forum.freeciv.org

Rhue wrote:I can map them all, but I understand it's not possible to contribute patches yet?

It is possible to contribute patches. https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web

Rhue wrote:A longturn game on a giant earth map with true starting positions would be really fun.

Yes, such as LongTurn game could be fun. However, the real earth map has extremely unfair starting positions, because the continents have so different terrains. (Aftica and Australia is mostly desert) So it would be difficult to assign 300 starting positions which would use up the whole map in a fair way, therefore a large part of the world would be unused.

You can experiment here: https://play.freeciv.org/freeciv-earth/

Sadly, I can't map them all for Earth, because there would be conflicts, if civs were set to random - they could start too close to each other and prevent each other from settling their capital city. In that case the one that has its land stolen tries to move away and settle its city somewhere else, which is nice, but that leaves it a bit handicapped, if there's enough room left to settle it at all.
I'm going to do Europe as well.

AndreasR wrote:

Rhue wrote:A longturn game on a giant earth map with true starting positions would be really fun.

Yes, such as LongTurn game could be fun. However, the real earth map has extremely unfair starting positions, because the continents have so different terrains. (Aftica and Australia is mostly desert) So it would be difficult to assign 300 starting positions which would use up the whole map in a fair way, therefore a large part of the world would be unused.

You can experiment here: https://play.freeciv.org/freeciv-earth/

Well then, either most of the desert would have to be removed (and the map possibly further adjusted) or, as you're saying, a large part of it would end up not being used, and the remaining space would have to be equally divided among the players, which would surely be possible? Unfortunately, there's a size limit to that generator, there's also no way to view the map in its entirety without playing through it, is there?

I've used it once to generate an Earth map, started in Asia and for some reason India was covered with desert as well.

Rhue wrote:I've used it once to generate an Earth map, started in Asia and for some reason India was covered with desert as well.

Probably because large swaths of India ARE effectively desert (at least during dry season). That's why the British uniform switched from Redcoats to Khakis (itself Indian for dust-colored). (Because marching around in what amounts to a gigantic bullseye in hostile terrain results in lots of losses)

Rhue wrote:I've used it once to generate an Earth map, started in Asia and for some reason India was covered with desert as well.

Freeciv-web uses the colors from the map image to determine the terrain type. It detects parts of India as desert because of the colors on the map there. The algorithm for detecting terrain types can be improved a lot.

Well, I've almost finished mapping Earth now, it will have about 80 starting positions, some for multiple countries. Then I'm also going to map Europe, which shouldn't take as much time. I've also had a look at the feasibility of setting up Earth for longturn, and you are right, it isn't really possible. What I did was take the 180x90 Earth and double the size (a bit of dabbling with rows and columns). And indeed, there was enough space to house 300 players, but no way to place countries in their historical starting positions, as Siberia for instance had space for about 50 players, but there aren't nearly that many Siberian civs. Same issue with Canada and Alaska, so I suppose it would still be possible to balance and tweak that map so the 300 players have equal chances, but with no historical accuracy, sadly.

I've committed an updated Earth. It has 89 starting positions now for more than 100 countries.

See http://www.freeciv.org/wiki/How_to_Contribute

Oh, sorry for overlooking the Redmine part. I hope I got it right this time, I'm new to Git and it's been tricky figuring it out.

Patch I attached to hrm ticket is now in 36h (minimum) inspection period for people to comment before it's ready to get pushed.

I'd also like to upload a version for the current 2.5.3 version. Is that fine? I can create the patch myself.