[Freeciv-Dev] Re: About your Freeciv city naming patch (fwd)

[Cameron Morland <cjmorlan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I sent this response to one critic. (nb I'm too busy to monitor the list
these days.)

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2001 19:45:35 -0500 (EST)
From: Cameron Morland <cjmorlan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: cameron@xxxxxxxxxx
To: Takacs Gabor <tg330@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: About your Freeciv city naming patch

La 2001-12-11, Takacs Gabor skribis:

> Hello!
>
> I think there are some disadvantages of your patch:
>
> 1. In an "avarage" Freeciv game I think there are a lot more
>    coastal cities than non coastal cities.

I agree.

>    And there are only few river cities.

I try to build as many cities as possible on rivers; it gives a +1/2
defense bonus, and is the only way to build roads on rivers for a long
time.

>    In the real world there are a lot of river cities, and a
>    lot of non-coastal cities too.

There aren't actually that many river cities. See [1], below. Yes,
basically every city is on some sort of river or lake. But that's not
what the patch is supposed to do.

>    The effect:
>    Big & important & historical cities have great chance not to
>    appear in the game. (If they are river or non-coastal cities)
>    I tried the patch with the English and after playing for a long
>    time the server hasn't offered Manchester as a city name yet!

True.

> 2. I like when the capital of a nation is their real capital.
>    It makes the game more interesting.

It also means that if you're playing competitively you will change the
name of many of your cities so they can't locate your capital.

>    Why is it good that the capital of the English is mostly Blackpool?
>    Or if there is a chance that the American capital will be Riverside?

This is a bit of a problem. The best solution is probably to only
sometimes use the natural city names (randomly) and to select a random
city from the appropriate list, instead of the first. I don't have
time to implement this, but I'm pretty sure it would be really
easy. Look at the function

  char *city_name_suggestion(struct player *pplayer, int x, int y)

in the file:

  freeciv/server/citytools.c

> 3. The patch makes the development of the nation rulesets more
>    difficult.
>    For example the developer has to decide what to rank as a river.
>    And if the ranking of 2 developers is is different that will appear
>    as confusion and chaos for the Freeciv players.

See [1].

> 4. Currently more then half of the nations (especially small and fantasy
>    countries) doesn't use the new city naming method. Updating the
>    rulesets of these nations is particulary difficult.

People can continue to play with the old data, it's entirely
backward-compatible. Updating can be slow if there isn't the
interest. It's also less important for lesser-known nations. I don't
know, off the top of my head, what the capital of Mordor is. But if I
see a Japanese city of Tokyo you can be sure I'll conquer it as soon
as convenient.

From the point of view of a neat feature, only people who recognize
that the city names are natural will find this a useful feature. So if
there aren't any people who speak Mordor, nobody would actually
benefit from having that nation updated.

> I think the old city naming method (sorting the cities by economical and
> historical importance) is simple and excellent.
>
> What is your opinion about my critical remarks?

It's nice to get _some_ negative commentary, it's hard to improve without
it. This has been "in development" since March, and you're the first
person who said anything against the idea.

Anyway, it's unlikely I would get to changing anything before May (I'm
unfortunately serious, I won't have good computer access in the
Winter). if you want to improve the implementation, making it choose
with more randomness is probably the best improvement.

----

[1]: The way it is supposed to be implemented is by nomenclature; ie
names with river-based roots in them become river cities. For example
(Canadian):

"Quebec": A Cree (?) word meaning "where the river narrows".

"Trois-Rivieres": French; "three rivers".

"Abbotsford": The ford of the Abbot(s).

"Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu": French; "Saint John on the
Richelieu".

"Lethbridge": The bridge over the Leth river.

"La Grande": The Grande river.

"Pembroke": The Pem brook.

"Powell River": English.

"Riviere-du-Loup": French; "the river of the wolf".

Using nomenclature does mean that the developer has to understand the
language or history of the nation. That shouldn't be a problem for
most of the nations. I have already done some of the English nations,
someone else has said he would do Spanish and Portuguese nations,
someone else planned to do the UK Celtic nations. And really, the
level of understanding required isn't too great; I did the Dutch and
Boer, and I really don't speak that language.

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