Monthly Archives: January 2012

Creating shortcuts for Freeciv servers

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Here’s how you can setup a shortcut directly to Freeciv server.

I’m currently playing three different Freeciv worlds and one of them with two different accounts (until one player comes back from a holiday trip). I thought this might be worth mentioning.

Windows 7

Select Start menu, find Freeciv, and select from the right button drop down menu Send to -> Desktop (create shortcut).

Now your desktop should have an icon named Freeciv. Rename it to “Freeciv LT30” if you’re playing LT30. Select again the right dropdown menu and open Properties. From there add to end of the Target option following text: “ -a -n username -p 5030 -s lt30.longturn.org“. Of course you should change username to match your username. Properties dialog should look like in the example image.

Now you should have a shortcut named Freeciv LT30 on your desktop which you can click to instantly connect to LT30 server. No need to remember server settings.

Linux

Linux systems use different types of shortcut systems. Basically you just need to copy your current shortcut and change it to use arguments “ -a -n username -p 5030 -s lt30.longturn.org” just like in Windows 7.

Mastering communications

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Freeciv has an integrated chatline with some useful features to help communicate with your co-players. I’ll try to reveal here some of the key points to help to communicate with players.

Contacting through Longturn website

When playing Longturn.org’s games, sometimes the best way to contact is using Longturn’s website. You can send messages to users from their profile page. For example when a player is idling they might still read their emails. However, some players don’t provide their email addresses.

Private messages

You can send private messages to players by their player name from the Chat dialog.

For example, write “Jhh: Hello” to send a private message to me.

However if you intent that message to be public to everyone try for example to write “jhh, Hello“.

Messages to allies

The easiest way to write messages to allies is to check in the box in the GTK client for it (right bottom corner). However you can also write messages with a leading dot. For example, “. Hello allies!“.

Referencing to City or Map location

The most useful feature of the integrated chat might be the ability to reference locations and cities from the map.

If you go to the map and move your mouse over a specific tile, and then hit ctrl, alt and right mouse button, there will be a special reference tag in your chat input ready to be used in your conversations. (Sometimes you might need to start writing a message before it goes there.)

After you write a message with that tag there will be a link on the chat message and other users can easily find about where you linked by clicking it. Also, the map shows a special square over that tile.

You can clear links in the GTK client by using Clear link -button (right-bottom corner of chat dialog). Clicking those links again will mark them on the map again.

Referencing to units

You can link to units almost the same way by shortcut Shift-Control-Alt-MouseRightClick on a unit on the map.

More

See more from Freeciv’s Help -> Chatline.

Update:

You can change options from client so that chat messages are written also to Messages tab from (GTK client) Game -> Options -> Message and enable check box for Mes column for Chat messages. Remember to hit Game -> Options -> Save options now after you change settings.

Daily Journal – Playing LT30/T3

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It’s time for the 4th turn of LT30.

Once more, I start my turn moving my two explorers. I’ve heard rumors that some players have already seen other nations. Maybe I’ll see today, too. (I didn’t. Update: Yes, I did. I saw parts of Aleut’s lands.)

In LT30 explorers have three moves but since they can move on any terrain as they would on roads, it makes total of nine moves (3*3). Because of that there’s no practical reason to move along rivers or avoid harder terrains like mountains.

Moving to check research development — all looking good, I’ll have Pottery in two turns!

(Update: In case you missed how my research is so fast, see my recent blog post about the first turn.)

There doesn’t seem to be much to do for the moment. Because it’s going to be only two turns until I’ll have Pottery, I should continue improving tiles that I’m planning to use next — building more roads and irrigations.

In LT30 workers have three moves, too. With workers it’s often better to move two moves and build something that takes only 1 turn to finish (like a road) than move all three and do nothing that turn. You will have full three moves more next turn. You can still finish the next improvement in the same time if it’s at most two moves away.

