Classic

Freeciv Classic Ruleset

👉🏻 This page gives a history and comparison of the Classic ruleset to the Civ I and Civ II game rules from which it was inspired. Click here for the Classic game manual.

History

Originally, the Classic ruleset was not just the default ruleset of Freeciv, but the one and only main ruleset. The ruleset embodied the main focus of historic Freeciv development, to create an improved emulation of Civilization I. When Civilization II arrived, the goal moved forward to incorporate most of its improvements. Finally, when Civilization III was released, some changes in that release were controversial and seen by some as downgrades rather than upgrades. However, other improvements were seen as obviously superior (e.g., the Workers unit). Some of these changes were selectively incorporated into the Classic ruleset. However, the overwhelming majority of the DNA in the Classic ruleset is still primarily based on Civilization II. To summarize, Classic ruleset is a version of Civilization II which conservatively has incorporated only the less controversial changes of Civilization III, and arguably, in some ways, became the "best of both worlds."

How to Play

• Please note: native client now uses civ2civ3 as its default ruleset. Freecivweb.org uses Classic+ as the default ruleset.
  • 👉🏼To play a Classic game, you need to change out of the default ruleset before launching a game:
• In native client or web client, type /rules classic in the console window, prior to game start.

Changes to Civilization II

• Pollution is calculated differently and has different penalties/bonuses
  • Factories, Power Plants don't generate pollution per se but increase its chance which is based on shield output
• Unit upgrades do not cause loss of veteran level
• Units disembarking from sea to land end their turn after disembarking ("slow invasions").
• No "tired attack" - units attack at full strength regardless of remaining move points.
• Diplomats and Spies cannot do operations on cities or units from Transports
• Suitcase Nuke removed from game.
• Mining Desert requires Construction tech
• Mining Glacier requires Refining tech
• Free tech awards are based on one's technology goals, not completely random
• Accidents added: earthquake, pestilence, fire, industrial accident, nuclear accident.
• Trade routes are not bidirectional, but are considered to have a separate "from" and "to" terminus, when calculating which city receives profit from sale of Goods.
• Nations are able to ally each other
• Besides 2 Settlers, an Explorer and 2 Workers start the game.
• Tech costs are "Classic style" instead of "Civ I|II style." Techs increase in cost based on the number of pre-requisite techs. Instead of "each new tech researched adds to the cost of the next tech"
• Nations have borders and territorial influence
• Four veteran levels instead of two. The added levels are: v2 "hardened":175% strength, and v3 "elite":200% strength
• Settlers are never obsolete.
• New unit "Workers" (from Civ.3) can do what Settlers do without food upkeep. Workers upgrade to Engineers.
• No Fundamentalism government
• No Elephants or Crusaders
• AWACS is a new surveillance aircraft unit
• Civilian units have no ZOC
• Bombers, Missiles, Nukes, Diplomats, Spies, Caravans, Freight, Explorers, and AWACS have no ZOC
• Stealth aircraft are invisible to enemies who are not adjacent
• Triremes can travel anywhere on Ocean tiles (not Deep Ocean), instead of having a 50% chance to sink if not adjacent to coast.
• Submarines are mega-buffed: cost 50, A12, 5 moves, can't be seen by Helicopters. Was: cost 60, A8, 3 moves, can be seen by Helicopters.
• Carriers can't attack coastline.
• Diplomats built under Communism are also veteran. (Was: only spies are built veteran under Communism.)
• Maximum number of trade routes starts at 2, and can go to 4 with Magnetism and The Corporation. (Was: a flat 3)
• Most buildings cost about 25% less.
• City walls provide 3x defense (4.5x for land units with free fortify bonus). Was: (2x, and land units must fortify manually to get 3x)
• Colosseum gets +1 bonus with Electricity. (Was: Electronics)
• Power Plants give a +25% shield bonus with Factories and a +25% shield bonus with Mfg. Plants, instead of a flat +50%.
• Power Plant pollution reduction bonuses are same as above, a -25,-25 split instead of -50
• Libraries double science output (was +50%). Universities: +150% (was +50%), and Research Labs +200 (was +100%)
• Copernicus adds +100% to science output (was +50%)
• Isaac Newton boosts science production in every city by 100% (was: single city)
• Marketplace has 0 upkeep (was: 1)
• City Walls give bonus against Helicopters (was: SAM Batteries).
• All Space Components require Factories to make them.
• Eiffel tower costs 1/3 the cost and has half the effect.
• Hoover Dam requires the city building it to have an adjacent River
• Lighthouse and Magellan's Expedition require the city building them to have adjacent Ocean.
• Lighthouse loses effect of making Triremes travel safely over all waters.
• Pyramids add +25% food storage to every city and stack with Granary. (was: counts as Granary in every city)
• Seti Project boosts science production in each city with a Research Lab by +100%. (Was: each city with a Library by +50%)
• Sun Tzu stacks with Barracks to allow accessing the new v2 veteran levels. Chance of v0 to v1 promotion goes to 75% instead of 100%.
• King Richard's Crusade obsolete with Robotics (was Industrialization)
• Cure for Cancer gives +1 happy in all cities (Was: +1 forced content.)
• "Invention" technology gives +2 vision to Fortresses
• Fortresses claim national border territory
• "Buoy" is a new tile improvement for Oceans. It gives vision around the ocean tiles even when units aren't there.
• Tech requirements for Stealth are Superconductors and Advanced Flight. (Was: Superconductors, Robotics)
• Specialists no longer require the city to be size 5.
• Citizen nationality introduced to cities
• City unhappiness caused by city size and empire size, are calculated differently:
  • Civ II: See https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Attitude_(Civ2)
  • Classic: See Cities#Civilization and its Malcontents and Happiness
• Government corruption rates changed:
  • Despotism corruption is 37% (was 30%)
  • Monarchy corruption is 15% (was 25%)
  • Republic corruption is 15% (was 18%)
  • 👉🏻 The resulting effects are:
    • Disparity in trade income from the first city placements are lessened and "smoothed."
    • Monarchy-first and Republic-first become two diversely interesting strategies.
    • The incentive to "rush" out of Despotism is notably increased.
• Output waste applies only to trade, not to production (shields).
• Aqueducts, Sewer Systems, Cure for Cancer decrease chance of civil health incident
• Units in cities get free fortify bonus: (was: you must be fortified).
• Capital city gets a production bonus of 75% in Despotism and 50% in Monarchy (was: nothing)
• Fallout is distinct from Pollution. A tile with both Fallout and Pollution rsuffers a 75% penalty.
• Embarking on a ship costs 1 move point (was: all move points)
• Over 500 nations to choose (was 21)
• Units in Airbases can be seen (were: invisible)
• Rivers increase terrain defense to 150% of former. (Was: +0.50 to existing bonus)
• Empire Step size was added to fix a critical imbalance issue in the commercial game. This issue was known as ICS or smallpox.
  • In commercial Civ2, the size a city can grow before new citizens become unhappy is based on the difficulty level one chooses, and can range from 6 at easiest level, down to 1 at Deity level. There is, however, no penalty based on the number of cities in the empire.
    • Normally, cities can grow to size 4. At size 5, the fifth citizen is unhappy and requires appeasement from temples, luxury, etc.
    • Empire Base size is how many cities you can have without triggering the first unhappy citizen to occur at size 4.
    • Empire Step size is how many additional cities you can add to the Base size, before triggering yet another unhappy citizen at a lower population size. Empire Step size is cumulative: each time you add x more cities, you get an additional unhappy citizen.
    • Note: in commercial Civ2, there is no Empire Step Size. This critical bug was never patched commercially: the numbers below for Civ2 Empire Step Size refer to the patched Freeciv version of Civ2.

Empire Base Size and Empire Step Size

government	Civ2 Base	Classic Base	Civ2 Step	Classic Step
Anarchy	9	9	6	6
Despotism	10	10	6	10
Monarchy	11	11	9	12
Republic	14	13	12	14
Democracy	17	14	12	16
Communism	14	12	12	∞

👉🏻 These changes:

1. Fix the critical smallpox/ICS flaw from Civ2.
2. Make differences in government type less severe for small nations
3. Create more pressure on larger nations to have an advanced government.
4. For a period, Monarchy is competitive with Republic, instead of definitively inferior at all times.
5. Communism is more effective for empires with a large number of cities.

This list is a work in progress and may not be complete...please add other differences as they become known

Notes

Up to Freeciv 2.4 the classic ruleset was known as default ruleset. In Freeciv 2.5, there is no ruleset named default. Rather, the …/data/default.serv file consists of a rulesetdir classic server command. This loads the classic ruleset by default if no other ruleset command is given by the user. For Freeciv 3.x, the …/data/default.serv file is set to load the civ2civ3 ruleset by default. Thus, for 3.x, you should either issue the /ruleset classic command in order to play the classic ruleset, or change the …/data/default.serv file to load classic by default.

The initially loaded ruleset, as defined in a …/data/default.serv, inherits any saved options. The command-line option -r reads a file with server commands, in which you may include a rulesetdir command.

Native Freeciv clients find "rulesets" by scanning for *.serv files. They do not enumerate all sub-folders which contain ruleset files. For example, if a client finds a foobar.serv file, it will show it as the foobar ruleset. The ruleset that is actually loaded will be the one specified in the foobar.serv file, which could be changed to load something other than the foobar ruleset.

See next:

Improvements to Multiplayer ruleset from Classic.