The Art of Freeciv

This guide on how to play Freeciv was written about version 1.12.0 - you may prefer the updated version.
Original author: Warlock
The Art of Freeciv is a little different to the other online
manuals. Whilst they will explain the mechanics of playing, what
various commands do, how to control your empire, and minutae on the
effects of various city improvements and wonders, this manual
attempts to explain how to actually play the game. Not in terms of
which units to move and where, but in terms of the tactics and
strategies that will prove most effective in the online arena. 
This includes advice targeted specifically at players completely
new to the game, but it is mainly intended for people who have
already played a few games, and are now convinced that the entire
top ten of the online ranking column is composed of
people who have designed their own clients, and otherwise figured
out sophisticated ways to cheat at the game. (They haven't of
course. Given the amount of time that lot spend online playing,
it's amazing they even find time to sleep.)
Read on gentle reader, and you too may join the illustrious
ranks of freeciv players who at one time or another have been asked
if they've made any 'private modifications' to their client
software.
==Freeciv Online Etiquette==
For beginners the online game can be quite bewildering. Especially
if you've never played the commercial Civilization games upon which
it is based, and sometimes even if you have. There are two sources
of confusion, the game itself, and the players of the online game,
who have evolved their own style and terminology for talking about
the game. Consequently when you first connect to a public server,
some of the things people ask can be a little confusing. 
The important thing to know when connecting to a public server
is that anybody can issue any command to the server, but this does
not mean that everybody should. It is generally not a good idea to
join a public server and immediately type /start or begin changing
options willy-nilly.
Always ask before changing anything on the server, and always
ask before starting or ending the game.
During the game generally the only command given to the server
is to change the timeout parameter, which controls the length of
time each player has to make their moves. At the beginning of the
game this is usually set to be as low as possible, and can then be
increased during the game. The turn done button can, and especially
at the beginning should, be used to indicate you have finished your
move before all the time runs out. This helps speed up play during
the initial rounds when nothing much is happening except city
growth.
===Vocabulary===
The two questions most frequently asked on servers prior to
starting the game are what gen do you want to play, which effects
the starting topology of the world, and what value do you prefer
for citymindist which controls how close cities can be built to
each other. This latter question may come disguised as a question
about smallpox, (cities can be built close together), or largepox,
(in which they can't). 
Other common questions relate to the presence or absence of
huts, visual huts which randomly hand out goodies or instant death
to any unit that steps on them, and barbarians, (random ai
generated invasion fleets).
You can get more information on any server command, including
the default value for that option, by using the help command
/help gen for example.
Personal preferences vary enormously for what games people like
playing, but at present there are a few, well delineated factions
online.
====Islands vs Continents====
The predominant choices for generation are 1 and 2. Gen 1 games
distribute players amongst a couple of large continents, and
smaller islands, and players may find themselves on their own small
island, or sharing a continent with several other players.
Occasionally you may even get your own continent. Consequently gen
1 isn't considered to be very fair, since a lot depends on where
you end up, and who your neighbours are. 
Generation 2 on the other hand, puts every player on their own
island, with a bunch of little initially unoccupied islands thrown
in for good measure. This guarantees everybody reasonably similar
terrain on which to develop their empires, and at least a little
time before open warfare can break out. Gen 3 does the same thing,
but makes all islands, player and spare ones, exactly the same
size.
Gen 4 pairs players up on the same sized islands, which makes
the identity of the player sharing your island the most critical
part of the early game.
====Smallpox vs Largepox====
The other big ongoing debate concerns the spacing of cities.
Without going into all the gory details, there are game balance
problems in freeciv that have arguably caused the game to evolve in
ways that were not originally intended. 
Smallpox, also known as Infinite City Sprawl (ICS), occurs when
players build small cities fairly close together, and generally
although not completely, ignore making improvements, (such as
temples to them). Largepox on the other hand, is a style of play
that builds cities further apart, and actively builds improvements
to cities to allow them to grow as large as possible.
Unfortunately (for the largepox players), when the two
strategies compete at the same level of play, the smallpox players
win the vast majority of games. The citymindist parameter attempts
to fix the problem, by forcing players to build cities a certain
distance apart.
