Civ2/Andrew

:Reformatted copy of email referred to on Civ2 page:
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From: Andrew John Hughes <hughes2002@...>
Subject: Civ3
Newsgroups: gmane.games.freeciv.general
Date: 2002-07-07 22:18:07 GMT (13 years, 33 weeks, 2 days, 17 hours and 17 minutes ago)
I enjoy playing Civ3 a lot, as well as Civ2, but I would also say that, in a way, they are completely different games, with changes that require different mindset while playing.
I would say that the biggest problem with Civ3 is that it doesn't seem
finished. Just looking at the city view screens you can see this, with the
lack of buildings. They are also several other missing items compared to
Civ2 such as the wonder movies and council, that made Civ2 special. The one
that really annoys me is the way you no longer get the history of the
research when you get a tech (although you don't in FreeCiv either). There are other things that are annonying - no terrian terraforming, and having to research certain techs to advance (in civ2 rules, you can get away with no religion).
I don't think it would be a matter of having 'full civ3 functionality' in FreeCiv, but adding some of its more promising features to what's already there, to produce what Civ3 should have been, gameplay-wise.
Offhand, the ones I would think of to add would be:
*Culture
**Capturing cities via cultural dominance
**Cultural victory
**Cultural borders (grow on cultural point marks)
**Rebelling citizens
**Culture of citizens
*New methods of victory
**Dominance (most dominant player left)
**Diplomatic (UN wonder)
**Cultural (20000 for a city or 100000 tot)
*Resources and Luxuries
**Added via tech advance
**Trading of resources via diplomacy
**Colonies for holding resources out of borders
**Use of resources to build (coal --> railways, etc.)
**Luxuries increase happiness (incense, wine, furs, etc)
*More diplomatic strategies
**Rights of passage, mutual protection pact, trade embargos
*Small wonders
**Wonders which all can build at some point due to achieving something, e.g. 5 banks =3D Wall Street, several big cities =3D forbidden palace, Apollo space program for all, 5 SDIs - Strategic Missile Defence, etc.
I'm sure others can think of more. I would imagine most of the above could be grafted onto what is already there relatively easily. For example, culture would just require a culture variable for each improvement (0 for things like barracks, 4 for cathedral I think, wonders). These are added onto a cities total each turn, and the borders expand at each appropriate point (1000, 10000, etc). Some calculation takes place each turn to see if a nearby culturally-weak city is swamped by the better culture. Citizens would have to have a culture stored - this can eventually change due to assimiliation, but is initially the culture of the birthplace. It affects rebellions on city takeovers (militarily - cultural takeovers are due to the citizens
wanting the change, so the same doesn't happen).
Other features can't be put in this easily, such as worker/settler seperation a la Alpha Centauri, and the completely different way fighters work.
A lot of the advantages of Civ3 are taken from AC and also add to playing the game in a peaceful way (like taking over cities without warfare). Hope some of this can be achieved.
A possible idea might be a branch in the code for Civ3?
Andrew :-)
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Civ3