[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Chunnel

[Tony Stuckey <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2000 at 02:45:03AM +0100, cyb97 wrote:
> on 27.03.00 22:11:53, the guilty party (ie. Reinier Post), stuck his head out 
> with the following anouncement:
> >I like the idea of civilizations becoming gradually more apt at
> >building bridges: perhaps the maximum length of bridges could increase
> >with literacy? And the chunnel wonder would give unlimited length
> >(still with the same expense, of course).
>
> No offence, but what has bringbuilding got to do with literacy, this sure
> must be related to enigeering and the technological level, not whether or
> not the population are literate....

        The idea is that books are more reliable than human memory at
recording what went wrong.  Trade Guilds and a Master/Journeyman
relationship is a fragile way to try and encode specialized knowledge, and
simple ego and provinciality often cause people to ignore good suggestions
or alternative methods from "unqualified" directions.
        There are a number of reasonable requirements for such an idea,
Bridge Building and Mathematics probably both coming too early to be good
co-requisites.  Metallurgy, Steel, Refining, Machine Tools and
Industrialization all come fairly late, and would cover the Literacy idea
as well.

        One point that's being missed in this discussion is that you can
bridge continents now, simply by parking a series of transports in place.
For a short distance, such as the proposed 4 tiles, you don't even have to
park them -- a pair of port cities could provide protection against attacks
and are entirely within the movement range of a Galleon or Transport.
Galleons come reasonably early in the game.
        Since it is easy to load and unload masses of units using
transports, the only reason not to use them is that they are considered an
unnecessary management step.
        The only effective Chunnels/Bridges would be the incredibly long
ones.  If they are treated as a sea improvement which can be pillaged, the
cost of defending a long construction would be prohibitive, requiring at
least a serious fighting ship every 3-4 length units, on extended patrol,
with all of the ongoing support costs that implies.

        This is really the major argument against the proposed Air Cargo
unit as well -- There's simply no need for it.  Capacity would logically be
less than a Transport, the enabling technologies would be late comers,
movement rate shouldn't be faster than a Bomber, etc.  However, where would
such a unit be applied?
        Railroads already give you the ability to cross incredible land
distances quickly and easily.  Transports, Airlift, Paratroops, unit
subversion and buying production via Money all allow you to transfer units
and/or influence across ocean areas.

        A possible avenue which would make this more interesting is special
scenarios in which some of the normal units and buildings are disabled.
Maybe a Mars scenario with huge sweeping sandstorms which block certain
travel modes.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"And they said work hard, and die suddenly, because it's fun."
        -Robyn Hitchcock.