FREECIV-WEB 2021 Anniversary Upgrade



''' A new version of Freeciv-web has been released! '''

''' We call this new version the "2021 Anniversary Upgrade"! '''

 Play Freeciv-web at: https://www.freecivweb.org/ 

 Freeciv-web source code on GitHub: https://github.com/Lexxie9952/fcw.org-server 

Freeciv-web is an open-source turn-based strategy game. It can be played in any HTML5 capable web-browser and features in-depth game-play and a wide variety of game modes and options. Your goal is to build cities, collect resources, organize your government, and build an army, with the ultimate goal of creating the best civilization. You can play online against other players (multiplayer) or play by yourself against the computer.

 Release Notes: 

These are the Server upgrades, not ruleset upgrades.

'''1. Special Unit Actions / Attacks. Rulesets can give units new special abilities:'''

a. can optionally specify a move cost up to 7 moves points.

b. can optionally specify a limit to number of units on tile which can be hit

c. can optionally specify a maximum number of units who can be potentially killed

d. can optionally specify a unit stays fortified when doing the action.

2. Population units can now specify a different pop-cost and add-to-population number.

3. Non-diplomatic units can be made to enter "direct combat with buildings".

4. Tech tab: Bulb cost display will now be accurate if the GM has changed sciencebox to non-

default value.

5. Fixed a design flaw in the server that made pop-cost units take up all a city's build slots.

e.g., Now you could make a Settler or Proletarian and still use build slots for Riflemen.

6. Made units-display in lower-right update correctly more often.

7. Made possibilities for some rare “backdoor” exploits, now impossible.

8. DIPLOMATIC ACTION REPORTING TRANSPARENCY: all diplomatic actions show the odds

and results for all stages to both contestants.

'''9. New DARK MODE color theme. Can be easier to read and play at night.'''

10. Help Tab: Unit vision range now reported in real tile distance rather than square of radius.

11. Fortresses and Naval Bases show a flag of who owns them to prevent confusion.

12. Fixed variety of small quirks/inconsistencies in loading/unloading of transports.

13. Hovering over a Special Unit Attack button in the Attack pop-up window, now gives info-

text for all its special traits and requirements (from mp2-c onward)

14. Fixed rounding errors in the displayed upgrade costs for units.

15. Fixed server bug where “Capture Unit” did not trigger casus belli.

16. Added ability for ruleset effects to be conditionally triggered by unit activity (instead of

only completed actions.)

17. FOOT SOLDIERS CLEANING POLLUTION. There was a hidden flaw in 3.0 server, any unit

who can do ANYTHING to a tile automatically got a magic bonus to also clean pollution and

fallout. This was affecting foot soldiers because they can make hideouts. This gave them

“magic ability” to clean pollution and fallout, unintentionally. It was advertised in MP2

Summary changes that this is not a permanent rule but will only last until fixed. Now this is

fixed. Only non-military tile workers can clean fallout and pollution (worker, engineer, settler,

proletarian).

18. GLOBAL WARMING.

A bug in Freeciv server caused climate change to lag very badly on

large maps, from being caught in bad recursion. It had very high probability of crashing the

game. This was the reason that FCW had originally disabled Global Warming. This bug exists

in all versions of Freeciv but not anymore in FCW. This now has following fixes and upgrades:

1. New game server settings for STRENGTH of nuclear winter and global warming.

2. New percent setting allows adjusting the threshold that triggers climate events, and the

tolerance/absorption of the earth to diminish the accumulation of impact over time.

3. TC Climate Change processing takes only seconds instead of several minutes.

4. It doesn't crash.

5. Note: the defaults for these settings were always ON in all games, they were just not

triggered because FCW blocked them to prevent crashing. So, be careful of global warming.

6. New feature: IPCC report gives transparency on risk of climate change if the risk starts to

escalate.

7. Climate Report is now in Gov tab.

19. GMs can now set “landmass” from between 10 to 99 (was 15 to 85)

20. Mass select Airlift: you can select multiple units and give them all a simultaneous airlift

command, which will execute in sequential order if each is legal. This upgrades one-at-a-time

airlifting.

21 Intelligent Load/Unload/Activate Cargo are now upgraded to work holistically with each

other. Specifically, T and L commands can be given to both cargo and transports, with

different results. See below.

UNLOAD TRANSPORT 'T':

a. 'T' tells selected Transport(s) to unload all cargo. (Was: all transports, all cargo)

b. 'T' tells selected Cargo to unload from Transports. (Was: all transports, all cargo)

LOAD 'L':

a. 'L' tells selected Cargo to load on Transport(s). (no change)

b. 'L' tells selected Transport to LOAD all units on the tile which it can legally take as cargo.

