Re: Speeding Up Games

--- Mark Metson <markm-W7yTmn5oUcJWk0Htik3J/[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Ilkka Lehtoranta wrote:
> 
> > I think there is more sophisticated way to finish
> games early but still 
> > gently. This could be achieved by having 'key
> cities': You win the game 
> > when you have captured or destroyed the key cities
> of your opponents.
> 
> So far you're sounding OK...
> 
> > Key cities could be the capital city and some
> other cities, maybe chosen
> > by server. I.e. every 10th (20th? 30th?) built
> city could be a key city. 
> > WHo ever gets them first wins.
> 
> Too arbitrary. Its ridiculous. If my 9th and 19th
> cities are now size 20 
> and my 10th and 20th are still tiny villages
> churning out settlers for me 
> its my 9th and 19th that are key, not my 10th and
> 20th. Being a "key city" 
> should be related to actual usefulness, such as my
> more productive city my 
> most scientific city my highest-taxed city and such.

I don't like the idea of having arbitrarily-chosen key
cities AT ALL.  However, when Civ II had key cities as
part of scenarios, chosen by the editor, it worked
okay.  If scenarios were added to Freeciv, I think
having key cities would be a fine idea.

Of course, one non-arbitrary key city is the one with
the palace in it.  I could easily see adding an option
where a civilization is counted as defeated when its
palace is captured  (as Mark alluded to later on) --
in fact, it could just be a new value (say, -1) for
savepalace, since it wouldn't make sense to save the
palace if the civ is defeated.

One problem with that is frequently, as soon as I
become a democracy, I sell my palace, so I have no
capital to be captured.

> Also, wasn't there a long time ago work being done
> on "essential" 
> (game-ending if they are killed) units? It might
> make more sense to use 
> those.

Aren't there barbarian leader units?  Maybe each civ
could start with a leader, and losing your leader
means your civ is defeated.  I think it would be a
nice touch if the leader unit got, say, triple defense
from a palace, so he would spend most of his time in
the capital city.
 
> Or, have an option whereby losing your palace
> finishes you. Or, limit 
> where you can rebuild your palace. Like maybe if you
> lose your palace you 
> can only build a new one in a city that has a
> courthouse, if you have no 
> courthouses when you lose your palace then sorry,
> you're out of the game. 
> (Where out of the game means "as if disconnected",
> not "as if turning over 
> your player to AI then disconnecting").
>
> Also, with respect to all the "inactive"
> civilisations, just because you 
> leave their cities and units lying around on the map
> need not mean you 
> count them as existing when checking for "win by
> eliminating all 
> opponents". So once everyone is just lying around
> "as if disconnected" (or 
> maybe in anarchy) count that as a win.
> 
> Hey in fact maybe at any time everyone else is in
> anarchy could count as a 
> win even if they think they went into anarchy
> deliberately just to change 
> government in a predetermined way? If everyone in
> the world except you 
> decides to have a revolution at the same time maybe
> the result need not be 
> as predictable as they think. Synergy.

I like the idea of a civ in anarchy not counting
against a conquest victory.
 
> Hmmm I notice you don't get to choose what
> government will result after a 
> revolution until the revolution is over.

If I understand what you're suggesting, that's already
taken care of in CVS -- the revolution entry has a
submenu for the type of government to have after the
revolution.

++JohnWheeler

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