[Freeciv-Dev] Re: RFC: Layers Patch

[Arnstein Lindgard <a-l@xxxxxxx>]

I think the layers proposal is a gigantic kludge.

Civ3, unlike Civ2, goes a long way to implement true realism:

1. Catapults, Cannons..., and bombers, and warships are categorized
   as doing "bombardment" when attacking land tiles. That means one
   or more units in the stack _may_ take a very small amount of
   damage. Nukes are ~50% lethal.

2. Fighters do "air superiority" missions, but they can't
   actually kill a cavalry.

3. Normal attacks only kill one unit, the rest of the stack is
   untouched.

4. When only bombarding units are left inside a city, they all die.
   (Sometimes you can capture them.)

5. Partly because of the aboves, it's impossible to finish a Civ3 game
   in a resonable amount of time. You actually have to bring an army
   in order to invade someone.

Freeciv is an action game. Winner takes the whole stack, and nothing
is ultimately defendable. It only aims to simulate one or two realism
aspects of any given thing. A big ship can generally bombard the land.
It's utterly unrealistic to cause serious damage to an infantry
division this way, of course. But we don't worry about it, better
keep the action principle. A fighter can attack other airplanes. So
we have one aspect simulated, and don't need to worry about "what if
this and that unit is in the stack, and is it realistic that this
other unit should (not) be able to attack it" or whatnot. And what if
a fighter cannot attack infantry any more -- you'll just remove the
simulation of the fact that some airplanes can sometimes be used
effectively against ground units. And vica versa.

If a Civ3 mode was implemented, Freeciv could _also_ become a classic
strategy game with realism, which would be impossible to finish in a
reasonable amount of time. Incidentally, that would also fix
smallpox. But layers seems like a hack. Every player or coder
probably has some particular favourite realism aspect that he would
like to "fix". Mine is the ship bombardment. We could have an endless
stream of patches forever. The fundamental game principle aims to
have one simulated realism aspect.. and an infinite number of
unrealistic aspects, for every unit. Better aim for full Civ3
compatability sometime. Could be nice for single player, some people
would like it.


Arnstein