[Freeciv-Dev] non-smallpox idea

[Bernhard Kuemel <darsie@xxxxxx>]

Hi!

How about linking city size or some city improvements with reseach? It
is only realistic that scientific advances are made in cities. Having
only small villages might not block someone from advances, but
decrease the science output.

Having a science "corruption" of 1 (or 2) might be too much for the
beginning as that might take away almost all science of the early
villages.

Increasing the number of lightbulbs required for an advance would
allow very smooth adjustment of the advance rate with some formula. It
could also be made with an individual factor for each technology.
(Some) technologies could also depend on some city improvements, again
not neccessarily blocking, but slowing down. Scientific advances were
not only made through theoretical work, but inspired by practical
experience. Having no harbor might considerably slow down invention of
more advanced ships. Chivalry (allowing knights) could depend on
number of temples. Horseback riding would not need any penalty, but
the alphabet could well suffer if there were only size 1 villages.

These formula would probably be a rather opaque mechanism while much
of the game is very lucid. But the increase in # of lightbulbs/advance
is unknown by me, already. Is it linear, e.g. 3 or 5 bulbs/advance?
But well, the formulas could be published in the help browser.

We could have a rather large initial number of bulbs (nobs)
(increasing every advance or turn as now) and multiply that with a
reducing factor for every beneficial thing. E.g.:

steam engine (allowing ironclad):
for every      | multiply with
----------------------------
city size 3    | 0.99
city size 4-6  | 0.98
city size 7-10 | 0.95
or city size n | 1-0.005*n
harbor         | 0.97
but total benefit from cities = 0.9
total benefit from harbors=0.9

Factors for cities at the sea could be lower.

E.g.: say we have advance number 25 so our initial nobs = 10+25*3=85
Player has cities (size/number): 3/3, 4/2, 6/2, 8/1 and 3 harbors.

From the cities we get 0.99^3 * 0.98^4 * 0.95^1=0.85
total city benefit limits this to 0.9.
Benefit from 3 harbors: 0.97^3=0.91
total benefit: 0.9*0.91=0.82
Player needs 85*0.82=70 bulbs to invent steam engine. That value could
be updated every turn (nobs required may decrease during developement)
so players have motivation to build bigger cities and improvements.

I heard arguments that it's unrealistic to invent steam engines 600
BC, so with tiem as a factor these formulas could be tuned to achive
realistic timelines. Developing things before/past their historic
appearence could result in a developement penalty/bonus. We could have
server settins that modify the speed of time to control game length so
people could select from short games that last something like 100
turns until 2000 AD or long ones with 1000 turns until 2000 AD.

That set of formulas is probably too complex to configure every detail
with server options, but there could be several formula sets
selectable, including "none" meaning the current state.

Hey, I like that idea more and more. It does not put up annoying or
unrealistic rules like loads of unhappiness or city distance limit of
4. It appears very playable to me. And finally I feel very much it
would solve our problem with smallpox/ics as not building bigger
cities or improvements could effectively slow down technology which is
an essential power in the game.

Smallpox stopped me playing with others when in one of my early games
2 of my opponents playing ics were soooo far ahead of me. The need to
play such a dumb strategy takes away much of the games attractiveness
which is building up a civilization with all those lovely details. I
guess many people are waiting for a solution to the smallpox problem
and we would have much more players if we solved it.

Love Bernhard