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

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marko Lindqvist <caz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It seems that you are against all expansion, when I think expansion 
> outwards is ok and actually requires skill. We seem to agree that cities 
> should overlap less (few big cities instead of lots of small ones).
I am not sure if I said all expansion are bad.  Expansion certainly is an 
important part of the game -- you can't expect to win without any expansion 
(unless you are playing OCC against the AI).  The problem starts when 
expansion becomes the only game in town because there are no checks and 
balances in place to put other interesting aspects of the game into play.  I 
think we can all agree that expansion is way too important with current 
default rules.
> Umh, I just found out that my own rulesets use value 3 :)
>
> I remembered that we were using value 2 and one more sounded a bit too big 
> when there's a lot of coastline. (I have sometimes used value 4 with big 
> landmass)
That's good to hear.  It's encouraging to find out that there are people who 
are not only open to these ideas, but actually used them.
> > The point of ICS or smallpox strategy is that it gives you so many cities 
> > that losing one, or even a dozen won't affect you much at all.
> My point was that no matter how many cities you have, there is constant 
> added to it's value when you lose it. So, you don't lose just (1/number of 
> cities) of your empire, but much more. Currently only such constant is fact 
> that enemy gets one free (if conquercost=0) tech from you. I know;  one 
> tech is next to nothing with default rules.
My point was that ICS can make all these concerns irrelevant.  That's how 
unbalnaced it really is.
> > I am not at all surprised to see a lot of people opposed to this.  But if 
> > you think about it for a minute, you will see that it's the perfect way to 
> > balance a multiplayer game, because it puts a limit on expansion so that 
> > everyone will end up with more or less the same number of cities.  The 
> > problem with any civ type game is that exponential expansion will magnify 
> > any difference in initial conditions many times over after a couple of 
> > hundred turns, so without any mechanisms to limit the expansion, the 
> > person with the most land area will win most of the time
> But taking control of biggest land area shows skill by itself (gen1 is 
> unfair, no matter what you do). If one can drive other players out of some 
> area, he have earned right to build cities there. Also, number of cities 
> grows when you conquer/buy enemy cities. I don't think that only smallpox 
> players conquer enemy cities :)
> So I still think that you should not punish players severely simply
> because they have many cities. That said, I don't have anything against 
> that we slow expansion down.
Here you seem to be saying that the game is intrinsicly unfair and there is 
nothing we can do about it, and I have to disagree.  I think we can and 
should.  The real issue here is not about fairness, but gameplay, as it 
always is.  It seems unfair to "punish" a player simply because he/she is 
good at expansion, but that's missing the point.  By limiting the 
effectiveness of expansion, you can encourage/force players to use other 
skills besides expansion and bring previously ignored elements of the game 
back into play, thus making the game both more challenging and enjoyable, at 
least IMHO.
Many people hate this idea because it means they will lose the edge they 
have gained through previous experience and effectively have to relearn the 
game.  Others argue that it will lead to prolonged games because it is in 
effect a defensive advantage.  I happen to think this will make the game 
more fun to play, for more reasons than one, and that we can find other ways 
to speed up the game if needed.  But that's just me.
Mike





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