(new command, "Scoop up Cargo units")

c. 'L' tells selected Cargo units who are already loaded, to transter to other transports on

the same tile without unloading first, IF such action would be legal when the cargo first

unloaded then loaded. In other words, it makes a shortcut single action if the two

actions of unloading then loading would be legal.

d. 'L' command given at Sea, tell selected Cargo to move to a new Transport. This is legal IF

current Transport has used no more than 4 moves AND has half or more of its moves

left. This is a needed compromise to allow legitimate "Transport transfer" at sea,

while still preventing double move exploits for transports.

SELECT CARGO on TRANSPORT 'U':

a. 'U' command will only select Cargo units on the selected Transport(s). (Was all cargo on

all transports.)

b. If no Transport is selected, 'U' command does its old behaviour to select ALL cargo units

on the tile.

Summary of new T, L, U commands:

What no longer happens:

1. 'T' will not force you to unload ALL cargo on the tile, forcing you to do multiple

tedious load/unload operations.

2. 'U' command will never select all cargo on same tile, but only on selected Transports.

3. 'L' command won't disallow swapping Cargo between Transports in cities because you

didn't take the extra step of unloading first.

4. 'L' command doesn't force you to click-select every unit you want to load. Now you can

select the Transport who scoops up all legal units instead.

22. Can "Transport swap" Land cargo units on land tiles:

1) where it's legal to unload anyway, to save an extra step (cities, naval bases, quays)

2) in sea units who have enough moves (see 24.'L’.d.)

23. Added new server feature: iPillage. This uses the server's new surgical strike pillage

feature, where tiles can be destroyed in real-time just like buildings, units, and

everything else. iPillage brings Scorched Earth and Blitzkrieg into the game; gives Air

Strikes a legitimate purpose, increases the tactical importance of Vigil. Server allows

rulesets to specify 3 iPillage characteristics for each individual type of unit:


 * success odds


 * move cost


 * pin-point single target, or multiple random targets in one strike.

note: iPillage odds go up +5% for each veteran level.

24. Added "gold per shield" info to the City screen (custom user column) and on pop-up

window to buy item.

25. Added option to enter Full Screen (Full Immersion) like every non-browser game

automatically does.

26. ESC is now dedicated to exiting Full Immersion. Use ALT-S or Options>>Full Screen to go

back to Full Screen.

27. ESC is not the right key anymore to exit tabs and pop-up windows. (See 26). Instead, the

command to exit any tab or pop-up window is "W" for (W)ithdraw (W)indow. This now allows

the game to default into an orthodox full screen experience like Freeciv Native Client and

EVERY OTHER REAL GAME, instead of being a "second class browser game."

Recommended: Don’t complain you don’t like full screen. Of course you love it. Just learn

your OS hotkeys to EASILY switch programs and enter/exit full screen.

28. Fortify given to non-fortifiable units will sentry them instead, and if they can't sentry, they

will be given "No Orders" and stay quiet, not asking orders.

This turns the F key into the magic key for making ALL units be quiet and do their best

option on the tile. It allows giving F to a large stack and every unit who can fortify will,

while sentrying the rest. Now you can move through lots of units fast.

Reason: quicker/easier micro-management during late game.

29. Sentry given to non-sentry units will give them NO-ORDERS instead, to quiet them.

30. Triremes can now sentry on all legal refueling spots (before: couldn’t sentry on coastline.)

'''31. Size 1 cities aren't immune to nuclear weapons. Now, size 1 cities are annihilated if nuked.'''

32. Investigate City was badly-coded to work 100% of the time all the time. It now has:

1. Default diplomatic action odds (80%) of avoiding diplomatic battle, even if enemy spy is

present (was hard-coded as 100%).

What this means: When investigating a city, you first do a "Covert Slip Attempt" to

sneak past being discovered. This is only rolling the dice for if the enemy knows you

are trying to spy. It has nothing to do with succeeding or being caught.

2. If you fail step 1, there is a diplomatic battle if there is a diplomat or spy in the city. Also,

the city owner is informed you were attempting to spy (otherwise he doesn’t know.)

3. If you avoided a diplomatic battle in step 2, then you have odds to succeed at

investigating the city (you might get caught.) MP2 has base odds 85% chance to

succeed at this phase. (Was: 100%).

What this means for MP2 rules:

80% chance to slip past enemy diplomats/spies without diplomatic combat.

