[Freeciv-Dev] Thoughts about corruption

[Gregor Zeitlinger <zeitling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 25 Nov 2001, Mike Jing wrote:
> Maybe we should just 
> implement the auto-elvis feature and banish civil disorder once and for all. 
>   Or maybe we should just get rid of unhappiness altogether.  I know that 
> would make a LOT of people VERY happy.  ;-)
Yes, I think this would be very useful, but since it is a very different
feeling, I think it should be optional.

Some ieas I had about corruption and trade - motivated from long
micromanagement sesssions in Civ2.

1) I think it's easier and more predictable to make it a function that
depends on the total number of cities only. 

2) Which city has how much corruption could still depend on the distance
to the capital. Still easier would be to have the same amount of
corruption in each city, as in Communism (civ2 at least). Order of
founding could also be a possibility.

3) How about making gold income and sience production a continuous
function rather than a discrete one. This would eliminate the problem of a
10 and 1 city producing both 1 sciene because of 90% corruption.

4) A totally new idea would be to do the same as in 3) with luxury. There
are two ideas I could come up with.

4a) (luxury is continuous) Convert the excess luxury (after making
everyone content) into science or gold.

4b) Pool all luxury together and then distribute it among the cities to
make all people content, or, if sufficient, happy.

The idea is to eliminate losses from roundings, which I hate, because I
love efficiency :). Predictability is another point though.

I also though about the function to calculate corruption. I think it plays
a central role in determining the optimal number of cities. Is it a lineal
one right now? Does anybody know, or know where to find?

5) I would suggest something like (1/n)*base_trade, where n is your nth
city. (ln(n)/n)*base_trade is the equivalent function if it applies to all
cities, which has the convinience that you dont have to worry about which
city has with level of corruption. 
This fuction has the property that the total science level is ln(n) where
n is the trade from each city, given they are all equal. In the first
model (different corruption levels) its aleways good to found new cites
(for trade), while in the ladder it might be bad in the short run.
I could also imagine a function where the trade level in all cities
together is the same as if you had just one city ((1/n)*base_trade in each
city). You would still have an advantage because you could produce more
troops.

6) The same concept can be applied to waste (which is for shild as
curruption for trade) and food potetially too (although I don't think that
it's much desirable)

bye

-- 
Gregor Zeitlinger      
gregor@xxxxxxxxxxxxx