[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

[Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx>]

There's a similar thread on the Italian freeciv list, so I think
it's time to go international. B-)

First, while I share Mike's (and others') adversion against ICS, I
must say I don't enjoy playing with Mike's proposed rules. Well, Mike,
you showed us a way of building a big empire with only a dozen cities,
but could you please show us another one? I mean a different strategy 
which can be winning with your rules. Other than building your 12 cities 
and growing them up, with almost no need of early exploring. Do you ever
build a Trireme? Or any Feudal Age military unit? I admit it's a good
thing to see some Nukes sometimes, but with your rules you almost 
make the early part of the game just a race for vertical expansion.

I'd relax a bit yuor happiness rules, and make corruption different.
Something like:

--- server/citytools.c.original Wed Feb 21 13:38:01 2001
+++ server/citytools.c  Wed Feb 28 13:51:26 2001
@@ -559,7 +559,7 @@
     val /= 2;
   val *= g->corruption_level;
   val /= 100;
-  if (val >= trade && val)
+  if ((val >= trade && val) || pcity->size < 4)
     val = trade - 1;
   return(val); /* how did y'all let me forget this one? -- Syela */
 }

(not a real patch, it's just to show the idea).

You can't have a city smaller than 4 produce more than 1 trade.
This will make a large empire with small cities possible, but only for
a limited time. What makes ICS winning is that it gives also a trade
advantage. 40 1,2-sized cities produce more trade than 10 of size 4.

ICS should be possible, but not so winning as it is now. You need to grow
some of your cities over 4 otherwise reasearch will almost stop.

(this may be combined with a happines penalty, of course. I think your
rules are just too tight)

.TM.
-- 
      ____/  ____/   /
     /      /       /                   Marco Colombo
    ___/  ___  /   /                  Technical Manager
   /          /   /                      ESI s.r.l.
 _____/ _____/  _/                     Colombo@xxxxxx