[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Embrace the Dark Side: Be ICS

[Raahul Kumar <raahul_da_man@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Greg Wooledge <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Raahul Kumar (raahul_da_man@xxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> 
> > 1 Your cities are your only way to control/use tiles -> Therefore to
> control
> > more tiles you need more cities. 
> 
> (SMAC has resource crawlers that can harvest resources from tiles outside
> the city radius, but Freeciv does not.)
> 
> > 2 The only way to generate income is through your city (Again, more is
> better)
> 
> Incorrect.  You can also get gold by conquering enemy cities, or from
> "goody huts".  Or by "diplomacy" (e.g., "Pay me 100 gold right now or I
> raze Minneapolis!").
> 

Are you seriously suggesting goody huts as your main money maker? My point
still stands. And conquering enemy cities also means, wait for it,more cities.

> Of course, you don't actually need money to win the game; you only
> need enough gold to maintain your city improvements, if you have any.
> In theory you could conquer the world with a Trireme and a Horseman. ;-)
>

No. I quite often bride enemy units and cities with lots of units, so money
comes in handy then. I also rush build units with cash. 

> > 3 Units are produced at ... Can you guess? Yes, your cities. (More is
> better)
> 
> Also found in goody huts, but yeah, you're basically correct.
> 
> > 4 Research into tech advances are conducted in your cities.  (More cities =
> > more tech)
> 
> Again: conquest, goody huts and diplomacy.  In addition, you can use
> Diplomat units (or Spies, later) to acquire knowledge from your neighbors.
> 

And these all work far better for a ICSer. If I conquer a size 12 city, and
you succeed in destroying 5 size ones, which one of us is worse off? I get to
re-use the size 12 city, whereas my size one cities no longer exist, leaving
you with no additional cities to continue the attack. Another huge advantage
of ICS.

> > 5 Each city is your army support mechanism.
> > The more cities you have, the more units you can support without cost in
> the
> > field.
>

I thought I restricted my comments to Civ,Civ II and Freeciv. But the
information below is quite handy. I prefer the Civ:CTP approach.
 
> SMAC has the ability to build "clean" units (they cost more to build,
> but have no support payment), and Civ:CTP uses empire-wide military
> support, with all cities contributing shields/minerals.
> 
> Also, CTP's units have a variable cost depending on their power level.
> A CTP Warrior costs 4.05 shields to support, whereas a Machine Gunner
> costs 24 and Space Marines cost 135.  (Don't ask me why it's 4.05 instead
> of 4; I didn't write the silly thing.)
> 
> > 6 Each city can only make ONE unit/improvement, so greater shields go to
> waste.
> 
> Only in Civ2 and CTP.  In Freeciv leftover shields carry over; in SMAC,
> up to 10 will carry over.
> 

Are you sure on that? I have not noticed this.

> > 7. Even the wonders are ICS. Michaelangelo, and all the other happiness
> > wonders, along with Hoover Dam are perfect for ICS. And wonders can only be
> > built at ... cities.
> 
> No argument. :)  All the Civ games have at least a handful of Wonders
> that give all of your cities something, which greatly favors ICS.
> 
> It might be worthwhile to add (or change) a few more Wonders that
> affect single cities.  Most (or all?) of the Civ games have at least one
> Wonder that doubles (or otherwise multiplies) the science output of a
> single city.  CTP has one that quadruples gold output later in the game.
> Civ2/Freeciv have King Richard's Crusade that gives +1 shield per square,
> and SMAC has the Merchant Exchange that gives +1 energy (trade arrow)
> per square.  (Bear in mind that the SMAC Merchant Exchange bonus applies
> to energy harvested by Crawlers, also; it can be *very* powerful for a
> builder-type player.)
> 

I quite like this idea of yours. When will I see the patch?

> > 8. Sheer annoyance factor. It is a very tedious thing to attempt to beat an
> ICS
> > player in a conquer the world strategy.
> 
> I'm not very familiar with multiplayer Freeciv, but I'd imagine that
> most games end before the final city is taken; when one player has an
> obviously crushing superiority, and the outcome is inevitable, further
> play is pointless.
>

That is precisely the problem. The ICS'er can keep the fight going for a *VERY*
long time.
 
> Warfare is simply more tedious than peacetime building, because you have
> to move all those units around.  There's really nothing more to it than
> that, and ICS doesn't change this.
> 
> > 1. Allow ways to increase a city radius(villages) like in Civ 3
> 
> CTP2 has that, literally.  Civ3's "radius" that you see in the screenshots
> isn't the radius from which workers can harvest goods -- rather, it's
> the "cultural" influence, and allows the collection of trade resources
> inside the cultural radius without roads and "colonies".  It also has
> some sort of effect on your empire's influence, and the possibility of
> having enemy cities spontaneously join your empire.
> 
> We won't really know the full impact of the Civ3 culture system until
> the game hits the shelves.
> 
> > 2. A city should be able to have far more than 4 trade routes(dependent on
> > improvs, a city with an airport has 6, with an airport and port 8,
> > superhighways 10 etc). Increase the amount of money gained through trade
> > generally. (If an ICS player is building caravans, he is not building
> > settlers).
> 
> Every Civ game seems to have a different trade system -- it seems that
> nobody's happy with the Civ2/Freeciv implementation. ;-)
> 

True. You still did not say whether my system was good, bad or indifferent.

