[Freeciv-Dev] Re: for discussion: ics revisited

[Jason Short <vze2zq63@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Mon, 18 Mar 2002, Jason Short wrote:
>
> > It seems pretty artificial to me...
> Why?
Every Civ game has had science research increase by 50% under science 
buildings.  This includes all four SM ones (including CivIII, which does 
address ICS), Freeciv, and every clone I know of.
In other words, its a very visible change.  All players will wonder why 
it has happened.  It's overkill.
(As for changing the tech style, I have no problems with that.  But 
that's a different issue; it has nothing to do with ICS.)
> > I always thought the "natural" solution to ICS was to count all workers
> > working in a city's radius toward the "unhappiness" for that city, even
> > if they belonged to another city.  This would make smallish ICS cities
> > be counted as cities several times their size for unhappiness calculations.
> Forcing cities further apart does very little to solve the problem. We can
> do that (much cleaner) with citymindist already.
Citymindist is less clean (though still pretty clean), because it's a 
fixed-distance effect.  The solution I outline (proposed by 
someone-or-other many months ago) has a proportionally greater effect 
depending on how close a player's cities are.
And, it is much less intrusive on the rulesets (than your solution).

But, why does forcing cities further apart not solve the problem?  You 
can still sprawl, but I don't see how that's ever going to stop...

I also think civIII's solution was pretty good: "set pop_cost 2". 
Culture does help out in some ways, too (a city with no culture has 
problems), but hurts in others (ICS will be able to eventually get huge 
amounts of culture, though it'll cost).
jason