Last updated on December 13th, 2025 at 11:43 am
Freeciv Go – Strategy Game Review
Freeciv Go is a Strategy game from Vladimir Davidovich, first launched in 9th September 2021.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 173+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Freeciv Go Stand Out
Freeciv is a free turn-based multiplayer strategy game, in which each player becomes the leader of a civilization, fighting to obtain the ultimate goal:
To become the greatest civilization.
Players of Sid Meier's Civilization® series should feel at home, since one aim of Freeciv is to have rulesets with compatible rules.
Freeciv is maintained by an international team of coders and enthusiasts, and is easily one of the most fun and addictive network or individual-versus-computer video games out there!
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Freeciv Go is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 7th December 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Fixed some UI issues
- Accessibility improvements
Download & Availability
Freeciv Go is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
If you like the old school civilization games you like Freeciv.
A great option for playing Freeciv on the go, havent experienced and real issues, but maybe a multiplayer (local or online) would be loved! Though it may not be the best for those new to the genre or not experienced due to its mildly steep learning curve, you have done an amazing job.
It takes a little getting used to the interface, but once you get the hang of it, its just like old school CIVII, but formatted to fit in the palm of your hand. Spent hours playing as a kid, and now we get to experience it again with our own kids. Shoutout to the devs! Excellent Work.
This is pretty much an exact replica of civ II, with slightly better graphics. Overall a very fun game, and free, which is awesome. Combat favors the defender a little too much, in our opinion, but besides that everything is exellent. Highly recomended.
We got this game because CivRev was too easy; even on the highest difficulty, the ai werent terribly intelligent. This game doesn't have that problem. The ai are complex and it takes a combination of luck and skill to defeat them. Or you could just cause nuclear winter and fight a dreadful war of attrition. Every game is different, from the terrain to the tech imbalances to the relations between ai. Its so much better than Civilization Revolution.
This is awesome.The only downside is the old-dated Freeciv version this app based on and the lack of customizement. For those who are unsure how to play,we mean winning the Ai,heres some advice to give you some sense. First Remember defense is the most important thing here. If you want to invade Ai,you need defensive units to protect your attacking units since your units strength will decrease if you only have partial movement when the combat occurred. If you love peace or just got a terrible start where you cant get an overwhelming army to flood the Ai,you need neccesary defense to avoid being conquered by the enemy Ai and sometimes one or two powerful attacking units to drive Ai units out of your high producing tiles. Anyway,you understand that you need defense right? Then how?Just one most advanced defensive unit possible and then city wall,coastal defense if possible,barrack(1,2,3),sam battery,sdi defense.The denfensive units you should pick up as soon as you can,from left to right,are Phalanx,Pikemen,Musketeers,Riflemen,Marines,Mech. Inf. And,if the city is coastal,(consider)AEGIS Cruiser.You may also want to have a diplomat or spy fortified in your cities,one for one,to prevent(actually decreasing the possibility) it getting harmful damages from Ais diplomat or spy.Notably,a larger city would give your defending unit more strength in combat.That is to say,a city of size 19 and musketeers is better than one with a size of 6!Get yourself several attacking units too in case your enemy controls the essential food producing tiles. Second Remember cities follow both The More The Better and The Larger The Stronger rules. Never waste your time on wandering your settlers around.Grains,Peasants,Whales,Fish,River whatever just make sure your settler-producing city have its health of +2 or higher even at size 1.Dont stop to produce the stupid library or so on before you are sure that theres no more tiles for your settlers to build city on.Well,defense is an exception that unless youre sure nobody would appear to conquer your city when you focus on building settlers(enough coins for a one-turn defensive unit building is also ok).The trick is to research Map Making tech quickly so that you can use a trireme to take two settlers away to other islands or continents.Also,if you are lucky,you can use your explorer or diplomat(settlers and warriors are ok too) to take a tile,leaving the AIs settler stuck there wasting turns,which will hopefully give you more cities than Ais. Third Small empire deserve no war. Though its nice to have the first city growing fast with its health +2 at size 1,there are games you dont.The consequence is that you only have 3 or 4 cities until the end of game.(Well,you only have 2 or even 1?Start a new game.)You can still win as long as you dont need to put resources on any attacking units.How?A good alliance and strong large empire Ai ally!This surely needs some luck,bro.As it really happens,put all your efforts on defending,improving tiles,enlarging cities and researching the fastest,which would be easy if Ais are spending turns on wars.Try to grab some useful wonders like A Smiths Trading Co.,Shakespeares Theater,Womens Suffrage and so on.But dont waste your turns and caravels building any wonder that is useless in the modern era as a Democracy government(Pyramid and Leonardo's Workshop are the only two exceptions,if you managed to that early).At last,you should be able to set off a nice 100% success rate spaceship(you can get 53% or 56% during your building the most expensive space components,but thats not recommended) with 15.1 years or 7.7 years,anything alike,and hopefully win the game while all your ally would declare war on you eventually. We believe you would be able to win and get one fun in the game since you know the three points.Have fun!There are way a lot to play with.
