Ville franche (English: lit. "Free City", also known as an independent, "indy", or sovereign town) is the designation given to towns that have become independent and are no longer associated with a county.
The process of a town becoming independent is commonly referred to as "flipping" or "turning" a town indy. Towns can only be "flipped indy" by an army General with his/her army within the walls (inside) a given town, taking one day to do so. A General may also flip an indy town back to a given county only if he/she has received sanction (approval) from that county to do so. You may be able to convince the county council to do this by gathering a bunch of people demanding freedom after a law suit by the county that was lost. Then you can ask the previous mayor of a town which is corrupt to rebel and then after the case stimulate the feelings. Have people send messages to the council and start a forum post. These things are all rare but if you really want to you can do it.
Note that social, economic and political changes occur when a town is removed from a county (turned indy) as it cuts the town off from all county resources:
- Most notably, people in an indy town cannot vote in a county's elections (even though the town itself doesn't move and is still physically located in the county).
- People in an indy town cannot purchase animals from the county, which means that ranchers will need to travel to towns that are not Ville franche to purchase animals.
- Indy towns are cutoff from the county university and therefore residents of indy towns cannot study unless they travel to non-indy towns to do so.