[Freeciv-Dev] suggestions

[Siegfried Kettlitz <siegfried_kettlitz@xxxxxxx>]

Here are some suggestions about cities.

As I don't like having many cities, which cause a lot of micromanagment, I thought about what could help.

A) Having a techlist for each city.
When every tech is available in every city, you don't have to build things as libraries or schools(new). You also don't care much about education of your race.
So, let us say, you develop every tech in your capital and the capital contains all researched techs. Then, a teacher-unit (would also be new) of which 1 is made availabe for free and 1 extra for every school built, carrys the tech around your island. When coming into a city it stops and teaches the inhabitants for X turns. Then the city knows the new tech and forgets old techs when some time is elapsed and if the list of known techs in that city is longer than the number of the size (+ 3...6).
That would mean that development in big kingdoms slows a bit and that you cannot build many cities of size 2 or 3 at a high techlevel because they cannot produce the hightech units/buildings.

B) Be able to build metropoles
When turning a city into a metropois you need the metropolis tech(new) and then build cities around the one that is to upgrade (8 cities + center city). Then you are able to build the metropolis building(new) in the city. When built all surrounding cities + the center one are turned into one big city. That means one building counts for the whole metropolis, all prod. trade and food are added.
So, if you have a center city of size 14 + 8*size 2 you get 30 workers to place on the map + 9 fixed workers (which do not consume food or count as population). That would mean that you have problems with unhappiness but a very concentrated production.
And when attacked the whole metropolis is attacked. That means that one defending unit defends 9 tiles. When attack-units homed in the city or the inhabitants over size 4 cause unhappiness the whole metropolis gets unhappy and into disorder.

Such a metropolis could cover a whole little island and would make big maps even smaller.

Normal city:

C = City tile
r = In range of City
- = Out of range

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-rrCrr-
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Ability to place 20 workers. + 1 Fixed extra

Metropolis

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-rrCCCrr-
-rrCCCrr-
-rrCCCrr-
-rrrrrrr-
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Ability to place 36 workers. + 9 Fixed extra

Very big Metropolis

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Ability to place 66 workers. + 16 fixed