[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Suggestion: Growning cities

[Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx>]

On Sun, 27 Aug 2000, Ashley Penney wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 26, 2000 at 11:20:26PM -0400, Greg Wooledge said:
> > (Hey, why did you Blind-carbon-copy the freeciv-dev list?  I had to add
> > the list address manually. ;-) )
> 
> I screwed up, because I expected it to default to reply to list, *grin*. :)
>  
> > Ashley Penney (ashp@xxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> > 
> > > Speaking of which, I have a demand! *grin*.  I want to be able to apply 
> > > something
> > > similar to capitalism (iirc, the improvement that doesn't build anything 
> > > other than
> > > money), but right from the start.
> > 
> > I'm pretty sure this, or something close to it, is going to be in Freeciv
> > pretty soon.  There's been much discussion of it in the last month.
> > 
> > As a player, though, I have a counter-suggestion: build Diplomats (or
> > Spies if you have the tech).  They have no upkeep, they're fairly cheap
> > to build, and they're immensely versatile.  I pretty much always need
> > more Spies/Diplomats than I have.
>  
> Ah, that I didn't know, and that's incredibly helpful as I always play with
> lots of diplomats for dealing with the irritating barbarians that pop up from
> time to time.  Thanks. :)
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ashley Penney | ashp@xxxxxxxxxxx
> "People who claim they don't let things little bother
> them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito."

I use to build Caravans (and yes, also Diplomats). Caravans are versatile,
too. They're fast, no upkeep, just as Diplomats. They have no tactic value,
but they're useful for the Wonders building. I never build Wonders 
directly, just build Caravans. When I have enough of them, I just start
building the Wonder in one city and move all the Caravans there... and if
there's some Caravan left, use them for Trade Route. And also, in emergency,
you can disband them in order to help a city build anything (at the price
of loosing 1/2 of the points, of course; you can do the same with 
Diplomats, too). It's a fast way to transfer production points from one
city to another one (of course you pay a price). If you're building 
Wonders, with Caravans there's no such a price. In building Wonders they
are useful also because they let you start building Wonder X *before* it
becomes available to you... as soon as you have the required tech, you
build it. You can finish building Michelangelo's the *same* turn you get
Monotheism, if you have six Caravans ready.

Diplomats -> (big) tactical value, emergency production transfer, no upkeep.
Caravans -> Wonder building, Trade Routes (prod to gold conversion, just
like Capitalization, only slower, since the longer the Route the better, so
it may take a while to move the Caravan), emergency production transfer,
no upkeep.

I think there's no need of Capitalization at early stages... I've found that
I'm always building Wonders... and when I'm not, it's because I've something
very urgent to build. And I also use a lot of Trade Routes... so production
points are never enough for me... I don't use Capitalization a lot later, 
either. That's for capitalists... my later Communist empires build Nukes 
(*grin*) mostly... B-)

.TM.
-- 
      ____/  ____/   /
     /      /       /                   Marco Colombo
    ___/  ___  /   /                  Technical Manager
   /          /   /                      ESI s.r.l.
 _____/ _____/  _/                     Colombo@xxxxxx