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

[Mike Kaufman <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Aug 27, 2002 at 12:32:05AM +0200, T.J.T van Kooten wrote:
> 
> 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"

this is old news. (but I guess for all you not following the -dev
discussion...)

This generalized calendar has been removed from CVS.
The new calendar system (currently only submitted) includes the
functionality plus allows (almost) arbitrary designation of units).

so you can have dates like:

March, 1901
Fall, 1901
Week 1, 1901
Jan 23, 1901, 23:04:43
Day 1 of the New Moon in the Age of Seldon.

> 
> 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.

this applies to the new patch as well with the analagous extensions:

using the last example above, you can start out in Ages/turn for a certain
number of Ages, then move to lunar phases/turn and then to days/turn  (or
multiples thereof)

The question is when it comes to the things that trigger a change in the
units/turn. (I call it a timeframe in my patch).

Currently (in the patch), three things can change a timeframe:

1. a default date is reached (like the current 1000BC, 0AD, 1000AD,...)
2. a certain tech is discovered. the patch also has an option wherein a
   timeframe cannot be changed unless a certain tech has been discovered.
3. some obscure rules on spaceship parts (that now seems to have little
   bearing on civ1 and civ2 games) these are hardcoded for freeciv. They
   can be turned on or off but not modified via rulesets.

> 
> 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.
>

So it seems that without duplicated the difficulty levels of payciv, we
can't duplicate the calendar system. (though we can change the default date
of 1yr/turn to 1870 rather than 1850. We can also simply pick a difficulty
level and duplicate that one.
 
> > > > 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.  
> 

and that's the question.

-mike