[Freeciv-Dev] Re: CTP implementation

[Greg Wooledge <wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marc Strous (marc_strous@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> i've started work on implementation of good idea's from civCTP into freeciv. 
> did anybody else start this yet?

I've put in one or two things that CTP will need, but I'm not actively
working on any more right now.

> i don't want to implement everything and do want to include some other 
> things to not get into copyright-troubles. help and suggestions on what 
> should and should not be kept or should be added are welcome

* Triremes work differently.  They never sink in the ocean, but they
  are incapable of moving more than 2 squares away from land.  (And yes,
  this allows you to know whether a square next to the Trireme is
  starting to approach land, or goes farther out to sea, by looking at
  the movement line -- if it's green, you can move, so it must be within
  2 squares of land; if it's red, you can't move, so it must be "deep".)

* Three tile improvements for movement in addition to rivers (rivers
  use 1/2 movement point; roads, 1/3; railroads, 1/5; and maglevs, 1/10).
  Undersea tunnels and outer space count as maglevs.

* Sea and space cities.  The whole space-combat/drop-from-orbit thing,
  which I never really figured out.

* As I noted a while back, movement onto a tile with river/road gives
  you the movement cost reduction, even if you started out on a tile
  with no river/road.  Personally, I dislike this.

* Some units (cavalry) cannot enter mountain squares at all, unless the
  mountain square has a road/railroad/maglev.

* The public works pool.  And on a similar note, the way that military
  unit upkeep is drawn from all cities instead of the unit's "home" city.
  (Units don't have home cities at all in CTP.)  And one minor note:
  you can irrigate tiles that are diagonally adjacent to water.  (And
  you can irrigate tiles that are diagonally adjacent to a tile that's
  starting to be irrigated, before the irrigation is actually in place!)

* The wages, rations and workday sliders.  Too much to go into here.

* 12 different governments (if you count Anarchy) -- but more
  importantly, the way the governments work is different.  There is no
  govt. under which you can't fight wars (there's no Senate).  But there
  is a "war discontent multiplier" which means fighting under Democracy
  causes more unrest.  There are multipliers for just about everything --
  a gold multiplier, a science multiplier, a production multiplier, etc.

* The city limit thing.  I HATE THIS!!  (Actually, it wouldn't be so bad
  if the numbers were changed.  For every city after the 30th under the
  Republic, you get 1 unhappiness point in every city.  If you've got
  40 cities under the Republic, you've got *10* points of unhappiness in
  every city.  It gets worse from there.  But if you got, say, 0.1 points
  of unhappiness in every city over the limit, and then set the limit
  lower, you'd have a situation much closer to the original Civ2 one.)

* There are multiple visibility/vision classes (which I've enumerated
  on this list in the past).  E.g., Spies can see Slavers, but Slavers
  cannot see Spies, and neither of them can see Lawyers.

* The whole trade implementation is different.  This ties into the "tile
  specials" as well.  There are no more bison/wheat/fish/whale/oil/etc.
  tile specials -- instead, there are trade goods (sugar, pearls, crabs,
  jade, diamonds, etc.).  Plus the piracy thing.  If you've played CTP,
  then you know what I mean. ;-)  This also means that there's no way
  to combine cities' production for teamwork Wonder building -- you can
  rush buy the Wonder, but that's all.

* New city specialists (entertainer/scientist/tax-collector/factory-worker)
  with city improvements as prerequisites.

* The whole slavery thing, including Slavers and Abolitionists, and the
  Emancipation Proclamation Wonder.  Each city has a separate slave
  population from its normal population, and you need military units in
  the cities to keep the slaves from revolting (1 unit per 3 slaves).
  Slaves eat half rations and don't need to be paid, but they cannot
  be specialists.  (Also, slaves don't contribute to unhappiness, either
  due to population/crowding, or when your rations/workday settings make
  everyone else unhappy!)

* Stacked combat.  This includes stacked movement.  Units have separate
  attack and ranged-attack figures.

* Bombardment.  Units have a bombardment strength and number of rounds,
  which is not necessarily the same as the ranged-attack strength used
  in stacked combat.  Cannons inside a city can bombard ships next to
  the city.  Some units have counter-combardment flags.

* New tile improvements -- most importantly, the radio tower (or whatever
  it's called -- the one that gives you radius-8 vision for 1000 public
  works points) and the nets/fisheries in the water.  Note that there are
  generally three levels of each improvement -- three different roads,
  three different farms, three different mines, and three different
  fisheries.

* Most Spy operations cost gold.  There are some Spy-type operations that
  are assigned to other units (e.g., a Cleric unit can convert a city,
  a Corporate Branch can enfranchise a city, and so on).  Most also
  have a success rating, which may be modified by the presence of
  city improvements.  (Converting a city is harder if it has walls.
  Enfranchising has about a 75% success rate no matter what.  Trying to
  discover a new technology with a Spy costs 2000 gold (a lot!) and is
  only about 50% effective at most.)

* Spy-type operations against a city cause it to go "on alert" and make
  subsequent spy-type operations much more difficult (if not impossible).
  This "on alert" is accompanied by an eyeball icon, and lasts about
  5 turns.

* Multiple pollution types, which are hidden from the player for the
  most part.  There's global warming, which leads to the familiar
  flooding effect.  There's also ozone depletion, which leads to dead
  (irradiated?) tiles near the poles.  Also, highly polluting cities
  produce dead tiles within their own radii.  Dead tiles are a separate
  tile type, like hills or mountains.  They cannot be improved, and
  terraforming them is slow and expensive.

* A couple new diplomatic options -- no-trespassing agreement, no-piracy
  agreement, and so on.  Not much here.

* I'm probably forgetting more stuff. :-(

> the routine i'll start with will be a server-side combat resolution routine 
> (that calculates combats like CTP). this only works when stacking of units 
> is possible. This might be implemented in a freeciv compatible way by 
> allowing the players to make some units "slave" to a "leader" unit. The 
> "slave" units no longer get focus and automove to the "leader" unit and 
> after that move with the leader unit until they are "freed" again by 
> clicking on them and regain focus. also more user-friendly than stacking 
> would be.

A problem here: the stack should only be able to move as fast as its
slowest unit.  If you tie units to a "leader", make sure the leader's
movement points are decreased appropriately.  Also, see the note above
about cavalry and mountain squares -- a stack led by an infantry unit
cannot enter a non-roaded mountain square if there's a cavalry unit in
the stack.

> next i intend to proceed by making a new subroutine that figures out wich 
> advances can be researched after an advance has been completed (this works 
> differently in CTP).

Civ1 and Civ2 also differ from Freeciv in this respect -- there's some
random component to the advances.  I think this was intentionally omitted
from Freeciv, as it's unfair in multiplayer mode.

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

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