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

[Arien Malec <arien_malec@xxxxxxxxx>]

Coming back into this a bit late but:

--- "Ross W. Wetmore" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I missed Arien's earlier post so will piggyback on Renier.
> 
> Again ICS doesn't work and Arien's "faster" analysis is wrong because ...

ICS does work, and there are reasons that it does. That other strategies may
work as well or better does not mean that ICS does not work.

Not wrong: I didn't say that ICS is faster, I said that there are reasons that
ICS works as a strategy. As I mentioned, I've been able to reach Automobile by
year 400 +/- 100 years, with a fairly small initial island, by using a
rapture-like strategy, and I have never been able to get that far using pure
ICS, even on a very large island. However, in  your analysis below, you ignore
the exponential factors at work: 

> Assume you start with a size 1 city with food +2, prod +4 which *really*
> weights things in favour of ICS (double average production).
> 
> You will generate a new settler every 10 turns, and if your 2nd city is
> as productive and not that far away it will take 30 turns or so to get
> 4 cities plus some noise (up to 10 more turns) to get them all to size 2.
> During this period you are totally defenceless :-).

And 40 turns to get to 8 (= 16 with the free city center worker)

> It takes 10+15 turns to let the original city grow to size 3, and 5 more
> to rapture it to size 8.

You don't have The Republic yet...

> During this period the city can produce military
> defence and/or unhappiness improvements like temples, or productivity
> enhancements like marketplaces.
> 
> And at this point vertical growth is moving at 1 per turn, while horizontal
> growth still takes 10 turns per city.

And 1 settler creates 2 workers with the free city worker, doubling the
exponential effect.

By the way, there is no reason that you can't use ICS with a Republic or a
Democracy. Even if we fully implement Payciv-like waste & unhappiness, you can
still use ICS with the more advanced governments to get around the empire
unhappiness limits.

Again, I'm not arguing that ICS is always the best strategy, but there are
reasons that it works.

Arien

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