Re: [Freeciv] Re: FreeCiv FAQ question suggestion

["Bobby D. Bryant" <bdbryant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

LucFrench@xxxxxxx wrote:

> Will do. But what I mean by Civ 2 style scenarios is a programmable set of
> events; for example, if a particular city is captured, then the guy capturing
> it gets an extra tech. Or, on a particular turn, you (the scenario designer)
> can cause a particular region to collapse beneath the sea. (They implemented
> an Atlantis scenario this way.)

I've been thinking about adding something like this, although I would implement
it piecewise over a period of time.

What I want to do is create a new game.ruleset with lots of sections to support
[events] as well as other things needed by scenarios and modpacks.

In fact, I've been wanting to write some code to add the new game.ruleset and
provide a [calendar] section that will let you specify the year increment table
rather than having it hard-coded.  (This is one of the main problems with my
'ancients' modpack -- under the hardcoded calendar you end up getting
Legionaires around 1500 CE because I've crowded in a lot more early
technologies, pushing everything else back a good bit.)

Other sections that I think should be added to the ruleset as time allows are
[map], which would give you the option of specifying a pre-made map or else just
setting the map generation parameters, and [rules] which would specify things
like the road movement bonus and other things that you can modify in Civ II but
not in FreeCiv.

The cumulative effect of such a .ruleset would allow designers to construct
scenarios, modpacks, or anything on a continuum between the two.  (As I see it,
the difference in a scenario and a modpack is that the former pins down more
details.  One thing I didn't like about some of the Civ II scenarios is that
they specify too much detail, so that they aren't very much fun on repeated
play.  But this .ruleset mechanism would let you specify an intermediate amount
of information, forcing the "feel" of, say, Middle Earth, but leaving you in the
dark about how the map was laid out and and which subset of possible
species/nations would show up in any given game.)

However, I still haven't figured out how changes to FreeCiv get authorized, and
I don't want to write a bunch of code that never will be used.  I'd like to hear
some discussion as to whether the above is desired (and also whether anyone is
actually working on a tribes.ruleset that they intend to submit).

Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas