Freeciv is a very configurable game. Its look and feel and its behaviour can be changed in many ways; most are applied before playing starts, some can be applied while playing is in progress. The standard distribution comes with a small range of options; this directory offers a few more, contributed by users. Note that many items contributed here were created for old versions of Freeciv, and some may not work with newer versions. Tilesets The appearance of the Freeciv map can be changed by choosing a different tileset. A tileset is a set of images, one for every terrain type and for every unit type, some more e.g. to display roads and rivers, and one flag image for every nation there are some more tiles, for example, to display roads. The standard distribution comes with five tilesets, two for isometric view, one for overhead view, one for hexagonal maps, and one for isometric hexagonal maps. The tilesets/ subdirectory provides a couple of alternative tilesets in various sizes. Smaller tilesets are useful if you want to fit more of the map onto the same screen area. Client settings Freeciv offers a few more options to customize the user interface: which messages are displayed and how, details on how cities are displayed, whether or not animation effects are used, etcetera. "Save settings" can be used to make the current settings the defaults. Server settings Freeciv is a client/server game. The server holds the state of the game, and the details of how it is played; the client is used to present an interface to a user. Tilesets and client settings only affect the interface and apply to individual users; server settings affect the game itself and apply to all players. Game playing has two phases. In "pregame" state, users connect with their Freeciv clients to a Freeciv server, and configure details of how the game will run. At some point, the game is started, every user picks a nation to play with, computer players are created and pick a nation, the map to play on is generated if necessary, initial units are created and positioned on the map, and the first turn starts. From then on, the game is "running". The "initial" server settings, such as those influencing the map generation, determine what happens when the game is started; the other settings, such as the (optional) turn timeout, can still be changed while the game is already running. Not all server settings have a graphical user interface in the client; the most powerful tool is the server command line. The chatline in the Freeciv client can be used to issue commands, if the server is configured to allow this. A set of server settings can be saved to file to be reloaded in the next game. Freeciv servers hosted by 3rd parties may run with various sets of nonstandard server settings that they load at startup. Nations Additional nations can be added to Freeciv. This requires information both on the server side (to allow users to select that nation) and in the tileset used on the client side (to display the nation's flag). Some additional nations are provided in the nations/ subdirectory. Rulesets A ruleset is a set of files in a certain format that configures the set of terrain types, unit types, city improvement type, and technologies, with their behaviour, and a few more things. A ruleset has a name, and can be loaded into a running server, but its contents cannot be inspected from the server, let alone edited. Also, there is no GUI for creating rulesets; contents must be edited with a text editor. Modpacks The standard Freeciv distribution comes with five rulesets: "default", "civ2", "civ1", "multiplayer", and "experimental." A modpack is a combination of a ruleset, usually a list of nations, and one or more tilesets to support displaying the new items defined. See the modpacks/ directory. Maps, scenarios, and savegames. Freeciv can generate a map to play on when the game is started, but it can also be played on a predefined map. Some maps are distributed with Freeciv, some more can be found in maps/. A scenario, in Freeciv, is a map pre-filled with units and/or cities belonging to particular nations. See scenarios/ A savegame is a state of the game saved while the game was running. Freeciv uses the same file format for all three, and handles them in the same way. A map editor, formerly named Civworld, has been integrated with the regular gtk2 client as of Freeciv 2.2.0.