[Freeciv-Dev] Re: comments on ics solutions

[Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2 Mar 2001, Mike Jing wrote:

> Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx> wrote:
> [snip]
> >I see. But mine was not a blind argument based on realism. It was a 
> >gameplay issue. The game would be more interesting if you don't know from 
> >the beginning that you have to grow a dozen huge cities.
> 
> Actually, once you have managed to take away the advantages of ICS, the 
> virtue of huge cities will become obvious.  Once you get past a certain 
> threshold, vertical expansion will rule.

Once you have managed to *balance* the advantages of ICS, there will
be no obvious virtues. Both horizontal and vertical expansion will
have their advantages. IMHO, that's the key for an interesting game.

> >Sure, but "big gets bigger" holds also for vertical espansion.
> 
> That is true to an extent.  But it does make horizontal expansion much more 
> difficult, thus taking away a major factor in the problem.  Moreover, it 
> makes conquering a lot less rewarding than it is now, thius giving the 
> weaker player a better chance of survival.
> 
> >That's a symptom of the fact there's only one clearly better way to play.
> 
> No.  It's a fundamental problem in civ type games like Freeciv.  And I 
> believe unhappiness is introduced specifically to address this problem.

Unhappiness it's not the only way to limit espansion. I believe it is
best suited to limit vertical expansion. And I believe that corruption
(and other trade penalties) are better suited to limit horizontal
expansion. And corruption it's already in the code, but plays a very
little role. Give corruption its proper role, put a trade penalty on
small cities (as opposed to their current trade bonus), and horizontal
expansion will be limited. I percieve unhappiness as an innatural
limit for horizontal expansion. Even forgetting about realism, it's not 
smooth enough. I think it's no good when a player has to "compute"
the exact number of cities he/she can have without suffering a (huge)
happiness penalty. Again, there's no choice: it's perfectly clear that
11 is ok, and 12 is very bad. Instead, I like when there's no clear better
choice. The game is more interesting (and closer to RL, as a side
effect).

> >The more variables you put into the game (number of cities being one of 
> >them, average size another one), the more choices (among equally viable 
> >possibilities) you force a player to make, the less likely is that a player 
> >can play "the perfect game". Even if you manage to get some advantage at 
> >some time, you still have to be careful at the choices you make, as they 
> >can be sub-optimal, and give the other players a chance to catch up. But if 
> >there are few or no choices, once you lead you'll be leading for the rest 
> >of the game. And you need to *increase* the number of variables in the game 
> >to give players more choices to make.
> 
> The problem is not the number of variables, but the balance between them.  
> You don't need complicated rules to make the game more complex.  Chess, 
> anyone?

Wrong example. You can increase the number of *variables* without 
making the *rules* more complicated. And chess is a perfect example of
that. Rules are quite simple, but yet every game is very different,
since there's high variability (in position, for example).

> [snip]
> >Exactly. So you don't think that the number of cities, their
> >average size, even the distribution of their sizes are worth to be 
> >variables that belong to the game?  And that the more you can "play" with 
> >these variables (in a balanced way, of course), the more enjoyable the game 
> >is?
> 
> I strongly suspect that, given the existing city model, the kind of balance 
> you are looking for is next to impossible to achieve.

That's another matter at all. Games like FreeCiv need almost constant
tuning to achieve such balance. That's precisely why most of the
parameters of the game can be easily modified... I've never said it
would be easy.

> >Ok, I'm saying it's not "perfect" (as YOU say). I've never said it's 
> >"unnecessary". Happiness is *one* af the features of the game
> 
> I am merely point out that unhappiness is introduced primarily to limit 
> expansion.  And if you take away that role, it no longer has much of a place 
> in the game.

> 
> >that ICS manages to avoid. Corruption is another one. *I* proposed to 
> >introduce an happiness penalty for cities that are placed too close. And 
> >also I think that playing with trade production also affects  happiness. 
> >I'm saying  that using *just* happiness to balance the game against ICS 
> >leads to other kind of unbalance problems. I'd prefer a bunch of small 
> >changes to the game, all in the same direction (against ICS), instead of a 
> >big one that addresses part of the problem. I'm 100% with you when you say 
> >that happiness should play a bigger role, believe me. But I also thing the 
> >role you gave to it it's just too big. It reduces
> >the number of variables. Which IMHO is bad overall for the game.
> 
> I am certainly open to other ideas which can help against ICS, and then the 
> unhappiness penalty can be relaxed somewhat.  However, it should still play 
> a big roles in limiting horizontal expansion.  (Its effect on vertical 
> expansion is obvious.)

Maybe I can put it in another way: IMHO you're just "overloading" the
meaning of unhappiness. It's true it has a role in limiting vertical
expansion. Now you're using it to limit horizontal expansion as well.

> 
> >As for realism, I believe that RL is "balanced" in a way, otherwise we'll 
> >be all speaking the same language now. It's so balanced that there no clear 
> >economic, political model that is the best. So it's a good thing try and 
> >learn from RL. Not for the sake of realism itself. But to implement
> some of the lessons already learned.
> 
> It's also so balanced that nobody has conquered the world yet.

Yup. What has made such attempts fail? The Roman Empire was close to
conquer the known world at that time. And *corruption* was on of
the key factors in its fall... people unhappiness played a role only
in Rome itself (that was so *vertically* expanded!)


.TM.
-- 
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     /      /       /                   Marco Colombo
    ___/  ___  /   /                  Technical Manager
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 _____/ _____/  _/                     Colombo@xxxxxx