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freeciv-1.13.0-6mdk.x86_64.rpm

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                       Freeciv Rulesets
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          (Originally by David Pfitzner, dwp@mso.anu.edu.au)

Quickstart:
-----------
 Rulesets allow modifiable sets of data for units, advances, terrain,
 improvements, wonders, nations, cities, governments and miscellaneous
 game rules, without requiring recompilation, in a way which is
 consistent across a network and through savegames.  (In the future
 there could be other categories of rulesets.)

- To play Freeciv normally: don't do anything special; the new
  features all have defaults which give the standard Freeciv 
  behaviour.

- To play a game with rules more like Civ1, start the server with:
       ./ser -r data/civ1.serv
  (and any other command-line arguments you normally use; depending on
  how you have Freeciv installed you may have to give the installed
  data directory path instead of "data").  

  Start the client normally.  The client must be network-compatible
  (usually meaning the same or similar version) but otherwise nothing
  special is needed.  (However some third-party rulesets may
  potentially require special graphics to work properly, in which case
  the client should have those graphics available and be started with
  an appropriate '--tiles' argument.)

  As well as a Civ1 style as above, Freeciv now has a Civ2 style
  similary, although currently it is almost identical to standard
  Freeciv rules.

  Note that the Freeciv AI might not play as well with rules other
  than standard Freeciv.  (See notes below.)

The rest of this file contains:

- More detailed information on creating and using custom/mixed 
  rulesets.

- Information on implementation, and notes for further development.

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Using and modifying rulesets:
-----------------------------

Rulesets are specified using new server options.  The command above
of "./ser -r data/civ1.serv" just reads a file which sets these 
options (as well as a few of the standard server options).  
The new server options are:

        techs, governments, units, buildings,
        terrain, nations, cities, game.

They are special server options in that they take string values, but 
otherwise the behave like normal server options.  Eg, try the server 
command "explain techs".

For each of these options, the value of the option specifies a 
subdirectory of the Freeciv data directory, containing a file
name techs.ruleset, units.ruleset, buildings.ruleset, etc.

Eg, the commands:
   
	set techs default
	set governments default
	set units civ1
	set buildings custom
	set terrain civ2
	set nations default
	set cities default
	set game custom

would specify the files:

	data/default/techs.ruleset
	data/default/governments.ruleset
	data/civ1/units.ruleset
	data/custom/buildings.ruleset
	data/civ2/terrain.ruleset
	data/default/nations.ruleset
	data/default/cities.ruleset
	data/custom/game.ruleset

(This is just an example, and may not give very sensible rules; the
directory data/custom and the file data/custom/buildings.ruleset do 
not exist in standard Freeciv.)

The ruleset files in the data directory are user-editable, so you can
modify them to create modified or custom rulesets (without having to
recompile Freeciv).  It is suggested that you _don't_ edit the 
existing files in the "default", "classic", "civ1" and "civ2"
directories, but rather copy them to another directory and edit the
copies.  This is so that its clear when you are using modified rules
and not the standard ones.

The format used in the ruleset files should be fairly 
self-explanatory.  A few points:

- The files are not all independent, since eg, units depend on
  advances specified in the techs file.

- Wonders and city improvements have a new field, "variant".  This
  allows limited changes to the effects of specific wonders and
  improvements, where such changes have been implemented.  See the
  "TODO Variants" section below for which variant effects which have
  been implemented so far.

- Units have a new field, "roles", which is like "flags", but 
  determines which units are used in various circumstances of the
  game (rather than intrinsic properties of the unit).
  See comments in common/unit.h

- The [units_adjust] section of the units file deserves some
  explanation.  It contains the entries:

	max_hitpoints, max_firepower, firepower_factor.

  The first two entries (unless zero) override the hitpoints and 
  firepower entries for individual units, as a convenience.  
  The value of firepower_factor is used when combat is resolved:
  All combat firepower values are multiplied by firepower_factor,
  which means that the effective hitpoints of any unit is really 
      (hitpoints/firepower_factor).
  Actually, it is these effective hitpoints which are report to the
  client for all hitpoint values.
  (This complicated setup is so that the AI calculations don't 
  blow up when using Civ1 rulesets.)

