[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Goals

["Claus Leth Gregersen" <leth@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Heya i guess i speak for all of the original authors here,



> On Mon, Dec 13, 1999 at 09:12:11AM +0100, Egbert Hinzen wrote:
> > On Mon, 13 Dec 1999, David Mitchell wrote:
> >
> > > It says on the site that the goals of the game are to be "comparable
> > > with Civ 1/2"
>
> This is a goal for Freeciv developers.
>
The original goal was to make a client/server game, that had behaviour like
civ 1/2.
That is turnbased, units, cities, techtrees..
Our initial focus was not to make civ 1 or 2 in details, but as work
progressed it turned more and more into that.
Especially after freeciv got more and more popular, and people started
making patches for it (all sorts of insane rules)
Was a very good way and simple way to refuse those patches, all it took was
to say "first we make it civ 1/2 compliant, then we can make the 'macdonalds
wonder'".
Besides i think it's a valid point still, people has grown used to the
civ1/2 rules, and many (well atleast me) thinks they're still the best/most
fun in this class of games.
But it seems that freeciv is almost civ 2 compliant now, so maybe when this
happends change version to v2.0.0,
as we intended years ago?
I know there has been alot of work on generalizing freeciv, with rulesets
etc.. but i doubt that it's completely general yet, like the ability to make
CTP or Alpha Centauri, by just creating a ruleset.

Another weakness is the AI; it's not suited for major strays away from the
standard rules.
I guess a more or less rewrite of the AI would solve this, to remove all the
hardcoded rules.
Another thing is that having autonome units/cities might be good for some
purposes,
but a good AI have an overall plan.
I know it's partly my own fault, i made a very simple AI that didn't have
any overall plan, and
that way of thinking has been like multiplied 1000 times, in terms of
codesize ;)

> >  but in the About section in the help, it says that the
> > > ultimate goal is the elimination of all other civilisations.
>
> I guess this was written before the space race was added (in January).
>

There is the timelimit aswell (standard y2k) , highest score wins.
But face it without the diplomacy, violence is the only answer.
Diplomacy needs to be implemented properly before it's ready for version
2.0.0 i guess.

> >  There is
> > > no way in Freeciv to make peace with an AI player, the only thing on
> > > their mind is the destruction of everyone else.
> > >
> > > What do you all think?
>
> Somebody has to implement AI diplomacy.
>
> > I don't like the freeciv goal!
> >
> > BTW: The arguments against some orginal wonders forcing players to
> >      keep/make peace are not good, too!
>
They're good enough, with no diplomacy, how should UN and eiffel be of any
use, or even work?
> Where did you find those?
>
> --
> Reinier Post
>
>
/Claus Leth Gregersen.