[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#6159) Colonization: Professions

["Greg Wooledge" <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ilkka Lehtoranta (ilkleht@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> But how workers get their profession? In Colonization you got colonists 
> with profession from docks in Europe. Not to mention game concept is 
> different.

It's been a long time since I played Colonization, but here's what I
remember:

1) You could "recruit" colonists who specialized in various professions
   from your European HQ, as you mentioned.  The recruits available
   at the dock were randomly chosen and generally weren't what you
   needed at any given time. ;-)

2) Or you could get unskilled colonists from the European HQ or through
   population growth.

3) Or you could get slaves/indentured servants from the European HQ,
   which had to become unskilled colonists before they could become
   specialists.

3.5) I think(?) you could capture native Americans and turn them into
   slaves.  I might be misremembering that part.

4) An unskilled colonist working at a specific job had a chance (either
   completely random per turn, or perhaps increasing as time passed,
   but I suspect the former) of becoming a skilled specialist in that
   profession.

5) A slave/indentured servant working there had a chance of becoming
   an unskilled colonist.

6) If you had a schoolhouse, you could put 1-3 specialists in it to
   act as teachers (depending on the "level" of the school).  Any
   unskilled colonists might randomly pick up the profession of one
   of the teachers.  This had a higher probability of success than
   just having them working at a task without instruction.

7) If you had a teacher (say a Silver Miner) in the schoolhouse, and you
   had an unskilled worker on a task (say Farming), then you couldn't
   predict whether he would pick up the Farming or the Silver Mining,
   except that the teacher (Silver Mining) had a better chance each turn.
   This was somewhat frustrating.

8) Your citizens could then move between cities, like military units
   in Payciv/Freeciv.  (So you could train citizens in one location
   and then distribute them to all the other cities, or wherever
   their skills were needed, etc.)

9) Military units were made by giving guns (which you stockpile in
   cities, which produce them by putting workers in a gunmaking
   building) to citizens.  If the citizen was a Soldier specialist,
   then your unit would attack/defend better.  There was also a
   veteran flag, IIRC.  If you took an armed citizen and gave him
   a horse, too (which you could breed and stockpile in cities),
   then he became a cavalry unit, which attacked better than an
   infantry unit.

10) When a cavalry unit loses a fight, the horse dies, and he becomes
    an infantry unit.  You can make him a cavalry again by running
    back to a city and getting another horse.

10.5) I can't remember whether, when an infantry unit loses a fight,
    it just loses the gun and becomes an unarmed citizen, or whether
    it gets captured/destroyed.  Fighting with infantry was to be
    avoided as much as possible.

11) When a non-Soldier unit wins a fight, it might become a Soldier
    specialist.

12) After the Revolution, you got "revolutionary" citizens which
    were basically super-Soldier specialists (with powdered wigs).
    These fought even better than normal Soldier specialists.  So,
    a veteran revolutionary cavalry unit was the best fighter in
    the game, and if he lost a fight, his horse died.  You could
    send him back to a city (assuming you could make it back to one)
    to get a new horse; meanwhile, he was just a slow-moving veteran
    revolutionary infantry.

13) Immediately after announcing the Revolution, a bunch of enemy
    forces showed up outside your cities (unless you had a strong
    enough naval presence to force sea battles to occur).  You got
    one turn to attack them in the wilderness; and you got a bonus
    for doing so.  Then they got to attack you, and they'd try to
    take your cities.  Recapturing a city was pretty hard, so it
    was far better to have a huge number of cavalry units waiting
    to attack the enemy and take them all out (or as many as
    possible) outside your cities.

-- 
Greg Wooledge                  |   "Truth belongs to everybody."
greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx              |    - The Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://wooledge.org/~greg/     |

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