Unciv

Unciv describes itself as “an open source, moddability-focused Android and Desktop remake of Civ V”. It is a turn-based 4X game on a hex map: you found cities, research technologies, and expand by trade, diplomacy or war. It ships with two rule sets modelled on the original game and its Gods & Kings expansion, and has scenarios and a map editor.

Playing with others

• On one device: hotseat games, where players take turns on the same phone or tablet.
• Online: multiplayer works by uploading and downloading the saved game after each turn, so players don’t need to be online at the same time, and the app can notify you when it is your turn. Players join by exchanging the user ID the app generates; there is no account.
• The default server is uncivserver.xyz, run by a community member. The project’s own documentation lists it under “Third-party (unofficial) publicly hosted Unciv servers” and warns that such servers may go offline and lose your games. You can point the app at another server or host one with the server software the project publishes.

Mods

Mods can add, replace and remove the game’s basic definitions, and the in-game browser finds them on GitHub. The project’s modding guide advises against creating or editing mods on a phone.

What goes online

The app’s own description says the internet permission is needed “for user-initiated downloads and the multiplayer feature”: browsing and downloading mods, the music, and multiplayer turns. The other background permissions (starting at boot, a foreground service, notifications) come with the code that delivers multiplayer turn notifications. Single-player games need no connection. Our scan found no tracker libraries.

About this file

• This is F-Droid’s build of version 4.22.6-patch1, signed with F-Droid’s key. The project also publishes signed APKs on its GitHub releases, but doesn’t recommend them because it updates often, and those can’t install over this one or the other way round. Its Google Play listing is free.
• The music isn’t in the APK: the game leaves it out at build time and offers a Download music option.
• The 27.3 MB file runs on Android 5.0 and later, on ARM and x86, 32- and 64-bit. It declares 7 permissions.
• The Portuguese (Brazil) translation is complete (100% by the project’s own count in this version).
• The code is under MPL-2.0. The README lists the media under CC BY-SA, CC BY, CC0 and public-domain licences; the credits file also names some images from Flaticon, Freepik and Pixabay, which come under those sites’ own licences.

Unciv is an independent project, not affiliated with Firaxis Games or the Civilization series.

CPU types in this build: arm64-v8a (64-bit ARM, almost every phone since 2017); armeabi-v7a (32-bit ARM, older and budget phones); x86 (32-bit Intel, emulators); x86_64 (64-bit Intel, emulators and Chromebooks).

Versions currently kept in the F-Droid repository. We host and check only the newest one. Full changelog.