Comments on: Get Ur FreeCol

By: painmaker

painmaker — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:36:45 +0000

- First: To the author of the post: I don’t think that you have understood the nature of the behind the scenes of the game. As a colony you are obligated to follow what your mother land does. In the game is very likely that other powers will be at war with your colony early on. a- because of what is decided in Europe b- because the inland colonies find your proximity a threat. You need to start your colonies far from them or start with a few cannons from the market… relatively cheap …

2 – Second: The big problem still in freecol is the poor AI coding. If you play long enough to survive the first wave of attackers (those are the mayor troops of them) the AI starts then to send waves of unarmed civilians to your area… easy picking.. too easy that spoil the game and guarantee your victory. Since population is the key in this game, capturing these large numbers of units is the end of a descent game….

But as everyone said it already, it is free, it is a great effort… and I hope they improve it…

By: Brian Wagner

Brian Wagner — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:24:19 +0000

I’m having fun with FreeCol, true, it’s not the original. My biggest gripe is that the City screen’s building display is a *scrolling* list instead of the old “at-a-glance” building display. Sure the graphics are ugly, but I’m a graphic artist by profession, and this weekend I’m going to put something nicer together (and share it if I think it is worthy).

The “random” war declarations, though, are intended. From the original game, it was the fact that the mother countries got into a war, and thus the colonies were also thrown into the war, without necessarily any warning, even if they were friendly with each other. There is less explanation as to why the war started, but it is intentional.

Lotsa lotsa fun though, I only got 2 hours sleep last night, cause I was up all night playing, reliving the old days. (Now if I could find the HD that I had archived the actual original game on…)

By: Alan Au

Alan Au — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 22:56:57 +0000

I spent some time messing around with FreeCol, and it’s simultaneously enthralling and irritating. The core gameplay design is wonderful, but of course they can’t take credit for that. My main complaints are with the interface and AI. I suppose I’ve been spoiled by the UI and gameplay tweaks of Civ IV (e.g. borders, peaceful units don’t block roads, etc.), which is why I’m probably better off waiting for the official remake.

By: sinister agent

sinister agent — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 19:15:22 +0000

They also had a horrific habit of lurking on your land for no good reason, blocking off your units from accessing your colonies

God, yeah, that always drove me utterly mental in Col. You had to form a fairly large army early on somehow, just so you could pre-emptively fortify at every isthmus and around your colonies, so that they couldn’t declare war and instantly obliterate all your colonies because they’ve had twenty dragoons sitting at the gates since 1520.

By: terry

terry — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 18:26:42 +0000

I highly recommend grabbing WinUAE and playing that one version which you can find on the internet device. However do not do it with Covert Action or you get cases full of expletives (really).

By: silencer

silencer — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:33:51 +0000

I don’t think I’ve heard of that Missy Elliot song. You damn kids and your music.

On the theme of criticizing it, maybe you should have titled the post FreeCol Matter.

By: tackle

tackle — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:33:17 +0000

Hah!
That’s what I thought, but I also thought my imagination was too odd for it to be true.

I thought more in the lines of a town crier shouting it out.. “Get ur freecol…” “Bring out ur dead…”

By: Dagda

Dagda — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:44:23 +0000

Spoken out loud, the title sounds somewhat like “Get your freak on”, the well-known title of a song.

By: tackle

tackle — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:31:56 +0000

Explain the joke please, I’m not native english speaking

By: J

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:53:49 +0000

I feel bad for gamers that you had to explain the title joke.

Video games could do with more Missy influence you know.

By: fluffy bunny

fluffy bunny — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:24:57 +0000

Schadenfreude: You can install the Amiga version to the hard drive so that you don’t have to swap disks. Probably works just as well on WinUAE.

I agree that the Amiga version of Colonization was very well done, with proper windows and everything (for the uninitiated, it looked like this: http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/sid-meiers-colonization/screenshots).

I was a bit tempted to play it, but I just remembered that I have a shrink-wrapped copy of Anno 1701 in my “new” games pile, so I have an excuse to install that now…

By: Feet

Feet — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 09:03:04 +0000

Even with the explanation it took me a moment to get it. ¬_¬

I’m having a slow day.