[Freeciv-Dev] Re: fascism patch

[Jed Davis <jldavis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

--On Sunday, 30 July 2000 8:44 AM -0700 paulz@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Now one to more general Freeciv.  One of the authors of this modpack
> mentioned how his flag spread like a virus all over the continent.  But
> this pretty much happens in every game.  The civilizations in Freeciv
> aren't really "free" (as in liberty), they all end up under the iron
> fist of whatever nation K is playing (If you don't know K, play on
> civserver.freeciv.org sometime :).  We are creating a game where the best
> strategy is to build tons of small cities so your nation can out
> reproduce the other ones like rabbits.  Then create war machines and
> crush them.
>
> "So what?" you say.  And I guess I do too, to a certian extent.
> However I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to put some thought into
> looking for other ways to play the game.  I like the idea of other
> types of warfare in Civ:CTP, if not the implimentation.  I like the
> idea of border cities voluntarily switching sides because of economic
> reasons.  I think it would even be interesting to have parts of a
> cities population immigrate to another city of a border nation (I live
> in San Diego, so I see this on a daily basis).
>
> Food for thought, and hopefully a comment or two.
Well, since the Freeciv style isn't tied to the rules of any other Civ, 
we've got some leeway to encourage larger cities...
Maybe Temples wouldn't have upkeep costs, since they'd support themselves 
with donations; if this seems too powerful maybe it could be dependent on 
knowledge of some tech and/or usage of some government; also, Colosseums 
might have reduced or eliminated upkeep (ticket/concession sales?) under 
appropriate conditions.
The contentness-producing wonders, however, unbalance the game a little too 
much in favor of their owner, so as I've said before I think they (and 
others) should gain per-city upkeeps.
Or maybe economies of scale: large cities might have production bonuses, or 
small cities have production penalties (or both), since larger cities would 
have larger-scale, more efficient production infrastructure; this could 
also be done to science, on the grounds that larger cities would have more 
resources for researchers.
Something else I think might be unbalanced is cities' growing every turn 
from celebrating under certain governments.  Maybe the citizens should be 
spoiled by this state, so for every population unit added, the number that 
are content by default decreases by one?
And on governments: Is the Republic really that much more powerful than 
Monarchy?  (Same for Democracy/Communism.)  Should it be?  Should Republic 
and Monarchy really have the same amount of corruption?  I tend to think of 
a republic as being more corruptible than a monarchy for some reason.
Just my $.04

--Jed