[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Different sized city area

[Marko Lindqvist <caz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 4 Jan 2000, Tony Stuckey wrote:

> > >  Original idea: When cities grow, their area of effect grows as well. In
> > > game terms, you can't set your workers so far away from small town than
> > > from big metropolis.
> > 
> > Yes, this would be great.  More realistic, and it helps fighting the
> > city building frenzy that dominates much of the game.  I've always wondered
> > what was holding this back ... wouldn't the layout of the city popup
> > windows be a problem?
> 
>       Realistically, city size has nothing to do with it -- you're
> limited by how far your horse can pull the cart before your apples spoil.

 So it should depend on your tech level (horses vs air planes)  :)

 Besides, apples (food) is not the only thing you can 'collect' from
contryside. I don't think ore (resources) and gold get spoiled so easily.

 Bigger cities have more resources to upkeep law and collect taxes from
surrounding area.

> Doesn't matter if your destination is 30K people or 30M.

 Long distance is a risk. Apples you are going to sell just might spoil if
something unexpected happens. You may get robbed. It's just not worth it,
if you are not absolutely sure somebody is going to pay you a lot for your
product. If destination city have more people, it's also more likely that
there is some fool who is ready to pay you as much as you ever are going
to ask.

> 
>       Changing the city radius would skew the "best available tiles"
> upward, and therefore make most city buildings slightly more valuable.
> 

 One can always balance this by setting 'specials' lower, so at least
there is not so many specials at city area.

>       You're going to have many more unhappy people in larger cities.
> game.unhappysize defaults to 4, and ranged from 2-6 in Microprose
> Civilization.  That alone is probably enough of a pain in the neck to not
> do it.  Happiness wonders become game breakers, Shakespeare's Theater in
> particular.

 Well, I'm not going to change default behavior. Almost any option can
unbalance game, if used without thinking. If you are going to play
with bigger cities, you should set other settings accordingly. Make
'unhappysize', 'aqueductsize' and 'sewersize' bigger. Lower 'foodbox' a
bit.


 Well, at least I'm going to play some games with bigger cities myself, so
my work have not been useless (in my current version there is server
option to set city size to 3, 5 or 7).


 Caz

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