[Freeciv-Dev] Re: An alternate nopox strategy

[Jason Short <jshort@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Konan Lemee wrote:
> However, some buildings in the rules are clearly set to
> disfavor big cities :
> - cities have to produce, then maintain, buildings
> (temple, cathedral, coliseum) that are only useful to
> prevent unhappiness when city grows bigger than default
> content number.
> - cities have to produce, then maintain, buildings
> (aqueduc, sewer system) that give no advantage, but only
> allow to cross a limit.
> 
> If someone wants to counterbalance ICS, it is possible
> to modify these buildings. Depending upon your taste,
> you could modify some of these buildings as follow :
> - lower their production cost (dividing by two will
> change the rules !)
> - lower their upkeep (maintenance) cost (dividing by
> two, rounding down, will change the rules !)

The two "ideas" here would make ICS _more_ prevalent, making it easier
to build and maintain a horde of unhappiness-reducing buildings in every
city of an ICS civilization.

> As founding a city destroys your settler, ICS strategy
> is very concerned about the production cost of settlers,
> while regular game is also concerned about the upkeep
> cost(food especially, but shield also). To disfavor ICS,
> it is easy to increase the production cost of settlers.
> Doubling the cost to 80 shields already will be a big
> slow to the ICS, but it better than anyone choose the
> value that fits his tastes.

Do you really think doubling the cost will slow down ICS?  I'm not quite
claiming it doesn't, but I'd like to see a mathematical explanation to
support this claim.

I see no reason to believe that any of these ideas would make ICS less
prevalent, and many of them could detract from game play on their own.

Sylvain Boivin wrote:
> I have a suggestion related to the ICS problem. My suggestion is based on
> the fact that, in real life, when a civilization reaches a given pop size,
> the spatial distribution of the pop tend to be the same:  a big city, 
> surrounded by smaller ones.

This is a good point.

Mathias Uhlmann wrote:
> You don't know the width of the distribution, in reality this width will
> differ very strongly
> 
>  The idea of a urban centre surounded by smaller cities and villages is in
> (Free)Civ already included, the cities in the game are not like
> cities in reality but more like whole areas, with small towns and
> agricultural areas around the big city.

This is also true, and very insightful.

Any two cities within range of each other are in some way part of the
same urban area, and should interact with each other.  My first thought
was that in calculating unhappiness, not just the city itself but any
other population centers within range (i.e. within the city area) should
be included.  Perhaps the population should be counted in inverse
proportion to it's distance, so that if we have a city of size 4 and
another city of size 4 distance 2 away, the total "population for
unhappiness" could become 4+4/2=6.  (However, the numbers need
tweaking.)  From Mathias's point of view, we're "fixing" the width of
the urban distribution to be one city region.

In fact, this could be extended indefinitely, potentially even replacing
the penalty for large civilizations.  Every city reduces the happiness
of all others by an amount inversely related to its distance.  Large
civilizations will feel this penalty strongly, but spread-out ones less
so.

"Terry Browning (by way of Jeff Mallatt )" wrote:
> The change is to count non-native farming within the hinterland of a
> city as if it were population. i.e. If Rome has size 3 and Naples is
> farming 2 squares within the Rome's hinterland, then the city has a
> stability as if it were size 5. Naples's city square counts as a farmed
> square.

This is brilliant.  It accomplishes the exact same thing I had in mind,
and does it quite elegantly.  (I am, however, amazed that no one has
come up with it before.  Or have they?)

The only possible shortcoming is that it cannot be generalized to the
entire civilization, as I suggested above.  However, this isn't
necessary.

> 2 It does not punish large civilizations. A player can have any number
> of cities that they can find room for, without penalty. For this reason,
> this rule should be more popular with players since it doesn't threaten
> their ambitions, only the pox.

Very good point.

> 4 The change reflects the usual human reactions of looking at territory
> in a proprietorial way, envying neighbours and hating those they see as
> encroaching and crowding. When neighbours are too close for comfort,
> they can't be friends.

This is just an extension of the current reasoning behind unhappiness. 
When things become too crowded, people become unhappy.  The change here
is that "crowded" is now determined on a by-area basis (people/area),
rather than a by-city basis (people/city).

"Miguel Farah F." wrote:
> The only thing that I can think of is this: should this approach be
> used in the same way if Rome and Naples belong to the same player, to
> two allied players or two enemy players?

It should be used in the same way in all three situations.  From the
citizen's perspective, the crowding is the same in all three.

I have one question/comment of my own.  We all know that a city of size
1 produces 2 farming squares.  Are both of these squares counted for the
unhappiness?  In a lone city of size 1, do we get an effective
"unhappiness size" of 2?  This could, of course, simply be canceled by
increasing the unhappiness limit by 1.  In two adjacent cities of size
1, where all four farming squares are within range of both cities, is
the "unhappiness size" for each city 2, 3, or 4?

jason short