My Wishlist

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
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GriffonSpade
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My Wishlist

Post by GriffonSpade »

Updated version of my old wishlist! I believed I've filtered out all the obsolete ones, though some old ones made a return with some changes. Some of the larger ones are also liable to be exported to their own threads and linked.
http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=51

UNITS

2) Ability to control unit stacking for both tiles and ferries(via size limit)

19) Ability to set attacker AND defender class requirements for defense bonuses

24) Effect controls for modifying(add/subtract, or at least turn off) fortify/city defense and terrain defense (separately). Preferably with attacker negative requirement. (notably for IgWall attackers)

47) Additional 'partial_invis' layers: Subterranean (underground, for burrowing units), and 'Camouflage' (for units that can hide in terrain).

50) Bombardment/Anti-Air actions: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=74393

54) Allow Veteran sprites to be set individually in ruleset, rather than automatic reading from an ennumerated list.

57) City-Unique Units: City cannot build more units of this type if one is already homed. Additional option might include inability to rehome. This has a few purposes:
1) Wonder Hero units. The ability to create a single, unusually strong unit, but only one at a time, so they can't be mass produced.
2) City Defense units. These units are intended to represent militia or national guard units and be immobile, much like how in later civ games, cities have their own defense scores. Creating a new City Defense unit should cost a population.

58) Auto-Build Unit: When a city is built, a unit is automatically created with it. This simplifies the creation of new cities, giving them a defender automatically. This would be defined in Ruleset like the BarbarianTech role, with the last chosen, though based on the player's own techs for qualification.

UNIT AI COMMANDS/ADVISORS

4) "Explore and Raid" - Similar to the explore command, except when adjacent to an enemy unit or city with moves remaining, it would automatically attack them. This would prevent exploring units with high attack but low defense from dying like fools as they just let enemies kill them.

5) "Counterattack" - Similar to the fortify/sentry command(preferably fortify, unless it is given priority over the Go command), except when an enemy moves to adjacent tile, and the unit has moves remaining, it would automatically attack them, then begin to fortify back into their counterattack stance, giving a more realistic border defense policy. The server option to automatically attack really isn't very good, as it's ALWAYS active and on EVERY (military) unit, rather than just the ones you pick and choose.

6) Allow units that cannot fortify to have a similar function ("Rest"?) that does almost everything that fortify does, but does not increase defensive strength

53) Give units Sentried for a turn the same defense bonus as Fortified units, until an action is taken. Using either Sentry or Fortify would cause units that are already Sentried or Fortified to immediately gain Sentried or Fortified status, rather than having to wait a turn.

CITY

7) Separate queue for units and buildings http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89783

21) Ability to block citizen placement (for working tiles within city_radius on a city) from enemy zones of control

23) Effect controls for how much food remains after a plague and starvation (Instead of having them use growth's value, each have their own value)

DISPLAY

13) Ability to control how much population one city size(or a given total city size) corresponds to (and a bit of a stretch, but to control how much population each unit adds to the total)

39) Client Setting: Combat Delay to delay the displaying of combat until X milliseconds after it actually occured (To allow time for the client to Center and the player to focus, so that the entire combat can be seen, also allowing Combat Animation Step Time to be low.)

TILESET

MOVEMENT

26) Block the ability of road native units(That are on otherwise nonnative terrain) to cross into cities that are not connected to their road type
(Questionable? This might have been done.)

TECHNOLOGY

17) Allow up to 4 prerequisites on a technology

EFFECTS

28) Make_Unhappy: Makes extra citizens unhappy. Applied before Make_Content effect. This could be used for things like Propaganda effects that would make citizens in other nations unhappy.

35) Additional effect requirement ranges: Especially something like 'Radius2' (sqrt4?)and 'CRadius2' (sqrt5?) that would allow more flexibility than Adjacent straight to Continent/Player.