In reality, the game doesn't change that much with larger values
of citymindist, and the same overall strategies continue to work
well.
==Understanding the Game==
Above and beyond all else, freeciv is about optimising your
production and associated technological growth as it increases
along a somewhat exponential curve. Initially, and assuming no
production capability is diverted to military units or city
development, the number of cities in an empire can be doubled
roughly every 11-14 rounds. At some point, either because you've
run out of room, or because somebody else has decided they need
your land more than you do, production is going to have to be
diverted away from sheer growth. The basic objective remains to
grow your production and research base, faster than all the other
players, whether by expansion, invasion, or judicious alliance. 
A large part of the art of freeciv lies in getting this balance
between expansion, technical development, production of military
units and city improvements defence and offence activites just
right.
Freeciv can be broadly characterised as having three somewhat
chronological parts: technical development, expansion, and global
warfare. There are occasional cries online for a kinder, gentler,
freeciv, but it's fair to say that's not the game most people are
playing. The objective for most freeciv players is to develop a
production base capable of producing enough military might to crush
every other player in the game.
Although sheer production capacity is a critical part of the
game, almost as critical, is the development of technical
capability. Besides production, cities also generate a certain
number of science points each round, and this controls the rate of
technical advance. (Use the F6 function key to access technology
development during the game). This too increases on a somewhat
exponential curve, and is not unrelated to production since the
more cities you have, the higher your science output will be.
Other conditions being equal, if one force is hurled against another ten times its size, the result will be the flight of the former.
The Art of War, 10.15 Sun Tzu		Technical development is important, because no matter how high
your production capacity is, it's fair to say that trying to fend
off an invading force of ironclads with any number of triremes is a
decidedly lost cause. Technical development is affected by the raw
output of your cities, but is also crucially affected by the type
of government you have. Since you begin the game in a form of
government (Despotism) which has rather low technical development
attributes, one of your immediate goals is to become advanced
enough to get into a form of government which favours fast
technological advance, (Republic), and this makes the following one
of the key points of the game.
The single most important skill for any player to develop is a good start.
===The beginning of the game===
What exactly defines a good start is determined by your starting
configuration, and by your style of play. With a little luck you
can get to republic inordinately fast if you concentrate on trade
to the exclusion of all else, but in doing so you will usually have
to sacrifice some city growth. That will hurt you later on in the
game, because your overall production levels will be low relative
to a player that didn't do this. (The mathematics is simply the
number of rounds it takes to double your cities, and the number of
cities you have that are outputting settlers. This is the kind of
formula that is frequently described as being very sensitive to
initial conditions) 
Consequently, the beginning of every game involves judgment
calls on how to best handle the terrain of your particular starting
position; which is why it's a good idea to practice it a few
times.
	Here the player has a lucky starting position, and has
exploited it. All four of their initial cities will generate 2
science points/round, allowing them to begin the change to republic
circa 2500BC. 
However, there's another island just visible on the left hand
side, which could mean potential trouble if it belongs to another
player.
===Practicing the Start.===
The start is the easiest part of the game to practice. Start up a
local server on your home machine, (the command is
civserver) and enter the following commands. 
*set huts 0
*set techlevel 0
*set gen 2
*set aifill 8
*set barbarians 0
This sets the server up to play a generation 2 game, with no huts,
no barbarians, and a total of 8 players, you, and 7 ai's. A fairly
standard online game configuration in fact. Now connect a client,
and /start the game. 
Hitting the F6 key will bring up a report on your current
technical goal, your extended goal, and what technology you already
have. The default values for most countries are Ceremonial Burial
and Monarchy. This is not what you want, and you need to change it
immediately. The immediate goal should be changed to Alphabet, and
the long term one to Republic.
The speed of technical development is controlled by the amount
of science produced by each city. This is proportional to the
amount of trade that city does. The trade points produced by the
city depend upon which tiles it is using for resources, the type of
government, and crucially, especially at the start of the game, on
the physical distance the city is from the capital.
These last two are why it is critical to get to republic as soon
as possible. Under despotism, the starting government, there is a
one point penalty applied to any resource (including trade), that
excedes 3 from a tile. So a whale for example, which would give a
city 3 trade points under republic, only gives it two under
despotism. Far more deadly though, are the effects of corruption,
which depend on the distance the city is from your capital.
