Advanced Player Setup

In Freeciv21, there are many ways to setup a game with varying types of players. Games can be single-player in that there is only one human against a collection of AI. Games can be setup to be all human, such as Longturn games. Lastly, you can do a combination of the two: multiple humans versus multiple AI. Players can play FFA or in pre-allied teams as well.

More details are available in How to Play Freeciv21, and in the in-game help. The Game Manual has instructions on how you can manipulate players in the pre-game interface.

The sections below use the server command line features, which is considered an advanced operation.

Single Player

In most cases when you start a single-player game you can change the number of players and their difficulty, directly through the pre-game interface. However, you may want to do something more complex.

When playing on a remote server, you typically do all the player manipulation by hand. Start by selecting the ruleset you which to play and then change the aifill setting to the number of AI players you wish to play against.

$ freeciv21-server --ruleset royale

...

> /set aifill 30
> /list

Note

The default number of players is often ruleset defined, so selecting a different ruleset can change the pre-configured set of aifill players. Have a look at the server output at startup to see what the value of aifill was set to.

Difficulty levels are set with the /cheating, /hard, /normal, /easy, /novice, and /handicapped commands.

You may also create AI players individually. For instance, to create one hard and one easy AI player, enter:

> /create ai1
> /hard ai1
> /create ai2
> /easy ai2
> /list

Human vs Human Players

The steps to create a human only game is similar to the previous section. Start the server with the ruleset you wish to play and then remove all of the AI players. Here is a quick recipe:

$ freeciv21-server --ruleset royale

...

> /set aifill 0
> /set nationset all
> /create [player username]
> /aitoggle [player username]
> /playernation [player username] [Nation] [0/1]
> /list

Note

The value of player username can be anything, but is often the logon ID of the player that will play, is case sensitive, and it sets the leader name. The value of Nation is one of the available nations, also case sensitive. Notice the command to enable all nationset. The bit value of 0/1 is 1 for Male and 0 for Female.

The human player will right-click their logon ID in the pre-game interface and select Take this player at game start. This is a one-time procedure.

Tip

You can also create a plain text file named players.serv. Inside the file you add all of the user creation commands into one file. Then include a read players.serv command line at the bottom of the Server Settings File.

Teams of AI or Human Players

Following from the section above, you can easily set the team for a player with the /team command, like this:

> /set aifill 2
> /team AI*2 1
> /team AI*3 1
> /team human1 2
> /team human2 2
> /list

You will now have a two team game of two AI players against two human players.