Big and small rivers

[Hafting]

Currently, there is only one type of river in freeciv. I think two sizes makes for more interesting terrains:

Small river (same as the current river)

• Useful for irrigation
• Only small boats, like triremes
• Bridge building tech needed to build a road across the river tile
• All land units cross the tile easily

Big river

• Also useful for irrigation, of course
• All surface ships can go up a big river.
• Building a bridge should cost more, like a road across a mountain tile
• Small land units may cross a big river without a bridge, but uses up all move points entering or leaving such a tile.
• Big land units cannot enter the tile without a bridge. They must wait for bridge building, wait for a ship, or go all the way around.
• A big river tile might provide more trade. But with the river taking up much space, perhaps less food?

Terrain generators should make a few big rivers, and more small ones. A big river might be fed by several small rivers.

[Ignatus]

Interesting idea though not one in priority to appear. Currently, it's possible to make a ruleset with different rivers as you can see in Alien World, but they don't connect to each other like big and small rivers normally should. There should be some tweak that we first generate big rivers and then small rivers, and tell the river generator that big river tiles can hold mouths of small rivers.

Likely there was a scripted river generator somewhere in the forum?

[Hafting]

Very interesting. So, it is possible to have the two kinds of river, just by making a sufficiently sophisticated ruleset+tileset? No need to patch the freeciv c code? I already have a terrain generator that can easily make small and big rivers; It simulates waterflow, so all I need for river sizes is another treshold.

Big and small rivers can probably be made to connect, by putting a small river on any tile having a big river. Adjacent small rivers will then connect to the small river existing under the big one.

I could not run an "alien" world. My freeciv did not like the alio tileset, for some reason. But I can still read the ruleset.

[Dino the Dinosore]

In my dino2 ruleset (see - viewtopic.php?t=91837&start=20) I have tile extras Waterways and Canals. Kind of a similar idea, but you build them with Workers/Engineers.

[cazfi]

Big and small rivers can probably be made to connect, by putting a small river on any tile having a big river. Adjacent small rivers will then connect to the small river existing under the big one.

Likely even standard integrated road types feature can be used. See comments about "integrates" field of roads in terrain.rulesets.

[Dino the Dinosore]

Yes, the "integrates" works. What it looks like in my dino2 ruleset file terrain.ruleset, "Road types:" section -

Code: Select all

[road_4]
extra="Waterway"
first_reqs     =
    { "type", "name", "range", "present"
      "Extra", "Waterway", "Local", FALSE
      "Extra", "Fort", "Local", FALSE
      "Extra", "Fortress", "Local", FALSE
      "Extra", "Airbase", "Local", FALSE
      "TerrainFlag", "CanHaveWaterway", "Local", TRUE
      "TerrainClass", "Oceanic", "Adjacent", TRUE
      "Tech", "Engineering", "Player", TRUE
      "UnitFlag", "Settlers", "Local", TRUE
    }
move_cost=3
move_mode="Cardinal"
compat_special="None"
gui_type="Other"
integrates     = "River", "Canal"

[road_5]
extra="Canal"
move_cost=3
move_mode="Cardinal"
compat_special="None"
gui_type="Other"
integrates        = "River", "Waterway"

You also need appropriate x.png and x.spec files with the appropriate images.