[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#9596) Better nation selection

["Per I. Mathisen" <per@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=9596 >

On Tue, 3 Aug 2004, Jason Short wrote:
> Mateusz Stefek wrote:
> > About a year ago I wrote a patch which made AI select nation from the
> > same class as user. (PR#3751)
> >
> > Unfortunately it doesn't work as I expected. When I choose Persians AI
> > picks Boers just because these nations are in the same class
> > (historical).
> > If AI knew something about the history of the real world it could
> > probably choose more inteligently.
> > Attached patch adds two new fields into the nation struct:
> > founding_year and collapse_year. When AI chooses nation it tries to
> > minimalize the sum of "time distance" between nations.
>
> Is this overkill? Feature creep?

It is an interesting idea, but I don't like the way it is done. The
implementation is tied too closely to the present ruleset and its
assumptions. Instead, perhaps we should offer some restricted nation lists
that can be used to attain consistency.

This can be done by for example having a new file
data/ancient/nation.ruleset, then doing "/rulesetdir ancient". This will
load nations from that file, and everything else from default.

  - Per