[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Civ II player puzzled by ICS strategy (long)

[K@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Mike Jing wrote:

> BTW, I have already concluded that patching out the city center is not the 
> right way to go and thus abandoned that approach.

You and Paul told me about your playtesting of the no city center
patch and I think it is important to be more specific about the
statement above in this list. Both of you told me that the patch did in
principle work to prevent ICs. You only reported that food specials 
became too important (such that somebody without fell too far behind).
This was for no city center+constant granary size+
(4 food for food specials, 3 for grassland, 2 for plains etc.)
and can, of course, be made fairer with some fine tuning.

Of course, your deity level patch successfully prevents ICS without
the need of fine tuning. Deity level and no city center
are somehow complementary approaches: 

- deity level prevents ICS at some size of the empire by 
  happiness punishment and is rather difficult to manage 
  (something for experts)
- no city center tries to replace the current growth model
  where growth is obtained by building new cities 
  by a growth model where growth is proportional to the 
  population (number of workers)
  (its more complicated to make this a workable, fair approach)

Has anybody any argument why no city center should not work?

K


P.S.: One can make no city center fairer, e.g., simply by removing 
the 4th food for the food special under despotism.

General consideration: with (4 food for food specials, 3 for grassland..)
the food surplus is +2 (specials) and +1(grassland), i.e.,
there is a factor of 2. In the current freeciv release, you can get
a food surplus of +3 (city build on food specials) vs. the usual +2, i.e.,
a factor of 1.5, which is generally considered to be fair.

In a more complicated model one might remove every fourth food
under despotism [maybe also every food surplus larger than +3 without
a granary (needs additional granary wonders)]. Cities with (i) 
no food specials, (ii) one food special,  and (iii) two food 
specials would have (under despotism) a food surplus 
of +1 each at size 1 
of +1 (i), +2 (ii), and +2 (iii) at size 2
of +1 (i), +2 (ii), and +3 (iii) at size 3
which is  not too different from the present factor 1.5.