[freeciv-data] Re: [Freeciv-Dev] new generalized calendars

["T.J.T van Kooten" <thomas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Whoa, so what's up exactly? Seems to be a vote about the calendar 
feature in Freeciv?



 After a quick check in Freeciv dev here's the issue at hand:

This is an automated notification of a change to freeciv cvs, > on Mon Aug 19 
16:05:28 PDT 2002 = Mon Aug 19 23:05:28 2002 (GMT) > by Per I. 
Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx> 

"Adding generalised calendar. Calendars can now be changed by  modifying 
game.ruleset, and calendars can be made to start with either a year or acquired 
technology, or year and required  technology. The previously hardcoded 
linking of acquiring technology for spaceship components and calendars has 
been removed. Now you move into a special  hardcoded 1 year calendar 
immediately upon launching your spacecraft instead"

So if I understand this correctly you can now change the ruleset to 
change the calendar display at specific points in the game. So from 
4000BC to 0AD you could have 50-year turn increments and switch to 
20=year turn increments after 0AD and so on... You can also set a 
certain flag like an acquired (invented) tech to switch to a new 
calendar.

P.S
In Civ2 you also had an option to modify the calendar. But that was 
mostly used in scenarios (months of the year e.a). The time 
increments and actual game turns in a standard Civ2 game would 
depend on the difficulty level,  e.a on chieftain level you would have 
550 game turns until 2020 AD (Alpha Centauri deadline), for prince 
this would be 500 turns, kings got 450, emperors and deities got only 
400 turns to reach Alpha Centauri. The turns for every time increment 
(or should i say era?) differed for the difficulty level. So in practice the 
"clock" would move slower when you played on chieftain level then if 
you played on emperor level. The final 150 turns(1 year/turn) always 
started at the same year for all the difficulty levels: 1870 AD

The Civ2 increments in chronological order are like this:
50, 25, 20, 10, 5,2,1 year /turn.






> 
> > > I suspect that the major features of civ should be integrated: o
> > > the building of (the first of) a certain unitype. o the building
> > > of (the first of) a certain improvement. o discovery of a tech.
> > 
> > > o I suspect that Per might like something like the death of a
> > > certain
> > >   unittype (like a Sauron unit), but I think that might be going a
> > >   bit far...
> > 
> > And exactly this is the problem: where do you draw the line? You may
> > also want certain modifications like:
> >  - building of a unittype is possible
> >  - building of a unittype is possible for all players
> >  - first player builds the unittype
> >  - all players built the unittype
> >  - all players have an existing unit of this type
> >  - and so on
> > 
> > Where do you draw the line?
> 
> Yes, this is exactly the problem, and I would like the people on
> freeciv-data's opinion about this. After all, what we're _really_
> talking about here is only ONE change (aside from ignoring the
> spaceship and tech doubling rules) in the mechanics of the game and
> that is that with the change of timeframe, we get a possible change in
> the end game date. Since everything else [should] be determined by
> turn number, changing how "time flows" really only materially could
> change the number of turns left in the game.
> 

This really differs from the Civ2 model which is based on a max 
number of turns per difficulty level. From a personal standpoint I do 
like the Freeciv calendar idea. I will have to read up on it before I offer 
my opinion on the other options though.  

> 
> I see your meaning. It actually would be kind of neat to associate a
> set of [calendar_unit?] definitions with a particular timeframe, so
> you could start out in lunar units, move to Julian units, move to
> Gregorian units, and then move to Stardate units. It'd be awfully
> flexible, but then again, really, what's the point?
> 
> > I agree that you have to prodive an "espace" mechanism.
> 
> eh? "escape"?
> 
> -mike
> 
It would be a nice feature to have when Freeciv has proper scenario 
support.


-CapTVK-