36) Additional effect requirement ranges for Building effect requirement type: Adjacent and CAdjacent [and Radius2/CRadius2?] (In effect, first checking for cities, then checking if any of those cities have the desired building)

37) Ability to check units OTHER than the attacking target (as far as I can tell, a target unit can only check itself? Except in combat where it checks its attacker? Also, I'm assuming UnitType is the unit's Name, e.g. Warriors or Phalanx, and not Move_Type, which is Land, Sea, or Both?) This would allow various effects, like having AEGIS cruisers giving a defense bonus against air units to nearby allies, support units giving regen or defense bonuses to nearby allies, and sabotage units giving penalties to nearby enemies.

41) The ability to have 'non-critical fail' result from action failures. Possibly two separate ones based on 'maintaining stealth' and 'maintaining secrecy'

42) The ability to try to blame another nation in covert actions. Possibly another level of success like 41). It would reduce the chances of success and potentially create a diplomatic incident with the entire world rather than just the target on a critical-fail.

43) The ability to activate 'upkeep banking' (once you have the requirements). Upkeep banking would place all non-upkeep production into a list, and if any units are lacking their upkeep, they will change to the city that has extra production that can support them. Possibly by changing their home cities. Once this is possible, changing homecities should be possible from anywhere in the world, rather than just while within said city. A more advanced model might have all cities simply pay into a homogenized bank to cover all the units. In modern militaries, upkeep is mostly paid by the nation as a whole, rather than by independent cities. (Note: This can be approximated now by using gold upkeep, which I've read is handled far better now.)

48) 'Make_Unhappy_Mil' effect type: Like Make_Unhappy, but increments unhappiness 'caused by military' directly without involving units.

49) Create 'Event Tokens': http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89781

55) Add the ability to check a Policy Slider's value: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89794

56) Allow Corruption to be capped (notably because of the output_waste_by_dist scaling up to infinity): http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89851

MISC

32) In Units.ruleset, Change the name of the "DefenseDivider" variable to "AttackMultiplier". No actual mechanics change, just something to reduce the required mental gymnastics. (DefenseDivider is declared in the Attacker, but effects the Defender. It's somewhat confusing, as without reading the reference, it looks like it just counters the DefenseMultiplier variable. Might as well just have it read as AttackMultiplier, which is the apparent effect for the one in whose section it is declared in.)

45) Change the 'turns until contact is lost' option setting 0 to mean 'only while in direct contact', rather than 'never', which should be changed to -1.

46) 'Neutral' diplomatic status: This would be the default status rather than War. War would be explicitly declared, caused by entering a neutral nation's territory/city work area with a non-civilian unit, or attacking a nation's unit.

51) Generalize Adjacent Water Borders:http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89784

Idle thoughts/Uncertain Ideas/Unconfirmed current functionality

Make a Quad tile-ruleset option, using the normal square/lozenge Oct tilesets, but unable to travel diagonally.

Make some method of trading food to other cities

Make the ability to create 'autonomous regions'. That is to say, you can choose a city and force it to become its own nation, preferably one on the same team or at least allied with the original owner. (Afterward, more cities could be given to the new nation through diplomacy.)
Last edited by GriffonSpade on Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:26 am, edited 9 times in total.
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Re: My Wishlist

Post by GriffonSpade »

Summary of New and Redacted stuff.
Updated and Simplified Wish:
28) Make_Unhappy: Makes extra citizens unhappy. Applied before Make_Content affect. This could be used for things like Propaganda effects that would make citizens in other nations unhappy.

New Wishes:
46) 'Neutral' diplomatic status: This would be the default status rather than War. War would be explicitly declared, caused by entering a neutral nation's territory/city work area with a non-civilian unit, or attacking a nation's unit.

47) Additional 'partial_invis' layers: Subterranean (underground, for burrowing units), and 'Camouflage' (for units that can hide in terrain).

48) 'Make_Unhappy_Mil' effect type: Like Make_Unhappy, but increments unhappiness 'caused by military' directly without involving units.

49) Create 'Event Tokens': http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89781

50) Bombardment/Anti-Air actions: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=74393

51) Generalize Adjacent Water Borders:http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89784

52) Allow units to remain Fortified while selected until performing an action.

