[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Sail River: Next Step

[Erik Sigra <freeciv@xxxxxxx>]

Jules Bean wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Aug 24, 2000 at 06:48:28PM +0200, Erik Sigra wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Now that the sail_river patch by Jerzy approaches completion, I can't
> > help posting some ideas :-)
> 
> I like these ideas.
> 
> However, generally, I think all of the below should predicate on their
> own tech tree.  It is good to make the tech tree richer, it makes for
> more interesting trade-offs and possible different styles of play.
> 
> >
> > Terrain Improvement:Canal
> > * Built by Settlers.
> > * Works like rivers.
> > * Can be upgraded to heavy canals like roads are upgraded to railroads.
> > * If a player tries to build a canal on a tile with road, and he doesn't
> > have the tech bridge building, he has to choose between aborting or go
> > ahead building the the canal, breaking the road.
> > * No tech requirement (like roads).
> > * Takes many times longer to build than roads (about 5x, depending on
> > terrain). This is because players are not supposed to build canals in
> > every tile, but only at strategic places, just like in the real
> > world.
> 
> ISTR Civ I did have a tech for roads (e.g. the Roman civ started with
> it, but some others didn't). Any, I'd definitely give this one a tech
> called 'canal' or some such, it's very important.
> 
> (Incidentally a map of britain, france or holland on 'freeciv scale'
> would revel canals on every square, I suspect, so they were quite
> widespread...)

Not as widespread as roads!

You shouldn't make any conclusions based on the scale of the Freeciv
map. It can be widely varied in wide ranges by changing options like
'city radius' 'minimum distance between cities' and the movement of the
many units.

Also, it should take many times longer to build canals through hills (or
even mountains) than on plains and grassland. so the player has the
option to build a longer cheaper canal or a short expensive canal.

> Jules

Erik