Considering that you're aiming to get the republic advancement
by around 2200bc, at which point you should have 7-8 cities, you
could easily lose 15% or so of your pre-republic science points by
building too far away.
A rough rule of thumb is that under despotism any city which is
more than 2 squares from the capital, (the number of squares in
this case is obtained by adding the x and y distances), will only
give 1 science point no matter how high its trade score is, and if
it is more than around 12 squares (x+y again), it won't contribute
anything. If you can get a very high value of trade 3-4 squares
away, whale + wine say, then you can also get 2 science points from
that; but those combinations tend to be rare.
An eye should also be kept on the food surplus of each city,
(which determines how fast the cities grow and/or produce new
settlers.). Only exceptionally should you build a city where the
initial food surplus is less than 2.
Practice repeatedly on an empty server, until you
can reliably get republic technical advancement by 2100BC, and
understand what happened when you get it earlier or later. Then try
seeing how long it takes you to get Navigation. Make a copy of the
game at the beginning, and try playing a few games out to achieving
Navigation on the same map. Try different positions for your
cities, and see what difference they make, and what happens to your
rate of expansion when you start building military units, or using
settlers for mining/roads. Then read the terrain part of the
manual, one more time...		Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. 
Art of War, 1.26. Sun Tzu
==Developing your Nation==
It's worth taking a careful look in the F1 city summary screen at
your cities production levels before and after you change your
government to republic. There are some significant differences in
the food and output production of some tiles, which will directly
impact you in the next stage of the game, and should probably have
influenced some of your city placement choices in the initial
rounds. 
Generally, things always vary a little depending on what
generation game you're playing, the goals now is to expand as
quickly as possible to fill your original starting landmass, start
exploring your local sea area, and be prepared to fight off or form
alliances with any early visitors that pop by.
Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. 
The Art of War, 13.4 Sun Tzu		There are almost no military situations where having accurate
intelligence information is a disadvantage. In freeciv, this
usually means exploring your coastline with triremes as soon as
possible. This requires Map Making technology, and typically this
will be the first tech to get after republic. At this stage in the
game if you can see any islands immediately off your coast line,
you need to find out fairly quickly if they're the home island of
another player or not. 
Occasionally someone will get triremes out very early, before
republic, which is why it can be a good idea to move your explorer
back into your capital once you've explored your island. Explorers
can't fight, but they do make quite a good defensive unit.
Especially in emergencies.
While your first couple of triremes are exploring your
coastline, your cities should still be pumping out settlers to
build new cities in your existing island, and any new islands that
look promising.
===Technical Development===
A common technical strategy at this stage of the game is have the
long term tech goal be Navigation, (for Caravels, upgraded triremes
which don't have to hug the shoreline), and then Steam, which gives
you the first potentially game winning tech, Ironclads. There are
alterntives, Democracy is one, Magnetism another. The former relies
on using the higher science rate possible under democracy to catch
up on the sea power advances, as well as stealing technology if the
chance arises. The latter allows frigates, which don't stand up
very well to ironclads, but can typically be built several rounds
earlier, and make a useful attacking unit. Trade, which allows
caravans to be built, is another common diversion. 
====Surplus Production====
At some point it no longer makes sense to pump out settlers to
build cities. Practice and personal preferences in city spacing
will tell you when. The question then becomes what else to build.
Settlers are also useful for improvements, they can mine or build
roads, which improve production and trade respectively. However any
city which is supporting a settler takes a hit on its spare food
production, which restricts and slows its growth. In practice that
means a city can really only support one spare settler, and that it
is best to pick cities with high food surpluses to do this. 
On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away.
The Art of War, 2.11 Sun Tzu		A similar problem applies to military units. Besides causing
unhappiness, they also use up one production point. Which implies
that you don't want to keep too many sitting around if they're not
needed, but on the other hand you may need something on your island
to throw back the first attackers.