53) Give units Sentried for a turn the same defense bonus as Fortified units, until an action is taken. Using either Sentry or Fortify would cause units that are already Sentried or Fortified to immediately gain Sentried or Fortified status, rather than having to wait a turn.
[REDACTED] wrote:

Code: Select all

1)  Ability to set which units a given unit is strong at attacking and/or defending against(like lancers defending vs cavalry, or fighters attacking helicopters)

3) Ability to set a bombard_kill flag in the units file, allowing bombarder units to kill their target if their attack would reduce its health to zero.

8) I don't know if it's been addressed, as I've not checked recently, but better handling of troops that have gold upkeep rather than production. Last I checked, the AI would continue creating more and more troops, even though they are immediately disbanded, and  utterly abandoning any hope at research or buildings. (Soldiers want paid!)

9) Ability to set mindist between cities even higher(range that server can use set in ruleset?), for larger harvest ranges (Maximum harvest range is 5, which would need an 11 mincitydist to prevent overlap[11 tiles away has 10 tiles between cities, preventing overlap. Current max is 9, which only prevents overlap with city harvest radius at 4.)

10) Ability to change city growth requirement to a linear version of the formula rather than geometric(?) one.(for instance, going up by 10 food for each population)

14) Ability to set the time passage not in years, but an even smaller increment of time, a month. (Primarily a display change perhaps? Simply Displaying CE 1.12 instead of CE 23, etc?) 
[Note: edited this, said 1.11 = 23 before, .1 would be logically added to the decimal always, since no one uses a zeroth month, but instead first month to denote the beginning of a year]

15) On Hex tilesets, load river mouths for the additional two directions (up/nw and down/se for iso?hex, and up-left/ne? and down-right/sw? for notiso?hex)

16) On Oct tile-rulesets, have an option to have diagonal movement costs increased by approximately the square root of 2 (1.4142..., or, for example with 1/3 movement bits, 1 to 1+1/3, 2 to 2+2/3, 3 to 4 or 4+1/3)

18) Water:
The ability to set in server how many tiles out water can be border claimed by a city (So that a city could claim out as far as it's able to work, for example 2 in the default ruleset)
The ability to set in server how many land tiles must be adjacent to water before it can be successfully claimed by a border(In real life, any ocean next to their land border is claimed by countries, and the country with an adjacent border that has the highest claim would receive it)[0 would have the same claim rules as land, and -1 or 7 in hex/9 in oct would never claim additional water tiles
The ability to set in server if border claims can 'bridge' across water tiles to other land tiles (But only if the water tile itself can be successfully claimed).

20) Ability to remove Zone of Control effect from nonmilitary/zero attack units.(That is to say, These units do not create a ZOC, rather than ignoring existing ZOCs) As an extension, limitation of zone of control to tiles a unit can actually attack.

22) Repurpose "UnsafeCoast" flag to cause map generator to ignore this terrain when making oceans shallow (To allow deep water to form around glaciers, to prevent Triremes from sailing around them, though not necessarily ALWAYS deep water, if it's near another terrain type.)

25) Separate the ability to attack from NonNative Terrain into two different qualities: the ability to attack native terrain from nonnative terrain, and the ability to attack nonnative terrain from nonnative terrain. (For example, to prevent a caravel or frigate from attacking land while in a city, while allowing destroyers and battleships to do so.) [Perhaps simply with a No_Attack_NonNative_From_NonNative unit flag]

27) effect range "TradeCity" for requirement types Building, Special, Base, Road, Terrain, Resource, TerrainClass, TerrainFlag.
     -Trade city would include the range "City" of both the city in question and all of its (direct) trading partners.
     -Would be a good option for "strategic resources" so as to not be overly limiting to each individual city, while not being so uncontrolled as to allow cities with absolutely no interaction to gain access to things which require said strategic resources (Player's CityA having iron would not allow CityB to build Legion unless they had a trade route connecting them).
     -Possible additional option of a "TradeWeb" range that would include any city linked by trade, namely those which are trading with cities cityX is also trading with, but you are not trading with directly. (CityX trades with CityY, and CityY trades with both CityX and CityZ. CityX would then detect types from not only CityY, but also CityZ)

29a) Effect flags! Similar to the existing, and [b][i]INCREDIBLY USEFUL[/i][/b] terrain and unit flags, for use as requirements in other files, such as buildings, units, and terrain.
29b) Ability for unit/building requirements to need Flags, such as Terrain and Tech flags (and Effect flags).