We have dreamt about Freeciv on our iPad, with a touch interface, and here it is! We have not played much yet, but have the 5 stars just for the effort. +1 to pinch-zoom request. +1 to more rule sets. is it possible at all to switch between isometric and 2d, which is easier to control? is all the UI implemented? We wonder how to view the tech tree. * is the source code available.
Like Civ 2 – our favorite turn-based strategy game. SUGGESTION: Allow zooming-in to better see the pieces. We play on ipad, but things are small and would love to zoom in to view them better. Thanks and looking forward to more development of this great app.
Great throwback to the early versions of Civilization before it got extra animated and at times unnecessarily complex. Some of the gameplay could use a little refinement (recognizing beggars can't be choosers with a free game). For example: – hard to tell when a city is fortified which led to some real stupid moments on our part. -would love to be able to turn off the advisor that wants to build an airport. That was very annoying. – we couldn't find a way to view underlying terrain.
This is a good port of Freeciv to iOS. The controls work well, the game looks good, and the AI plays pretty well. It uses what used to be an experimental ruleset, and that is not changeable. It also lacks most of the tabular reports that make a larger empire manageable, especially later in the game. We would imagine that porting the ruleset customization and the missing tabular reports shouldnt be too hard, so Im hoping those are in the works.
This is a very well thought out UI on top of the Freeciv game. 5-stars and looking forward to future versions.
Is there a way to pinch-and-zoom? This was the very first thing we tried to do when we started a game and we couldnt do it. Is there a tech tree? Or a Civilopedia? What version of Freeciv is this running? Do you have a website with a message board or a forum? Thanks again.
You cant really scum save like in regular Civ so it made us grow as a player. Lots of fun getting a perfect start. End game is tedious as usual w civ games.
This is a really fun game, one problem, the ai is a bit too overpowered. – if you are wanting to find tips we find the best way to beat the ai is to use marines and cruise missiles.
This version of the app has with forward compatibility issues, such as becoming unresponsive after a too close alert As far as the CPU opponent being unbeatable, its exactly how the CPU in the desktop version behaves. The problem is with the FreeCiv code base rather than this particular port. To have a fighting chance, you need to take the huge risk of building wonders in your capital city to maximize culture and happiness. You also have to build roads, harbors and caravans to maximize trade. After your city grows a bit you have to pull a citizen away from working and make it an entertainer. If you have to defend your cities you should have enough money saved up to build a musketeer (or alpine troop) in each city being threatened. The CPUs will have hearts in their eyes and not attack you even if their attitude towards you is genocidal.
The game is really fun in the beginning but completely unplayable in later turns. Its virtually impossible to win against the AI in combat, and if you just focus on technologies the computer will still finish you off with 999+ ironclads out of nowhere later in the game.
