[Freeciv-Dev] Re: long-term FreeCiv play

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> I've been investigating a little after this positive mail, and another
> (private) one, it looks quite do-able.
> 
> BTW the idea is for a small group, e.g. 6 players or so, to play maybe 3-4
> turns a day. This way a Civ game can go on for weeks "in the background".
> Should be a good laugh!

You're not the first person to consider play by mail, but in my experience,
the average game, with a timeout of 60-100 seconds, lasts several hours.
At 3-4 moves a day, your average game could easily last a year.  I have
only met a few people who have been playing Freeciv that long.

But it's an interesting challenge.

> However I'll probably have to make a few mods to the source to get it
> working -- first of all the "timeout" param has a max value of 999 seconds
> (any reason for this?)

I don't think so.  Which do you plan to interface to,
the server or the client?
 
> BTW One thing I'm thinking of is a "turn schedule", where turns happen at
> e.g. 11pm, 2pm and 5pm, Monday-Friday, so it can fit in when the players
> are at work, but they won't have to wake up in the middle of the night to
> get an especially good turn in ;)

Let me know when yuou're ready to test, and I will try a game.

> (Unfortunately most of my possible players will be Windows-bound, so let's
> hope they can get free/cheap X servers to run the Windows port on)

Not all of the existing Freeciv Windows ports require an X server.

-- 
Reinier