[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [FreeCiv-Cvs] esr: Treat Elephants as a horse unit (e.g., Pikemen ...

["Eric S. Raymond" <esr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jason Dorje Short <vze49r5w@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
> >Treat Elephants as a horse unit (e.g., Pikemen get a defensive bonus
> >against them).
> 
> Perhaps we should at least make an attempt to see if this is how civ2 
> did it before making this change?

I have a copy. I'll look.

But this raises a more general question which I haven't seen a clear
answer to.  There are at least three ruleset metrics we seem to be using:

* Play balance
* Historicity
* Fidelity to Civ2

It's clear that we don't treat any of the three as completely trumping the
others.

I made the Elephant change because it's (a) historically correct, and
(b) unlikely to have much effect on play balance -- Elephnts tend to pass
out of use before Pikemen are a large factor in most of the games I've
played, either Civ2 or Freeciv.

Personally, I'd put play balance first, historicity second, and close
fidelity to Civ2 third.  So, I would tend to use Civ2 fidelity mostly
as a tiebreaker in cases where the issue is in doubt both in
playability and historicity.

Does this agree with the group's philosophy, or should I be ranking
Civ2 didelity so much higher that checking Civ2 conformance first was
the right idea?
-- 
                <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>