[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#6458) wishlist: refugees

["Benoit Hudson" <bh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[morgan - Fri Oct 10 00:14:52 2003]:
> How would refugees come about?  I assume one
> wouldn't have the option of building them like normal units.

Ah, yes, I missed that detail, didn't I.
I was thinking they'd come about either partisan-like when the city
falls, or just every time the city population drops when it's under
attack.  Maybe the spy should have a "create mass hysteria" option too :)

Like the partisan, I see no reason to block building refugees.  I guess
you could use them as a weapon -- build refugees and send hordes of them
at your enemies.  But they'd be an expensive weapon for being so blunt.

I missed another detail:  Refugees count as a unit, so your forces can
ignore ZOC if they are moving into a square with a refugee.


> Perhaps there could be a random chance of a refugee unit forming when
> a city is attacked, instead of a loss of population in that city?

A refugee unit represents one population unit.  If the population of the
city drops, there are two possible reasons: they died, or they fled. 
Currently, freeciv only models the former; I'd like to model the latter.
 Nuke and poison attacks are best modeled by the population dying.  But
warfare causes more people to flee than to die, with some notable
exceptions, of course.  I claim to capture those exceptions by the
ability to kill the refugees.


> And/or maybe refugees could form when an enemy unit blocks access to a
> city's workable tiles for a length of time and the city is starving.

Starvation could be modeled as creating a refugee (and decreasing city
size) when you first hit zero food, and then the refugee dies the
following turn if food production is still negative.

> When a refugee unit crosses a border, the owner of that nation could
> be given the option of claiming the unit, passing upkeep and control
> to that player.

Problem with that being that when the city falls, the refugee thus
created is suddenly in enemy territory, so you don't get the
partisans-among-refugees effect.  I think a better option would be to
make refugees increasingly cheap to bribe as they get deeper into enemy
territory.  Calculate distance to nearest border, divide bribing cost by
distance, or somesuch.


> Combined with culture this would be quite an interesting game
> dynamic:  neighbouring nations of wartorn nations would essentially be
> given free settler units (with both food and happiness upkeep) but at the
> cost of having their nation's culture diluted.
>
> Cool idea, but I don't imagine it would be worthwhile implementing at
> this stage, but maybe when (if?) Freeciv has some sort of culture
> model.

I don't see the refugee unit idea as being all that closely related to
the culture idea.  Certainly, the refugee lends itself well to a
culture-based world, but it still works in the civ2 framework.  My idea
is for more realism.  Also, it should make war more expensive to wage,
for the attacker, and less devastating, for the defender (since you get
to withdraw some population and resettle it).