30) The ability to create a Unit Death unhappiness effect, that creates X unhappiness (ruleset defined) lasts for Y (ruleset/server defined) turns. No one likes when their families die in war, and their deaths should have an effect on their home city's happiness, possibly even leading to riots and civil war. Currently units dying in republic and democracy even make their home cities HAPPIER, which is somewhat inane. [A later extension would have it that City Defense deaths should NOT cause unhappiness, and neither should defensive deaths in locations that would not cause democracy/republic unhappiness (e.g. inside happy borders)] Perhaps generalized to an achievement-like token that lasts only X number of turns after being achieved (and resetting the timer each time it is achieved)

33) Add the ability for bombarder units to Counter-Bombard when an enemy bombards them, using their own Bombard ability (or perhaps controlled by new counter-bombard fields). Have the ability to counter-bombard be controlled by a field (For example, a Howitzer could counter-bombard a battleship or cannon, but a catapult cannot counter-bombard them. This would be a list like the cargo field, listing applicable Unit Classes. Declared in either the Attack or Defender's fields, it doesn't matter.)

34) Add the ability for units to Bombard-Defend when an enemy bombards them. Bombard-Defense would force bombarder units to NOT bombard, and to use normal attack versus defense rules; controlled by a field (For example, a Fighter could defend against a bomber, but a Legion can not. This would be a list like the cargo field, listing applicable Unit Classes. Declared in either the Attack or Defender's fields, it doesn't matter.)

31) Ability to extend happyborders to inside all allies' borders as well as your own for republic/democracy unhappiness. (So you can send units to defend your allies without causing unhappiness)

38) Ability to set FoggedBorders to 'visible borders only' (borders in fogged areas not drawn at all, as opposed to drawn but not updated, or drawn and updated)

40) Enabling an action being able to cause casus belli against ALL other nations. Could be useful for a feudal type government or as a result of a nuclear attack or something. People baying for blood, and they don't care whose it is.

Ability to set the ocean as an unusable source for irrigation, unless certain technology (desalination?) is known

Allow unlearnable technology to be set as starting technology, enabling different tech trees.

Make 'non-aggressive' (or default) civilizations not attack during first contact.

Allow an additional color(s) to be used for tiles on the minimap.(perhaps declared in the tileset?) (For example, having 'out of bounds' tiles show up as black, rather than green of land, or blue of ocean)
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Re: My Wishlist

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

Some of these are already a thing:
GriffonSpade wrote:52) Allow units to remain Fortified while selected until performing an action.
That's actually a catch-all client option, something along the lines of "cancel current order when selecting a unit". Disabling that option can be quite useful, depending on your playstyle. This also applies to things like carefully planned-out paths to connect with roads, losing which can be quite annoying.
GriffonSpade wrote:26) Block the ability of road native units(That are on otherwise nonnative terrain) to cross into cities that are not connected to their road type
(Questionable? This might have been done.)
I believe this is already implemented in developmental versions with the "JumpTo" and "JumpFrom" road flags and the "integrates" road property, which detail exactly when moves to and from a native road on a non-native tile are legal.

