[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

[Michael Kiermaier <stud8707@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

mike jing wrote:

>"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.

i know, you tried to remove the free city center. what problems did arise?

jussi asp's idea that a settler costs two workers adresses exactly the same
problem (which is the main reason for ics in my opinion.), but it sounds less
restrictive to me.

so i think we should give it a try, since the "free city center" also got its
chance. and it should not be too hard to implement. my further thought was that
if some changes are done to the settler unit, we could also do the change to
split it up into two units. this was discussed some time ago, and it seemed to
me that noone disliked this idea.

i really want to test the game with this more expensive settler unit.
if it decreases the advantages of ics to a level where other strategies have a
chance to win, fine.
if it is not enough, we can additionally try out a constant granary size. (only
a small change to the ruleset, i guess.)
after that i really cannot imagine that ics is still the best strategy. and if
someone wants to weaken it further, he can lower the prices of buildings.
(again only a ruleset change.)

and after this, ics is broken in a quite natural way and everyone can do the
changes he wants to have. for example, there is no reason why not to decrease
happines in the way you suggested.

>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.

i do not understand which bigger problem you mean. expansion itself ??
but forbidding expansion is equally bad as forbidding to develop cities, which
is practically done by ics.

you are right, your suggestions are easy to realize. but this should be true
for mine, too. (see above)

>>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.  ;-)

i want to see it this way! (with the restriction described below.)

>>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.

i think that this corruption-like unhappiness should only depend from the
distance to the capital and the government type. if we restrict ics in the way
described above i see no reason why to make it dependent from the number of
cities.

>>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 
>>an 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.

i still feel that your unhappiness-rules in its current form are unlogical and
too restrictive (i know i am repeating myself.) and it seems to me that i am
not the only one who thinks so...

but please note that the aim of my recent mails is not to critisize you.
basically, we agree in a lot of points: ics must be stopped, the game is too
fast and ends too early, it is bad that only a small part of the features of
the game are used at the moment...

i am reading this mailing list for just a while now, and most time i agreed
with you. but now i think there is a better way to overcome ics. so my hope is
rather that i could maybe convince you to give jussi asp's suggestions a try.

>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.

the only things to change are the settler unit and the granary size. (see
above)
this changes are rather streightforward in my opinion and therefore i see only
a small propability of an unexpected unbalancing effect. and if it seems to
work as we expected, playtesting should ba a lot of fun...
of cause it should be adoptable (in the ruleset) if a settler unit costs one
worker unit or two, so i cannot imagine that someone would not accept this
change.

>And of course, I just think my ideas are better.  ;-P

please think again about my arguments :)

>Mike

~michael