>> If no diplomats are there, this is 80% chance to spy without enemy knowing it.

>> If you fail at this, your enemy will be told you tried to spy.

If slipped past OR defeated enemy diplomats in combat, 85% chance to succeed at

investigating city.

33. Spies could only sabotage city production by selecting “random target” and hoping it tries

for production instead of a building. This was upgraded: targeted sabotage now lists

"Production" as one of the choices along with the improvements.

34. Info-symbols. Special info symbols mark the messages you get in the chat window, to

make it easier and faster to scan back for important events. Especially be aware:

Yellow warning triangle: something BAD happened, or very important warning.

35. NEW DEMOGRAPHICS statistics: Units Built, Units Killed, Units Lost. GM can now select

which demographics to show AND which stats to show for each demographic (score, rank,

and who is #1.) This allows GM to set more “intel privacy” for some things.

36. Discovery of a new government gives an instant link icon to change government in the

chat window.

37. Recycling Unit is smarter to differentiate single or plural simultaneous; and differentiate a

disbanding from a recycling into production. Also new Orders button for Recycle/Disband has

same intelligence to it.

38. CTRL-click: clicks a tile as if the city is not there. This is good for selecting units without

having to go inside the city to pick one.

39. New server feature: Special retaliation ability. Ruleset can make some units defend from

ranged attacks with the potential to retaliate if they also can range attack..."ranged defense".

Example: you volley attack with Archers onto other Archers. They can volley back. Note that

ranged defense requires the defender to have move points left.

40. Fixed: server when calculating move points for damaged units, had rounding errors that

were cheating these units of partial move points.

41. Fixed bug where ranged attacks did not reduce movement points of damaged units.

42. Adding a pop unit to a city will re-arrange the tiles worked, even using the governor if it is

set. Before, the new citizen was just an entertainer. This makes late game management of

Proletarians and Pilgrims MUCH less work.

43. TC reports on UWT activity delays would report activities that didn’t even finish this turn.

Now it only reports it if the activity is going to finish this turn.

44. Middle clicking a tile now tells you how long until a unit with UWT will finish his job

(making a road or fort or mine, etc.)

45. EMOJI for units, buildings, and other game elements. It’s here. Try it out. Type [`warriors`]

into chat window. Note, you are using what some call “accent grave” ( ` ) and not apostrophe

or single quote ( ‘ ) to do this!

Yes it seems like a fun gimmick, but this has a real use in the message window. Before it was a

wall of text that is hard to read for important infos. Now, emoji...

a) help you scan a long list of info to find the right info.

b) battles or events that happened while you are offline will have the unit emoji in them,

to see it faster.

46. Tech Screen: Middle-click on tech to set future goal, doesn't slip into scroll-pane mode.

Alt-right click now works as middle click in tech screen.

47. Defending units lost in cities, now inform the player what city they were in when they were

lost, so they can know better where the attack was, without needing to click the text link.

48. Chatbox scrolling to end of page after getting a message was sometimes slow and lazy,

just like that person you know who does most of the job but quits before it's done. Now, it

scrolls a little bit then does a forced snap-to-bottom.

49. Every event in chatbox that took place somewhere on the map, is a link to center the map

there, AND will select the unit there if there is one. This isn’t new, but some people didn’t

know it. But now, there is SIGNAL MARKER FEATURE which will flash on the exact tile if there

was no unit there, so you can still see exactly which tile.

50. Poisoning a size 1 city eliminates it. (all rulesets). Before, all cities could be poisoned

except size 1, which had a special magic hospital to be immune from poison.

51. Kill-stack events sometimes left you feeling ignorant what happened. For example, “killed

the Riflemen, and 5 other units!". Now, up to 6 other unit kills are reported in a kill-stack. (7

or more is too long report, sorry)

52. CITY GOVERNOR, with advanced features not found in native client or upstream server.

53. Fixed, sound effect for selling a building would trigger even when you can’t sell it. Now,

you only hear the sound after the server confirms the deal is done.

54. Server has new effect rulesets can use, for increasing/decreasing the work rate of units.

55. Units fortifying inside a hideout now have aqua fortifying icon to show they're in a

hideout, similar to sentry and already-fortified icons.

56. New server settings hangry and fulldisorder.

hangry - Fixes a logic flaw in TC processing, where people were happy to starve because

after population change, they would pick new tiles to avoid disorder.

fulldisorder -

1. closes a couple exploits/loopholes where super micromanagement of disorder

brings unfair competitive edge. Disorder is very simple now: all production and

purchasing power for 1 turn is stopped if disorder is not prevented before TC.