This is probably our favorite game ever, but it could be better. So we wrote down some ideas for possible new features; 1: The randomly generated maps should be bigger 2: Real continent maps should be added. Europe, Asia, etc. 3: It would be really cool if military scenarios were added to the game. (WWI WWII, Vietnam War, etc.) 4: A custom map designer would be awesome! 5: If there are going to be real world maps, all countries should start in there right places. The French start in France, Mexicans start in Mexico, etc. 6: Also, you should be able to add more AI players, maybe like thirty or more. 7: Then, finally, one BIG map of the entire world should be added. We think the game's popularity would go way up if these features were added. It would make us very happy if they were added, too, because it really bugs us when, say we're Russia, and we end up next to Brazil. That doesn't seem right. It would be better if you start out as Russia, and end up next to Finland, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Georgia. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE this game and we think it's awesome, but we just think it could be more awesome. (Oh, and by the way, we love the classical music feature) Also; as a response to other people who have posted negative reviews; the game is NOT unwinnable, it just takes SKILL. It's not a stupid game that takes no skill at all. Once you REALLY get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun. Here's a good tip; a lot of people complain about how AI's have unlimited recources. This is not true. As they are AI's, they are efficient and shrewd. When you start the game, build as many cities as possible. While building cities is crucial, the real way to win the game is to take good care of your cities. Essential city improvements include harbors, granaries, temples, factories, barracks, and cathedrals. Barracks train your soldiers so they are made as veterans, which gives you a great advantage. Harbors allow you to catch more fish in the ocean, increasing your population faster. However, at some point, if you grow a large population, you will eventually recieve an "empire penalty", in which your people will try to revolt and cause a civil war or revolution. Empire penalties usually occur near the beginning of the game, usually when your government is Despotism. When your cities recieve the penalty, change your government to tribal. Temples and cathedrals make your citizens happy, making them less likely to revolt. Factories increase the production of your cities, allowing you to create and build faster. And we know AI's are very tough, even in "Very Easy" mode. But this is their secret, what we've just explained to you. Now you can keep up with the AI's.
This is a really cool game, love the art style, but we dont really think the music and audio match the style. Still really cool and more of a challenge compared to other Civilization games, but not to complex to not understand. Love it.
Cant open the tech tree but otherwise like the game so far.
Enjoyable game except at the beginning. The AI players seem to have way too much resources to spam soldiers/military — slowing the development of everyone as a result.
When we start the next move the game crashes although this has never happened before we hope they fix it.
Like easy er mode so people can learn.
Its alright, its just a bit soulless. Here are a few problems we have with it: It has no animations or victory animations and selecting a nation with that scroll bar is extremely painful (remnicent of that bad phone number selector). The AI is also impossible to deal with, Its extremely difficult to have any sort of diplomacy at all because the AI will reject any offer you give them, even if you havent done anything wrong to them. There is no tech tree or in-game encyclopedia. Also Seretse Khama should be the leader of Botswana. The website version is better we think. Overall, it is a decent replica of the original game that can work on a phone.
Has many classic civ aspects, but always pushes you to war. Would be nice to minimoize messages if desired.
A greyed out chat button leads us to believe that there is multiplayer but there isnt. Other than that its an ok port of free civ.
The amount of playable countries to choose from combined with the slider being the only method of picking a country makes for the only issue Im having with the game. Trying to pick the exact country we want gives us an aneurysm every time. If we could give one suggestion, it would be adding a second method to choose your country.
The game isnt bad, but with attention to a few details it could be so much better. Here are our complaints: (1) No minimal, or no way to see some kind of overview map of the whole world. (2) Moving units is a real pain. You have to click the go to tile button ever single time, and that is so annoying. It would be a lot nicer if we could just select a unit, and then tap the tile to move to. (3) The game needs to be more in-your-face about some things. When nations want to talk to us, the game just puts a little red dot on the nations icon. It is super easy to overlook. It needs to actually pop up a dialog where you can talk with the other nation. (4) Technologies take waaay to long to get at the beginning of the game. It feels like the game starts incredibly slow. (5) It would be nice to be able to play on an actual world map.
Great game. Mobile adaptation seems to be missing a lot of the options and menus that are real helpful in the standard version.
After talking a hundred or so turns, the app now exits unexpectedly whenever we tap end turn. The is no way to proceed with the game.
