Hello team,
I have many questions and suggestions in regards to the recent freeciv
updates.
First of which is in regards of any foreseeable time before debian-games
send 2.5 to testing ?
* Landmarks
I am confused as to the _use_ of such landmarks as "Scorched spot" etc.,
mind helping me understand ? Also, are there possibly multiple such
places (multiple Scorched spots...) ? Does such a place lose its name
upon near civilization expansion (nearby city, for clarity), and if not,
under transformation (highest peak becoming a plain...) ? Does such a
place bring any provision upon discovery (happiness, trade, science...) ?
For that matter, mind explaining what "disasters" are ? I have trouble
finding any useful info on any of these.
The http://gna.org/bugs/?20588#comment0 asks for new ideas. A few of
mine follow :
- Floral dale (cf. Rose valley, Bulgaria)
- Gemstone valley (cf. Mogok, Burma)
- Large crater (cf. Ngorongoro, Tanzania or Toba lake, Indonesia)
- Crystal cave (cf. salt mines)
- Hidden highland (cf. table mountains or Sigiriya, Sri Lanka)
- Salt lake
- Gold river (cf. rivers containing gold)
- Powerful whirlpool (cf. Maelstroms)
- Rocky spikes (cf. Fairy chimneys, Turkey)
- Great falls (cf. great falls)
- Faraway island (the furthest 3- land from any 15+ tiles continent ?)
- Far sea (the furthest (10+ distance, water) tile from any land tile)
- Fire field (cf. Yanar Dar, Azerbaijan)
- Deep pit (cf. pit caves)
- Coral reef
- Fauna cradle (cf. Mauritius and Réunion islands, or North- and Eastern
Indonesia)
- Fruit source (cf. Almaty, Kazakhstan)
- Last discovery (last tile discovered if only one to go for one
nation's 100% until one gets this spot marked)
- Sunken city (cf. sunken cities)
- Natural city-scape (cf. "cities" shaped by nature alone)
- Treacherous reef (buoy ?)
- Famous shipwreck (event ? buoy ?)
- Ancient Shipwreck (event ? buoy ?)
- Antique farmstead (unmanned ? farmland)
- Forsaken mine (mine)
- Barbarian stronghold (unmanned ? fortress)
- Feudal castle (unmanned ? fortress)
- Fortified mound (unmanned ? fortress)
- Lone fort (unmanned ? fortress)
- Abandoned facility (unmanned ? airbase ? on unmanned ? island)
- Legendary city (ruin)
- Ravaged hamlet (ruin)
- Ghost town (ruin)
- Barbarian market (ruin ?)
- Forbidden ruin (ruin)
- Forgotten temple (ruin)
- Razed village (ruin)
- Lost capital (ruin)
- Lawless outpost (unmanned ? fortress ?)
- Devastated harbour (coastal ruin)
- Merciless fence (unmanned ? fortress)
- Hot springs
- Thermal source
- Sulphur formations
- Mushroom abundance
- Bubbly water
- Numerous cascades
- Notorious mirage (desert ?)
- Elusive oasis (oasis)
- Water illusion (desert ?)
- Misty danger (water, event ?)
- Hopeful cape (cf. Cape of good hope or Gibraltar)
- Monster sightings
- Monster reports
...
The terrain and ressource type for each is up to you to decide upon,
these are mere ideas.
While some might fit many (Crystal cave fits absolutely any), some may
be restricted to a few (Hidden highlands for example).
Some could hint a few new ressource possibilities (notably instead of
the shields).
It could be interesting to think about the possibility to have a glacier
being either tundra, lake, ocean or mountains with a special "ice" (like
farmland or huts) amend to it ? This would make it more logical for some
polar glaciers to become un-iced mountains, and for polar mountains not
to be civilizable until un-iced.
It could also help for the future to prepare for a third type of
possible resource on each tile type (there are numerous possibilities).
In addition to the above, I suggest considering the following terrain types
- Volcano (mountain, influences environment, near and far)
- Great glacier (mountain)
- Isthmus (any land tile, a bit like rivers for triremes)
- Marine oil (ocean)
* Technologies
** Wonders
- Corinth’s canal (Explosives ; allows creating sea channels on land)
- Channel tunnel (Space flight ; allows building railroad on sea)
- Baikonur spaceport (Space flight ; accelerates rocket production or
spaceship production or allows recovery on disbanding of rocketry)
- Silk road (Trade ; bonuses to caravans ?)
- Demilitarized zone (Labor Union ? ; for the country which builds it,
prevents land border crossing both ways and cross-country migration with
nations at war)
Glaciers could get a point of "trade" once a specific tech is reached
(Radio ?)
Cities automatically could be bridged upon discovery of Construction,
before Bridge building (there is a large difference between bridging
cities and roads)
The goal of space race could be Mars, Venus, Titan... rather than Alpha
Centauri
** Technologies
- Roll-on-roll-off (railroad can transport anything, planes, ships...)
and Container ship (akin to caravan, but is not destroyed upon arrival,
advised to "patrol") upon discovery of "Globalization"
(Industrialization, Radio, Machine Tools ?)
- One additional trade point for every tile within borders upon
discovery of "Tourism" (Radio)
- Online task-force improvement (spies and diplomats start with more
experience) available upon discovery of Computers
* Other remarks
** Clients
I do not understand what the Freeciv-web on Google Play is, a complete
local game or a client connecting to a distant server ?
In any case, F-droid.org would certainly be happy to propose the app
(maybe see what they are about, You might discover something interesting).
** Blog test
I appreciate what you experimented with the 100 nations for 500 turns on
20k tiles (BTW, nice blog).
Although the outcome might not get much different if no (random ?)
discrimination is not brought upon participants, I think it could be
interesting to push the engine to the limit to test how well it goes in
terms of performance etc. under large pressure (you'd also get data for
the long term etc.).
One such example would be to have 100 nations for 1k turns on 1M tiles
with random differences (initial tech, number of settlers, number of
cities, political system, allies, gold, barbarians, fleet...).
Another could be to just have maximum possible values for each, with
absurdly large amounts of nations (duplicates much ?), turns (over 9000
!) and tiles (2M max, right ?).
Any limitation would henceforth be taken into new consideration.
As for the value of the neutral experiment conducted, it may be
interesting to compare the growth of AI-only players and human-only
players in similar games (10 players, 200 turns, 4000 tiles ?), to see
how to improve the AI or make some false assumptions clearer to humans.
** Leaders
Is it just me or does it feel like having Justinian I rule the
Byzantines from stone- to space age is slightly improvable ? Even as a
"possibility" or a "suggestion" somewhere, it could be a nice touch to
be able to change leaders' names manually, and rulesets could specify
for which period and regime(s) a ruler was important, leading the AI to
change their leader's name (and gender) appropriately.
** Non-donut spherical map
Any news ? Seems to me a rhombic dodecahedron or triacontahedron could
be a nice solution (with inner tiling etc.).
** Copyrighted content
I may not know the best way to have some copyrighted content (some
rulesets and flags for example) easily gotten as an additional package
to a fresh installation of Freeciv.
I mean not only getting stuff I make, but allowing people to share their
extra content as a non-free non-included dependent package, centralized
somewhere ?
There was such a system with mods, if I recall correctly.
What would you suggest ?
Well, that's already long enough,
I'd be very glad to read from you about the above, even in fractioned
answers,
Thank you,
Drake
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