[Freeciv-Dev] Re: More on (un)happiness

[Paul Dean <Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> Looking through government.ruleset, I found another variable related
> to happiness and empire size: empire_size_inc.
> 
> ; empire_size_inc  = if non-zero, reduce one content citizen for
> ;                    every empire_size_inc cities once #cities
> ;                    exceeds (cityfactor + empire_size_mod)
> 
> I guess someone had already took this effect into consideration.
> However, it defaults to zero, so it doesn't have any effect yet.  I
> think it should be enabled.  Together with a smaller unhappysize, it
> will help to slow down the initial expansion.  I think we can all
> agree that expansion is way overly important in Freeciv.  There are
> many benefit to this, as I have mentioned in earlier posts.

As well as the AI issues, which you mentioned, your idea would
actually make the game much quicker -- the first person to build
Michaelangelo is certain to win!  Game over.

If there is more unhappiness in the game, then the happiness wonders
will have to be taken out or made *much* less powerful.

Personally, I don't think that unhappiness is the key to encouraging
players to have a smaller number of larger cities.  I think you have
to give *incentive* to having larger cities.

The problem at the moment is that the number of tiles used is biased
towards having lots of small cities - 1 city of size 2 uses 3 tiles
whereas 2 cities of size 1 use a total of 4 - so you're always going
to want to split a size two city into two cities of size one even if
you have to put some munits in them to keep them happy.  I think The
way to get around the smallpox syndrome is to allow larger cities to
use more tiles or get other benefits.  For example, a city of size 5
gets an extra trade point per tile.  Another example, a city of size
at least 5 gets to use 2 extra tiles free.  Also the way that the food
box increases in size discourages city growth - it's easier to fill a
foodbox of a size-1 city than a size-7 city!

Lots of issues, which are not solved at all by having lots of
unhappiness.

-- 
Paul
http://www.redeemed.org.uk/