Bunch of beginner questions

[Fizanko]

Hello,

Having recently found Freeciv , i've been enjoying with it for a while, and of course got some questions, i'm using the 2.50 GTK2 build on window as apparently from what i read the SDL one isn't as complete due to no maintener.

- In the Civ i played (a bit of Civ 2 and a lot of Civ 3 PTW) , i was very used to get popup when there's some event/build completion/war/etc..., in Freeciv those pieces are displayed in tab, excepted that if i don't click on the related tab on the screen bottom, the informations isn't shown to me, so it's very easy to just forget to go to those tabs every turns and so miss important stuff, it's rather tedious.
Is there a way in Freeciv to have information popup instead of those tabs ?

- the AI build its cities extremely close (i am using the civ2civ3 ruleset in the hope it help my learning process) , i know a lot of people play this way as it's apparently more optimised for the costs, but it's way too close for my enjoyement of the game, that's very annoying to me as it makes the war more of a chore than i was used to. Is there a way to customise the AI so it play +/- the same way as i do regarding the spacing between cities.

- i can't find how to get information from a tile when i click on it, is there a setting for that ?

- is there a way to tell the AI in diplomacy to get the hell out of my territory ? i can't find the option and there's nothing about it in the and it's annoying to see all those guys patrolling in my territory, blocking the way of my workers and etc...

- when i use the screen for the research, it always open into a very small window :
http://i.imgur.com/3oydP9j.jpg
so i need obviously to enlarge it manually, set what i need and close, but the next time i open again the research window, it's back at being that small again.
Is there a way to have it keep the dimension i want ?

- is there a possible "team" victory in Freeciv ? I mean on my first game i survived (thanks to being on my own continent, far from the other AI) and for half the game an AI was in alliance with me.
I started make a lot of progress for the spaceship components (the way it's going is very different from what i was used) but when i started to get a bit well with it with tons of stuff already done, that allied AI suddenly declared war on me and invaded my peaceful continent, laying waste to my advanced troops with its own advanced troops.

- i found the way to move a stack of unit instead of 1 by 1, but is there a way to build "armies" like in Civ3 ?

- how can i know my troops upkeep, i mean how much troops i can have belonging to a city, when it is optimal, when it is going to lead me into trouble with the city, as i sometime have city unable to upkeep an unit, despite my financial balance is positive.

I wanted to ask about sound , as despite the apparent included soundpack the game is desesperately silent even when i enabled the sdl plugin to play them in the options, and found :
http://freeciv.wikia.com/wiki/Sound_%26_Music
that has a "freesounds" soundpack that has a huge lot more sounds, and with it i finally could get some sound ingame.

Sorry to ask lots of questions, but that's what to expect when you have someone new at it

[cazfi]

- See Game menu -> Options -> Message
- You can force minimum distance between cities as a game rule with server setting 'citymindist'. Try typing '/help citymindist' and '/set citymindist 5' to client chatline if not running server separately
- Tile information is shown on middle-click (or rather: hold as long as you want to see it)
- You can't command your enemies - sign a peace treaty so they have to move their units out of your area
- There's possibility of 'allied' victory (if enabled in server settings), but it's probably really possible only with conquest victory, not spacerace victory
- Usually unit upkeep is in shields, not gold, and it's taken from their homecity. So make sure that shield production of no city gets negative

[Fizanko]

Thank you very much.

[Fizanko]

Some more questions

- probably basic but still can't find how to : how do you zoom out to have a better view of the surrounding ?

- on the browser version there's the very intuitive right click -> available possibilties for selected unit, but neither on the gtk2 or even the sdl version i tried i can have that, is it hidden somewhere in the seas of options or is it just not possible on the non-browser versions for now ?

- even if i change everything into a popup (all the treaties by example), i still have the diplomacy dialog being into its own tab i have to navigate to instead of poping up like every other messages i set to popup :

The only way i found around this is to go to Game -> Options -> Local Client and in the interface tab disable "Enable Status Report tabs"
But doing that, i run into the same problem for most popup that i mentionned for the research one
Is there a more proper solution or option i am missing ?

probably more to ask soon

[Fizanko]

Not a question, but i don't know where to post this.
On my playtest, i noticed that any of my cities refused to build a settlers when they were at size 2 , only accepting when at size 3, it always sounded odd to me.

Then i noticed in the scenario list there was a "tutorial", so in case i missed something on my playtests, i decided to give it a try.

And noticed what seemed odd is reported in the tutorial too :

Here it clearly states that city size 2 can build a settler :


And if i look at my town that reached size 2 , it clearly refuse to build that settler :


Then the turn after, that settler is finally built (while the city was still at size 2) , reducing as expected the city to size 1.
Looks like the oddity is that when a city reach size 2 it does not build the settler, it wait a turn (despite the settler is ready since a couple of turns already)


I'm using the "classic" (that is default apparently) ruleset for this tutorial.

[cazfi]

Population cost of settler depends on the ruleset, and if you don't have "Disband if build settlers at size x" (where 'x' might be always 1, even if it should be more) set for the city, it refuses to build settlers until city is big enough to survive the cost.

[The Square Cow]

As far as I know there isn't a way to zoom out, however if you use a different tileset that is smaller you will be able to see more. To change look in Game>Option>Local Client.

[Fizanko]

Population cost of settler depends on the ruleset, and if you don't have "Disband if build settlers at size x" (where 'x' might be always 1, even if it should be more) set for the city, it refuses to build settlers until city is big enough to survive the cost.

I replayed with the Tutorial scenario while making sure the ruleset was set to "Default" to avoid the ruleset differences you're mentionning.
And i could reproduce the problem, the tutorial tells you that you require a City size 2 to build 1 settler, and ingame it's obviously not happening :

(the settler has been waiting for "1" completion for at least 5 turns in that screenshot)
And as mentionned previously, only the turn after i played that one the settler is finally built.

I think the problem is that the unit build check is happening before the city size growth in the pre-turn calculations, so on the pre-turn when the game check the city, it is at size 1 and so it refuse to build, then the city is made to grow to size 2 and then your turn really start ... without your settler being built despite that city is now at size 2.

As far as I know there isn't a way to zoom out, however if you use a different tileset that is smaller you will be able to see more. To change look in Game>Option>Local Client.

That's too bad, a zooming out/in would be very convenient instead of having to scroll around the map or select a mini-tileset.
Hopefully this will be considered in a future release.

[Arbogast]

A similar situation happened to me too under the default3 ruleset.

[Alien Valkyrie]

City production is evaluated before City growth. This way, it can commonly happen that you build a settler and the city grows back at the same turn. However, it also means that you can only finish the Settlers the turn after the city has grown if the city is too small.