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

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

K@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 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?
The biggest problem I had with no free city center, at least the way I 
implemented it, is that you can't free your first worker off the city 
center.  This has a couple of serious consequences.  1) The way Freeciv 
works now, you can free your single worker off the tile it is working on if 
the city is in revolt and still not starve because of the free city center.  
If you can't free the worker, there will be no easy way to get out of 
revolt, and I think this is too big a difference.  2) On the other hand, it 
is difficult to implement it so that you _can_ free your only worker in a 
size 1 city without the free city center.  Furthermore, even if you could, 
the city will simply starve if you do lift the worker from the tile.  Again, 
this strays too far from the original behavior, IMHO.  To me, it just 
doesn't feel right.
But of course, I have other reasons as well.  Most importantly, I think the 
"deity level" patch brings more to the game than simply preventing ICS.  I 
still believe there has to be a way to limit expansion and that's the most 
natural and elegant way of doing it.  I understand it will not be utilized 
in the default rulesets, but all I want is a viable alternative, not a 
revolution.  So it is all right as long as I can get it into CVS so that I 
can run my own custom rulesets.
> 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.
You will also havve to consider the effect on cities of sizes other than 1.  
In general, these changes make the distribution of food resources less 
uniform.  For example, you can end up with huge food surpluses in areas of 
grasslands, and not nearly enough around hills and mountains.  IMHO, this 
upsets the balance of food distribution a little too much.  And I prefer not 
to change it if it is at all possible.
> 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.
More tweaks are certainly possible, but the mere fact that it requires such 
consideration should raise a red flag.  All things being equal, the simpler 
solution is usually the better solution.
Mike

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