====Caravaning====
Caravans are part of the answer to what to do with surplus
production. Caravans can do two things, one is build trade routes
between two cities, which will increase science and tax production,
the other is provide a way to move production between cities. The
main reason for doing this is to build wonders, but since each one
requires a fairly large amount of production units, building them
in a few cities should provide a reasonably reliable supply of
surplus production if you need to suddenly produce some defensive
units. 
Building up a stock of caravans let's you choose which wonder to
build, and where, more easily than just building one in a single
city. It also let's you hide the fact that you're building it until
the last possible moment, which may or may not help you actually
get it.
====Wonders====
It's worth reading the wonders list fairly carefully. Of particular
interest are the wonders which don't become obsolete. The most
important of these are Magellan's Expedition, and the Democratic
Wonders. 
Magellan is probably the single most powerful wonder, and also
the one that most benefits the player who has it. What it does is
give all ships two extra movement points. But since it can be built
as soon as a player has navigation, this means its effects enhance
exploration, expansion, and invasion. A lot of games hinge on who
wins the race for Magellan, and since its technological
prerequisite is Navigation, there is no penalty (in terms of tech
advance) for trying to get it.
The democratic wonders are a slightly different story. They
affect city happiness, which in turn means cities can grow bigger,
with less improvements, and most importantly, make it much easier
for a player become and stay a democracy. Being a democracy has a
number of advantages, but the critical one is that democracies are
immune to most of the efforts of spies and diplomats.
The disadvantage of being a democracy is that you must keep your
cities happy. Because if two or more of your cities are in revolt
for more than two rounds, you will go back into anarchy.
Michelangelo, J.S.Bach's cathedral, Woman's Suffrage and Cure
for Cancer all have this effect to a lesser or greater extent, and
generally any player with at least two of them shouldn't have any
trouble being a democracy.
The problem is that with the exception of Woman's Suffrage, they
all require a slight diversion from the generally accepted steady
technological advance to cruisers. Typically (depending on their
tech production rate), this means that a player incurs around a 10
round delay in getting to cruisers for each of the other wonders.
Which may or may not be fatal...
==Learning how to Fight==
===Defence===
You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked. 
The Art of War, 6.7 Sun Tzu		So you've been number 1 in production since Republic, expanding
nicely, just got democracy, and have nearly finished wiping out
some hapless largepox player with the misfortune to be two squares
from your home island. One moment you're on top of the world, and
the next half your empire is in revolt, and the rest of it has
suceeded to the control of an AI. And all because some character
called Zop has snuck a transport in with a couple of horsemen, and
taken over your capital.
Once your nation grows above a certain number of cities, there is a
chance, increasing in proportion to the size of your empire, of
your nation revolting if its capital city is captured. When this
happens a new AI player get's created and ownership of a fairly
large number of your cities is transferred to them. This is not a
situation that can generally be recovered. 
Consequently, of the several ways to win, although the most
usual is to establish a crushing production lead on the other
players and roll them over with sheer military weight of numbers,
it is also possible to successfully attack the player with the
crushing production lead, take or destroy their capital city, or a
city containing their democratic wonders. This is actually easier
to do than you might think, given the complexities of unit handling
towards the end of a long game.
So, never leave your capital in a coastal city. Your capital is
initially determined as the first city you build, and in order to
maximise the tech advance rate, it frequently has to be built on
the coast. That doesn't mean it has to stay there. Once you have
the Masonry advance and can spare the production, pick an inland
city, preferably on a hill, (which gives you extra defence points),
and start building a palace there. Once that palace is finished,
your first one will be automatically sold, and your island will be
just that little bit safer.
For similar reasons, don't build wonders in coastal cities
either. What happens to a democracy when one of its democratic
wonders are captured, and all those unhappy citizens get unleashed
is not a pretty sight. At least, not if it's your democracy that
just got taken out.
===The best form of defence...===
The standard attacking technologies in freeciv are a couple of horsemen or diplomats, some kind of transport for them, and the latest and greatest in sea power to attack coastal cities with. Consequently a lot of games are decided when one player gets ironclads significantly before the others. 
Horsemen are quite cheap units to build though, so games can also be won by a player bringing off an early trireme attack - especially if this occurs in range of a capital city. Having to build defensive units early in the game slows down expansion dramatically. Even if the attacking player is thrown back in the short term, in the long term the damage to the production of the invaded player may be unrecoverable.		Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
The Art of War, 6.5 Sun Tzu.
