[Freeciv-Dev] Re: more complex unit and battle system

[Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx>]

On Mon, 28 Aug 2000, Dalibor Perkovi[ISO-8859-2] æ wrote:

[...]
> Not more realistic, but very different in effect. Or, maybe, yes, more 
> realistic?
> Think. On one side you have settlers who have all their life been digging 
> things
> up (sort of), and now they only get a better machinery to do basically the 
> same
> thing. On the other hand, using a new weapon is very much different. Have you
> ever fired a rifle? Not a pistol, a rifle?

I don't understand this argument... what's the difference? 

> 
> Now, don't get me wrong, I'm definitely *for* upgrading. Only maybe units 
> shouldn't
> keep *all* of their expirience, but, say, 1/3 to 2/3 of it, it's arbitrary.
> It would still have lot of effect, and it would be much less unrealistic.

Well, it's about units, not men. You can find a phalanx even late in
the game (leftover of early stages). Of course it does not mean they are
2000y old... B-). It's just that the player had no enough money to
upgrade them. It's unrealistic only because in RL they are either upgraded
or disbanded. Which is something that the player should do... I don't
blame the game if a player doesn't do that. The player is not good at RPGs.
But he/she may argue that FreeCiv is not a RPG.

And experience is not just being able to use your weapon better. I do hope
my riflemen already know how to shoot when I send them to battle...
they learned it while I was building the unit. Being in the battlefield
is a completely different 'experience', you don't learn it without 
being there, and it should somewhat count in following battle. It does
in RL, BTW.

Speaking of upgrade, it's quite realistic that better units (== more
experienced) get better weapons, even before than other units.
Upgrading costs go to pay new wepons and extra training of your men.

But you made me think of a possible improvement on the xp idea. xp should
age with time. This means that if you keep your experienced units idle,
they'll slowly loose their xp. Which *is* realistic. And close to what
you mean. A veteran phalanx can be kept idle in a city, and later
upgraded to riflemen, but by that time, it would be a normal unit.

.TM.
-- 
      ____/  ____/   /
     /      /       /                   Marco Colombo
    ___/  ___  /   /                  Technical Manager
   /          /   /                      ESI s.r.l.
 _____/ _____/  _/                     Colombo@xxxxxx