Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Civil war patch and ruleset.

[Tony & <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 12, 1998 at 09:39:26PM +0100, Nicolas BRUNEL wrote:
> I think the idea of teleporting units strange.
> How during a civil war units can journey faster
> than any other units during the whole game ?

        I'm happier with it than with a massive fight scene.
        Every game everywhere has cut corners somewhere.  When you attack a
diplomat of a friendly nation, they are teleported home, too.  ("Diplomat
has been expelled by the Romans!", in Civ2).  Don't sweat it.

> If it is possible why nations at peace with full control
> over their territories can't do it ?

        Because it's being used as a conflict resolution mechanism only,
not a way to make you an all-powerful dork.  The concentration of force
that could happen with teleporting units is simply insane.  Fighters and
Bombers are bad enough.
        Note that it's also completely unrealistic to only be able to move
ships a few spaces in a game turn -- in a year or two, circumnavigation of
the world is possible.

> I'd prefer that units in a stack either slay each other or
> move randomly one adjacent and ennemy free square.

        I don't, so there. :)

> About the sharing of knowledge, it may led
> to strange cases where a player owning armor has to find the wheel.
> May be only the latest knowledge will be shared.
> The old ones will be common to all parts of the collapsing empire.

        All advances learned by the master civilization should be learned
by both sides of the civil war.  There's simply no other rational way to do
it.  As to what's being researched right now ... I'm not sure that I see
a reason to change that, either.  Losing research points sucks.

> -Concerning ruleset, i was happy to come back to civI.
> But it reminds me of another game Xconq where ai is soo dump.
> In this game, there is no predefinite units, terrains or rules.
> It's impossible to have a good ai for Xconq.

        It's quite possible.  You just need to either tell the AI the
rules, or have some way for it to spend a lot of time discovering how to
take advantage of them itself.  Scenario-based AI shouldn't be a surprise
to you.  I think there is even a Civ-ish Xconq module.
        And I really like Hex-grids.

> It would funny if the ruleset langague  sticks to GDL : the lisp like
> langague
> of Xconq so that someone with time enough can clone freeciv using GDL.

        Stan Shebs tried it.  It didn't really seem to improve interest in
Xconq, for whatever reason.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"When I was young, the sky was filled with stars.
 I watched them burn out one by one."  -Warren Zevon