Apart from that, here's my two cents on the ones that aren't:
GriffonSpade wrote:19) Ability to set attacker AND defender class requirements for defense bonuses
Yes please. In general, my suggestion on that front is to take the actor_req ↔ target_req system from action enablers and give something similar to effects. Next, action enablers could be replaced with a new "Enable_Action" effect and "Action" requirements at local range.
GriffonSpade wrote:24) Effect controls for modifying(add/subtract, or at least turn off) fortify/city defense and terrain defense (separately). Preferably with attacker negative requirement. (notably for IgWall attackers)
Yes, please. In general, more control over the various defense layers.
GriffonSpade wrote:47) Additional 'partial_invis' layers: Subterranean (underground, for burrowing units), and 'Camouflage' (for units that can hide in terrain).
Think big, my friend – let's abstract the idea of invisibility layers and allow ruleset authors to define any number of them.
GriffonSpade wrote:4) "Explore and Raid" - Similar to the explore command, except when adjacent to an enemy unit or city with moves remaining, it would automatically attack them. This would prevent exploring units with high attack but low defense from dying like fools as they just let enemies kill them.
Probably useful, though I'd also be in favor of an "explore carefully" option, which avoids other players' territory in order to not anger them.
GriffonSpade wrote:5) "Counterattack" - Similar to the fortify/sentry command(preferably fortify, unless it is given priority over the Go command), except when an enemy moves to adjacent tile, and the unit has moves remaining, it would automatically attack them, then begin to fortify back into their counterattack stance, giving a more realistic border defense policy. The server option to automatically attack really isn't very good, as it's ALWAYS active and on EVERY (military) unit, rather than just the ones you pick and choose.
In older Freeciv versions, there used to be an "Auto-attack" command. It could only be done inside a city (so fortifying was irrelevant), and whenever the unit saw an enemy that it could reach and attack immediately, it would do so (and then return to the city as quickly as possible). The only downside was that if you kept your city surrounded with roads, this would lead to cannons leaving the city to attack someone and then being stuck out in the open for a turn.
But, yeah, I've direly missed something like that for a long time now.
GriffonSpade wrote:6) Allow units that cannot fortify to have a similar function ("Rest"?) that does almost everything that fortify does, but does not increase defensive strength
With more control over defense layers (#24), this could be easily possible to do simply by allowing units to fortify, but not giving them any bonus from it.
GriffonSpade wrote:53) Give units Sentried for a turn the same defense bonus as Fortified units, until an action is taken. Using either Sentry or Fortify would cause units that are already Sentried or Fortified to immediately gain Sentried or Fortified status, rather than having to wait a turn.
This would also require the unit to not lose its fortification just because it woke up. In general, fortification bonus should last until the end of the turn if the unit doesn't move, since it only really starts doing something else at that point. This would, however, require a clearer distinction between "fortified" and "leaving fortification", especially when given another command, but not moved. (A lot of this would be so much simpler if simultaneous turns weren't a thing.)
GriffonSpade wrote:23) Effect controls for how much food remains after a plague and starvation (Instead of having them use growth's value, each have their own value)
Yes, please. Also for disasters that kill citizens.
GriffonSpade wrote:13) Ability to control how much population one city size(or a given total city size) corresponds to (and a bit of a stretch, but to control how much population each unit adds to the total)
Yes, please. Because, when you look at it, if you build Settlers in a huge city, one of them maybe takes away half a million citizens, and then, when you build a new city, it has a measly 1000 inhabitants.
GriffonSpade wrote:17) Allow up to 4 prerequisites on a technology
How about allowing N prerequisites on a technology? While we're at it, how about allowing N root requirements?
I mean, in the future, I'd be in favor of just flat out adding requirement vectors for both of those, but that might be a bit too much work and danger or introducing bugs at the moment.
GriffonSpade wrote:28) Make_Unhappy: Makes extra citizens unhappy. Applied before Make_Content effect. This could be used for things like Propaganda effects that would make citizens in other nations unhappy.
More specifically, I'd propose having negative Make_Content, Make_Happy and Force_Content effects simply give the reverse result. That is, negative Make_Content effects would make content citizens unhappy and unhappy citizens angry; negative Make_Happy and Force_Content effects might have to be changed around a bit to be worthwhile.
It should be noted that applying a separate Make_Unhappy effect before Make_Content would only really do anything if angry citizens are enabled, because in bigger cities before Make_Content, there typically isn't more than one content citizen.
GriffonSpade wrote:37) Ability to check units OTHER than the attacking target (as far as I can tell, a target unit can only check itself? Except in combat where it checks its attacker? Also, I'm assuming UnitType is the unit's Name, e.g. Warriors or Phalanx, and not Move_Type, which is Land, Sea, or Both?) This would allow various effects, like having AEGIS cruisers giving a defense bonus against air units to nearby allies, support units giving regen or defense bonuses to nearby allies, and sabotage units giving penalties to nearby enemies.
I suggested something like this previously as hrm #695469. There hasn't been any response yet -.-
Also, yeah, unit type is, well, the unit type, as it's declared in units.ruleset. Move_Type was already optional and more or less deprecated, and in current beta versions (2_6) it has already been entirely phased out.
GriffonSpade wrote:41) The ability to have 'non-critical fail' result from action failures. Possibly two separate ones based on 'maintaining stealth' and 'maintaining secrecy'

