[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Idea-city dialogue

["Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This change would significantly alter the game balance and could lead to
some quite unreasonable scenarios if not properly controlled. As you point
out it is quite useful :-).

In the case where you are limited to straight shield production it
introduces waste as has been discussed. Converting shields into usable
items as quickly as possible is in the player's interest and increasing the
backlog of stored shields is a form of waste and lost potential/momentum.

In the case where you are allowed to buy completion, there would be nothing
to stop you from raising an overwhelming defence/counterattack force in any
(sized) city on a one turn delay. This sort of reduces military strategy to
just an overwhelming surprise attack, and largest cash reserver basis.
Manoeuvring and disposition of forces, not to mention reasonable foresight
and control in allocating effort to military preparedness would go by the
board.

The current game forces you to designate at least the target type of unit
being produced with a penalty for switching. This becomes moot when you can
start up a new target and shuffle or buy shields. This rule was not
arbitrary, but was put there after serious thought, and needs at least as
much thought on the implications for the balance of play to remove it.

In the regular Civ game, the AI was effectively allowed to accumulate
undifferentiated shields or cash, and build whatever it wanted if it had
enough reserves. This was considered an extremely unfair advantage in many
a discussion. This is just another form of what you are proposing, allbeit
one that at least limited production to one item per turn.

If one does this there should be considerable thought as to the
implications and balance of the game, and probably significant restrictions
on how it may be used. I don't see anyone thinking this one through enough
to make their proposal credible.

Cheers,
RossW
=====

At 07:45 PM 01/07/11 -0400, Peter Ehrlich wrote:
>On Tuesday 10 July 2001 03:40 am, you wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 09, 2001 at 06:20:26PM -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote:
>> > Peter Ehrlich (peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
>> > > Ex.  you have a city with 14 workers.  You can tell 5 of them to
>> > > building a caravan, 7 to building a battleship, and 2 for building
>> > > Coastal Defense.
>> >
>> > This gets mentioned every once in a while.  There's really no benefit to
>> > you (the player).
>>
>> There is one difference: you can get more than one unit/building
>> finished per turn. What do people thing about enabling this?
>>
>>        Raimar
>
>I think it would be quite useful actually.  If you had a city that needed an
>aquedect but did not want to stop its production of units, then you could do 
>it. 
>
> --PeterEhrlich