Server Introduction

In order to play Freeciv21 over a network, one machine needs to act as the server: the state of the game lives on the server and players can connect to play. There are many ways to operate such a server. This page gives an introduction to the topic, guided by the experience gathered by running the Longturn website.

In order to run a server, you need a computer that other players can reach over the network. If you are planning to play at home, this can usually be any machine connected to your WiFi or local cabled network. Otherwise, the easiest is to rent a small server from a hosting provider. We strongly recommend that you choose a Linux-based server, as that is what we have experience with. Linux is also the only platform that currently support user authentication. You will need the ability to run your own programs on the server, so SSH access is a must. Apart from that, Freeciv21 is quite light on resources, so you will hardly hit the limits of even the cheapest options.

Whether you choose to use your own machine or to rent one, the basic principle of operating a server is the same: you need to run a program called freeciv21-server for as long as the game will last. This program will wait for players to connect and handle their moves in the exact same way as in a single player game. In fact, Freeciv21 uses an internal server for single player games!

Installation

Installing Freeciv21 on a server is done the normal way, as documented in Installing Freeciv21. Because the official packages come with the complete game, they will pull a number of dependencies that are normally not used on servers (for instance, a display server). This software is installed for packaging reasons, but will not be used.

Starting the Server

Once Freeciv21 is installed, it is immediately ready to run a simple server, which one can do by running the following command:

$ ./freeciv21-server

This command will start a server on the default port for Freeciv21, which is 5556. You can provide a custom port number by passing it to the -p argument:

$ ./freeciv21-server -p 5000

A server started with this command can be reached by pointing the game to port 5000 of your server machine’s IP address or hostname. We suggest to start the server from within a terminal multiplexer such as tmux or screen, which will let it run independently of an active terminal window.

User Permissions

Freeciv21 supports several access levels for players connected to a server, restricting which commands they are allowed to run:

none

The user may not issue any command.

info

The user may use informational commands only.

basic

The user may use informational commands as well as commands affecting the game. Commands affecting the game start a vote if more than one user is connected.

ctrl

Same as basic, but the vote is bypassed for commands affecting the game.

admin

May use any command, except for quit, rfcstyle, and write. This includes potentially destructive commands such as save and fcdb – use with care.

hack

May use all commands without restriction.

By default, users connected to your server have access level basic. This can be changed using the cmdlevel command:

cmdlevel info new

This command grants access level info to any newly connecting player. A few more options are available; please see help cmdlevel from the server command line or the game server/chatline for more information.

Note

The take and observe commands require access level info only. Their use can be restricted using the allowtake server option or, in more advanced setups, using the user_take Authentication and Database Support (fcdb) hook.

Authentication

By default, Freeciv21 servers are open to anyone without any sort of authentication. It is possible to make Freeciv21 ask for a password. There is also a built-in registration procedure with which one can create an account and set a password.

Authentication needs vary greatly depending on what you do with your server. If you use passwords merely to prevent players from peeking on each other, you may be fine with a very basic setup. If you are planning to run a full-scale server allowing registration through a website, you will need much more advanced settings. Freeciv21 ought to support all use cases within a unified interface. To allow for the necessary flexibility, authentication support is implemented using a Lua script.

See the fcdb documentation for more information about setting up authentication.