<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=37592 >
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007, (Eddie_Anderson) wrote:
> Since this discussion last summer, I've been thinking some more
> about what Freeciv could be. I've reached a few tentative
> conclusions. Some of the changes are simple; some are far-reaching.
Thanks for opening up this topic again. I will soon have more time to look
at such ideas.
> 1) Add a new victory condition to Freeciv that is based on points.
...
> I propose that a fourth victory condition be added to Freeciv:
>
> d) The first player to X points wins.
...
> One of the biggest advantages of this is that it makes
> Freeciv games scalable. E.g. if you want a short game, play to
> 500 points; if you want a longer game, play 2000 points; etc.
I have been thinking along these lines myself, inspired a great deal by
the way the board game Settlers of Catan manages the victory condition.
However, I think the number of points should be very low, preferably 10 by
default, to make the number seem more meaningful and close, and it should
in most cases be possible to steal points from opponents to create
counter-strategies (just like in Settlers of Catan).
To quote from a design document I never made public (some parts may not
apply):
"When you start the game, the world of mankind is in its infancy. We have
already spread across the whole planet, but only beginning to reap the
benefits of true civilization. The first cities take form, and with the
crowding of people, ideas about how we should live take on a new urgency.
Can your chosen ideas for the best way of life stand the test of time? The
winner of the game is the civilization whose ideas have become
irresistible through the overwhelming success of the civilization that
espouses them, be it through peaceful or military means.
The game offers to end when one player has a given number of victory
points, agreed in advance. The potentially victorious player can choose to
end the game at this point, or at any other point that he/she/it still
satisfies this condition, or until all other players are vanquished.
The following may give victory points (and other effects) in default
ruleset:
* Largest space station, 1 point.
* Longest continuous road, 1 point.
* Longest continuous wall, 1 point. Only need to pay half as much to
barbarians to appease them.
* Each defeated enemy civilization, 1 point.
* Defeated barbarians, 1 point each time.
* Largest palace, 1 point. There are several versions of the Palace
building, in different sizes, just like Settlers of Catan.
* First circumnavigation, 1 point.
* First to philosophy, 1 point.
* First to cure for cancer, 1 point.
* Possession of Eiffel Tower, 1 point.
* Greatest Expedition, 1 point. Magellan's < Darwin's < Apollo
Project.
An early victory with five victory points is possible by getting for
example longest road, defeating one civilization, getting first to
philosophy, producing Magellan's and building the largest palace."
This gives a natural way of doing shorter games, without having an
entirely artificial end year and the artificial and very hard to sabotage
game scores as a way of appointing a winner.
> Another potential advantage is that the AI can be programmed
> to focus on accumulating points rather than trying to engineer
> a conquest.
It would certainly give the AI a shorter future horizon to focus on, which
could be a good thing, and war in the game would become more a means to
various ends (primarily to sabotage victory points) rather than all-out
conquest, although the latter would still be possible.
> a) Reduce the government corruption penalty for Despotism and
> Anarchy to 10%.
>
> Both Despotism and Anarchy impose penalties at the tile level.
> For tiles like fish, that represents a 33% penalty of its food
> production. I don't understand why there is an additional 37%
> penalty (plus a distance penalty) on top of that.
I agree that the recent corruption changes may have penalized the early
governments a little bit too much.
> c) Eliminate Rapture growth
I agree completely.
> d) Eliminate unlimited movement on railroads.
I would be in favour, but it is not something I would consider important.
> Plus, (I assume that) teaching the AI to use unlimited movement wisely
> is difficult.
Not at all.
> e) Normalize the effect of most happiness buildings and effects
> (all except martial law?).
>
> E.g. If a temple can turn an unhappy citizen into a content
> one, then maybe that temple should also be able to turn a
> content citizen into a happy one. The way it works now is
> somewhat counter-intuitive.
If you did that, you could just as well remove all the unhappy/happy
effects, and replace them with buildings that produced luxuries. The
non-transitiveness (if I can call it that) of happy-buildings is the only
thing that separates them from luxury production. (Well, that, and more
esoterically, at what step in the transformation process from unhappy to
happy they apply, but this hidden complexity should not be an argument in
favour of them, far to the contrary.)
> g) Use PF distances for calculating the distance-based corruption
> and waste penalties.
>
> I've experimented with this and it works. The code was copied
> from Per's "Wonder City" code and I don't understand all of
> it. But when you build roads, it *does* reduce the losses due
> to distance from the capital.
I sympathize with this idea, but I suspect this would be a performance
killer with the way city production is calculated currently.
> h) Eliminate ZOC effects caused by units with 0 offense (e.g.
> Explorers, Diplomats, Caravans).
I agree.
> i) Eliminate trade routes established by caravan.
I agree. Not sure if I agree with your replacement idea, though.
- Per
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