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Re: Colonization (and other questions)


Hans Ronne wrote:
> 
> >Is there a game library similar to Sid Meier's classic
> >Colonization (still one of my favourite games)?
> 
> Not really. What we have so far is a Civ 2 emulation module and the
> Advances Through History module, which is like Civ 2 but with a more
> realistic research tree. If you would like to write a Colonization module,
> you could start with one of these. There is also a Voyages of Discovery
> module that Stan is working on. It may end up looking like Colonization.
> You would have to ask Stan about that.

I just had individual voyages and/or an explorer's career in mind,
no plans to expand that.  Once upon a time, so long ago that the
file has disappeared, I had a start on the board game "Conquistador",
but it's pretty simplistic compared to Colonization.

> >Can the game map be partially random and partially fixed,
> >e.g. Europe plus a random "New World"?
> 
> No, but superimposing a known map on a random map should not be too
> difficult to implement. Interesting idea.

One way to implement would be to add a quasi-terrain-type called
"unspecified", paint it onto the parts you want to vary, then have
synthesizers know to look for the type and only modify those cells.
I've thought about it as a way to add maze generation to areas of
a fractal map, but apparently not enough to get it written down in
the doc/PROJECTS file...

> >Can materials be transformed, e.g. can a smith change metal
> >into tools?
> 
> You can specify that a unit produces one material type each turn if it has
> a specific amount of another material type available. However, the second
> material type is not consumed in the process. This may seem weird, but the
> code is used only in one game (empire) where the required second material
> type is "civilians" (sic).

The idea is that this sort of material is a catalyst for production;
an abandoned city is not going to be productive no matter how much
raw material is present.  (The civilians are modelled as a material
because their numbers may go up and down.)  You can approximate a
conversion behavior by making metal a catalyst, and also setting
a nonzero consumption for it, but no starvation hit; then the smith
produces tools at a steady rate, metal disappears at a steady rate,
but tool production stops when the supply of metal is gone.

As Hans observes, this part of Xconq is not fully flexible; part
of the problem is that Xconq can't do arbitrary production formulas,
but must choose some subset to support.

The first choice is manual vs automatic.  There is some code that
starts on providing production via explicit player action, but it's
incomplete - not least because a game that depended on this would
probably be horribly tedious.  Production in good games is invariably
automatic, keyed to either unit type and location (Civ), or to a
set-and-forget extraction activity (RTS games).  Xconq supports both
of these modes.

The second choice is the algorithm to use, assuming automatic production.
Units can be set to produce automatically, x amt/turn, or to produce in
proportion to surrounding terrain ("advanced" units only), or to convert
materials at a specified rate (conversion).  I don't remember Colonization
well enough to know which is most appropriate for those units; we may
want to add some additional cases in the code.

Stan

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