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

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ross W. Wetmore <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This just means that no one has really figured out the more sophisticated
> counter strategies while those using basic despotic sprawl have become
> very adept.
You kept refering to "despotic sprawl" and i am not sure what you meant by 
that.  The first thing (well, maybe second) an ICS player (or any player, 
for that matter)  goes for is the Republic.  It doesn't take a genius to 
figure out that you can't hope to win by staying as a despotism.
> I don't dispute the empirical examples from the servers, but I think there
> are checks and balances that will even things out if they are exploited
> with as much sophistication for other strategies.
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but please play some net games and see 
for yourself.  You will find your choice of strategies is severely limited 
in the face of ICS.  You have to realize that it takes a great amount of 
investment to be able to take advantage of rapture growth: irrigation/harbor 
for food, temple/marketplace for happiness.  Ironclads will be knocking on 
your door long before you are ready to celebrate.
> Citymindist is good because it targets one of the weaknesses of ICS -
> resource limitation. It also slows it down by forcing longer moves before
> city founding.
It certainly helps, to an extent.  But it still pays to cram as many cities 
as possible into the available space.
> It might be better to really discuss "all those arguments" and figure out
> where things are going wrong, than to dismiss the core principles of the
> game in favour of massive application of unbalancing bandaids :-).
This has been discussed many times, I believe, and it seems that Civ3 has 
really addressed most if not all of the problems that have been pointed out 
here.  Here are some interesting features in Civ3:
-- Separation of Settler and Worker units, and they no longer need food 
support.
-- Settler takes 2 pop points (implemented as an option in Freeciv).
-- No more home city for units/simplified unit support system.  This reduces 
ICS's advantage in supporting a large army.
-- New culture system, so building city improvements is more important since 
that's how you gain culture points.
Thare are others which I can't recall at the moment.  Anyway, it looks like 
some real effort has been put into fixing this problem in Civ3.  Then again, 
that's if you think there is a problem at all.
Mike




_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp