NEWS-2.2.0

WARNING: This is a tentative list, by no means exhaustive. See the full ChangeLog in the source for a comprehensive list of all changes.

Welcome to Freeciv 2.2.0

Thanks again to all our developers, who continue to work so hard.

This release includes lots of changes relative to 2.1.x; the significant ones are outlined below. Bug fixes also included in the 2.1.x line are not listed. Those who are interested in seeing the detailed changes should check the ChangeLog file.

WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 2.1.x

• Built-in editor
• Expanded ruleset format:

• Unit classes
• Movement restrictions

• Can limit which terrains a unit can enter
• River-boats
• Wheeled units
• Which units another unit can transport

• Migration
• Plague
• Bases
• Calendar effects

• Changes to gameplay with default ruleset:

• New terrains:
  • Deep Ocean (as Ocean but no specials and cannot be transformed)
  • Lake (as Ocean but no Whales special; inland water below a certain size is generated as Lake)
• Triremes are not restricted to tiles next to land, but to (shallow) Ocean tiles; they now cannot even attempt to enter unsafe tiles
• Triremes no longer get the +1 movement bonus from Nuclear Power that other sea units get
• Triremes and Carriers can no longer attack land units
• Submarine attack strength reduced from 15 to 12 (to make it easier to defend against them with escorts)
• New base type buoy, which can be built by Engineers on water tiles with the Radio advance, and gives vision.
• Ruins (left behind by destroyed cities, no effect on gameplay currently)
• New advance Environmentalism and Solar Plant improvement, which can eliminate pollution from production
• Trade route value now depends on size of cities, not on trade generated in them
• New national borders system
• Coastal Defense now available earlier (requires Gunpowder instead of Metallurgy)
• No restrictions on specialists in small cities
• Terrain within working range of a city can no longer remain unknown
• Units in fortresses now regain 25% HP per turn (as in 2.0.x) instead of 100%
• New nations

• AI difficulty level: Cheating
• New server options:

• foggedborders: visibility of borders is subject to fog of war
• borders gains new modes where player can see all tiles inside borders, and borders extend to unknown tiles revealing them
• endspaceship controls whether spaceship reaching Alpha Cen ends the game
• trademindist controls the minimum distance for trade routes between your cities
• Times now specified in turns instead of years (endyear becomes endturn, onsetbarbs expressed in turns)
• simultaneousphases renamed to phasemode and gains new options

• Client interface changes:

• Menus and shortcut keys revamped; notable changes include:
  • Connect with Road/Rail/Irrigation changes from Ctrl+Shift+R/L/I to Shift+R/L/I
  • City Report: F1 to F4
  • Go/Airlift to City: Shift+L to T
  • Wake up Others (Shift+W) becomes Unsentry all on tile (Shift+S)
  • Orders menu split into Select, Unit, Work, and Combat; Reports becomes Civilization

• Scripting improvements
• Event cache: messages from the last few turns can be replayed to clients on connection and saved in savegames
• Featured text in Gtk client, including colour coding and clickable links to mentioned cities/units/tiles

See NEWS for full lists of changes.