[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

[Paul Zastoupil <paulz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 04:23:04PM +0100, Marco Colombo wrote:
> 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 agree with these gripes against the unhappiness rules.  Also, they take
no account for map size.  If you have a huge map with only 2 players and
you are limited to 12 cities, you may never even meet the other player
before he launched his spaceship.

> 
> 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)

A similiar patch was recently committed.  Although it only removed the
'false' floor of corruption.  Cities can now have 0 trade.
http://arch.freeciv.org/freeciv-dev-200102/msg00448.html

I was going to work on a more general patch to remove certain amounts
of science from smaller cities.  But maybe it should be trade that I am
affecting and not just science.  I think your idea above is a little to
brutish in its effects, but I like the idea.  Perhaps smaller cities
should have a penalty, but not limiting them to 1 trade.  Besides,
this would skew the demographics, because what you are effectively
doing is making corruption larger in the small cities, which wouldn't
be quite accurate.

-- 
Paul Zastoupil