[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Michael Kiermaier" <michael.kiermaier@xxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]
> first i describe how a enjoyable game should look like in my
> opinion: each player has to find a balance between building new cities and 
> develop existing cities. the optimum should be somewhere between these two 
> extremes and there should be a variety of successful strategies.
Agreed.  But obviously it's not an easy goal to achieve.

[snip]
> but i think that also mike´s solution does not really adress the
> cause: the main reasons for ics, free city center and growing
> granary size, are still valid. it rather restricts the most important 
> symptom, the infinite city sprawl, in a somehow artificial way, and you can 
> use ics in the used way until you reach this barrier.
You are exactly right.  However, please note that I did first try to tackle 
the main cause for ICS head-on by getting rid of the free city center, which 
I later decided to be not such a good idea after all.
More importantly, I see ICS as a symptom of a much bigger problem.  I still 
maintain that there should be a constraint on expansion, for the benefit of 
game balance.  The unhappiness rules do exactly that, in addition to 
eliminating ICS.  And it takes little effort to implement because most of 
the code are already in place.
> in my opinion it is simply not logical that at some point it is bad to get 
> a new city, no matter if built, conquered or more dramatically found in a 
> hut.  maybe you want to argue that it gets more difficult to reign over the 
> people as the country grows.
This is the exact argument used in Civ2 for unhappiness caused by empire 
size.
> but this could also be achieved with a unhappiness which depends on the 
> form of the government and the distance (or as someone proposed the 
> travel-distance) from the capital (like corruption). so there would not be 
> a sudden penalty for all the cities but a more intuitive penalty for remote 
> cities.
It already depends on the government.  I was also thinking about making the 
penalty more gradual as you have described above, which is closer to Civ2 
behavior anyway.  Maybe I would actually implement it if more people would 
see things my way.  ;-)
> now one could argue that this is a further reason to build the cities close 
> together. but together with jussi asp´s changes it will be better to have 
> one big city instead of two or three small ones that have to share its 
> space.
If it is still mainly based on number of cities then it would not be too 
bad.  The change would be that only the new cities get the penalty, so a few 
new cities won't bring down the whole empire.
> please note that i did not say that i do not like higher unhappiness. i 
> agree with mike jing that the game is way too fast. decreased happiness is 
> a elegant method to slow down the game, because it brings the luxury rate 
> back to the game.
Thank you.  :-)  That's what frustrates me the most: people just don't seem 
to see the benefit of marketplaces/banks.  But I guess I can't blame them.  
Those things are absolutely unnecessary under default rules.
> to get rid of the causes for ics i would suggest to use jussi asp´s
> proposals. in his mail it sounded like he already implemented some
> of them. it would be nice if he posted some patch.
I think it's good that people are experimenting with different new ideas.  
However, I do think the game is basically sound the way it is, and perfectly 
playable under the rules I have proposed.
The problem with new features such as those proposed by Jussi Asp and others 
is that: 1) they could change and unbalance the game in unexpected ways.  I 
suppose this could be addressed by extensive playtesting, and that takes 
time.  2) since these changes are quite significant, it will be hard to get 
them accepted and implemented into the code.  I think it is a good thing to 
be conservative and cautious with regard to changes like this.  It's easy to 
think up new things to add, but much harder to determine what is actually 
needed.
And of course, I just think my ideas are better.  ;-P

Mike


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