# Freeciv

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/freeciv/

8 people recommended Freeciv in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 5 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Free, open-source Civilization-style strategy game that people enjoy and play online with friends. Critics note slowdowns on large maps with many AIs and higher memory use.

Summary written by Claude from 16 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 12 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Nostalgia for early Civilization games (2 comments in the sample): "playing Freeciv with XaW in my early Linux days" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49816431)) "Freeciv was what brought me too the civ world" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46920719))
- Enjoyable, fun free game (2 comments in the sample): "The Free Civ and Free Colonization games are good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665733)) "That was such a great game!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47435291))
- Recommended alongside other free games (2 comments in the sample): "Supertux2, Crispy Doom, SDLQuake, FreeCiv-SDL" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47803966)) "if you want to play those, hit up freeciv" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919178))
- Online play with friends and reconnects (1 comment in the sample): "online Nethack/Wesnoth/FreeCiv gameplays over it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47804522))

## What people warn about

- Weak client and fiddly UI (1 comment in the sample): "all these fiddly and very fickle UI toolkits" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563263))

## Other strategy games people recommend

- [Battle for Wesnoth](https://hackerapproved.com/p/battle-for-wesnoth/): 32 recommend, 7 mixed, 3 criticize
- [Sid Meier's Civilization](https://hackerapproved.com/p/civilization/): 17 recommend, 6 mixed, 8 criticize
- [Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri](https://hackerapproved.com/p/alpha-centauri/): 15 recommend, 1 mixed, 0 criticize
- [Heroes of Might and Magic III](https://hackerapproved.com/p/heroes-of-might-and-magic-iii/): 14 recommend, 2 mixed, 2 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Freeciv", https://hackerapproved.com/p/freeciv/ (8 recommend, 3 mixed, 1 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.