Because this turn I didn’t have much real things to do — and for the fun of it — I’ll write also about my Demographic’s Report.

Though it says I’m number one for most of the topics, it doesn’t show the full truth. I’m probably just one of many. Anyway it’s a good sign for the start. The reason I’m not first in some of these is probably just because I’m spurting for the science at the moment.

Maybe I’ll start watching more carefully these reports in the future. Who knows, maybe I’ll spot the first two size city!

That was all for this turn today. Tomorrow more!

Freeciv Tilesets

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I bet you noticed that I don’t use the default Amplio tileset in my screenshots.

I have never liked Freeciv’s isometric tilesets because I haven’t seen an isometric tileset that’s as clear as is the original 2D tileset. I always get headache when trying to interpret Freeciv’s isometric tilesets.

Freeciv offers four standard tilesets and you can install more or even make your own. Most of the time you can just switch the tileset without changes to the server.

The current tileset can be changed from the client’s settings: Game – Options – Local Client under the Tileset option.

Amplio2 is Freeciv’s newest tileset and the default. It’s isometric and much bigger in resolution than other tilesets shipped with Freeciv. I personally do think it’s much more clean — even almost usable — but I don’t like the small amount of tiles this tileset allows on the screen. I’m not going to use it before Freeciv offers a way to zoom the map.

Isotrident was Freeciv’s previous default tileset (some years ago). It was the first isometric tileset to replace the original trident tileset.

Trident is Freeciv’s original 2D tileset. In my opinion it’s still the best and most clear tileset available.

Isophex is the only hexagonal tileset shipped with Freeciv. Though it can be used with a “normal” 2D/isotrident server, it does not make much sense unless used with a hexagonal-type Freeciv server.

You can install more tilesets from Freeciv’s homepage.

Installing tilesets in Linux

For example in Linux tilesets can be installed simply by unpacking the package under ~/.freeciv/2.3:

wget http://download.gna.org/freeciv/contrib/tilesets/freeland/freeland-3.0-Beta2-normal--freeciv-2.3.x.tar.gz
cd .freeciv/2.3/
zcat ~/freeland-3.0-Beta2-normal--freeciv-2.3.x.tar.gz|tar xf -

Installing tilesets in Windows 7

On my Windows 7 the right place to unpack the tileset package was C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Freeciv-2.3.0-gtk2. However I’m not sure if this is the correct place always. After the unpack there should be a directory named freeland and a file named freeland.tilespec.

Daily Journal – Playing turn LT30/T2

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I am now playing 3rd turn of Longturn LT30.

I started my turn by moving my explorers again. Exploring the world is one of my favorite activities while playing Freeciv.

I haven’t seen other nations yet. This map seems to be really huge. It’s actually bigger map than our latest Finnish game (FI2011) had — and it was really big map, too.

I also founded my fourth city this turn. Liverpool added one scientist more to help research. It’s now three turns until I get Pottery — total of 16 bulbs/turn and I have 16/56 already done.

Because of the science boost my cities don’t produce much shields or food but I’m sure I need Granary before I let them grow and to build more Workers. While I wait for the Pottery I started to build roads and irrigations.

That was all for today’s turn. Tomorrow more!

Behind the Game – Continent Numbers

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In Freeciv the continent numbers are one of the internal bits of detail about your land and the world that is available to the player. In a perfect game, I don’t think you should see this data, but because Freeciv shows it to everybody, I don’t see it as cheating either.

I spotted details about continent numbers from the LT30 chat:

“Continent numbers are assigned beginning at the upper-left corner of the map, and proceeding right and down. The reason that large continents generally get low numbers is that the code is more likely to run into them than smaller continents. While smaller numbers tend to indicate larger continents, that’s not always the case.”

— written by Sgik in LT30 chat

You can check your continent numbers by moving mouse over a tile and pressing down middle mouse button. See the red underlined number in the example image: this tile is on the continent #39 — there’s at least 38 other continents in the world.

