[Freeciv-Dev] Re: non-smallpox idea

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > The simple one is the corruption distance fall off of city science under
> > despotism. In effect this means that whilst a smallpox player is
> > guaranteed at least one science point from all their first 8 cities,
> [...]
>
> I think this is a problem in itself and it's not hard to fix.
> There's no basis for the roundoff to 1.
The minimum of 1 trade left after corruption has been removed since 1.12.0.  
However, the problem of roundoff still remains.  Say a city is suffering a 
loss of trade of 93% to curruption, then it doesn't matter whether it is 
producing 1 or 10 trade prior to corruption, it will have exactly 1 trade 
left afterwards regardless.  This seems wrong to me as it clearly favors 
smaller cities.
Currently under Despotism, the 100% corruption distance is 12 (this is 
map_distance, which is the sum of the distances in x and y direction, i.e. 
diagnal is counted as 2).  As long as city stays within this distance from 
the capital, it is guaranteed at least 1 trade (thus science), thus 
corruption is never a problem for smallpox since the cities are rarely far 
from each other, at least at the start.  Once you reach the Republic, 
corruption is even less of a problem for smallpox, where the maximum is 
capped at 53.7% (=36/67).
On the other hand, if you prefer not to use smallpox, you would place your 
cities farther apart and grow them bigger, then corruption will become a 
serious problem.  As I pointed out earlier, big cities lose a lot more to 
curruption than smaller ones.  Under despotism, a distance of 6 from the 
capital means 50% loss of trade.  This would seriously delay the discovery 
of the Republic and haunt you for the rest of the game.
> > The easiest way i can think of to fix that is to also make the 
> corruption
> > fall off proportional to the number of cities in the empire. This would 
> even
> > things up between the two strategies, at least at the beginning of the
> > game. If science output (under despotism), became 1 after 2 cities, and 
> 0
> > after 8 cities, this would effectively maintain the current status quo.
>
> Looks like a good idea, but I don't see the 'realism'.
"Realism" be damned, Sir!  We need game balance!  ;-)

Mike


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