Like celebration, when disorder status occurs, the effects of it are felt on the turn when

it's reached (the upcoming TC and next turn.)

2. conquered cities count as a kind of disorder for 1 turn after conquest, and you can’t

produce anything right after conquest in that city. Be careful to get this city under

order if you are democracy.

57. Fixed a bug that was not giving players any score for their small wonders. Well, in mp

rules, almost all wonders are small!

58. Full 2-way casus belli status displayed in nations tab. You will see a † next to your

diplomatic state if there is casus belli. You can hover the mouse to see how many turns are left

in casus belli.

'''59. New server setting casusbelliturns. W'''e didn’t know it, but before, casus belli was

automatically set to only last 2 turns: the turn it happens, and the turn right after. This new

setting allows the ruleset to set how long it lasts. New default in mp2c is 12 turns.

60. Diplomacy Pacts Upgrades:

a. You may forget or excuse a casus belli, possibly from some verbal agreement over an

action or maneuver which generates a casus belli, simply by doing another Cease-Fire,

or Peace, or Alliance. This clears the casus belli and "forgives past casus belli".

b. When a Cease-Fire has 3 or less turns left, you may create a new one, instead of being

forced to wait for it to expire into war.

c. Doing a Cease-Fire or Peace agreement when you already have one but there is casus

belli, will not reset the length of the agreement, but only pardon the casus belli.

Want to extend it before it expires? Just do another one after excusing the casus belli.

d. Doing a Cease-Fire or Peace after casus belli is reset, sets a new one with a new length of

time, as set by GM in game.server.ceasefirelength (default: 15 turns.)

e. (b,c,d) give players the ability to choose separate combinations of excusing casus belli

and re-affirming cease-fire for a new time period.

f. De-jankification of all kinds of rare edge cases is tedious to explain but there are 2 charts

for full disclosure at diplhand.c line 545 and line 603. In general it's made to be softer

more fluid and do what's logical in edge cases, rather than fall and get stuck in one of

the "stupid logic holes of freeciv diplomacy".

Short summary: if you ask for the same type of pact as you had before, it will excuse casus

belli if you have it, otherwise, if the pact expires very soon, it assumes you want to offer

to renew it before expiration.

61. Server settings armisticelength and ceasefirelength are now under the control of the GM.

In mp2c, new default for armisticelength is 5 turns, not 16. Get your units out of my

country! FASTER! But don’t worry, now you can re-affirm the armistice to go longer

before it expires, if you need more time to move the units out!

62. Chat marks the speaker with their flag. Private sent messages are right aligned, Allied chat

and global chat are center, incoming are left aligned.

63. Focus Lock is a new Prefs option! It keeps the current selected unit centered on map (ALT-

SHIFT-F). It's more of a preference on a PC, but might make a big improvement for mobile

users. On mobile it defaults to ON.

64. Prefs options for "Show pollution on map" and "Movement Point Display" can now be

permanently set instead of temporarily.

65. There was a bug where EFT_GROWTH_FOOD was not applied to cities going from size 0 to

size 1. (This is the effect of extra food in your city.) Since you can’t have a Granary in a size 0

city, it’s no problem there. But for Pyramids, it means your new cities started with 0 food and

didn’t get the effect. This was bad because the most important time for Pyramids to work is

for new cities. This was fixed.

66. Stack Escape changed. Before, escaping unit had to have MORE moves than attacker to

have 50% chance to escape. Now, it’s equal or greater number of moves, and…

67. New server effect "Stack_Escape_Pct" allows regulating odds of stack escape in certain

situations, instead of hard-coded universal 50%, always. Starting in mp2-c, this is now 60%. (At

50%, an even chance of death means you can’t rely on Stack Escape for any benefits. Rulesets

can specify different odds for other special cases now.

68. New server feature to allow “negative upkeep” buildings. This allows improvements which

give “infrastructural support” to other buildings, to help their upkeep.

69. The Improvement super panel in the city list now filters out obsolete buildings and

buildings whose undiscovered tech requirement is more than 1 tech away. This makes the

super panel much more productive and usable.

70. The tech tree was showing illegal units and buildings sometimes. If nukes_major and

nukes_minor were disabled, it still showed these in the tech tree. Now it turns those off.

What this means: everything in the tech tree that you see, is something you can build.

Numerous smaller fixes and improvements not listed. There might be a few bigger ones that

were forgotten in these notes, that we will be added as discovered missing.

STAY TUNED: The all new Multiplayer II Caravel ruleset, which uses these features and

other advancements to take MP2 to a new much higher level !!!!!