[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Materials in Freeciv

[Greg Wooledge <wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Martin Olveyra (bj0v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> 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)

This is good, but for "mods" it would be best if you could specify the
number and type of the resources, and which tiles/specials produce them.

This makes me think immediately of Heroes of Might and Magic III.  For a
HOMM3 modification to Freeciv, it would be necessary to have wood, ore,
mercury, sulfur, crystal and gems.  These resources come from mines, which
are placed on the map by the (human) mapmaker.  Each city improvement has
its own "recipe" of these resources (e.g., a Citadel needs 5 ore and 2500
gold, and a Portal of Glory needs 10 each of mercury/sulfur/crystal/gems
and 20000 gold).  Wood and ore are typically the easiest to acquire,
and most of the basic city improvements only require wood, ore and gold
(money).

> 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)

If a city has no oil, does this mean it can't build anything at all?

> 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.

Sounds good from a realism point of view, but I think gameplay will
suffer.  Especially at the beginning of the game, when you might not
have *any* cities producing, say, oil.

On the other hand, if rule #2 is relaxed, then it becomes a bit more
playable.  The less-common resources shouldn't be required for the
basic city improvements.  (Civ2/Freeciv already has a tech requirement
for city improvements.  A rare-resource requirement on top of that could
make city improvements too hard to build.  You shouldn't need "plutonium"
to build a Marketplace. ;-) )

Another HOMM3 feature for resource management is the Marketplace city
improvement.  It allows you to trade one type of resource for another,
at a considerable loss of value.  But if you desperately need just
one more crystal to build that Mage Guild Level 4, and you have a few
hundred wood stockpiled, it's great. ;-)

Also, it's important to note that in HOMM3 you can't build creatures
(equivalent of military units) until you have the appropriate city
improvements to house them.  To build Griffins, you have to build a
Griffin Tower, and so on.  Once you've done that, the Griffins themselves
only require some gold -- but you get a limited number of them per city
per week.

(Sorry for the disorganization in this message.  I hope it's useful
somehow.)

-- 
Greg Wooledge                    | "Truth belongs to everybody."
wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx             |   Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://www.kellnet.com/wooledge/ |

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