1. A Tutorial Introduction to the Client

In this section you will start a solitaire game of Freeciv and learn the basic concepts of controlling your race. All of this document assumes that Freeciv is installed in its default directories, and that the executables are in your PATH.

There are at present five versions of the client. The original client, named `xaw', uses the Athena widget set that comes with the X window system. There is also a native Amiga client (MUI) and a native Windows client (Win32). The default client is built on the GTK+-1.2 widget set and is called `gtk'. A client for GTK+-2.0 comes with the distribution but is not yet polished. There are other ports in various states of progress. We will be using the default GTK client for this tutorial.

1.1 Starting Up

Though this is the client tutorial, we must always start up a server to play the game. In an xterm or other window, start the server and give it some parameters: % civserver This is the server for Freeciv version 1.13.0 You can learn a lot about Freeciv at http://www.freeciv.org/ 2: Now accepting new client connections. For introductory help, type 'help'. > set aifill 7 That parameter will provide six computer-controlled players after you start (more precisely: it will add artifical intelligence players to the game until the total reaches seven; since there is one of you, this will provide you with six opponents). Leave that running for now, go to another xterm, and type % civclient & This will start up the client (in the background) and will bring up the Main Window and the Connection Dialog.

The Connection Dialog

As the window's title indicates, this dialog enables a connection to be made to a running server. Name is important since this name is associated with the nation you're playing. If you are playing from a loaded savegame or connecting to a multiplayer game, you use this field to indicate which nation to play with. In general, it can be anything (it defaults to your username), and you must remember it, be told what it is, or look in the savegame if you have access to it. However, players created initially as AI will have their username be the same as the nation's leader name. The other tab in the dialog lists the games registered with the Metaserver. This is described in more detail here. All this is FYI. For now, if you're starting a new game, just choose the default. The second and third fields specify the server that your client is connecting to. If you started the civserver in another window as above and you have your /etc/hosts set up correctly (i.e. localhost points to your machine), then everything should be fine. If the server is on a different machine, you must specify the hostname or IP address and possibly the port number that the server is running on (a server command line option sets this, but defaults to 5555). Click on "Connect". (Throughout this manual, "click" means a single left click.) If you look over at your server window, you should see something like: 2: Connection request from bob from hostname.somedomain.org 2: bob has client version 1.13.0 2: bob has joined as player bob. > Now on the server command line, type: > start which will start your game.

Select a Nation

Immediately after the server starts a new game, you are presented with the dialog that allows you to choose a nation and leader. Click on a nation's toggle button to select a nation. If any nations are grayed out, it means that other (human) players have already selected that nation. After you've made your selection, use the drop-down box to select a leader name and/or enter one of your choosing. Select your preferred gender, and then the initial city style you want. This option selects kind of sprite you want to indicate a city on the map. Click OK and we're on our way.

1.2 A Look at the Main Window

Now the main client window will be filled in with the world as you know it. One of the first things you should do, however, is click and hold on the "Help" menu button in the menu bar; you will see a wealth of topics for which there is online help. There is online help for essentially all of the game's concepts and features. Browse through the other menus to get an idea of the other dialogs available to you. More detailed information about the other dialogs will be presented later. The main parts of the client window are: the Map, the Overview Map, the Sidebar, and the Output Window and Chatline.

