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

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jacky Mallett <warlock@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> just to throw some more fuel on the fire, smallpox is a little more
> complex  a strategy that i think most people realise, and in games where
> several people are using it, rapture does come in quite handy towards the
> middle/end part of the game. You don't actually need much investment,
> you just have to whack the luxury setting up for a few rounds.
OK, maybe I am seriously mistaken.  But without irrigation or a harbor, it's 
unlikely that you will be able to grow a city beyond size 5 or 6, rapture or 
not, simply because of lack of food.  You will also need roads on land to 
increace trade, because otherwise the luxury setting doesn't do jack and 
your city won't be able to celebrate.  Last but not the least, you will need 
temple/marketplace to keep your citizens happy once your cities have grown.  
It's much easier to just found new cities with settlers so you don't have to 
deal with these problems.
> It's also not true that with smallpox you don't get to play with
> higher tech - i've gone all the way to space race several times, you
> just need a game with several players of roughly equal skill.
And how often does that happen?

> Game balance is a highly non-trivial (and theoretically speaking,
> mostly unsolved), problem. To make smallpox and largepox simultaneously
> valid and matched strategies, in the same game, would be an interesting
> task, and my suspicion is even if this was achieved, there would still
> be an advantage to smallpox, since the proportional cost of losing a city
> would be less than in the largepox case.
Exactly.

> Personally i think the critical question isn't which strategy is ethically
> the right one, (to somewhat dreadfully overgeneralise), but what makes
> for a fun game.  And in my experience,  a good smallpox player can cause
> just as much havoc in a largepox game if they've got the time.
IMHO, too much hovac already.  So much hovac, in fact, that they have taken 
the fun out of the game.  But that's just me.
Mike


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