[Freeciv-Dev] Ideas and a bug...

[Peter Wraight <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Right - to start off with I would like to comment on how well FreeCiv is coming
on. It is almost as good as the original game (Civilisation II) and will soon
surpass it. Anyway onto the ideas:

1. The complaints about the easy AI being too hard are well grounded. However I
believe there are other ways to improve the situation. Every time I started the
game with five AI players (hey I felt like a challenge) I noticed that there
was only one island on which everybody was. If the terrain generator was
slightly improved so that it generated several different islands defense would
become less of a problem.

2. Perhaps some units and technologies need to be added beyond the present level
of advancement (as in Civilization: CTP). This would give the game some added
depth and reason to continue investing in science after the year 2000.
Personally I feel that there should be more science advancements available than
can be researched in the entirity of the average game so that the race for
technology is always present.

3. Perhaps in line with the above idea there could be an option to research
custom units so units could be designed in the game (NOT before the game
starts) and used. Of course balance would have to be maintained - for example a
high attack rate could be balanced by a low defence rate or a very low movement
rate.

Finally I have a slight bug to report. When I first used the program I was
using the KDE with the kdm being used instead of xdm. With this none of the
mouse menus worked - ie. I could not change the technology I wished to
research etc... The problem was easily solved - I switched back to using xdm
but the problem could cause problems for those who use kdm and put them of the
game (unless it was just my machine)...

Peter Wraight
peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you.
Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he will have to touch it to be sure."
Jaeger