[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Is the city names patch good?

[Jason Short <vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jason Short wrote:

> Mike Jing wrote:
>
> > Takacs Gabor <tg330@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > > I write about a patch added to Freeciv on Dec 6.
> > >
> > > The description of the patch (from changes.txt):
> > >
> > > > Add the ability to structure the city names of nations based
> > > > on the (surrounding) terrain. For this city_name_suggestion now
> > > > take the position of the city.
> > >
> > > I think this patch has more disadvantages than advantages:
> > > (I apologize to the author :-)
> It is certainly true that the system doesn't degrade well.  Here's a 
> more complicated system that would:
> cities = "Washington" (capital, river, coastal), "New York" (river, 
> coastal), "Boston" (river, coastal), "Philadelphia" (river), "Los 
> Angeles" (coastal), etc...
> Note here I've made "capital" a description.  It is also possible for 
> more than one description to apply.
> When you want to name a new city, you go through all cities and give 
> them a value - say, exponentially decreasing based on how low down they 
> are in the list.  Then you multiply that value by whatever terrain 
> features match - and possibly divide if they don't match.  So if America 
> founds a coastal river city first, washington will always become their 
> capital - but if they found a river city first it might be philadelphia 
> (if you work the numbers right).  A mountain capital would be given a 
> third name.
> This is just rambling, though.  I don't have a problem with the current 
> system; only time will tell if it needs to be improved.
Upon further thought, I have come to the conclusion that the natural 
city names sytem _is_ fatally flawed, and should be replaced (preferably 
by a better natural city name system, perhaps one like I describe above).
The flaw is this: it discards the city order from the ruleset.  This 
will mean that it is impossible to convert the ruleset back to on 
ordered system.  (By "impossible", I mean it would be just as much work 
as building the ruleset from scratch.  It would still be possible to 
revert to a previous CVS version, but all additions to the ruleset would 
be lost.)
If the 64-nation limit is relaxed before the next release, then after 
the release we're going to see an influx of many more nations.  And all 
(or most) of these nations will use natural city naming.  It will then 
become infeasible to change systems at a later date.
All I'm really arguing for is a change in the ruleset syntax (perhaps as 
I describe above).  If somebody (preferably the original author, maybe 
me) provides a patch to do this, would it be accepted?
(Yes, it's really too bad I didn't speak up on this before the patch was 
applied.  I liked the system, and didn't think too hard about the back end.)
jason