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

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Paul,

You made a very good point.  However, I think you really have to try it out 
before making up your mind.  The main reason this actually will work is that 
it slows down the game significantly, and as Asher correctly argued in 
another post, you HAVE to slow the game down to encourage city development, 
and increasing unhappiness is a simple and elegant way of doing this.  Apart 
from that the game may possibly take longer (though not necessarily in real 
time terms because it actually reduces micromanagement due to fewer cities), 
it has only benefits.
As for the happiness wonders being too powerful, I have to disagree.  All 
the global wonders actually benefit more if you can build more and more 
cities.  However, if you enable an empire_size_inc of 1, the effect of 
Michaelangilo's will be cancalled by a mere three more cities.  Moreover, if 
we introduce a 'popfactor' to take into consideration of the additional 
unhappiness caused by total population, it will furthur limit of the 
usefulness of these wonders.  What this does is to force the player to 
improve the land, build more marketplaces/banks and use luxury to counter 
the unhappiness, which in turn encouage bigger cities, and all in all makes 
a much more balanced game.
A slower game will make the early wonders more useful simply because for one 
thing they will not expire so quickly anymore.  This opens a whole lot of 
other possibilities.  For example, the Great Library will let you set a 
lower science rate and put more money into luxury, which brings about 
happiness just as the happiness wonders do.  And with bigger cities, science 
wonders such as Copernicus' and Newton's become much more important and have 
the same effect.  Not to mention A. Smith's, which saves you a lot of cash 
in tax dollars now that you actually do build city improvements (it's still 
not overly powerful because you don't have as many cities), which also could 
be turned into luxury.  Therefore, the game is actually more balanced 
instead of the other way around.  To be sure, Michaelangilo's will still be 
very important, but in fact the playing field will actually be leveled 
compared to the way it is now.
I don't pretend to be an expert in Civ2 gameplay.  Almost everything I 
learned so far I first raed from somewhere else.  But the more I look at it, 
the more obvious to me that this is the way the game is intended to be 
played.  By this I DO NOT mean there is only one correct strategy, but that 
these changes will put all aspect the game into play and enable a number of 
equally viable strategies instead of simply expanding to oblivion.  I 
strongly believe it will actually balance the game instead of unbalance it.  
It will be hard to get rid of those old habits, but in the end it will be a 
much more rewarding experience.
Mike


> From: Paul Dean <Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: mike_jing@xxxxxxxxx
> CC: freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Freeciv-Dev] More on (un)happiness
> Date: 03 Dec 2000 12:32:58 +0000
>
> "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/
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