===Common attack/defence tactics===
====Diplomats and Spies====
Diplomats and spies both have the ability to incite
a city to revolt and it, and any units that belong to it, then
become yours. This costs money, roughly proportional to the
distance the city is from the capital of the owning empire. For
this reasons diplomats make a good defence unit for your home
island, since the cost of recapturing your cities is quite small,
and a lousy attack unit for cities right next to your enemy's
capital. However, if your enemy is in the habit of renaming all
their cities to make it hard to identify their capital, diplomats
can provide a hint to how close you are.
Although it sometimes seems that certain players are getting
rather more than 2 movement points/round out of a diplomat, what's
actually happening is that they're timing the movement of the unit
to be very close to the end of the round, and using the Go to
(keyboard g) command. Units being moved using go are evaluated
automatically at the beginning of each round, before any manual
moves take place.		to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
The Art of War 3.2, Sun Tzu
====The Sentry command is your friend====
In any war involving diplomats or spies, it's vital to have at
least one unit in the city on sentry. (Use the "s" keyboard
command.). Sentry'd units get woken up automatically when a
diplomat/spy approaches, and you have a small period of time to
kill the diplomat whilst your opponent is trying to incite
rebellion. 
The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals.
The Art of War, 5.21 Sun Tzu		
====And so is a protective unit====
Diplomat and spy attacks are something of a skill in and of
themselves, as is defence from same. Some players seem to have
amazing reflexes when it comes to picking off marauding diplomats.
Quite often they also have amazingly fast internet connections. One
way round this problem is to put in a defensive unit as well, such
as a musketeer, and bring the diplomat in on top of it. This has
the additional advantage of preventing bribery attacks, since only
single units can be bribed. If you have two or more units on the
same square (land or sea), then they're immune to bribery. 
Note though that if an attack against any unit on a square
suceeds all units on that square are destroyed.
====Destroying cities.====
When cities are taken over by another player there is always an
automatic loss of one population point. If the city is only size 1,
then unless you use a diplomat to incite revolt in the city, it
will be destroyed. 
Although generally you want to take over enemy cities and add
them to your production total, early in the game especially, each
city represents a significant portion of total output, and
destroying a city or two will put your opponent far enough back in
the expansion/tech curve to make them an easy pushover in a few
rounds when you get ironclads. At that stage of the game you don't
want to hinder your own expansion by switching too much production
into offense, too early.
As long as your technology and production levels are
significantly in advance of your opponents, then they are just
minding your cities until you need to take them over. Really!
====Inadvertent Technology Transfer====
One way to lose your technology advantage very quickly is to
unsucessfully invade. One of the side effects of taking over a
city, is that any technology your enemy has, and you don't, will be
transferred to you, one technology advance per take over. You can
also use diplomats to steal their technology. 
So if you know that your opponent is significantly
ahead of you in technology, one risky, but possible defence is to
switch production into cash and defence units, (primarily sea
units, diplomats and horsemen.) Then wait for them to come in, let
them take one city, and then use your diplomats to get their
advances. The cost of inciting a revolt in a city is proportional
to the distance from the capital, and consequently it's always
fairly cheap to get your own cities back. 
As long as you throw the enemy off your island in one or two
rounds, being invaded doesn't have to be the end of the game.		If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune. 
The Art of War, 8.9 Sun Tzu
The corrollary of this is when attacking, turn your production
over to tax rather than science. There's usually no point in
researching further if there's a chance of the enemy stealing your
advances. Of course, if you desperately need a particualar tech
advance, in order to get a wonder say, then you need to continue
researching. And if you're playing several good people, you need to
keep worrying about what everybody else is up to, as well.
====Will you ever build railroads again?====
Roads increase trade from certain squares, and railroads increase
production from certain squares. Both make it much easier to move
units around your island. Unfortunately an enemy invasion force
will typically find this far more useful than you will; which means
it's important to be fairly careful when and where you build them.
Be especially careful with railroads, because if you don't have any
defensive units, there's nothing stopping one horseman taking every
city on your island in one round. 
