[Freeciv-Dev] Re: irc summary

[Brandon Craig Rhodes <brandon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxx> writes:

>> Since *EVERYBODY* seems to agree that the
>> partial-movement-points-fails patch is a good idea...
> 
> Hhm, I'm ambivalent on this. First I think it doesn't harm, to remove
> the uncertainty about a move's success. And if it's good for the AI ...
> 
> But then it means every unit can move 2 tiles on the road plus one
> off-road per turn. The advantage of alpine troops is reduced. The diffi-
> culty of terrain changes, i.e. mountains are much easier to climb on.

I agree that this makes movement too easy.  Instead I suggest the
clean rules used by turn-based and movement-point based tactical games
like X-Com: Enemy Unknown; the rule would be:

   If with movement points left, you attempt a move for which you lack
   the points, you remain in place but your remaining points are
   committed towards the completion of the move.  At the beginning of
   your next turn, the points committed toward the move are combined
   with enough new points to take the move.

So if horsemen with one movement point want to climb a mountain while
avoiding the waste of the remaining point, they could go ahead and
attempt the move; they will make the move automatically at the start
of the next turn, using their first of two movement points for that
turn.

(We would probably retain the exception that all of your movement
points are sufficient to move you one space - so warriors in the
mountains can always move one square per turn.)

Thus units would not be getting cheap moves all over the place, which
would keep the differences between unit types as important as now; but
since the rule is absolutely deterministic, things are easier for
players and AI, points are never wasted, and moves always occur as
players expect them to.

-- 
Brandon Craig Rhodes   brandon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx   http://rhodesmill.org/brandon