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 2.5.5[]
2.5.6 is a bugfix release.
Server / General[]
Changes affecting players (supplied rulesets)[]
- Disbanding a caravan-type unit with the "Disband" action (Shift-D) in a city that's building a wonder no longer contributes 100% of that unit's production cost towards the wonder. You must explicitly use the "Help Build Wonder" action (B). This change was made because this allowed rules to be bypassed -- it allowed adding shields to foreign cities' wonders. GNA#23911
- If autoattack is enabled, cargo now preferentially attacks before its transport. GNA#25259 GNAPATCH#7985
- Air units could fail to return to refuel automatically and be lost, despite having enough movement points. GNA#25294
- A spurious enemy land unit could be shown in the middle of the sea on the client if the client's player saw its transporter being sunk, in games with 'killstack' disabled. GNA#24921
- Borders were sometimes not adjusted after tiles changed from land to water. GNA#23179
- It was possible to launch a spaceship that was not entirely connected (in a specific way). GNA#24979
- The server could emit assertion failures when a barbarian leader could not or did not want to move. GNA#24929
- The server could emit assertion failures shortly after creating a new barbarian player. GNA#24545
- The server now gives a clear error message if it fails to parse a saved game file. GNA#24972
- After selecting a specific nation to play and then reverting to random selection, it was possible to end up with the previously selected nation anyway, due to the leader name persisting. GNA#24170
- Removed duplicate city 'Orange' from Texan ruleset. (This was harmless.) GNA#25003
Changes affecting other rulesets / modders[]
- Remove init_government from the Lycian nation. This prevented using the standard nation set nationlist.ruleset in a ruleset not containing a 'Despotism' government type. GNA#24904
- Extra sanity checking when loading rulesets. GNA#24905 GNA#25137
Changes affecting server operators[]
- When reducing command permissions (cmdlevel) on game start to 'basic' for connected players, new connections after game start still got 'ctrl' permissions. GNA#24774
General[]
- A tiny optimization for speed. GNAPATCH#7567
- Various internal changes which should only affect developers. GNA#25007 GNA#25301
AI[]
- The building advisor will no longer automatically build (and hence move) 'small wonder' buildings of any kind. (Previously it only refused to move the Palace.) GNA#7598
- The AI could send caravans toward foreign cities in the mistaken belief that (a) they could help build a wonder there, (b) this would be somehow useful. GNA#24662
Clients[]
- Sound is no longer disabled by default for fresh installations, unless it was not compiled in. GNA#24280
- If a sound set with menu music was in use, a brief snatch of it would be played when quitting the client. GNA#24844
- The 'Turn Done' button is now disabled for dead players. (It did not do anything useful.) GNA#24945
- (Gtk3) Fix misdrawing of the scenario choosing page. GNA#24882
- (Gtk3) Fix warnings about use of Pango font syntax seen with newer versions of Gtk. GNAPATCH#7162 GNA#25226
- (Gtk3) Fix various other trouble when using the newest Gtk (3.22). GNAPATCH#7845 GNA#25160
- (Qt) Fix constantly blinking research text the turn when the tech tree is complete. GNA#25071
- (Qt) Added the option to show which tiles are native to a unit, as in other clients. GNAPATCH#6445
- (Qt) Added the 'Default' option to theme selection. GNAPATCH#7666
- (Qt) Fix artifacts on minimap: a vertical line of bright (unfogged) pixels was shown in hex topologies, and more unfogged pixels could be left after unit movement. GNA#24370 GNA#24861
- (Qt) Now shows any startup message set on the server with 'connectmsg'. GNAPATCH#7537
- (Qt) Now displays information about new releases of Freeciv from the metaserver, like other clients. GNA#24935
- (Qt) Trying to start the game very quickly after loading a savegame or scenario could fail. GNA#24859
- (Qt) Picking a nation for another player in pregame could set that player's leader name to the client's username. GNA#24906
- (Qt) When sending a chat message, the position in the chat history is reset to the bottom. GNA#24881
- (Qt) Chat messages containing non-ASCII characters could be displayed incorrectly. GNA#24888
- (Qt) Windows-specific fixes:
- (SDL) It was usually impossible to cancel a treaty. Opening the diplomacy dialog when it would have been possible would usually crash the client. GNA#25245 GNA#25085
- (SDL) With hex topologies, the city map was drawn over other parts of the city dialog. GNA#25251
- (SDL) The goto/airlift dialog had a hardcoded limit to the number of cities it could display, making some inaccessible. GNA#25024
- (SDL) Fix possible trouble when entering or leaving the main game view. GNA#23992
- (SDL) Fix possible trouble on theme change. Theme changes are not applied until a restart. GNA#25117
Tilesets / Art[]
- Minor fixes to civ2civ3 wonder graphics. GNA#25009
- An invisible fix to improve hex2t performance slightly. GNAPATCH#7953
Help / Documentation[]
- Documented the FREECIV_OPT client environment variable. GNA#25165
- Miscellaneous changes to developer/ruleset docs. GNA#24941 GNA#24996 GNAPATCH#7688
Translations[]
- Updated translations:
- Complete translations: Russian.
- Incomplete translations: Finnish (100% core, 92% nations), German (100% core, 87% nations), Ukrainian (99.1% core, 79% nations).
- (We're looking for a new primary maintainer for the German translation. See Translations if you can help.)
Build/portability[]
- Fix portability issues when building for 64-bit Windows. GNAPATCH#7558 GNAPATCH#7588 GNA#24902 GNA#24900
- Fix some compilation warnings on OpenBSD. GNA#24948 GNAPATCH#7634
- Fix use of deprecated types in the Qt client, causing warnings. GNAPATCH#7704
- Some incomplete changes aimed at enabling compilation with tcc. GNAPATCH#7509 GNAPATCH#7519 GNAPATCH#7526
- Fix generation of the configure script with the (rather old) autoconf 2.64. This would not affect building from our release tarballs. GNA#24907
- The FREECIV_LABEL_FORCE variable is now cached between runs of 'configure'. GNAPATCH#7987
See NEWS for older lists of changes.