42) The ability to try to blame another nation in covert actions. Possibly another level of success like 41). It would reduce the chances of success and potentially create a diplomatic incident with the entire world rather than just the target on a critical-fail.
I've been thinking, in general, about making action types more abstract. For example, for a lot of actions, there are currently two seperate actions each, one that allows the unit to escape, and one that consumes the unit. If instead, there were basic action types (e.g. "steal tech") upon which ruleset authors define the actions (e.g. "Steal Tech Targeted Escape"), stuff like this could also be made part of that.
GriffonSpade wrote:48) 'Make_Unhappy_Mil' effect type: Like Make_Unhappy, but increments unhappiness 'caused by military' directly without involving units.
As with Make_Unhappy, I'd propose simply giving negative Make_Content_Mil effects (and Make_Content_Mil_Per effects) that effect.
GriffonSpade wrote:32) In Units.ruleset, Change the name of the "DefenseDivider" variable to "AttackMultiplier". No actual mechanics change, just something to reduce the required mental gymnastics. (DefenseDivider is declared in the Attacker, but effects the Defender. It's somewhat confusing, as without reading the reference, it looks like it just counters the DefenseMultiplier variable. Might as well just have it read as AttackMultiplier, which is the apparent effect for the one in whose section it is declared in.)
Again, with the aforementioned target↔actor thing, combined with more control over defense layers, my endgame would be to turn all of those into effects as well, in which case some of them (at least DefenseDivider) wouldn't need their own name anymore.
GriffonSpade wrote:45) Change the 'turns until contact is lost' option setting 0 to mean 'only while in direct contact', rather than 'never', which should be changed to -1.
Yes, please. Maybe there could be additional options to make it so only contact between certain unit types (e.g. diplomats, leaders) enables diplomacy. Either way, it would allow restricted diplomacy without embassies.
GriffonSpade wrote:46) 'Neutral' diplomatic status: This would be the default status rather than War. War would be explicitly declared, caused by entering a neutral nation's territory/city work area with a non-civilian unit, or attacking a nation's unit.
If this is extended to turn into a peace when you get a common ally, sign me up. Otherwise, it would be functionally identical to war, just with a different name. We don't need to model that side of politics :P
GriffonSpade wrote:Make a Quad tile-ruleset option, using the normal square/lozenge Oct tilesets, but unable to travel diagonally.
Instead of a ruleset option, make it part of the 'topology' server option, as an alternative to square and hex. Of course, that would give us space for a fourth option...
GriffonSpade wrote:Make some method of trading food to other cities
In general, supply lines of some kind or other, so that enemies can cut them.

Whew, that was quite a bit.
~ AVL
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Re: My Wishlist

Post by GriffonSpade »

Old wrote:54) Allow Veteran sprites to be set individually in ruleset, rather than automatic reading from an ennumerated list.

55) Add the ability to check a Policy Slider's value. http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89794

56) Allow Corruption to be capped (notably because of the output_waste_by_dist scaling up to infinity). http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=89851
New wrote:
I can't believe I haven't added this to my wishlist yet.

57) City-Unique Units: City cannot build more units of this type if one is already homed. Additional option might include inability to rehome. This has a few purposes:
1) Wonder Hero units. The ability to create a single, unusually strong unit, but only one at a time, so they can't be mass produced.
2) City Defense units. These units are intended to represent militia or national guard units and be immobile, much like how in later civ games, cities have their own defense scores. (Creating a new City Defense unit should cost a population.)

58) Auto-Build Unit: When a city is built, a unit is automatically created with it. This simplifies the creation of new cities, giving them a defender automatically. This would be defined in Ruleset like the BarbarianTech role, with the last chosen, though based on the player's own techs for qualification.

