Unit controllable boundary growth

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
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Wahazar
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Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Wahazar »

Currently, national boundaries expand during TC when city size increase (size_effect>0).
There are several issues related to this feature:
1. stealing tiles from another nation (when radius_sq_city_permanent<0) - it is OK in case of enemy nation, but annoying if allied city suffer from lack of resources stolen by your large city, while they are not usable anyway (because outside of city workable radius)
2. disabling possibility of settling of potential ally
3. killing units of players with peace agreement, when uncontrollable growth of boundary is trapping such unit
4. blocking sea path for potential allied units which are have still peace agreement (due to lack of treaty clearances with other allies),
especially with Claim_Ocean flag.
5. restrictinfra is not working effectively, once city is taken, attacking player would use conquered infrastructure immediately.

Therefore my proposal is, to allow growth of borders only in presence of military unit:
if players unit stay on tile while Turn Change and tile is adjacent to existing border, standard border growth mechanism would apply to this tile and adjacent ones.

Thus growth of borders is not performed by its own, but controllable by units (which is logical - you need to claim land, and allow to tweak borders between allies more precisely).

Additionally, conquered city immediately claim borders only where your units stay, instead of base border radius used during city settlement.
It would result in smaller border radius when city is conquered (may grow later, after TC, if attacking units sustain outside city), thus enemy infrastructure can't be immediately used for further extra-fast conquering.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
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Corbeau
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Re: Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Corbeau »

This is generally going in the right direction, but there is a problem: this completely nulllifies military unhappiness. All your unit needs to do in order to stop citizens being unhappy is sit on enemy territory one turn and then it becomes your territory and citizens are no longer unhappy.

If you are attacking, your units should be considered on enemy land until a stronghold is captured. Basically, wartime change of borders should happen only if a city is conquered.

In this case, if it's a border city, all tiles between the city and the initial border now belong to the attacker. Tiles in direction of the defender should remain in possession of the defender. Exception to both is if there is opposing military superiority in either area. So, military units should dictate the border ONLY if a city has just changed hands. Of course, protocol and criteria should be constructed for deciding when a tile changes or retains ownership. This would be a lot of technical details and separate cases, but that's probably the easier part if there is a mechanism in existence :)

If it is NOT a border city, but an invader jumped deep into enemy rear, the previous also applies: border is changed only by military presence on tiles, not the whole area automatically, but, obviously, there is no area connecting to the attacker's land so there is generally more land that doesn't change hands until it is secured.

And of course, the thing that is completely missing is peaceful change of borders by agreement. This would solve all non-war issues.
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Ignatus
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Re: Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Ignatus »

Probably units just should be able to reclaim lands only if a claim source of their (or maybe sometimes allied) nation presents for the tile. We should have an option to switch this effect on only for the tiles that would be held by the source when the unit goes away, otherwise please build a base. Also, let the reclaiming happen in turn start while city unhappiness is counted in phase end, this would partially resolve the "always happy" issue.

I once had an idea to just store claim strengthes for each tile in a list that may be modified by effects and API. This may make Civ4 "dominating culture" claiming, or Civ5/6 purchasing tiles to the borders one after the another by city culture points (or sometimes with special city or unit actions).
Wahazar
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Re: Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Wahazar »

Corbeau wrote:...there is a problem: this completely nulllifies military unhappiness. All your unit needs to do in order to stop citizens being unhappy is sit on enemy territory one turn and then it becomes your territory and citizens are no longer unhappy.
No, seems you overlook two sentences.
Firstly: and tile is adjacent to existing border.
So, no exclave would be created by unit inside enemy/unclaimed territory.
Also this: standard border growth mechanism would apply to this tile and adjacent ones - border growth would occur exactly how it is executed currently (controlled by radius_sq_city, size_effect and radius_sq_city_permanent settings), but only at presence of your units.

So you can't expand borders into enemy territory more, than it can occurs currently.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
Lachu
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Re: Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Lachu »

I have other solution about unhappiness. Simply don't add unhappiness if enemy unit is near of city in our territory, but add this if enemy unit is near city (even on territory belongs to player ally or owned by player).
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Corbeau
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Re: Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Corbeau »

Wahazar wrote:
Corbeau wrote:...there is a problem: this completely nulllifies military unhappiness. All your unit needs to do in order to stop citizens being unhappy is sit on enemy territory one turn and then it becomes your territory and citizens are no longer unhappy.
No, seems you overlook two sentences.
Firstly: and tile is adjacent to existing border.
So, no exclave would be created by unit inside enemy/unclaimed territory.
I don't.

Suppose you are attacking. There is a great strategic position on a mountain just across the border. The problem is: when you occupy it, your unit will cause unhappiness in its home city. But with this change, the unhappiness ends the next turn. So you engaged in aggression with no consequence for the home town of the unit. And next turn you can go one tile further.

Unless you mean that this:
Also this: standard border growth mechanism would apply to this tile and adjacent ones - border growth would occur exactly how it is executed currently (controlled by radius_sq_city, size_effect and radius_sq_city_permanent settings), but only at presence of your units.

So you can't expand borders into enemy territory more, than it can occurs currently.
prevents #1 from happening in cases when the tile is actually closer to the enemy city. Is this what you meant? But even with this, I think this would cause some really unpleasant imbalance against the defender. Tile ownership is a powerful thing. it shouldn't be changed by simply putting a unit on the tile.
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Wahazar
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Re: Unit controllable boundary growth

Post by Wahazar »

Corbeau wrote: So you can't expand borders into enemy territory more, than it can occurs currently.
This is a crucial statement - I didn't propose that military unit would change ownership of ANY tile - this can be done by making fortress (if enabled).
I proposed, that military unit would change only these tiles, which are currently automatically changed during border expansion on city growth.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
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