[freeciv-data] Re: Cities in rulesets

On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 02:57:47AM +0100, Uros Lepota wrote:
> 
> TK>>     You're right.. but as you can see there are Mordors etc.. they
> TK>>     were never exist in a real world and they will never exist. So why
> TK>>     you can't make Byzantine?
> 
> TK> If it were up to me there there wouldn't be Mordors, nor Argentinians or
> TK> Boers, or even Americans or Canadians.  Spanish/Iberian, yes;
> TK> Dutch/Flemish, yes; Zulu, maybe; English/British, yes.  A culture that
> TK> is recognizable only because of borders on a map, or that has existed
> TK> for only 200 or 300 years, doesn't count.
> 
>     That's my opinion too..
> 
> TK> But that's just my two piastres.  My opinion wasn't solicited on which
> TK> nations to include in the canonical set <grin>.
> 
>     God have strange ways... :))

There isn't a strict policy on criteria for including nations into
the default set, but there has been a lot of discussion about possible
criteria, see the freeciv-data archives.

Generally, there are three kinds of nations:

  + modern nations: they exist today
  + historic nations: they have existed at some point in time
  + fantasy nations: they never existed

Some say the default ruleset should only contain modern nations,
Others don't care which nations are included, but everyone seems
to agree that whatever set is chosen, there must be little overlap,
otherwise you get duplicate city or ruler names.

Another rule of thumb that emerged is this: when a nation appears to
be a modern state, its cities must be part of that state today.
For example, Breslau (a German city until 1945) was removed from the
German ruleset for this reason.  This does not apply to ruler names:
most rulers in the German ruleset ruled at times when Breslau was
German.

This rule helps to avoid duplicate city names, but it is stricter.
For example, as far as Freeciv is concerned, Breslau didn't conflict
with any other city: in the Polish ruleset, its name is Wrocl/aw,
and as far as Freeciv is concerned, those are simply two different
cities.  But if Breslau is allowed into the German ruleset, it's
not clear where to draw the line.

Greece is harder.  I think most Freeciv players will associate the
Greek nation with ancient Greece, not with the present day state;
Constantinople or Byzantium clearly belongs to that nation.
There is no danger of confusion with Istanbul in the Turkish ruleset.
But it is also reasonable to apply the rules applied to Germany and
restrict the Greek cities to those in the Greek state today.

Now that the nation limit is lifted and more nations can be added again,
this becomes a more urgent problem.  For now I think it's up to the
maintainers to say whther there are any restrictions on the Greek
ruleset.

-- 
Reinier