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

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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.
You are correct in saying that simply slowing down the game in every aspect 
won't make much difference except making the games last longer.  The problem 
here is that city building and city growth are closely tied together, and it 
is much easier to build new cities than to grow your cities to a bigger 
size.  That's one of the reasons why ICS works so well.  And the separation 
of the city-founding unit and terraforming unit is meant to address this 
problem.  Unfortunately, making city-founders more expensive will slow down 
the game in general.
Another thing to consider is to modify the growth model of cities so that 
they can grow bigger faster.  But that's even more of a radical change and 
has to be carefully evaluated.
> 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!
I agree.  But the dominance of ICS really makes the game boring, at least to 
me.  On the other hand, there are people who see nothing wrong with it and 
are happy with the way things are.  Ideally, ICS should remain a valid 
strategy without being too overpowering. However, in practice, it is very 
difficult to find the right balance.  In any case, I think people should at 
least have a choice as how the game could be set up to favor some strategies 
over others, and curently there is no way to limit the effectiveness of ICS.
Mike

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