Peaceful ruleset for freeciv

[fraktalisman]

I've never played the original civilization game. After installing Linux, I discovered freeciv and I have been fascinated ever since. But for me, the main disadvantage of civilization's (freeciv's) concept is that it concentrates too much on warfare. I have been searching for a peceful ruleset and even tried to establish my own peaceful ruleset for freeciv, based on the classic civ2-style freeciv ruleset.

Not reinventing the wheel, I'd be glad to install a peaceful ruleset that is already there. Otherwise, I'd like to share ideas and comments, finish my own alternative civilization ruleset project and finally share my peaceful ruleset for others who maybe like to play a more civilized civilization.

Some ideas and issues that I've already figured out:
- you can't simply remove all military elements.
It won't be civ anymore, it would be boring, and most of all, the AI computer players wouldn't cope
- the AI computer players will find a way to establish attacking units no matter what. I tried to set attack=0 for all units, but the AI got attack points from barracks and veteran system
- there are aspects besides military strength that can be used to still have interesting and different units: firepower (== working power for workers and engineers as well), range of vision, speed of movement, special flags and roles like Diplomat, SuperSpy, IgZOC (ignore Zone of Control), IgTer (ignore terrain) etc
- when making substantial changes to units, other aspects - especially research dependencies - should be modified as well
- there are aspects for civil research, trade, flight, diplomacy that were neglected in classical military gameplay - change the rules to emphasize these aspects ...
- it is, in principle possible, to add totally new inventions like magic - I tried but it seemed to complicated and made the AI crash after some time of playing
- it is possible to alter many aspects of ther ruleset and still have capable AI computer players and a consistent ruleset ... testing is necessary


Any comments, ideas, experience or probably files to share?

As I don't have much spare time this year, it might take a long time until I reply ... but I probably will.
There are also some experimental ruleset files which I could post.

[robinp]

I presume that you used the standard version of Freeciv, which is fairly close to Civ2. Stepping just a little further away from Civ2, you could try C-evo (...//C-evo.org). C-evo succeeds in improving on many aspects of the commercial game, and it encourages the creation and use of alternative AIs. The standard download includes the standard AI, which is fairly aggressive, but the website offers others for download and indicates that some are quite gentle, describing one as "Peaceful and diplomatic". There's an AI Development Kit (downloaded with the game) to help you design your own if the current selection does not satisfy.

Another major difference between C-evo and Civ2 or Freeciv is that you design your own military units beyond the half-dozen primitive units you can start with. So you can eventually have a unit that has three times as much defensive strength as offensive strength and is practically unshakeable in a walled city until the opponents get something much more advanced.

However, to make war a less important part of the game, you probably have to change the rules so that defenders have more advantage, thus reducing the likely amount of attacking. People such as you and me who just like to develop science and culture and build a spaceship can then stack our cities with good defenders and spend hardly any time worrying about whether they will be destroyed.