How to play Operation Freedom

What the game is

Operation Freedom is a real-time counterinsurgency strategy game set across Afghanistan's 398 districts, on real terrain, starting in December 2001. You command a fictional coalition. The enemy factions and local partners are fictional too.

Winning battles isn't the goal. You're aiming for a population that supports the government, legitimate elections and no uprisings. It runs in your browser at https://operationfreedom.earthablaze.com with no install.

Pick a mode

When the briefing ends you choose one of two modes:

• Win the Peace is the campaign. Hold elections with at least 55% turnout and legitimacy of 70 or more, then keep national support at 60% or above for a year. Each uprising sets that year back 90 days. The first election is due around October 2004. If it fails, it's rescheduled a year later at a political cost.
• Total Control asks you to bring every one of the 398 districts under government control at the same time.

In both modes you lose if political capital reaches zero or Kabul falls.

What you manage

• Cash pays partner salaries, upkeep, projects and reinforcements. Unpaid partner forces desert.
• Fuel and supplies arrive by truck convoy from the Torkham, Chaman and Hairatan crossings, or by helicopter airlift. Uncleared roads get convoys blown up, and escorts help fight off ambushes.
• Political capital is patience at home. Casualties, civilian deaths, ambushes, uprisings and lost districts drain it.

How the insurgency works

Insurgents grow out of grievance. A raid on bad intel creates more enemies than it kills, and civilian casualties cut support and cost political capital. You only know what your drones, satellite passes and troops tell you, so build intel before you strike.

Engineers build FOBs, checkpoints and surveillance aerostats. They hold ground and secure roads, but they cost upkeep and isolated outposts can be overrun.

Missions

High-value targets and hostage-takings pop up every few weeks. Dispatch a unit, and its transport decides whether it arrives in time. Then auto-resolve the mission or take command of a real-time battle on the ground. See Controls and game speed.