[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Fanatism patch.

[Greg Wooledge <wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tony Stuckey (stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

>       Well, yes.  But look at the way resource management is raped
> under Fundamentalism:
> 
>       - no citizen is ever unhappy.
>               -- YOW!  What bonehead came up with this?!??!?!

I agree that the Civ2 Fundamentalism is unbalanced.

>       - Because of 1), all city happiness improvements a) cost no upkeep,
>         and b) produce gold equal to the number of people they make
>         happy.

Uh huh.

>       - 10 units are supported for free in every city.
>               -- No other government gets more than 3.

Despotism gets more than 3, in cities of size 4 or more.  I often used
that in Civ1 (no freebie units in Monarchy/Communism).  In Civ2, it's
not as important....

>       - Fanatics never need support
>               -- This is the most reasonable of all of them, because
>               -- Fanatics aren't a game-breaking good unit.

Agreed.  But for the same reason, it's not a very desirable feature of
the government.

>       - Diplomatic penalties for Sabotage are reduced.
>               -- Since they never mattered in the first place, they don't 
>               -- matter after this change either.  Humans will make up
>               -- their own mind about your Reputation, and AIs won't live
>               -- long enough to bother.

Right.  Of course, with a Civ2-like AI it matters... but Freeciv doesn't
have one of those (yet).

>       - Science is halved.
>               -- oooooh.  I'm shaking in my boots.

Agreed.  You can steal tech if you fall behind.

[snip]

>       So in the final analysis, a large city under Fundamentalism
> produces 158 gold/turn + taxes.  A large city under Republic/Democracy
> produces 37 gold/turn + taxes.

I also think Civ2 had a bug -- I always ended up with a lot more gold
under Fundy than I should've gotten, even after the obscene bonuses.

We already know that Civ2 Fundy is unbalanced.  Nobody was arguing for it.

What we need to know is: is a Fundy government with the following
attributes balanced?

   * 10 units upkeep-free per city
   * Fanatic units, no upkeep ever(*)(**)
   * Communism levels of martial law
   * "Very low" corruption (Civ2 manual, p. 68)
   * Communism levels of resource collection (no bonus/penalty, settlers
     eat 2 food)
   * Max trade allocation 80%
   * Half science
   * Fundamentalism advance depends on Monotheism and Conscription

If someone wants to add this in and play-test it, that'd be great.
(Did I miss anything, other than the irrelevant diplomatic immunity?)

The more I think about it, the more I think that the above is pretty
well balanced, though some tweaking may be in order -- maybe give them
Despotism levels of unit support (support 1 per population point), max
trade allocation 60%, and double happiness for Temples and Cathedrals?
Just a thought....

(*)In Civ2, being under a Fundamentalist government is not sufficient to
allow the construction of Fanatic units.  You must also actually *know*
the advance of Fundamentalism.  If you became Fundy by using the Statue
of Liberty and don't have the Fundamentalism advance, you can't build
the Fanatics.  Whether this is a bug or a feature is a matter for debate,
I suppose.

(**)I just checked the Civ2 tech poster, and I was correct before.
The Fanatic is identical to the Rifleman, except that it has an
attack of 4 instead of 5, and costs 20 shields to build instead of 40.
They're quite good as defenders, especially if you coat the map with
stacked pairs of them (to avoid bribery)....

-- 
Greg Wooledge                    | "Truth belongs to everybody."
wooledge@xxxxxxxxxxx             |   Red Hot Chili Peppers
http://www.kellnet.com/wooledge/ |

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