- The cities section of the nations ruleset files deserves some
  explanation.  At first glance, it simply contains a comma-
  separated list of quoted city names.  However, this list can
  also be used to label cities by their preferred terrain type.
  Cities can be labeled as matching or not matching a particular
  type of terrain, which will make them more (or less) likely to
  show up as the "default" name.  The exact format of the list
  entry is

	"<cityname> (<label>, <label>, ...)"

  where the cityname is just the name for the city (note that it
  may not contain quotes or parenthesis), and each "label" matches
  (case-insensitive) a terrain type for the city (or "river"), with a
  preceeding ! to negate it.  The terrain list is optional, of course,
  so the entry can just contain the cityname if desired.  A city name
  labeled as matching a terrain type will match a particular map
  location if that map location is on or adjacent to a tile of the named
  terrain type; in the case of the "river" label (which is a special
  case) only the map location itself is considered.  A complex example:

    "Wilmington (ocean, river, swamp, forest, !hills, !mountains, !desert)"

  will cause the city of Wilmington to match ocean, river, swamp, and
  forest tiles while rejecting hills, mountains, and deserts.  Although
  this degree of detail is probably unnecessary to achieve the desired
  effect, the system is designed to degrade smoothly so it should work
  just fine.

  (A note on scale: it might be tempting to label London as !ocean, i.e.
  not adjacent to an ocean.  However, on a reasonably-sized FreeCiv world
  map, London will be adjacent to the ocean; labeling it !ocean will tend
  to give bad results.  This is a limitation of the system, and should be
  taken into account when labelling cities.)

  Also note that a city earlier in the list has a higher chance of being
  chosen than later cities.

Properties of units and advances are now fairly well generalised.
Properties of buildings are still rather inflexible.

NOTE:  There is much in the rulesets that is not completely
implemented.  Be sure to read Restrictions and Limitations, below.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
The civstyle option:
--------------------

The server option civstyle still exists, but its only current use is
to determine how much of the map is revealed when the Apollo Program
id built.

The civstyle option will be removed in the near future.

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The AI:
-------

An important caveat regarding rulesets is that while rulesets allow
considerable flexibility, the AI has been designed and tested using
"standard Freeciv" (effectively Civ2) rules.  So the AI may not do as
well with modified rules.

Some changes to the AI have been made to try to take some of the
ruleset changes into account, and the combat calculations have been
fudged to try to avoid core dumps, but in general you should not
expect the AI to work as well with non-default options (where Civ1 is
definitely included in "non-default").

Examples of problems which have not been fixed:
- Units not having hitpoints in Civ1 can make a big difference to 
  appropriate combat strategies.  
- City walls are sufficiently different (increased build cost, and 
  upkeep; and effect vs sea) to require different handling?
- Without the Harbour and Offshore Platform improvements, cities with
  many ocean squares are much more limited in Civ1.  
- Wonders which only work on a single continent are not given special
  consideration by the AI.

Hopefully this situation can be improved in the future, but the more 
flexible the rules, the harder to write a good AI...

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Restrictions and Limitations:
-----------------------------

units.ruleset:

  Unused entries:

    - uk_gold

  Restrictions:

    - At least one unit with role "FirstBuild" must be available
      from the start (i.e., tech_req = "None").

    - There must be units for these roles:
      - "Explorer"
      - "FerryBoat"
      - "Hut"
      - "Barbarian"
      - "BarbarianLeader"
      - "BarbarianBuild"
      - "BarbarianBoat"  (move_type must be "Sea")
      - "BarbarianSea"

    - There must be at least one unit with flag "Cities".

  Limitations:

    - These unit flag combinations won't work:
      - "Diplomat" and "Caravan"

buildings.ruleset:

  Unused entries:

    - terr_gate
    - spec_gate
    - sabotage
    - effect

nations.ruleset:

  Unused entries:

    - attack
    - expand
    - civilized
    - advisors
    - tech_goals
    - wonder
    - government

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Implementation details:
-----------------------

This section and following section will be mainly of interested to
developers who are familiar with the Freeciv source code.

Rulesets are mainly implemented in the server.  The server reads the
files, and then sends information to the clients.  Mostly rulesets 
are used to fill in the basic data tables on units etc, but in some
cases some extra information is required.

