[Freeciv] Some questions

[<johannes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hei all,

I have decided I would like to help out with this project. Not that I
there is anything I know I could do, being an unexperienced c-programmer
and not having that much spare time, but nevertheless. Actually, I think I
would like to work with AI, even though I should probably start with
something easier. But putting my shortcommings aside, I would like to make
an AI that could analyze the ruleset to some extent, and that be used for
some clientside micromanagement (the computer AI player should handle its
cities good enough for the human players to use it for citymanagement
etc.). Hence the AI should only use whatever the client sees (no
cheating!), and I need to program it very 'modularized'. When I get the
time to do so, I will go through the AI that already exists and come up
with something more concrete.

Also, being an old CivI and CivII player (civ1 changed the way I looked
upon computer games, I still remember when my cousin first bought his copy
of it, I think we spent almost all Easter playing one game, and finally
conquered the world, only then realizing we made a score of about 15%), I
might be able to say something sensible in discussions from time to time.
But as such I have a few questions. I downloaded freeciv (1.11.4) some
time ago and tried a game against the computer (ten players, normal),
that's it for my experience with freeciv. Hence no multiplayer experience,
so I havn't been able to figure this one out. As I understand it, all
human players play their turn at the same time. I realize that this solves
to some extent the problem of waiting for the other players to make their
moves, but it gives an old civx player some questions.

1. Does this mean that in combat situations it is crucial to be the
quickest to attack (assuming you have attacking forces, like howitzers)?
I.e. if I attack you before you attack me, I have a better chance of
winning?

It seems to me so, and if so you have made civ into some kind of
"turnbased realtime strategy game", if you follow my thoughts. Having no
experience with this, I can't assess this, but it must change the way you
go about attacking other players, since you cannot rely on the turnbased
moving any more, since aften you have made your moves, your opponent might
make one and make another one (with the same unit) the next turn before
you can do your (f.ex. he might use a goto command, or whatever). Well,
these were just my thought, and I wanted to confirm that this was indeed
the way freeciv works.

Also, if this is the case (as I suspect), the documentation is not clear
on this point. It should be.

2. How fast do you 'smallpox' players reach the end of the tech tree
(assuming you try to reach the end of it)?

I have noticed much talk about this smallpox strategy it these forums, and
having a somewhat different strategy (I realize the importance of many
cities, but I usually develop them too, hence am more careful about
their placement), I would like to compare. Of course, I should do this by
playing some games, but I am in no position to do that at the moment.

All the best,
Johannes