[Freeciv-Dev] Materials in Freeciv

[Martin Olveyra <bj0v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am doing modifications over freeciv 1.11.4, which consists in adding
diverse classes of materials, instead of basing production in what is
called "shield". I want to know what do you think, alternative ideas and if you
agree to implement them in the distribution.

The reason is to add the concept of strategic tiles, which are very important
to conserve or conquer because of the importance in city production. This must
be also done by reducing the number of specials in the map, and increasing the
production of each of them.

Another feature that must be implemented in this case is a distributed based
material managing. That means, any material surplus of a city can be "absorbed"
by another cities to complete their respective
productions. This is very important due to the relative scarcity of specials.

Maintaining a good degree of abstraction, to avoid players boring, I will
implement the above changes in the following way:

1- Four kind of materials were added --oil, iron, stone, coal-- which
can represent abstractly a bigger amount of real materials. For example,
oil can be extracted from seals, whales or mineral oil. Coal material is
the production of forests tiles (wood) and coal specials tiles, etc. The code
can easily be modified to add or remove materials.
                                        (This part is actually done)

2- The term "shield" is conserved and reserved for the combination of this four
kind of materials: 1 oil + 1 iron + 1 stone + 1coal = 4 shields. 1 oil + 1 iron
+ 1 coal = 0 shields. So there must be available at least 'n' surplus of each
kind of materials to produce 4*n shields, needed to build units,buildings, etc.
This reflects astractly the reality that, for example, if you want to melt
iron, you must burn coal.
                                (This part is under development)

3- The distribution of materials must be done transparently. The cities will
have a surplus of certain materials with respect to other materials, because of
the rule described in (2). That unused surplus goes to each material stock or
is absorbed by other cities, in a rate determined by the travel time between
cities, which in turn is derived from distance and class of connections between
them. Also, I plan to add the feature that with this interchange of
materials, extra trade bonus results in the involucred cities. (Perhaps this
can substitute the actual mechanism in which suffice the presence of rail/roads,
coasts and rivers).

4- Client city dialog must be updated in order to show all this info.

5- Finally, some changes must be done to terrain.ruleset