Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Newbie: My ideas

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 19, 1999 at 03:41:29PM +0100, Reinier Post was heard to say:
> >   * What about real-time, not turn based strategy?
> 
> That's what Freeciv does, except that AI players don't interleave actions
> with humans.  It would be useful to have this, and equally useful to have
> full turn-based play as an option.

  I've made a patch that I *think* will allow turnbased play.  It's entirely
untested, however, because I'm using a CVS snapshot and the client segfaults
on startup. :-)  But it *does* compile.  I'll download a previous snapshot but
in the meantime I'm going to post it here so people can let me know if I made
any blatantly obvious mistake.

  It works by keeping track of which player is currently moving and then,
when that player ends his or her turn, alerting the next player that a
turn started ( using send_year_to_client() ),  I'm not sure if this is the
'right way' to do things but it seems to be how things are done in other
parts of the code.

  The most likely problem with this patch seems to me to be subtle (or not
so subtle ;) ) breakage somewhere else in the code where assumptions are being
made that I've violated.  Probably someone with more extensive knowledge of
the innards of this beast is better suited to check this.  Or to make this
patch ;-)

> 
> >   * Why can't player enter game, after the game starts?
> 
> Nobody implemented it.  Recently, civil war was added
> (conquer the capital and a country splits in two) so this
> should now be easy to add.
> 

  I could take a crack at that too, assuming the patch above isn't broken. :-)

> >   * Isn't computer player just a little bit hard (in year 1000BC
> >      he had Marines, Artiliery, etc. and i had only Musketers.
> >      Don't you mind that is unrealistic ?!? [easy difficulty])
> 
> There's an 'easy' mode in which the AI doesn't cheat all that much.
> This is a known problem, have you checked the guides at www.freeciv.org?

  I think he may have been referring to the 'easy' mode.  I know that I've had
similar experiences playing the easy mode computer.  I think that the problem is
not that the computer gets boosts in production and so on, but it actually
is playing a totally different game due to its omniscence. (btw, I'm fairly
good at playing CivII, or I was last time I played ;)

  Daniel

-- 
"It is hard to think of anything less sentient than a pumpkin."
  -- Terry Pratchett, _Witches Abroad_