The Map

The upper right is a scrollable map of the world around your initial units. The default world is 80 squares across and 50 squares high, but this viewport only shows a subset of these. Simply expand your window to see more of the map. Each square you see filled in contains a representation of the terrain in that portion of the world's surface. It is possible to move around the world to view a different part. This can be done by either clicking on the scrollbars ( as you normally do in a program) or by using the keyboard shortcuts( remember to have the freeciv screen active before using the keyboard shortcuts). You can also center the map by clicking the on map.You can also set auto center on units which can be found in menu game options.This would auto center the map on the current active unit.You can also center the map view on a particular city, this is done by using the find city option in the kingdom menu or the keyboard shortcut (CTRL f). The flashing square in the middle is alternating between the terrain of that square and the icon of the currently active unit. The terrain types which you see should be a sample of those in the world; in the picture your initial units are on a Grassland square, with Plains squares just to the south, east, and southeast of your units, and one north of the middle of the river. Just to the north of your units is a River square, with two more Rivers to its east. Off to the far southeast is a Tundra square. Surrounding your coast to the west is a number of Ocean squares. Your map may vary, but the same features will be available. Many map squares have special resources; in this case, there is one. The Plains square just to the east of the units has a Horses symbol; such a square has higher food productivity than an ordinary Plains square. How can you tell what the squares contain if you aren't familiar with the symbols? Put the cursor over the square, and press and hold the middle mouse button; you will see a tiny window saying something like "Terrain: Plains (Horses)". Do the same in the square with your units; you will get a line describing its terrain, another identifying the unit on the top of the stack there, and another giving the unit's critical statistics (attack, defense, firepower, and hit points). But first, note that much of the map is black, apart from the 21 squares in the center. These are squares of which you know nothing; you will not see what is in them until you have a unit close enough to report on them. What of the world beyond your 11x8 viewport? Move your cursor to the horizontal scrollbar below the map, and single left click. This shifts the map one square to the left, exposing more black squares on the right. A single right click will shift the map one square to the right. A single middle mouse click on the scrollbar will jump the map to that relative position on the entire world map. The vertical scroll bar adjusts the map height similarly. Or, instead of using the scrollbar, you can simply point to a square on the map and use a single right click; the map will be recentered around that spot. At present, there is little to see. Find your way back to where your units are. A shortcut for this is the "c" key, which will move the map to place the active unit in the center of the map. This and other shortcut keys you will use a lot. We'll leave the units for later.

The Overview Map

In the top left corner of the client window is an area which is mostly black, with some colored squares within. This is a map of the entire world, in a resolution so small that individual terrain squares are indistinguishable. It has a yellow dot flashing in time with your current unit. At this point it has no value, other than showing that the starting location is at the far south of the "middle" of the world. Once you have a world-spanning empire it will come in handy. On the real Earth map, if you have the detail map showing Europe, for instance, you would need many scroll clicks to adjust it to look at South America. But one click on the corresponding place in the overview map will shift the detail map to centered on the selected position. Cities and unites are shown on the overview map as colored dots. Moving units will move the dot on the overview map. Cities that have been destroyed will not be shown on the overview map. All units and cities can be shown by building a certain wonder. See wonders for more information on this.

Sidebar

Below the overview map is what I'll call the sidebar. The sidebar gives immediate access to some important information and controls without opening dialogs. Thevarious parts of the sidebar are numbered and a synopsis of those parts is found below: sidebar detach button game state indicators tax rates indicators/controls game information timeout indicator turn done button active unit state active (focused) unit other units on the active unit's tile more units indicator 1) Sidebar detach button: Just drag and drop the sidebar to detach it to where you wish it to be. 2) There are four symbols here, the first is the science researched level, the brighter the builb, the closer you are to what ever science you are looking up. Second is the nuclear winter globe (when this becomes brighter it means that the land is polluted with nuclear waste) if left unchecked will cause a nuclear winter. The third is the Global warming globe if this goes white, global warming takes place. To clear pollution see settlers/engineer in units list. Fourth is the goverment icon, and represents which goverment type your nation is running. 3) This shows 10 figures each being 10% of your nation, and shows your luxuary, science, tax levels. They represent the division you have between luxuries, research, and taxes. The default rates are no luxuries, 50% research, and 50% taxes, so what you see are pictures for five researchers and five tax collectors. if you reduced taxes to 40% and increased luxuries to 10%, the pictures would show one entertainer, five researchers, and four tax collectors. Let's change things to do research a bit faster. There is no need for taxes at this point. There are two ways to change the distribution of effort in your empire. One is through the "Game" menu item called "Rates". The other is through this icon bar. Click on the first tax collector. That will change it to an entertainer, and move it to the far left of the line (since it always shows entertainers, then scientists, then tax collectors). Click on that far-left entertainer, and it becomes a scientist. You can also look at the information box above and see the new percentages give as text. What if you try to exceed the maximum amount of research (or any other choice) allowed for in the rules? Try it: Click on another tax collector to make it an entertainer, then click on the new entertainer. The icon doesn't change, and you get an error at the bottom of the window: "Game: Science rate exceeds the max rate for Despotism." This is how you get errors returned from the server; your client tried to make the change, but the server rejected it. Change a scientist into a tax collector, and you can change the entertainer back into a scientist. 4) This is a display of the total population of your civilization, the year it is in the game (years increment is 50years a turn, until 1000BC, then 25years a turn ect), the amount of gold you have in the treasury and the levels of tax, luxuries, science to which you have set your nation to. Certain goverment types have certain limits for tax, luxuries, science. 5) This is the timeout indicator, if the timeout option has been set, this will show the amount of time you have left to complete your turn. The amount can be changed by using the server command for this. If playing over the internet, who ever is hosting the game will have control over this, and you can ask them to change the timeout by asking them in the player chat window. 6) This is the turn done button, press this at the end of your turn, or set Auto Turn Done which will do auto turn for you once you make you last move. You can find this option in the Game menu. You may see this button flash, this means that all other players have finished their turns and are waiting on you to finish your turn. When you press the turn done button it will gray out until the start of the next turn. When the game ends the turn done button stops working. 7) This part gives the type of unit whose move it is (or the unit you have selected for moving), the number of moves you have left for that unit and what kind of terrain it is on. 8) This is the unit which is being moved (unit details can be found above). 9) This is the list of of the units that are occupying the same square as the active unit, or are present in the same town. 10)This shows that there are more units on this square than can be shown in the space. Click this and you will be shown the other units.