Theres definitely a game here that resembles the original Freeciv but this one wont be much of a hit. For starters the AI on every level is perfect so unless you are looking for an immediate challenge youll hate this. Secondly, the algorithm does you no favors and the interface doesn't help. It will just spring things on you with the only indicator of attack being a small red dot or your cities randomly being erased by enemies. The other nations also seem to be constantly buffed. No matter what you do you will have less money then them and your veterans will lose to their green troops. Over all it might be fun if you get lucky by putting it on one enemy and choose islands so that you dont have 5 horsemen rushing you turn 5 but other than that you wont find this game to be very fun. It was an attempt but should go into the oven for a lot longer. Its missing multiple pieces that make rts games fun.
Does a great job of reproducing Civilization 3, far and away our favorite Civ version and probably one of our top 3 games ever. So thats nice. BUT No matter what level the AI is set on, the attack odds are horrendous. We still havent ever beaten a Settler, losing battle after battle against a unit with literally no defense. And most other battles end up the same, it takes so much strength and numbers to beat anything at all. So frustrating it takes the fun out of the game. Second major complaint is that no matter how few players and how much land you set the game for, you are inevitably surrounded by all other countries and never get more than a few turns without running into the competition. So you have to fight right away, and see point #1. Great idea, could get there with improvements to the formula.
We love the concept and how most of it works, but other nations arent accepting our peace offers, or ceasefires, or alliances. They just automatically fight us as soon as the first treaty ends. Aside from that, we keep that they seem to advance in technology WAY FASTER than we can. It makes the game extremely difficult even on the lowest difficulty, and therefore unplayable. Please fix this so we can play.
The AI cheats, completely ignores rules about having 2 population in a city to build settlers. So not true to civ.
Even when set to novice, it is unwinnable. If you try to focus on making more units then there will be a famine that makes your people rebel, if you try to focus on your people then the AI for some reason starts to hate you and declares war on you, and you cant attack any of their cities because they have like five defensive units in each city, all of which are veterans. This is on novice mind you. We would compared to the dark souls of civilization knock offs. But in dark souls you can actually win. We apologize for being harsh but we have spent a lot of time on a unwinnable game, if this gets an update where the AI is weaker in someway or we get a better tutorial then we would consider replaying it but until then we will not, we will not delete it though in hopes that the developer will see this.
We've played every Civ game from the beginning, and this is simply impossible to even get going, much less have any chance of winning. You are out-settled, out-armied, and out-technologied by each other nation. Even after quitting close to a hyndred times to get the absolutely perfect river/quail/bison start, you are defeated within 50 turns. It's FREE, so it's not really a omplaint about the price, but it is a complete waste of time. It did get us to work throught getting the latest FreeCiv installede under X Windows on the Mac. Which is the recommended way to go.
Why, WHY do you developers not see that this CAN NOT be read, like on an iPhone 12, and yet you still peddle your inferior merchandise! And Apple, you allow it.
Nobody is saying it so we will. This is a poorly copied version of sid meyers Civilization 3. This game is completely unplayable even on novice settings. Shame on you for not only stealing the idea, but tarnishing the reputation of one of the best war games ever created. This game needs to be flagged and removed.
Ive played regular civilization games for years , this is kinda like it but you never can win, your enemies build 10 times faster than you and you can never get an edge even on novice level, this is a stupid game, Ive started a new game about 20 times and a matter of minutes you are over thrown, stop trying to compete with civilization you have no chance devs.
It wasnt that good if you wanna play a civ like game we would pick any other game its hard to learn the controls on this sometimes you can build a farm sometimes you cant the other country's are automatically hostile and it has a lot of bugs.
This port is amazing, Im just new to freeciv and was wondering if anyone had a link or a place to go to learn how to play.
We wish there was an option to change rule set.
Updating our previous review – the game crashes the instant we touch the Smart Keyboard touchpad on our iPad Pro. Using iPadOS 15, iPad Pro 2021, and the 2nd gen Smart Keyboard.
Amazing that this works! Its practically the full game of freeciv and it is easily playable on a phone.
This is just a fantastic port of Freeciv, perhaps the best version of the classic Civilization experience! Thank you for bringing this to our phone.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 25.12.7
- Size: 45.58 MB
- iOS: 18.0 or later
- Languages: CA, EN, FI, FR, PL, RU, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: [Vladimir Davidovich]()
Last updated: 7th December 2025 | Genre: Strategy | Developer: Vladimir Davidovich