[freeciv-data] Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Freeciv Patch: Controls on access to specified techs.

["Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

David Pfitzner wrote:

> While this patch looks like a good start, it seems to me there is
> still a limitation that _all_ the "partitioned" techs will need to
> be marked non-transferrable?  Else you could aquire (by conquering
> a city etc) derived techs even without having the base ones.

Yeah, that's how I figured it.  I was originally going to use just one
flag, because that's all I see a need for right now, but since there are
two distinct classes of ways to acquire techs, I went ahead and gave two
flags, in case someone wanted more flexibility than I can see a need
for.  (I thought about also separating willing transfers from unwilling
transfers, but usually anything that can be transferred willingly can
also be transferred unwillingly, and vice versa, so I decided not to
split them.)


> And marking all techs non-transferrable means no sharing even
> between separate elven nations etc :-(

Good point.

I wonder whether we ought to provide some some structure at a layer below
that of nations.ruleset.  We could have a ruleset that sets up abstract
"classes" for nations to be assigned to (i.e., races, species, "good vs.
evil", traditional alliances, or whatever a designer wanted use them
for), and that grants some default properties and/or possessions to the
members of each class.  Then nations.ruleset would add a class name field
for each nation.  (For the default and compatibility rules, the class
would just be "human".)

Then we could have a flag to bar tech transfers across class boundaries,
and perhaps a more stringent flag to bar transfers even within a class,
in case some designer wanted to use it.


Such classes would be useful for other purposes too.  I've been mulling
over a system of restrictions on unit production.  One flag would say
"build one per game", and another would say "one in play at a time".
Those categories would taken in cross product with "per city", "per
nation", and "for everyone".  The 'class' system described above would
allow adding "per class".

Examples of what the unit restrictions would be good for are:

"Dark Lord" - build one per game, period.

"High Priest of Zoth" - one at a time, period.

"High King of the Dwarves" - one at a time, per class (plus limit it to
being built by nations in the "Dwarves" class).

"Praetorian Guard" - one at a time, per nation.

etc.

Also, the "build one per game, period" would allow uniquely named units
such as "Robin Hood & Co.", which would add color, but would look odd if
there were lots of them running around during the game.  Some of the "one
at a time" categories could also let you put some very powerful units
into a game, but keep players from flooding the map with them.

Finally, if the system were designed to be thoroughly general, it could
be applied to buildings as well as units.  Wonders would become nothing
more than buildings with special flags set on them.  The system would
still be able to model Civ2, but would be much, much more flexible for
modpack designers.

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas

p.s. -- Is anyone still on freeciv-data?  We had a couple of pointless
flame wars a couple of months ago, and almost no traffic since then.  Did
the flame wars scare everyone off?  I have a couple more ideas to moot,
but I don't want to post them where no one is reading.