[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

[Jules Bean <jules@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2001 at 04:21:48PM +0100, Mathias Broxvall wrote:
> Greg Wooledge wrote:
> 
> > Under the formula I'm using, A would only have 20 size-1 cities, not 100.
> > It's *still* an advantage for A,  but it's not nearly as dramatic as your
> > formula would indicate.
> 
> Yes, I was using somewhat extreme values just to demonstrate my point that it
> feels wrong that the larger population you have in a city, the harder it
> becomes to expand it (ignoring celebrations completly). Assuming availability
> of a food surplus it seems logical that a huge metropolis should grow 
> *faster*,
> not slower than a small town.
> 

Well, another way of looking at the contradiction is as follows:

City growth follows a nominally linear path 1,2,3,4,5,6,7....

But, OTOH, we are given to believe that's supposed to represent
something exponential. I.e. if size 1 is 10,000 people, size 2 is
20,000, size 3 is 50,000 and so on.  Or whatever.  But I definitely
got the idea from the Civ manuals that the numbers were supposed to
represent exponential, or at least faster than linear, growth.

Consistent with this is the fact the the amount of food needed grows
each time the city grows. (Fair enough, it's growing more each time)

So far, it all makes sense.

However, the problem is that production (of all kinds, shields, food,
trade) only grows linearly with the size. In fact, the effect of the
free city center + free shield + the fact that you tend to work the
'good' squares first is that the production actually grows more slowly 
than linearly.

To some extent, this is compensated for by the improvements you can
build in big cities.  But not much.

So I see the essential conflict as 'exponential growth' of a single
city only leads to roughly linear growth of its production, whilst the 
'exponential growth' option of founding multiple cities leads to
exponential growth of shields and food.

To be brutally honest, I think people do Civ I too much of a justice
(!) when they suggest that it was well-balanced.  I think Civ I had
AIs which were fun to play against, and you could beat them in a variety of 
different playing styles (because they were easy). But only the
multiplayer features of freeciv (and civ II) provide a vicious enough
evolution environment for people to notice that the game isn't
balanced at all.

Jules