[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]
> 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.
Of course I build Triremes!  Early exploration is extremely important no 
matter what.  The number of cities are limited, but you still have to find 
the best city sites and scout out your enemies to better defend yourself or 
forge alliances if you are so inclined.
As for another strategy to win, how about this: I was in a game with K and a 
few other players.  He built Marco Polo's Embassy, exchanged a couple of 
techs for the world map from another player, found out where my capital was, 
built the lighthouse and sent an army of chariots to take my capital.  I was 
concentrating on city development and my defense was thin, and he took me 
totally by surprise.  It's not hard to imagine how that game turned out.
Another example: I started a game right beside another player, so I quickly 
researched horseback riding and destroyed him, because otherwise I will not 
have enough room to build my cities.  This is somewhat extreme, but there 
certaily will always be fights for territory.  So you have to balance a lot 
of factors; there are a lot of decisions to make.
But you are right, vertical expansion _is_ the name of the game, because I 
think that's the way it should be, given the city model in the game.  But 
there are certainly a lot of variations around that central theme.  And as K 
shows me again and again, there are always more than one way to win.
> 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.
That's certainly true.  And maybe you would want to do the same for 
production?
> 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.
You do realize that this would make early science advance very slow, because 
it takes quite some time to grow your cities to size 4.  And again, the 
effect is too abrupt.
> (this may be combined with a happines penalty, of course. I think your 
> rules are just too tight)
Well, maybe.  If you could come up with a workable patch, I might be able to 
loosen it up a little bit.  As things stand, it just won't be effect enough 
against ICS if it is not tight.
Mike

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