A few thoughts on Dragoon/Caravel

[FriendAtArms]

While I was waiting for feedback on some of my other posts, I played a little over 100 turns of Multiplayer v2.4 (Dragoon) on the new website, freecivweb-dot-com. It's been a couple of years since I played the browser version; Caravel was out but I never got around to it, so all my previous experience was with Brava. For whatever it's worth, here are my thoughts.

1. Capturing "civilian" units is pretty nifty! I know it was in Brava but I never actually used it. I played my old games very defensively, so by the time I was moving into enemy territory I was using airplanes and tanks.

2. Emissary units -- also nifty! I got to make alliances earlier than I remember from the Brava days.

3. I like the idea of the Founder unit. I think. I wonder why all the Settlers you get at the start of the game weren't replaced with Founders. Maybe it speeds up the early game too much?

4. The Chand Baori confuses me. Well-Diggers already solve the "your first city has to be in a riverless desert" problem, and it doesn't seem to matter whether Tribesmen lose the ability to work, because you should have already recycled them by the time you've got Wonders up and running. I guess diagonal irrigation is...kinda neat?

5. Speaking of Wonders, is there any intention of implementing the Olympics? I can't find anything when I search the forum.

6. If you go into Help>Manual and click the "Vigil Flowchart" link, it sends you to a website called "Indoslot303". But the link to "Vigil Engagement Chart" works, as do all the other Manual links.

7. At one point, the soundtrack went quiet. When I checked under Prefs, it displayed the message "Error loading: music/ancient/RebirthsPortalUnveiled". The music never came back on.

8. I somehow minimized a "Tile Information" window, and it refused to maximize, close out, or even be dragged somewhere convenient. It just stayed put, blocking the southern edge of my minimap. Screenshot attached below.

[Dino the Dinosore]

Agree capturing is cool - I have that in one of my custom rulesets.

Also like the Founder unit. I have that in both of my custom rulesets, and think it would be a good idea to incorporate that in the official supplied civ2civ3 ruleset, and/or the sandbox ruleset.

"your first city has to be in a riverless desert" is indeed a problem, but I think the Well-Digger is an ugly kludge. Better to just allow a city tile to be an irrigation source. Easy to implement, just add another action in actions.ruleset -

Code: Select all

[enabler_irrigate_src_tech_not_in_desert]
action        = "Build Irrigation"
actor_reqs    =
    { "type",         "name",        "range",  "present"
      "UnitTypeFlag", "Workers",     "Local",  TRUE
      "UnitClass",    "Sea",         "Local",  FALSE
    }
target_reqs   =
    { "type",         "name",        "range", "present"
      "CityTile", "Center",     "CAdjacent", TRUE
      "TerrainAlter", "CanIrrigate", "Tile",  TRUE
    }

Olympics wonder is intriguing idea. What would be reqs and effects?