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

[Aliaga <aliaga@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:13 12/01/01 -0500, you wrote:
>
>I don't understand what you are talking about. A size 1 city is not
>in revolt unless you do some military actions (in that case you can simply
>home the unit in another city or disband it to avoid unhappiness or
>simply wait for the end of the military action).

I think Mike was talking about city management under heavy unhappiness
settings. They are used to mimic the higher difficulty levels of the
original CivII. Coupled with corruption and waste, it makes the game more
challenging and forces the player to make many more tougher decisions, since
the default rulesets/settings are geared toward easy empire-building (a.k.a
"King Level") and do not emphasize all the possibilities of the game engine.


>I agree that your deity level patch is an interesting alternative.
>Whether one likes to limit overall expansion is, of course, a matter
>of taste. Personally, this is exactly what I dislike.
>I find it rather strange and unnatural that you effectively need to 
>restrict your empire to some number of cities, that you even need to 
>destroy your opponents cities instead of conquering them to avoid
>passing that number. It also means that you need to spent a lot of your 
>time in mid-game on disbanding cities and happiness issues. This time
>I would prefer to think about diplomatic and military strategies.

Well, I'd say "Deity level" doesn't limit the max number of buildable
cities. It only makes harder to build them. That's why the player will need
to use every key part of the game engine, instead of focusing only on
conquest-by-flooding. Playing Deity on CivII I was often running out of city
names even when I had a personalized list of 150+ names available (100+
spanish, 50+ fantasy).

The phase were you get to conquer your enemies rather than making your own
cities is not related to unhappiness factors, but rather to
tactic/micromanagement/economy/availability things. I've never never
disbanded a conquered city for unhappiness value. Strategic/tactic needs
sometimes dictate it, however...

Happiness, revolts and trying to celebrate might be a pain, however. This is
what forces the player to grow/develop the cities, since this is easier than
build new ones. Then you'll find your empire much better suited to
diplomacy-and-war on the modern era, instead of being swamped by low tech
attackers.


>Deity also prevents you from building an empire which I feel is 
>the underlying idea of the game and which I would  define by 
>controlling a larger area with a large number of rather 
>big cities (what I dislike at the present model is that the best
>and only way (until steam engine) is to build as many tiny cities
>as possible, what is so nice about "no central worker" is that it
>does not matter whether one has two small or one big city of twice the size).

Overall, I think Deity goes a long way to ensure ICS will no longer be the
only way to cope, and will indeed allow some serious empire-building before
Judgement Day comes...

While unhappiness and corruption doesn't work exactly as the "no central
worker" approach, they certainly achieve pretty much the same goal, without
resorting to altering a very fundamental aspect of the original Civ games.


>This is a matter of taste, too. Presently, production rules the game
>(number of whales/forests/buffalo to maximize production at size 2 
>to build a settler), with the changes food and trade (roads on grassland) 
>will be more important. On gen2 the distribution of both grassland and 
>whales is rather fair, but on gen1 you will need to settle in a fertile 
>area [you need to settle at the whale coasts and close to
>forests (to switch at size 2) now]. Where to settle will be a more important
>decision since one also needs to care on what to do with the
>3rd and 4th worker etc.. But the unimportantness of this decision is what
>people in this list just complained about.

Production was key on CivII too. I do not really know the maps Freeciv uses,
but in CivII you had to be rather careful when placing cities under Deity
rules, 'cause even the first worker (center tile) is key there. So, when
every city site matters, ICS becomes triple hard to pull, since, as I
recall, you could severely hinder your productivity by placing your cities
too close to one another.


>I think removing the free city center is a simple, plain solution
>which naturally results in larger cities and a greater choice
>of strategies (you have a more balanced choice between building a new city
>or an improvent allowing the old city to continue to grow, e.g.). 
>As long as the free city center remains, ICS is still in the game 
>(namely exponential growth by building new size one cities) but only 
>punished at some point (e.g. by minimum city distance
>or by happiness with the deity patch). Freeciv is both a
>strategy game and a simulation of the raise and fall of empires.
>For the the latter aspect, I think the current growth model
>is very unnatural and an option for an alternative is desirable.

Deity level is simpler (no re-coding needed!). ICS will still rule on lover
difficulty settings, but then people wanting to play the full game should
stick to Emperor and Deity levels. Certainly ICS is present in those, too,
but it is not a "killer strategy", and this is the only change needed to
make it fair. By the way, I feel some kind of consensus could be reached on
"Emperor level" settings if Deity is viewed as too difficult to be enjoyable
by a large number of players.

As for the growth model, yes, I feel it is very unnatural, and there should
be some alternative in the (long) term. I gather the growth model is rather
difficult to tinker with, and every change would need some deep playtesting,
as well.


>P.S.: For the deity level to be playable, I think one needs
>the concept of vassal states that depend on a more powerful nation
>and transfer some part of their trade points to that powerful nation 
>unless they revolt at some point. 

Well, this is already built in the game: trade (and perhaps food) caravans,
which now are almost useless under low difficulty rulesets.

M.A.

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