[Freeciv-Dev] Bug in freeciv

[<jonlan-9@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>(by way of Jeff Mallatt <jjm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>)]

My name is Jon-Mikko, I am from sweden, and I used to play civilization &
civilization 2 LOTS. I just found out a couple of days ago about freeciv,
and i tried it out, been playing some internet-games against other people,
and I found this VERY important thing that you must have forgotten to add.
The thing is, as it is now, everyone build as many settlers as they can,
and as many cities too as close to eachother as possible. The one that
builds most cities wins, kind of, and it is not unusual for a player to
have like 40 or 50 cities of size 1 and 2 clustered over one little
continent with no roads, no irrigration, with just one square between the
cities. Everyone then uses republic and researches like one advance each
turn. This tactic totally ruins the game, and it is all just one bug that
is making it possible to use it. In civilization you get more corruption
the farer away from the capital you build a city AND how many cities you
have. In freeciv it seems like the number of cities doesn't matter at all,
only distance matters. In civilization for instance, you could have 4
cities on despotism without any corruption. If you built a 5:th city that
city became in civil disorder one size smaller than the others. Lets say
you play emperor skill and on despotism. The first four cities then became
in disorder on size 4. The following four, city number 5-8 became in
disorder at size 3, and the four following at size 2, and so on. On
monarchy you could have 6 cities without any corruption penalty, and on
republic you could have 8. Communism/Democracy no corruption penalty. This
greatly increases the various kind of strategy you can use to win the game,
allowing perfectionistic players to have a chance. As it is now, noone
builds irrigration, noone builds city improvements, nooone get cities
larger than 3 or 4, everyone just builds settlers, settlers, settlers and
expands...  Well, that was about it, I hope you got the time to read this
email, for I only want you to try make freeciv as good as possible... :)



/Jon-Mikko