====That ironclad can't do that to my Cruiser!====
After a unit has been in a battle there is a chance that it will
get veteran status. Attacks are decided partly on the unit's
defence/attack ratings, and partly by chance. Veteran units have
higher attack/defence values, and consequently a lucky veteran
ironclad can indeed sink an unlucky novice cruiser.
Since any battle counts, it's worth popping off any small land
units like explorers or warriors you happen to encounter, to see if
you can get a veteran. Similarly, if a unit does survive battle,
it's always worth withdrawing it to a port to recover its
hitpoints, but doubly so if that unit happens to have obtained
veteran status.
====Coastal Defence====
The coastal defence city improvement increases defending units
chances against sea attacks. In fact, get two fortified musketeers
in a city with coastal defence, especially if it's built on a hill,
and they can hold off several cruisers. Of course, the first
diplomat that comes along is going to have no trouble bribing the
city into insurrection, if you're not a democracy, and don't have
any units on sentry to protect the city. 
Now if you're fighting a democracy with a lot of
coastal defences it should be noted that the spies ability to
destroy city improvements still works just fine.		Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business. 
The Art of War, 13.18 Sun Tzu.
==Strategy==
who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain.
The Art of War, 6.33 Sun Tzu		Play enough online games and you will start to know your fellow
players. Most people are quite consistent in the way they play, the
tactics they use, and the options they like to play with.
Consequently part of learning the game, requires developing
counter-strategies to deal with specific types of games, and
players. 
One of the biggest game differences for example, is between
generation 1 and 2 maps. Immediate tactics need to be adapted in a
gen 1 game, especially if you find yourself close to another player
at the start. A lot of players in this situation will make
horseriding their first target technology, before they attempt to
get republic, and then go for a very early attack on any player
unfortunate enough to be in their immediate vicinity. This can be
countered by getting the bronze working advance, and building
phalanxes.
A wise player however may try to get an alliance with anyone who
looks like they won't be a rollover, since the impact of early war
on their expansion/production capabilities may be lethal in the
long term development of the game.
===Options galore===
There are a lot of options on the server which control how the
initial map is generated, and a lot of players have particular
preferences about which type of game they play. The number of huts
can be changed, as can the number of specials, (high value tiles),
and rivers/mountains/terrain proportions. (Occasionally the options
will be sufficiently bizarre that the server will be unable to
generate a map, and/or crash). Before you start messing around with
options too much though, it's worth bearing in mind one key point.
Almost all changes to options away from the generally accepted
standard settings disproportionately benefit the better players. 
You may get lucky. Which is why gen 1 games with huts are
popular with novice players and usually unpopular with the more
experienced ones. You may get your own continent to quietly expand
on, whilst two top ranked players are battling it out between each
other on a smaller island. On the other hand you may get to share
an island with one of those players, in which case if you're lucky
they'll apply the 'other players are only minding my cities until
i'm ready to use them' principle, just long enough for you to get
to Republic.
But failing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, most
changes help most the players who understand the game best.
Increasing the number of specials helps players who understand city
placement best. Playing with huts helps players who know how to
quickly get a trireme out to start mopping them up. Increasing
landmass or playing on very small maps, similarly helps people who
are quick to develop.
Some of the problems with option changes also relate to game
balance. The cost of producing a unit increases dramatically as the
units get more advanced. Increasing the rate of tech advance is a
popular choice, but it ruins the balance between production cost,
and the average amount of production an empire has at any point in
the game. Once again, not nearly as much of a problem for a player
who knows how to expand their production base quickly.
Which doesn't mean that you must stay with the
defaults, changing options makes for fun games, and it can also be
part of a deliberate meta-strategy. If you know a player always
plays gen 2, vote for gen 3. The difference is subtle, but can be
enough to throw them. If you know a player likes playing the
democracy strategy, try to maneuvre them into playing on a small
map. It takes quite a long time to get the democracy tech advance,
on a small map, you'll be off their shore with an invasion fleet
before they're even close. If you know a player prefers a small
map, vote for a large one. Again, the difference can throw them off
their stride.
