Freecol Version 0.5.1 : Released 2006/09/22

• The installer now adds a shortcut for starting the game in windowed mode.
• New graphics for displaying unit paths.
• Borders for the main menu.
• Some of the panels have been improved.
• Tons of bugfixes.

• Tax.
• The custom house.
• Capturing of goods.
• Lost city rumours.
• AI for the european players and the royal expeditionary force.
• Fight the war of independence.
• Separate graphics for each type of forest.
• Get a list of public game servers on the Internet.
• Join a running multiplayer game (if not all of the four european powers are controlled by humans).
• A user friendly installer.

Freecol Version 0.4.0 : Released 2005/06/23

• Has the following menus:
  • Game: With new preferences option.
  • View
  • Order
  • Report: with Religious, Labour, Foreign Affairs and Indians advisors options.
  • Colonizopedia: with Terrain Type, Units, Goods, Skills, Buildings and Founding Fathers options. Only the later two work in detail.
• Has improvements of the artificial intelligence and the addition of new features that allow the player to interact with the natives.
• Has the following new features:
  • AI for Indian players
  • Visiting Indian villages (colonist, missionary and scout)
  • Trade with Indians.
  • Graphical updates and Colonizopedia framework
  • Tons of bug fixes
• To install:
  • Download freecol-0.4.0.zip from the download section of the above freecol site.
  • Open a MS-DOS prompt (START -> RUN -> "cmd") and move to the directory freecol (using cd .. command).
  • Make sure that java.exe (START -> SEARCH "java.exe" and copy into the freecol directory) is in your PATH and enter the following command to run the client:
    java -Xmx128M -jar FreeCol.jar

• Lots of pictures and info., download a copy.
• The game's very professional. So far they have the Europe screen, map, units and you can build a colony.
• The current unit doesn't flash so you don't know who you're dealing with. After playing the game for a while I got the hang of moving the ships although the colonist I landed didn't always seem to want to move after a while.
• Doing the AI will be the real test.
• Also for some reason you get two ships and a pile of money to buy colonists, professionals, artillery and ships with.
  
• I hope they have a least 5 slots for European Powers so we can play as the Portuguese.
• It also appears to support network gaming, as a future option anyway.
• It has 'Dress' as Missionaries not 'Bless' as Missionaries in a Church. I don't like this. Having to build a Church in the New World before blessing Missionaries there makes the game more challenging. Anyway you don't have enough Colonists in the beginning to make lots of Missionaries or the Indian unrest due to large Colonies and Troop build ups. May be this is only temporary, I hope so.
• Also for choice of first founding fathers you get Adam Smith, Henry Hudson, Francis Drake, Thomas Jefferson and William Brewster. I know for a fact you can't get Smith or Jefferson as first choices they arrive later in the game as they are so useful. I'm not sure about Drake either. names.txt appears to show the game mechanics behind this. Maybe they haven't implemented the text file yet and just want to show all the Founding Fathers description windows.