See the full ChangeLog in the source for a comprehensive list of all changes.
Download links for older releases can be found in the download archive.
WHAT'S CHANGED SINCE 2.5.4[]
2.5.5 is a bugfix release.
Server / General[]
Changes affecting players (supplied rulesets)[]
- A city containing a Leader unit will now never defect in a civil war. Previously this could cause the rebels to end up with both Leaders. GNA#24724
- Units without a home city are no longer forced to acquire a home city when transferred to another player. GNA#24746
- Barbarians no longer spawn in Lake terrain in all rulesets which have it. GNA#24458
- Bug fix: it was impossible to change production in a city after disbanding a unit there the same turn the city was built. GNA#24714
- The win chance of a boat in a city defending against attack was erroneously displayed as 0%. GNA#24799 (A new client connecting to an old server running a custom ruleset may still display an incorrect defense value, this time too optimistic.)
- The client's display of city population could be out of date after international migration. GNA#24464
- The 'Plague' random disaster in the classic ruleset has been renamed to 'Pestilence' to avoid confusion with the unrelated game concept of plague. GNA#24688 Other text changed to mitigate this confusion. GNA#24689
- Bug fixes and improvements to Latvian, African, and Texan nations. GNA#24670 GNAPATCH#7240 GNA#24726
- Correct descriptions of server options 'techlost_recv' and 'techlost_donor' to make clear that they apply to technology theft as well as trading. GNA#24609
- Bug fix: a non-zero 'techlevel' setting (or a ruleset which grants initial techs) along with certain 'plrcolormode' settings could give a (harmless) assertion failure at game start. GNA#24614
- Bug fix: a player observer can no longer cause the game to start on behalf of a player. GNA#24678
Changes affecting other rulesets / modders[]
- Adding a base in the editor was not taking care of side-effects, such as removing conflicting bases on the same tile, granting vision and borders, etc. GNA#23106
- In the editor, the "Nation Start Positions" property could be disabled when changing other values on the Game tab of the property editor. GNA#24627
Changes affecting server operators[]
- New 'persistent' metaserver connection mode, where one failure to talk to the metaserver does not prevent future attempts. Enabled with the '--keep' server option or the '/metaconnection persistent' server command. GNAPATCH#7300
General[]
- Minor memory leak fixes. GNA#24634 GNA#24468
- Some optimizations for speed. GNAPATCH#7176 GNAPATCH#7202 GNAPATCH#7189
- Various internal changes which should only affect developers. GNAPATCH#7206 GNA#24669 GNA#24636 GNA#24651 GNAPATCH#7433 GNAPATCH#7432
AI[]
- AI players could occasionally be subject to the penalty for changing production type. They are supposed to always be immune to this penalty. GNA#24760
Clients[]
- It's now possible to create an all-AI game from the client, by becoming an observer and starting the game. (You also need to set 'minplayers' to 0 and set a turn timeout.) GNAPATCH#7334
- Fix drawing artifacts with oriented tilesets such as Cimpletoon:
- Fixes to disconnecting from servers and cleaning up spawned servers. In particular, the Gtk and Qt clients now disconnect cleanly from the server when you quit the client. GNA#24629 GNA#24872 GNA#24823
- For global observers, fixed display of city map outline and grid coloring. GNA#24791
- Fixed a potential buffer overflow in some clients in the presence of extremely long tileset or soundset names. GNA#24877
- (Gtk) Make Prev/Next City buttons insensitive for global observers, since they do nothing. GNA#24059
- (Gtk3) On very small screens, the balance between happiness and nationality areas in the city dialog has been improved. GNA#24265
- (Gtk3) Silence Gtk warnings on console by default with newer Gtk3 versions; this is necessary as it's not possible to construct a theme which works across the full range of Gtk3 versions we support without warnings. They can be re-enabled with freeciv-gtk3 -- --gtk-warnings.
- (Qt) Simplified the network page, so that local and Internet servers are on the same page. GNAPATCH#7392 Scans for local servers are now stopped once a connection is chosen. GNA#24833
- (Qt) There's now a button to lock the messages and chat window geometry, so that a mis-click doesn't accidentally disarrange them. GNAPATCH#7467
- (Qt) The '5' key on the numeric keypad now selects the previous unit, as in the Gtk clients. GNA#24516
- (Qt) Allied chat (chat messages are sent only to allies, not all players) is now the default. GNAPATCH#7368
- (Qt) The default leader name defaults to the player name (often the system user name) rather than a leader name from a selected nation. GNAPATCH#7367
- (Qt) Added an option to change the theme. GNAPATCH#7471
- (Qt) The '<', '>', and '&' characters are now handled correctly in chat; they are no longer interpreted as HTML. GNAPATCH#7263 GNA#24829
- (Qt) When there's a problem loading a tileset, an error message explaining it is now displayed. GNA#24832
- (SDL) The display of shields in the city dialog immediately after changing production could be overly pessimistic. GNA#24807
Tools[]
- Minor fix to freeciv-manual tool's output. GNA#24778
- Minor fix to modpack installer's error reporting. GNA#24637
Help / Documentation[]
- The 'Chatline' help is now more comprehensive. GNA#24841
- The tutorial scenario now has a message for when you build your first military unit. GNA#24874
- Miscellaneous other improvements to in-game text and user documentation. GNAPATCH#7119 GNA#24682 GNA#24720 GNA#24650 GNA#24753 GNA#24784 GNAPATCH#7303 GNA#24828 GNA#24838 GNA#24858
- Miscellaneous changes to developer/ruleset docs. GNAPATCH#7384
- Invisible changes to assist localization. GNAPATCH#6908
Translations[]
- Updated translations:
- Complete translations: Catalan, French, British English, Spanish, Russian.
- Incomplete translations: Finnish (100% core, 92% nations), Japanese (94% core, 95.4% nations).
- When localized into Finnish, the last character was stripped or corrupted in all messages. GNA#24754
Build/portability[]
- Package builders can now override the version label used with FREECIV_LABEL_FORCE. GNAPATCH#7196 GNAPATCH#7217
- 'nonnull-compare' warnings from GCC 6 are now silenced. GNA#23810
- The included Lua now uses fseeko() instead of fseek() where available. This is unlikely to make a difference in practice. GNAPATCH#7322
- Update some of the libraries shipped with the Windows packages. GNA#24321
See NEWS for older lists of changes.