[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Speeding Up Games

[Vasco Alexandre Da Silva Costa <vasc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 1 May 2003, Raimar Falke wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 01:23:41PM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Thomas Strub wrote:
> > > The player/alliance with the highest prod/eco/mil-power/techlead
> > > can ask if all other want to give up. When all the others say ok. The
> > > gameends with an allied victory for them. The AI should only agree when
> > > the power from all but the ally and the players who have surrendered is
> > > much smaller then the power of the winning players.
>
> MOO2 had the senate. All players get votes according to their current
> powers. If you can get 2/3 of the total votes you win the (diplomacy)
> victory. This voting occurs every 20-30 turns IIRC. The AIs will then
> threated you that you vote for them or they "crush your little
> empire". Haha.
>
> If someone got the 2/3 majority and it wasn't you you were asked if
> you accept. If you say no the new elected leader gets all planets and
> ships of the others. The others drop out. So you than fight against
> the combined forces of 3 or 5 players.
>
> This could be adapted to freeciv. In the freeciv version you would get
> the question "do you accept foobar's ruling" only if you have voted
> against him. In this case the supporting players form an alliance and
> you and the others who don't accept it have to fight. The alliance
> should be unbreakable.

Alpha Centauri had the planetary council. You could vote for several sorts
of things.
I still think Alpha Centauri was the finest of all the Civ games. The only
major problem it had was the sterile techtree because you couldn't relate with
the techs.
This was a game designed for multiplayer from the onset. It was not some
bolt-on.

*IMO Freeciv should aim for multiplayer Alpha Centauri features like
borders and the improved diplomacy*.

Some other things like customizing units in there ended up not being much
fun because you did not have enough variety.
It ended up being weapon 1x, 2x, 3x, 4x; shield 1x, 2x, 3x.

In Civ you had these interesting combinations due to muskets vs cavalry
and pikemen bonuses etc. It was more fun than Alpha Centauri (SMAC).
The only thing which brought variety in SMAC were the hull types and those
were few and far between.

Boring. Customizing ships in Ascendancy is barrels of fun because you get
all this variety. Weapons have different ranges and power levels. Energy
is used for nearly everything. You have tractor beams and repulsor beams,
specials that cause you to displace position with the other ship, blow up
the other ship's parts but not the hull, etc.

I liked the multiple veteran levels in SMAC though.

The governments were also nice. It added some more variety to the
gameplay. But all of these were just icing.


The good gameplay changes in SMAC IMHO were the diplomatic model, borders,
worklists, units display.

---
Vasco Alexandre da Silva Costa @ Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa