[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [Freeciv] Re: Nations + Feeling

[Tony Stuckey <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Nov 07, 2001 at 03:55:47PM -0500, Jason Dorje Short wrote:
> At a glance, it looks like this will be a significant undertaking, and
> likely to break server-client compatibility completely.  (Obviously
> others know more about this issue than I, but no doubt most people know
> little about it, so here goes...)

        Yes, but the right way to do it also breaks server/client
compatibility.

        (The Right Way(tm) is the Civ II way: the Select Nation dialog box
has a SHORT list of nations, and a button labelled "Custom".)

> Ideally, the client would be able to accept any number of nations.  This
> probably wouldn't be to hard to fix, but again would break compatibility
> of the server-client protocol.

        Or rulesets would be written to be flexible enough to add/remove a
nation definition locally more easily.  The nation list probably needs to
be morphable to allow for good modpack integration anyway.

> A much smaller issue is with having an overwhelming number of nations. 
> Someone suggested giving each nation a category, which could be used by
> the GUI code to group them and avoid having a single huge list.  IMO
> this is a separate issue and can be dealt with later.  Someone else said
> 63 nations ought to be enough.  My only response to that is to say that
> everyone who plays FreeCiv will want to have their nation represented,
> and there are a lot more than 63 nations in the world.

        There are many responses to that.  If Civ strives to represent the
historical significance, then "Nation" is quite frequently a misleading
term.  The Sioux may be the best example of that.  And I for one feel no
explicit need to cater to an encyclopedic nation list.  See comments above.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"And they said work hard, and die suddenly, because it's fun."
        -Robyn Hitchcock.