[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [PATCH] Renaming cities. (PR#567)

[Gaute B Strokkenes <gs234@xxxxxxxxx>]

Erik Sigra <freeciv@xxxxxxx> writes:

> Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > 
> > Gaute B Strokkenes (gs234@xxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > 
> > > * Don't let anyone rename a city to the same name as another.
> > 
> > I see two problems with this:
> > 
> > 1) This can be used to learn the names of enemy cities.  E.g., if you
> > know that the Babylonians are in the game, you can attempt to rename
> > one of your cities to "Lagash", "Nippur", "Ur", etc., and in this way
> > learn how many cities the Babylonians have (assuming the Babs haven't
> > taken defensive naming coutermeasures).
> 
> That is an important point. It could be automated with client
> scripting.

Hm, I suppose it's theoretically possible.  I still think that the
rename-all-your-cities-to-the-same-name-to-hide-your-capital thing is
much more likely to occur in practice, since you don't have to write
your own program to pull it off.

I have another idea, though: allow cities in different nations to
share the same name, but not cities in the same nation.  That would
stop both forms of abuse.  To follow through, this has to be enforced
when cities are conquered / transfered as well.

And we'd better do something about game_find_city_by_name().  As long
as there is no bijection between cities and their names, it's a
disaster just waiting to happen.  A better name would be
game_exists_city_by_name(), returning a boolean value.

-- 
Big Gaute (not to be confused with LG)
Nice decor!