 
Above all, use different starting configurations to improve your
own game, by figuring out strategies that adapt to different
playing conditions.		Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete.
The Art of War, 10.31 Sun Tzu
===Alliances are part of the Game===
Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy. Next best is to disrupt his alliances by diplomacy.
The Art of War, 3.2 Sun Tzu.		Informally you can always have an alliance with
another player, just by private messaging them, (player name:
message), and getting their agreement. Formally, if you establish
an embassy with another player using a diplomat or a spy, then you
can meet with them, share technology, exchange cities, and map
information. 
Forming a global alliance to bring down the current reigning
number one freeciv player can make for a great game, even if
Mr./Ms./Dr. Invincible doesn't enjoy being on the receiving end
quite as much as they do their usual rampage.
Strategically though, you should consider alliances carefully.
You may need your putative allies production base more than they
do. Sharing all your tech with a weaker player may also be a quick
way of giving it to the enemy if they start moving in on your
allies cities. Be especially careful with shared vision, although
very useful, sometimes a player will adopt the Switzerland strategy
and make an alliance with everybody. In this case you may suddenly
end up having shared vision with the enemy, which will probably be
far more useful to them than it will be to you.
==Vertical growth, or largepox and the art of City Improvements==
As mentioned in the beginning, city improvements are more of a
largepox issue than a smallpox one. Although the astute smallpox
player will often build the occasional improvement in cities that
will really benefit from it, and may well, if the game goes on long
enough, deliberately use rapture to increase their city sizes, by
and large these won't be their primary strategies. 
In point of fact the strategies and tactics applied above apply
just as well to a largepox game; and the specific advice for
largepox games below, can also be applied in a smallpox game. There
is no one way to win consistently at freeciv; it helps to mix and
match.
===Game development===
The primary difference between large and smallpox games, is that in
largepox individual cities should be proportionally bigger at a
given point (calender year) in the game. There will also be fewer of
them. Some things that are important in a smallpox game however,
become critical in a largepox game.
===The Start===
The distance fall off for science under despotism is one of the
reasons smallpoxers consistently beat largepoxers if they play
without the citymindistance restriction. The best a largepoxer can
hope for in terms of science is to get their capital city onto a
high trade combination, (a whale say), and if they're very lucky
their second city onto very high trade combination, (wine plus a
whale.) The best a smallpoxer can hope for, at least theoretically,
is to get their first eight cities, onto high trade combinations. 
Which means if you're playing largepox, you should move as far
as necessary to get your capital onto a location that produces at
least two science points. Even in a purely largepox game, if one
largepoxer gets a good capital site, and another doesn't the
difference is quite dramatic. Time to republic is inevitably longer
in largepox just because of the greater distance settlers have to
move to found cities, and because generally only 4 or 5 of them can
be close enough to generate any science points at all. Consequently
there's not quite the same pressure there is with smallpox to
settle down quickly.
===City Placement===
City placement is also much more critical in largepox than in
smallpox, and the emphasis is slightly different. Both forms of
play attempt to maximise the productive use of the territory
available, after all it is not the case that largepoxers playing a
game with citymindist=5 say, choose to space their cities 10
squares apart. Largepoxers and smallpoxers alike tend to maximise
the density of their cities according to whatever rules have been
adopted.
However, in smallpox people mostly worry about placing their
cities so that they are as productive as possible. The absolute
number of cities isn't so critical, one less city just means a
little more production that some other city grow into.
In largepox though, not only is each city a far more significant
proportion of the total than in smallpox, but lost production
because of placement errors, cannot be accessed by any other city.
It is consequently very important to build the maximum number of
cities that your island allows, and the importance of this
increases as the citymindist parameter gets larger.
===City Improvements===
One tactic that is far more important in a largepox game, is the
use of rapture to grow cities. Cities enter the rapture state if
all their citizens are happy, and the simplest way to achieve this
is to set the luxury setting under the Science, Luxury, and Tax
Rates menu (keyboard, shift T), as high as it will go.
After one round in rapture, any city of size 3 or greater, will
then increase in size by 1, each round they stay in that state.
Bear in mind that as cities grow in size, their unhappiness
increases, so no city grows indefinitely, without something being
built to rectify that.