For units and advances, all information regarding each unit or advance
is now captured in the data tables, and these are now "fully
customizable", with the old enumeration types completely removed.  For
improvements and wonders, each one has a largely unique effect, so the
effects themselves are still hardwired in the code.  The "variant"
field now allows some flexibility, though the effects themselves must
still be hard-coded.  There are some plans to improve this situation.

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TODO:
-----

- More improvement and wonder variants for Civ1 (see next section).
- Other alternative (non-Civ1) variants?  (If desired.)
- Better: Scrap variants completely and do something more general...

- Fix up AI dynamic government choice code.
- Work on making the AI handle non-default cases better.
- Could have other information to help the AI?
  Eg, scores for units/techs/buildings, to help the AI know which 
  ones to prefer?

- Rulesets for: time progression, ...?

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TODO Variants: 
--------------

First, those variants which have been implemented:
(Note Variant=0 should always be "standard Freeciv" effect.)

Barracks:	 Variant=0: just works for ground units (Civ2)
		 Variant=1: works also for air and sea units (Civ1)
Barracks II, Barracks III, Sun Tzu:
		 These use the same variant value and effect as
		 Barracks.
City Walls:      Variant=0: only applies against land and heli units
		 Variant=1: applies against sea units too
Police Station:  This uses the same variant value and effect as 
		 Women's Suffrage (see below).

Pyramids:	 Variant=0: counts as Granary in every city (Civ2)
		 Variant=1: allows all government types and there is 
			    no transition anarchy (Civ1)
United Nations:  Variant=0: units regain extra hp per turn (Freeciv)
		 Variant=1: allows all government types and there is 
			    no transition anarchy (Civ1) (see note(*))
Hoover Dam:	 Variant=0: works on all cities owned
		 Variant=1: only works for cities on the same 
			    continent as where the wonder is built
J.S. Bach:	 Variant=0: works on all cities owned
		 Variant=1: only works for cities on the same 
			    continent as where the wonder is built
Women's Suff.:   Variant=0: -1 unit-unhappy per City (-2 under 
			    Democracy) (Freeciv)
	         Variant=1: -1 unit-unhappy per Unit (Civ1)
Magellan's Exp.: Variant=0: gives sea units 2 extra move points
		 Variant=1: gives sea units only 1 extra move point
Great Wall:	 Uses same variant and effect as City Walls.
Leo's Workshop:  Variant=0: Upgrades one obsolete unit per game turn.
		 Variant=1: Upgrades all obsolete units each turn.
Michelangelo's:  Variant=0: same as a Cathedral in every city
		 Variant=1: doubles effect of cathedrals

Other differences between Civ1 and Civ2/Freeciv which have not been
implemented as variants:

Copernicus' Obs.: Freeciv: science output +50% in a city
		  Civ1:    doubles knowledge production in city, after
			   all other effects.
Isaac Newton's:   Freeciv: science output +100% in a city
		  Civ1:    "increases effects of Libraries and 
			   Universities" - by how much??

There are other more minor Civ1/Civ2/Freeciv differences, which 
could be handled using variants, for:
    Courthouse 
    Cure For Cancer
    Hanging Gardens
    Lighthouse

Notes:

Aqueduct and Sewer System: 
   The maximum sizes for cities without these improvements is handled 
separately, without using variants.  This leaves variants available 
if some other effects are desired.

Colosseum, Cathedral, Temple:
   Note that the technology effects on the effectiveness of these
buildings are not handled by variants, but by specially noting the
techs; see game.rtech fields cathedral_plus, cathedral_minus,
colosseum_plus, and temple_plus.  (Also applies to Michelangelo's.)

(*) United Nations: 
    I'm not sure what to do here: the diplomatic effect of Civ1,Civ2 
isn't appropriate for multiplayer Freeciv, and the hp effect of 
Freeciv isn't appropriate for Civ1 (no hitpoints).  The govchange 
effect seems reasonable -- note there is no Statue of Liberty in 
Civ1, and Pyramids, which has the same effect in Civ1, becomes 
obsolete.  Alternatively a Suffrage-like effect would seem sensible: 
your population is more willing to go to war if it has the sanction 
of the United Nations!

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