Installing Freeciv21

The developers of Freeciv21 provide pre-compiled binaries and installation packages for tagged releases. They can be found on the Longturn GitHub Repository for Freeciv21 at https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21/releases. The Longturn community provides binary packages for Debian-based Linux distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc.), Microsoft Windows|reg| (32 and 64-bit), and Apple macOS|reg|. If you are an Arch Linux user, you can find Freeciv21 in the AUR at https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/freeciv21.

Windows

For more information on using the Windows Installer package, you can read about it at Windows Installation.

Debian Linux

To install the Debian (and Debian variants such as Ubuntu) package, use the apt command with elevated privileges like this:

$ sudo apt install ./freeciv21_*_amd64.deb

Generic Linux

Freeciv21 is also available as a snap or flatpak containerized application. Different distributions support one or the other by default.

Snap

Debian Linux variants (those that rely on apt for package management):

$ sudo apt install snapd
$ sudo systemctl enable snapd
$ sudo snap install freeciv21

Fedora/Red Hat Linux variants (those that rely on dnf for package management):

$ sudo dnf install snapd
$ sudo systemctl enable snapd
$ sudo snap install freeciv21

Flatpak

Debian Linux variants (those that rely on apt for package management):

$ sudo apt install flatpak
$ sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
$ sudo flatpak install net.longturn.freeciv21

Fedora/Red Hat variants (those that rely on dnf for package management):

$ sudo dnf install flatpak
$ sudo flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
$ sudo flatpak install net.longturn.freeciv21

macOS

To install the macOS .dmg package, you start by double-clicking the file to mount it in Finder. Drag the game to your Applications folder, or a place of your choosing. When finished, unmount the package.

Note

In newer versions of macOS, you may get an error message when trying to mount the package: “Freeciv21.app is damaged and can’t be opened.” You will need to adjust the security settings on your computer. Here are some website links to help:

• https://appletoolbox.com/app-is-damaged-cannot-be-opened-mac/

• https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/open-an-app-by-overriding-security-settings-mh40617/15.0/mac/15.0

A Note About Native Language Support

Freeciv21 is packaged with Native Language Support (NLS), also known as Internationalization (i18n). By default, Freeciv21 will use the primary language that the client operating system is set to use. However, you may wish to play the game with a different language.

All the code and strings used in the game are based on US English (en_US) and encoded as UTF8 (en_US.UTF8). If you wish to play the game in a different language, you can do so by setting an environment variable to the language code of your choice.

At a minimum, all you need is the two letter code of the language you wish to play with. Here is a list of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639_language_codes

Note

We don’t support every single language code in the list above, but we do have some translations for many of them.

On a Linux based system, open a terminal and set the LANG variable to the language code. In the example we pick German (Deutsch).

$ export LANG=de_DE.UTF8
$ path/to/freeciv21-client

That setting will stay in effect as long as the terminal window is open. Freeciv21 will use the environment context into account.

Note

You can also add the export LANG=de_DE.UTF8 to your user’s .bashrc or .bash_profile. The variable will then be set every time you logon to your computer. However, this also sets the language for pretty much every application.

The LANG variable also works on Windows based systems. Open a command prompt, powershell prompt, or terminal.

PS C:\Users\Username> setx LANG de_DE.UTF8

Then open Freeciv21 from the start menu like normal.

Note

As with the note related to Linux based systems. The setx command sets a user level environment variable to the language selected. Any applications that use the LANG variable will also be impacted. This is especially true when working in the MSYS2 environment. You can set the variable to another language following the same step above. Simply set the variable to a different locale code.