So the basic strategy in largepox is to expand to fill your
island, get your cities up to size 3, and then periodically rapture
them up in size as high as you can. To do this, you will need to
build improvements that increase happiness, the main one of which
is Temple; and occasionally ones that increase food, primarily
Harbours, and eventually improvements that allow cities to continue
to grow in size, such as Aqueduct, (required to go higher than size
8).
City improvements cost a certain amount of money each round to
maintain, so it's important not to blindly build every improvement
possible in each city, and it's also important to use caravans to
set up trade routes to increase tax income. If you start getting
warnings about being low on funds, then you're getting this
tax/cost balance wrong. Maybe you should try smallpoxing...
===Hints and Tips===
Just as a smallpox player needs to re-read the terrain part of the
manual, and really understand it; a largepox player needs to read
the city improvement section several times, and really understand
it. You can't afford to build every possible city improvement,
build the ones that help to increase your production and science
development the most. 
====The Granary====
Not all city improvements are that useful, but a very common
mistake appears to be not realising this. Consider for example the
granary. This effectively halves the time it takes a city to grow,
but it costs 60 production points, or at +2 production points a
round, about 30 rounds to produce. Now post republic, most cities
can generate a +2 food surplus, which means without a granary, it
will take a city about 45 rounds to grow to size 3. 
However, as the effect of the granary doesn't kick in until it's
been built, the granary is effective only for the last 15 rounds of
that period. Typically the granary won't be completed until the
city is already size 2, in which case it won't have any effect
until the city grows to size 3. And, once a city is size 3, almost
all its growth is going to come in periods of rapture.
====The Library====
Libraries do nice things to science and technology development,
especially in combination with later improvements like research
labs. Again this does not mean that libraries should be built in
every city. Science output from an individual city varies between 0
to 12 or more. Bring up the F1 city summary and look at the science
column - there are quite dramatic differences between individual
cities science ouput. Put libraries into just the ones with the
highest science levels. 
====City Walls, Barracks====
At first sight, city walls and barracks look like good things to
build, after all they considerable improve the defensive capability
of the cities that have them, and the offensive capability (in the
case of barracks), of units that come from them. The problem is
that in general freeciv wars don't conform to the assumptions
behind these improvements. 
The commonest way to attack in freeciv is to get a horseman or a
diplomat onto an island, and immediately take over any undefended
cities, or bribe any defended ones. City walls do nothing to stop
either of these attacks. Defended coastal cities will also be
subject to attack by sea units, and the city wall improvement is
only effective against land based units. The times you may want to
build a city wall are in gen 1 games where especially if you're
playing with high landmass values, you'll need to set up border
defences. Also if you've have acquired an inland city on somebody
elses island, in which case a city wall can help you hold that city
and use it to generate offensive units to continue the attack.
Needless to say, these tactics only really work well if you're a
democracy and immune to diplomat attacks.
Barracks are even worse. There are actually three types of
barracks, with earlier types becoming obsolete as your technology
improves. Once the barrack has become obsolete it is ineffective,
and the new version has to be built. The veteran status is only
conferred on landbased units, and although this is a nice to have,
it's rarely that useful. In gen 1 games where you find yourself
needing a lot of landbased units they can come in handy, but be
careful that building them doesn't slow down your expansion
rate.
If you're putting together an invasion force, especially later
in the game, or you have a city with very high production
surpluses, (and thus capable of pumping out a lot of units), then
it it might occasionally be worth building barracks in the cities
providing the troops. First though, check and see if anybody has
built the Sun Tzu wonder yet.
==To Summarise==
While heading the profit of my counsel, avail yourself also of any helpful circumstances over and beyond the ordinary rules.
The Art of War, 1.16 Sun Tzu.		Freeciv is a game of occasionally daunting complexity, which is
what makes it so much fun. The online game often goes through
cycles as different attack strategies become popular, which in turn
provokes the evolution of different defence strategies. There is no
one way to win every single game, and every player has their own
little set of tricks that they hope nobody else knows about. This
guide tells you some of the most popular, and tries to give you
pointers on figuring out your own. 
It's a big world. Go play in it.
Category:Tutorials