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

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, Dec 03, 2000 at 03:18:31PM -0500, Mike Jing wrote:
> 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.

We saw such a 'slowdown' change between 1.8.0 and 1.9.0 when cities suddenly
had to have a foodbox of 20 before growing to size 2.  I am not sure what
the net effect was.  I'd expect longer games because you still need to develop
the same number of cities, it just takes longer.

> 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 a while I played games with slower research speed
(increased 'researchspeed').  This was very effective
in making the expiring wonders worthwhile (Pyramids,
Great Lib, Lighthouse).  But games took much longer.

We need settings that speed the game up!

-- 
Reinier