[Freeciv-Dev] Re: civ3's answer to smallpox

[Paul Zastoupil <paulz@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 08:45:18AM -0700, Arien Malec wrote:
> 
> --- Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > So CVS Freeciv allows a complete and total attack on ICS.
> > 
> > Good news ... is there any practical experience with this yet?
> 
> Well, I'm not a multiplayer player, but:
> 
> 1) The citymindist stuff is acknowledged by people who are to be an ICS killer
> 2) I get the impression that the trade penalties for small cities were
> playtested by the Italian user group

I have been testing the notradesize and fulltradesize in single player
mode.  I really like it.  It seems to be a real ICS killer.  However, the
AI really struggles with it.  So there isn't much challenge.  

For instance, to really take advantage of the AI's lack of knowledge
how this works, set settler 10.  Then put almost all those settlers into
1 city (leave at least one "free" settler to improve around this "city
of science", and found a settler city with at least one other).  The AI
founds 10 cities, and wont have _any_ trade for centuries.  You come at
the hard AI with cannons when he still has a bunch of warriors.  I have
even done this when I was pinned down on a little peninsula.

> 3) civ3 seems to be adopting the pop_cost approach
> 
> It would seem then, that none of these are particularly academic approaches to
> the problem. I would also note that all of them dramatically change the early
> period of the game, in quite different ways, so learning to work with them
> requires a pretty profound adjustment to strategy. As a side comment to Ingo,
> you can't just say: "my approach works for multiplayer, therefore all the
> others are just academic responses" -- you need to play test the alternatives
> enough to develop the appropriate strategies, and then judge.

The fact that it changes the early game is important.  Science goes much
slower for quite a while.  If/When we change the default rules I think this
should be taken into account.

-- 
Paul Zastoupil