Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Catching up + Some thoughts - comments sought

[Lalo Martins <lalo@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 10, Rizos Sakellariou decided to present us with:
> 
> That was my impression too with respect to Republic. However, I am puzzled 
> that Republic comes before Banking; even Trade or Currency discovery are not
> necessary for it. If we accept that its basis is the late 18th century
> developments, I think that the Republic comes too early in the tech tree.
> IMHO, this means that almost always there is no reason why one should go
> for Monarchy first rather than Republic (just one more tech required).
> People with civI/II experience tell me that the Republic had disadvantages
> that are not currently implemented in Freeciv. If this is true, isn't
> perhaps time to start thinking about adding these?

Perhaps you are biased by having played Civ/reading its manual.
I think I don't need to remember you that Civ is not free
software, and many times the folks who wrote the manual had no
communication with the folks who wrote the game :-)

As a History lover and grandson of a Historian, I look at
FreeCiv from other perspective and use my History book as the
game manual.

So, yes, Republic comes way before Banking or Trade. FreeCiv's
Republic is half what we call it today; but it's also the system
used in Rome before the Empire. Of course the description in
helpdata.txt doesn't apply to this kind of Republic (roman
citizens elected the Senate and the Senate elected the ruler)
but the effects apply.

Of course before Rome went Republic it already had Currency,
Trade and perhaps even Banking; I'd argue Currency is necessary
even for this kind of Republic, but Trade is not.

[Note: on our world Banking was "researched" by the Babilonians
at more or less the same time the Romans "joined the game". Rome
used Banking a lot when it started expanding, but I don't think
it was a necessary piece of the Republic.]

Also, fans of Babylon5 will easily think of the "Centauri
Republic" which works exactly like the late Roman model (when
Senators stopped being elected and started being hereditary).


##########

I'm very disappointed by the release of Alpha Centauri and CTP
:-) I was thinking FreeCiv would soon have all features we want
and rulesets in place so we could start developing a real
"FreeCiv game" (ie our own rules). Now I guess people will spend
some time playing CTP and perhaps Alpha Centauri, and then spend
some time cloning the new features inside FreeCiv, so original
rules will probably wait another year...

For example, once the Civ compromise is broken we surely could
use a complete rewrite of government types - more options,
better matching human history and adding theoretical types that
were never really implemented - aside from the long-discussed
"future tech". Sigh. Stop disgressing :-)

[]s,
                                               |alo
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