Some clients do it differently: I recall Mac version used alt and left or right mouse button. However I cannot confirm it since I don’t have a Mac to test it right now.

The first turn – Selecting a place for your cities and research goals

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The most important thing to do in the start of the game is selecting best places for your first cities.

Also usually the best strategy in the start is to optimize to expand by building new cities.

In LT30 you have four settlers, two explorers and two workers in the beginning. Cities can use 7×7 tiles around the city center (except the corners) but only if you have vision to them. Empty cities have vision of standard 5×5 land.

First you should use your explorers to search the lands around your starting place to have better knowledge of your surroundings.

You start with a Despotism government style and because of that those tiles get -1 penalty of more or equal to 3 resources. For example you will get only 2 food from Ocean (Fish) or Plains (Wheat) instead of normal 3. However by irrigating the Wheat tile, you may get three food even in the despotism.

Each city center will get at least one more of each resource — it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. For example if you build your city to Plains, the city center will generate 2 food, 1 shield and 1 trade (instead of 1/1/0), which is the same if you build it on a Grassland tile. However a city center on mountains will get 1 food, 1 shield and 1 trade (instead of 0/1/0).

You should select a place where you get maximum food output from at least two tiles (including the city center) and use your workers to maximize it (see the blue arrow in the image). That way you get your city to grow faster and you can build new cities faster. It helps if those tiles have shield output. Good optimized compromise to get fast growing cities is two irrigated Plains and a city center on Grassland or Plains tile, because with Granary built it gives you a city that grows and builds settler every 5 turns. It’s even faster if you have irrigated Oasis or Grassland tiles that give you output of three food each turn each tile.

You need to research Pottery to build Granary. Select it from Cilization -> Research (F6). In the start the fastest way to research bulbs is to change your people in the cities as scientists by removing them from the tiles and clicking the icon for specialist (see the red arrow in the image). Another option is to use GMA and select the Max Science governor.

This should give you 3–4 bulbs in each of your city (total about 16 each turn) and you can develop Pottery in only 4–5 turns.

While waiting the Pottery you can start building Barracks in the cities and once Granary is available you can change it to Granary. Just make sure you don’t complete the Barracks before you have Granary available. Also use your workers to irrigate one or two good food tiles near your city.

Without a Granary your cities will not grow as fast. The food stock is reduced to 0 when a city changes it’s size. With a Granary it will be half of the stock which makes growing to a new size half times faster.

 

Perfect Space Race

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Some weeks ago we made the perfect Freeciv space ship to end our current game at freeciv.fi.

To do that, I had to research once more how it’s done in Freeciv 2.3.0. There isn’t much documentation about it. It doesn’t work the same as it did in the commercial Civilization 1 and 2.

It seems the fastest complete ship will take 7.7 years to travel to the Alpha Centaur — it takes 8 turns in the game based on our tests. It has three Space Modules, 16 Space Components and 20 Space Structurals.

Most important thing to know is that the order in which you build these parts is significant. It seems the best way is to build first modules and components and then enough structures. That’s because the game tries to place new parts to supplement the ship and might put some parts in the wrong order if it thinks the ship needs more structurals for modules instead of components.

To build these parts in the first place you need to have Factory built in the city and have researched Space Flight (for Space Structurals), Superconductors (for Space Modules) and Plastics (for Space Components).

My raw calculations can be read from Google Docs.

You will get something about 100-400 more points (Please note: I haven’t confirmed the exact amounts!) to your score based on the size of your space ship. Usually the space race will end the game but some games do not have space race enabled — like longturn.org — or it doesn’t end the game (just adds points). The player who wins the space race doesn’t automatically win the game if he has less points than others have. For example it’s possible to make more points by developing Future Tech or conquering land.

The space ship is lost if your capital is conquered. If that’s a possible threat you should start improving your defenses ASAP or move your capital to a better city.