> SMAC doesn't have Caravans and trade routes; rather, any faction with
> whom you have a treaty or a pact automatically engages in trade with
> you.  Your cities (and their cities) are sorted in decreasing order
> by raw energy (trade arrow) income (before Crawlers and specialists).
> Your #1 city engages in trade with the other faction's #1 city; and
> your #2 with the other faction's #2; etc.  The amount of "commerce"
> income you get depends on the raw energy of both cities, your level of
> technology, whether you're the Planetary Governor, and whether you're
> the Morganite faction.
> 
> CTP has trade goods scattered around the map (instead of tile specials
> like Wheat or Fish).  Each is worth 10 gold (which is worth about 2
> trade arrows in Civ2/Freeciv).  A Caravan can be built; doing so adds
> one to the number of Caravans you have available (a unit is not
> created).  You can use Caravans to create trade routes between two of
> your cities; a trade good is sent from one to the other.  Here's the
> catch: the *second* of any particular good that a city has is worth 20
> gold; and the third is worth 30; and so on.  Cities may have up to 4
> trade routes (incoming or outgoing or a combination).  A city that has
> a single trade good and 4 matching incoming trade goods earns
> 10+20+30+40+50 = 150 gold (about 30 trade arrows in Civ2/Freeciv).  This
> is called a "monopoly" even though it has no resemblance to what we
> call a monopoly in real life.  (And yes, you could in theory have 2 or
> more of the same trade good inside your city radius, so the 6th instance
> of that good would give you +60 gold, for 210; but this is rare.)
>

Sounds good. What would it take to implement pirating trade routes?
 
> Also, CTP lets you "pirate" (destroy) an enemy trade route (they appear
> on the map as blue lines between cities).  This destroys the trade
> route (and hence the Caravan you spent on it), and also gives the
> pirating nation a small amount of gold (20 or 30 gold, which is worth
> about 4-6 gold in the Civ2/Freeciv scale).
> 
> You can also build CTP trade routes to other nations; if you're selling
> goods, you can demand a certain amount of gold in return (typically 20
> or 30), and vice versa.  All trade routes with nation B are cancelled
> if you go to war with them.
> 
> From what we know of Civ3, it appears that there's a resource-based
> system; but I don't know the details.
> 
> > 3.Two build queues. One for building units, the other for building improvs.
> 
> 
> This is brought up occasionally.  The standard response is that splitting
> your city's production between two or more targets means you finish each
> one much more slowly than if you built them one at a time.  This costs
> you the use of one of those targets for the period of time you would
> have had it, had you simply done one at a time.
> 
> For example: you schedule a marketplace, and then a ship.  Suppose each
> takes 10 turns to build.  If you build one at a time, you get to use the
> marketplace while the ship is being built.  If you schedule them both
> "in parallel", then both finish after 20 turns, and you lose 10 turns'
> worth of marketplace income enhancement.
> 
> However, if you allow a city to continue processing the build queue
> after it's completed one item, then it could potentially build multiple
> targets in the same turn, assuming you have the shields for it.  That
> could be useful in the late game for builder-types.  I've seen this
> proposal on the freeciv-dev list before, but I don't know what came of
> it.

Exactly what I am suggesting. This really matters in the end game.
 
> > 4. Big cities should have much higher tech earlier on, even a size 5 city
> > should be producing more science than 5 size ones.
> 
> This will generally be true if you have a library in the city, and if
> you don't have to worry about unhappiness.  The problem is that you
> probably *don't* have a library, and at least one of your workers is
> really an Elvis.
> 
> I think this point is the one that REALLY demonstrates the strength
> of ICS.  It seems natural and right that a single size-5 city should
> produce more science and gold than 5 size-1 cities -- unless you've
> actually played the game, where the reverse is true! :-/
> 
> I'd actually like it if ICS gave a higher aggregate shield output (which
> it currently does), while a large-city strategy gave better aggregate
> gold and science, without such an extraordinary investment in city
> improvements.  That would seem like a good balance to me.  (Of course,
> any change that affects game balance needs lots of careful playtesting;
> it's easy to overshoot.)
>

No. The limits on growth in Freeciv are too many. Unhappiness, having to
build worthless improvs like Aqueduct and Sewer System in order to grow
in size. Big cities should in every way be far better than ICS.
 
> > 5 Remove costfree units for all govs. Or alternatively have it depend on
> city
> > size.
> 
> The SMAC "clean" units are another alternative to this, but they come
> in the mid-game (perhaps 100 to 120 turns if you focus on growth and
> research instead of warfare).  It's also worth mentioning that SMAC lets
> you upgrade combat units of the same chassis type from any configuration
> to any other (same-or-better armor and weapon) configuration.  So you
> can convert all of your 1-1-1 units into, say, 1-<4>-1*2 Clean/AAA units
> by spending energy credits (gold).
> 
> (A word on clean units: their higher cost means that you have to keep
> them alive for a while in order to realize a profit on your investment.
> So it's probably not worthwhile to build clean aircraft, if they're
> going to fight for 1-5 turns before being killed.  But a clean garrison
> unit that simply sits in your central base for 200 turns and never gets
> 
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