Re: [Freeciv-Dev] How much is missing to make C:CTP clone

[Greg Wooledge <wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Artur Biesiadowski (abies@xxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> 1) Stacks - this includes movement (easy) and combat (hard, includes
> positioning in ranks, firepower etc). This would require few new packets
> (for group move/move request and for combat) and some additional logic
> in server for resolving combat.

Yes, this feature probably has the best "benefit/difficulty" ratio.

What about bombardment?  That's a radical and important gameplay change.

> 2) Stealth units - many kinds of them. I think that bitfield in
> unit_ruleset indicating invisibility sight and second field for
> specifying invisibility kind would do. Of course this requires some code
> in server to validate visibility and to cancel moves if invisible unit
> is spotted by stepping on it.

This gets back to fog of war, though.  In order to do stealth units right
(even the existing Submarines!) you need to have the server *not* tell
the client about units it can't see.  Then we get back into the whole
fog of war debate that just settled down recently....

> 3) Trade based on routes/monopolies. This is nice option even for pure
> civ2 - can be toggable independent from others. I'm afraid that it
> requires a lot of code on client side just for displaying all dialogs
> and trade routes correctly + more for handling logic.

Personally, I always found the "monopoly" concept counterintuitive.

> 4) Slaves. Quite easy I think, just a number indicating hom many
> citizents are slaves and moditying food/gold consumption accordingly.

But slaves can't be specialists.  This means changes to the worker
placement code, too.

There seem to be some happiness issues surrounding slaves that I haven't
fully worked out.  Specifically, when you raise wages, this normally
increases happiness -- but slaves aren't paid wages at all, so do they
contribute a happiness point?  How about food -- slaves only eat half
the normal ration, so do they contribute half a happiness point when
you raise the rations?

Finally, there is the whole abolitionist/emancipation thing.  Lots of
work to implement that.

> 5) Food/gold/production expectancies from governments. A lot of coding
> here I'm afraid.

It's more than just that.  The whole concept of what governments *do*
is different.  The way science output is computed is radically different.
Most of the city improvements are different, and the tile improvements
are different.  All of this is tightly interwoven -- you can't just
implement *part* of it and expect to have a balanced game.

> 6) Space. I think that we can safely ignore it.

For a brief period of time, at least.  But once you start adding CTP
features, you start down the path to a "CTP mode" and will eventually
have to face this.

> 7) Underwater cities. Shouldn't be hard.

Tedious, though.  There are a lot of little things to take into account.
For example, you'd have to add the Crawlers and probably the Undersea
Tunnels.  Some city improvements can't be built in underwater cities (the
same for space cities).  And probably more that I'm overlooking.

-- 
Greg Wooledge                    | Distributed.NET http://www.distributed.net/
wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx             | because a CPU is a terrible thing to waste.
http://www.kellnet.com/wooledge/ |