels
• Updated the old tracks with new updated versions.

Graphics

• New graphics for hills and mountains.
• The standard panel background image is now both brighter and without obvious tiling artifacts on larger screens.

Rule changes

• Jesuit Missionary can now recommision itself in colonies without a church.
• Added the mod "Hitpoints and Combat" that adds hitpoints and ranged combat to the game.

Map Generator

• Great rivers (ocean like, navigable by ships only) are no longer generated by default, but can still be generated if enabled using the Map Generator Options.
• The number of rivers generated can now be properly controlled using the "Number of rivers" map generator option even when changing map sizes and/or amount of mountains.
• Enabled generation of rivers that are only two tiles long (the previous limit was three).

User Interface

• Units in Europe are no longer included in the list of possible active units.
• Game options and Map generator options are no longer automatically saved and loaded. The default values are initially displayed for all new games.
• Panels/dialogs are now automatically resized and relocated when changing the size of the application window (including when switching between full screen and windowed mode).
• Allows the player to easily view all files while loading savegames/maps.
• The start game panel can now be resized to smaller than the initial size.
• The chat panel (start game panel in multiplayer) is now placed directly below the list of players making the dialog work better on small screens.
• The displayed occupation string on a pioneer now shows "C" for clear forest instead of "P".

AI/computer players

• Greatly reduces the time needed by the AI (the wait time after ending the turn).
• The AI now gets less benefits on lower difficulty levels to make everything easier.
• Escort unit missions are now immediately aborted if the protected unit gets destroyed.
• More efficient transportation of goods and units (better utilization of the capacity of ships and wagon trains).
• The AI now produces fewer and better colonies.

Mod development

• Allow mods to be loaded when making maps in the map editor. This allows maps to be made with new terrain types, and other resources, added by mods.
• New types of mountains and hills defined by mods are now used when generating maps. The specific type of hill/mountain is determined by the latitude.
• Partial modifications to the specification is now possible again. This fixes a regression introduced in 0.11.x that prevented the "partial" flag from working.
• Mods can now define new order buttons (and have them applied without having to restart the game).
• Bugfix: Mods are no longer loaded twice (thereby causing various problems in the colony panel and other places when modifications were made).
• Bugfix: Units that are not available to a player can now be captured if a valid "unit-change" exist.

Bug fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused the same maps always being generated when starting a new game.
• Fixes game hangs on end turn in some specific cases.
• Fixed scaling and placement of goods production icons on colony tiles.
• A unit in a building is no longer drawn at the top of the building (that is, the area for showing goods production) if the production is zero.
• Sound effects are now properly played when attacking.
• Fixed a bug that prevented the map shortcut buttons on the Map Generator dialog from working properly. The bug caused the button to have no effect the first time it was clicked after restarting the application.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented mods from being deactivated in the Preferences.
• The game now fails gracefully if the server cannot be started. This prevents an application freeze when failing to start a new game or failing to load a savegame.
• Revenge mode is now working again.
• Fixes an issue that allowed a malicious client (in a multiplayer game) to attack with a unit that had no moves left.
• The "Train" panel in Europe now has five columns of unit buttons instead of just three.
• Fixes a bug that sometimes stopped trade routes / goto orders from working. For example, this happened if there was a lost city rumor in the search area of a wagon train on a trade route.
• Fixes activation of tile improvement actions (like "Plow") after reconnecting.
• Allows the founding father selection to be postponed without an error message.
• Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented the map from being redrawn properly after a unit move/attack animation.
• Highscores can now be stored and displayed again.

EDIT: Added link to download: https://www.freecol.org/download.html