59) Research sub-tabs. Looking at Civ3's research, it looks so much neater than our own, and I think dividing our research display (the part with the scroll bars) into multiple tabs would work well. Essentially, it would do the same as current, but on multiple tabs. Each tab would draw all the advances that have the given subtab number, PLUS any listed prerequisites for ease of use. Maybe in addition to the main 'everything thrown in' (subtab 0) research subtab?

ie Ancient techs would be on subtab 1, Medieval techs (Plus Ancient techs that are immediate requirements) would be on subtab 2, Industrial techs (Plus Medieval techs that are immediate requirements) would be on subtab 3, etc. Maybe as many as an additional 9 subtabs after the 'everything' one?)
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Re: My Wishlist

Post by nef »

Caedo wrote:Some of these are already a thing:
GriffonSpade wrote:52) Allow units to remain Fortified while selected until performing an action.
That's actually a catch-all client option, something along the lines of "cancel current order when selecting a unit". Disabling that option can be quite useful, depending on your playstyle. This also applies to things like carefully planned-out paths to connect with roads, losing which can be quite annoying.
"Clear unit orders on selection" Client options (interface). I always disable this but it has a nasty downside - activate unit from city dialogue will ONLY give focus to the last unit 'activated' - not to all, and I see NO REASON for this limitation.
Caedo wrote:
GriffonSpade wrote:6) Allow units that cannot fortify to have a similar function ("Rest"?) that does almost everything that fortify does, but does not increase defensive strength
With more control over defense layers (#24), this could be easily possible to do simply by allowing units to fortify, but not giving them any bonus from it.
. For the record I believe this has been done.
Caedo wrote:
GriffonSpade wrote:53) Give units Sentried for a turn the same defense bonus as Fortified units, until an action is taken. Using either Sentry or Fortify would cause units that are already Sentried or Fortified to immediately gain Sentried or Fortified status, rather than having to wait a turn.
This would also require the unit to not lose its fortification just because it woke up. In general, fortification bonus should last until the end of the turn if the unit doesn't move, since it only really starts doing something else at that point. This would, however, require a clearer distinction between "fortified" and "leaving fortification", especially when given another command, but not moved. (A lot of this would be so much simpler if simultaneous turns weren't a thing.)
I have made a suggestion about this elsewhere http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.ph ... ved#p98945. A simple "not moved" status could be used to give the defense bonus (if applicable). Fortify and fortifying would then be just "don't wake up". I think this should fix the simultaneous turn issue as well. Two points: sprite changes to declare not moved status; and other real activities (such as settler work) would be assessed as movement.
Caedo wrote:
GriffonSpade wrote:23) Effect controls for how much food remains after a plague and starvation (Instead of having them use growth's value, each have their own value)
Yes, please. Also for disasters that kill citizens.
Also being fixed?
Caedo wrote:
GriffonSpade wrote:13) Ability to control how much population one city size(or a given total city size) corresponds to (and a bit of a stretch, but to control how much population each unit adds to the total)
Yes, please. Because, when you look at it, if you build Settlers in a huge city, one of them maybe takes away half a million citizens, and then, when you build a new city, it has a measly 1000 inhabitants.
Not sure of the point of this. Is it for scoring purposes? In any event it suggests another comment: My understanding from Civ I was that city size was a compromise between some IRL issues; e.g. "logarithmic" growth [hence changes in food box], and simplistic steps for city growth. In the latter case I interpret the food in the food box as serving two (incompatible) purposes - one as food stored and the other as an indication of fine grained population increase. On account of this I would suggest an option to make settlers etc. take food from the box rather than population. Of course if this depleted the box then it would reduce the size of the city.
Caedo wrote:
GriffonSpade wrote:17) Allow up to 4 prerequisites on a technology
How about allowing N prerequisites on a technology? While we're at it, how about allowing N root requirements?
I mean, in the future, I'd be in favor of just flat out adding requirement vectors for both of those, but that might be a bit too much work and danger or introducing bugs at the moment.
First step might be to add additional lines for root prerequisitesn in the research report.
Caedo wrote:
GriffonSpade wrote:Make some method of trading food to other cities
In general, supply lines of some kind or other, so that enemies can cut them.
I believe food trading is an essential feature of Civ II & III. I remember some talk of supply line issues but I have lost the details
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