forum.freeciv.org

It seems that there is a tendency among modders to add new governments. I see it as a sign that the current governemnt system is too restrictive and doesn't give enough choices and variation. The problem with adding new governments is that you simply have to pick one and mostly stick with it and, when you need something else, choose something else, without designing a strategy about what to keep and what to discard.

Alpha Centauri had this solved by, instead of Governments, having social effects, in all, 16 of them, all with bonuses and downsides, that you could combine, one from each group of four (once you discover them, just like the governments here). Technically, it can't be done in Freeciv without serious coding, but I think the effect can be emulated very accurately using the Wonders system.

The difference between the concept of Wonders and Social Effects is basically that Wonders cost a lot, but have no downsides, while Social Effects may have downsides and should be reversible like governments. Therefore, they shouldn't be too expensive (or people would build them very rarely). Also, some of them would exclude/negate each other (existence of A would remove effect of B and vice versa, whichever was built first).

Some ideas, right out of my head, would be:

Literacy Campaign: +30% bulbs, -50% tax
Laissez-Faire: +50% trade, +1 unhappy, +50% buildings upkeep, +20% corruption (or at least some of those)
Planned Economy: +30% shields in each city (minimum +1 shield), +50% pollution
Baby Boom: +50% food, -1 shield on tiles that produce 3+
Militarization: +1 veteran, 4 units free of upkeep, -25% trade, -1 food on tiles that produce 3+


Any more ideas?

You can use binary policies, where policies have only two or three values (for example -1, 0 and 1).

Lachu wrote:You can use binary policies, where policies have only two or three values (for example -1, 0 and 1).

I'd been thinking about saying that, but I haven't been able to come up with a way to make one policy disable another one, since policies aren't requirements. So it couldn't be implemented exactly like social effects, all the different policies would be entirely independent.

Disabling is not a problem. Simply set up requirements in effects.ruleset.

Corbeau wrote:Disabling is not a problem. Simply set up requirements in effects.ruleset.

Caedo wrote:since policies aren't requirements.

If we want one social effect to conflict with another, we need to use your wonders idea, since wonders are buildings and can be put in a requirement vector. Policies aren't something that goes into a requirement vector, but instead multipliers that affect the impact of the effect. So a policy with just two values mapping to 0% and 100% can effectively be used to turn certain effects on and off, but since only one policy can apply to a given effect, we can't make them cancel each other out (and even if more could, it would require some voodoo coding).

I'm not sure what you mean by "policy". What I'm saying is that basically everything can be done with wonders and effects using the current system of rulesets, including negating, automatic disabling etc.

Corbeau wrote:I'm not sure what you mean by "policy". What I'm saying is that basically everything can be done with wonders and effects using the current system of rulesets, including negating, automatic disabling etc.

Policies are something available in 2.6 and upwards. They are sliders you can adjust that can be used as a multiplier for an effect. That way, ruleset authors can implement effects for e.g. how much you control the press, how much pro-war propaganda you make etc. The only application in supplied rulesets so far is the experimental ruleset's "Personal Freedom" policy, which goes from 0 to 5, each level increasing total science output by 10% and unhappiness for military units in the field by 1.

You can build small wonders but destroying them is another matter. That makes it harder to use them for changing government settings.

On longturn.org games there has been some wonders expanding the governments. Giving more free units, more trade etc. In the new setups some of these have been removed because they change things too much and adding negative effects, or downsides, has not been easy. It would be possible to add a downside like -10% research or something like that. However getting rid of that would not be easy because it would basically need the player to destroy the city or at least get someone to conquer it.

This is why we are now adding a new government and also changing the revolt time to one turn instead of 2. This will be used for only one game, LT40. At least for now. It needs to be tested on a real game.

Alpha Centauri style social effects would be nice but maybe not something we would really need. This is of course my personal opinion

Btw, is there a "proper" place where we could suggest new settings and features for the future Freeciv versions? I already listed some issues regarding the multiplayer games and issues with it, but most of that stuff is something that probably can't be fixed since they are TC related and it's really hard to figure out the logic for making them go away.

wieder wrote:Btw, is there a "proper" place where we could suggest new settings and features for the future Freeciv versions?

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