[Message] Output Window and Chatline

Near the bottom of the window, below the unit icons, is a large rectangular area with messages. It contains all messages sent to you from the server (Note: you can filter which messages you'd like to receive, see Message Options). It has a scrollbar to allow you to scroll back to see older messages than those which fit in the window. At the very bottom is a single line. This is the multiplayer "chat" line, to communicate with other players. You can also send commands to the server through an IRC-like interface. For example, typing /help will give you return the help listing in the Output window. More detailed explanation of the chatline can be found in the reference section.

Message and Client Options: An Aside

You can control which messages you receive from the server in the Output Window beneath the main window, the Messages Window, and via popups. The word city means that the message setting is a message that would concern a city.The word civ means that the message concerns you whole civilization.The first two options " City: Buildings unavailable item" and " City: Captured/Destroyed" are currently set to "Pop". This means any messages concerning this would appear in a new popup message each time.You can easly change this by clicking "Out" which would then give the same messages but this time they would appear in the output window which is under the main map.Clicking "Mes" would set the messages to appear in the message window which ( unlikly the popup message window )can display more than one message.

There are several miscellaneous options controlling aspects of the client that can be found in the Game menu. Local Option: Solid unit background color This displays units with a solid background color and the map sqaure that the unit may be on is not shown. Local Option :Sound bell at new turn Sounds a bell at the start of each new turn. Local Option: smooth unit moves and Local Option: smooth unit moves steps These settings deal with Graphic display of units and can be tweeked to the users liking. The smooth unit moves makes the units move more smoothly-and you can either make it "jump" from one map square to another map square or make a transition in more steps.Just click to change the number settting. Local Option: combat animations Combat animations will show battles animated.If you wish to turn off this option just unclick this option. Local Option: popup dialog in AI mode Clicking this on or off will effect what is displayed if you switch to AI mode.No messages will be displayed at anytime if its turned off while the computer plays for you. Local Option: Manual Turn Done in AI mode Turns on or off manual turn done when you have set AI mode on.AI plays your turn ,but stops and waits on you pressing turn done button if its set on. Local Option: Auto center in Units and Local option Auto Center on Combat This will set the main map to be centered on the current active unit,so that at the end of moving a unit the map will then be refreshed and display the next unit to be moved (if any). When a battle occurs the auto center on combat will take you to view this if you have this set to on. Local Option: Focus on Awakened Units When units are sentried,they awake if an enemy unit comes near.This option would take you to the unit when it awakes. Local option Draw Diagonal Roads/Rails The game has an option of drawing staright lines for roads and rails or use the more asthetically pleasing diagonal line for roads and rails. Local Option Concise city Production Gives more concise city information. Local Option: End turn when done moving If you wish to make the game end your turn after your last move automatically rather than having to click turn done every turn, then turn this option on. Local Option: Use ALT/Meta for accelerators(GTK only) Option for GTK users with accelerators.This wont work on other systems.