[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Why does ICS work?

[Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx>]

On Wed, 13 Jun 2001, Christian Knoke wrote:

> Am Mittwoch, 13. Juni 2001 01:51 schrieben Sie:
> > Good analysis.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Getting to Republic with a defensible core of size 3 cities and an
> > appropriate balance of luxury and pacifier improvements is *THE*
> > major growth strategy. If you can do that before the ICS-types find
> > you and overrun you, or you can hold them off until you hit critical
> > mass, they are dead meat.
> >
>
> I like your last paragraph most. I play that way most of my games.
> If we'd _slow_ _down_ _science_, I can get to that point always _before_
> the ironclads come. Plus, I can draw more benefit of my science rate.
> I would build libraries then, for now this is not neccessary because
> I can easily achieve stealth without them.
>
> My 2 euro cent.
>
> > Cheers,
> > RossW
> > =====
>
> Christian
>
>

Please have a look to Lino's patch, we (a group of Italian players)
used it in the past to prevent early ICS.
I believe that "corruption penalty" is somewhat a misnomer, it's really
a trade penalty (implemented raising corruption) for cities < 6 in size
(with proposed settings). Penalty is:

size 0,1,2:     0   trade (at all)
size 3:         25% trade
size 4:         50% trade
size 5:         75% trade
size 6:         full trade (no penalty but "normal" corruption)

I'd advise to play a few games with this settings *before* drawing
conclusions about them. Try them with unhappysize=2 or 1. I'd also slow
down reseach a bit (beware, game is much slower in the beginning, of course,
you get 0 techs until you grow one city a bit).

Playing a plain ICS game is almost impossible, since you'll get no trade
(thus science) at all. You need at least a few large cities. But no other
limitations are in place (if you like stone age technology, you can
develop 20 1-size cities in less then 100 tiles as the beginning of your
ICS - no strange rules will prevent you from doing that - but i'll tell
you it isn't a brilliant idea).

Give it a try:
http://www.freeciv.org/cgi-bin/bugs/patches-submitted?id=720

.TM.
-- 
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     /      /       /                   Marco Colombo
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