mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

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Aino
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mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Aino »

Hello,

New Freeciv player here, trying the various rulesets in single-player mode. I like many of the civ2civ3 features. However, I really like the variable city radius from the 'experimental' ruleset. Though I'm not sure whether the AI actually handles it well? I did not find an option in the GUI to set variable city radius, nor a command-line option in the documentation (tried both v2.6 and v3.0.91-dev). Is there some other way to activate this feature, perhaps by copy/pasting parts of the ruleset files?

Rationale & question aside: the default 2-tile wide city radius seems incongruous to me -- it makes for a growing city that somehow never manages to exploit that 'whale' resource just across its border. In addition, the idea of local resource limitations seem to make sense for the premodern era, but not once the cities are heavily connected by transport. E.g. imagine multiple cities connected with all modern transport, some with locally only food resources and others with only production resources. Would it not be more 'natural' if the resources were considered pooled to an extent, rather than that only local restrictions apply? In the real world, we do have thriving cities that have hardly any resources of their own; they import all of it. Would the Freeciv architecture allow for something like this? Has it been considered? Just wondering.

cheers!
Ignatus
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Ignatus »

Yes, also like this feature from the Experimental (as well as high migration probability, though both seem to make AI to produce some ruins). There is no switch possible for this feature; you can only copy the ruleset directory and modify effects.ruleset, consult the effects manual on Wikia and README.effects how.
Aino
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Aino »

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction, Ignatus.
Ignatus wrote:There is no switch possible for this feature
Looking at effects.ruleset -- is that because there a number of different rules involved (for the various city sizes), rather than a single rule/parameter?
Ignatus wrote:Yes, also like this feature from the Experimental (as well as high migration probability, though both seem to make AI to produce some ruins).
I have not played enough yet to form an opinion, but it looks like that ruining effect can also be considered an interesting feature -- a kind of victory by civilization (!).

I guess whether it's a balanced feature depends on whether the AI is capable of also doing this to the human player and other AIs.
Ignatus
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Ignatus »

Aino wrote:
Ignatus wrote:There is no switch possible for this feature
Looking at effects.ruleset -- is that because there a number of different rules involved (for the various city sizes), rather than a single rule/parameter?
Likely. There is a limited number of settings that are configurable in the starting menu (like map size, amount of barbarians etc.), all the rest what is configurable is defined by the ruleset; it might also fix the potentially configurable options, because some settings may produce insensible ballance or outright bugs in combination with the rest (though civ2civ3 only sets sensible defaults and allows changing them if you want).
cazfi
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by cazfi »

In a way variable city radius is always enabled. Ruleset just defines the complex rules of the circumstances when the radius changes and how much.
Dino the Dinosore
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Dino the Dinosore »

I have been working on a custom ruleset based mostly on the experimental ruleset with some things from the civ2civ3 ruleset, including the variable city radius and new unit class "Big Land". Also has wild animals, plague, disasters, culture victory and my own tweaks. It's still a work in progress, but all are welcome to try this current version. Put "dino.serv.txt" into directory ".../share/freeciv" and rename it to "dino.serv" (forum won't let me attach file with .serv extension). Put "dino.zip" into directory ".../share/freeciv" and un-zip it to become directory ".../share/freeciv/dino". You should then be able to start a new game and choose the "dino" ruleset. Comments welcome.
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Aino
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Aino »

Pardon the holidelay...

Ignatus, cazfi: thanks for the clarifications!

Dino: browsing the readme, that looks awesome! Many things that make sense to me. Thanks for sharing this; I'll give it a full whirl asap. For now three preliminary notes:

1) Loading the ruleset resulted in a kraken-related error for me (krakens, huh). I fixed it by changing the line graphic_alt = "None" in units.ruleset to graphic_alt = "u.horsemen" as for the snow leopard.

2) In-game I do indeed get the horsemen graphics for the wild animals. I suppose my install doesn't contain the animal sprites. How to fix that? (I tried running your ruleset with my 3.0.9-dev install rather than the 2.6 one, figuring it might include animal sprites. Did not work; probably as expected?)

3) When playing with the 'experimental' ruleset earlier, I found the offshore platform effect badly overpowered due to the variable city radius: coastal cities would boom exponentially. Handy, but silly. I'm curious how your setup will play (it's as in civ2civ3, right?) Does an 'offshore platform' even make sense as a city feature? How about calling it something like 'oil refinery' instead, and tying its bonus output specifically to built oil well improvements (onshore & offshore), rather than to terrain?
Dino the Dinosore
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Dino the Dinosore »

Animal sprites are a problem for custom rulesets, the files that control them are not in the same directory as the custom ruleset stuff. Which is why I forgot to include them earlier.
(I'm using amplio2, hope you are also.) You need a new "amplio2.tilespec" in the directory ".../share/freeciv", and "animals.spec" & "animals.png" in the directory ".../share/freeciv/amplio2".

I have seen the offshore platform issue - had a coastal city with one and manuf plant getting ridiculous # of shields. I like the idea of tying it to oil well improvements.
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Aino
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Aino »

@Dino: thanks for providing the animal files - worked nicely. I've been playing on and off using your ruleset; up to the space race. Good fun! A few points (note I'm a Freeciv rookie so my insights are limited):

* I've made no detailed comparison but your tech tree seems to make more thematic sense than earlier ones I played with, which had some rather odd prerequisites/consequences.

* The animal units were fun... while they lasted, i.e. very (too) briefly. My starting units, starting on a peninsula, had to expand across some mountains with leopards, which made for an interesting early game. I had increased the animals parameter value (to 200 or so?) to give plenty animals. However, after these early leopards I never saw any other, nor krakens. I suppose they all got eliminated by the AI? It might be more interesting if new animals spawned on occasion, both thematically and gameplay wise (e.g. even for developed civs they could challenge unguarded settlers, workers etc.) Not sure if that is ruleset controlable though.

* As stated in the OP, I like the variable city radius; but it seems the AI can't deal with it very smartly (nor with automatic migration?). I build my cities well apart with expansion in mind and mostly near plenty of ocean, and reap the (perhaps excessive, see above) benefits once they get sizeable and have ports and offshore platforms. The AI seems to tend to build its cities closely packed, missing out on that kind of later-game perks. It constructs homogenized terrain with plenty of ruins (I presume due to migration hastened by the close city spacing). Just saying - again, not sure you can tweak that within the ruleset...

* I did not encounter any obvious ruleset-related bugs or weirdness, though the client did crash twice (did not check error log yet, if there is one).

All in all, while I can't compare the overall balance, I do at first blush prefer your ruleset over those that come with the game. So, thank you again!
Ignatus
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Re: mixing ruleset features? (specifically: civ2civ3 with variable city radius)

Post by Ignatus »

Aino wrote: The animal units were fun... while they lasted, i.e. very (too) briefly.
Have you downloaded the ruleset with or without this fix?
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