[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#4539) rules against smallpox (tutorials/nopox page)

["rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The argument here is basically flawed. In the initial game before one has
accumulated technology and the ability to grow vertically to exploit the
multiplicative factors, it is the case that despotic sprawl with lots of
small cities is the winning strategy. This is true in PayCiv too.

The fact that online gamers seldom get past the initial simple strategy to
more complex ones is a function of the need to think less and react more
quickly to simple military threats and activities, rather than optimize
and conserve resources to make the most efficient use of them.

In a strategic game, the player that survives any initial onslaught, or
avoids it and reaches a technological edge will cleanup on any smallpox
or ICS opponents by using their resources more effectively to maintain
the maximum curve of exponential growth.

ICS and smallpox are very inefficient growth strategies, and have a lot of
military and other weaknesses that can be exploited to cause catastrophic
collapse. They are just the easiest to handle and first that can be used
until the game matures a bit.

But Jason is right that there are a number of factors like unhappiness
and waste that are not properly implemented in Freeciv that impact the
balance between horizontal and vertical growth patterns, or technological
diplomatic and trade exchanges that boost the value of vertical multipliers
and provide for more non-military types of competition. The player with the
most money always wins is one strategy that defeats tanks, even as a tech
strategy of advanced weaponary defeats hordes of despotic phalanxes.

Cheers,
RossW
=====


Jason Short wrote:
> --On Friday, July 11, 2003 12:20:14 -0700 Guest <rt-guest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
> wrote:
>>
>>Hello,
>>I haven't played FreeCiv much, but I like "civ" games
>>very much. I have read Mike Jing's letter
>>(on the tutorials/nopox.html page)
>>and I think it is quite sad that he sees the smallpox
>>strategy as an incurable problem of FreeCiv.
> 
> 
> There are really two concepts here: smallpox and infinite city sprawl (ICS).
> 
> Smallpox is the advantage gained by putting all of your cities very close 
> together.  It's easy to make this an invalid strategy.
> 
> ICS is the advantage of always building new cities rather than improving 
> your existing ones.  The player who spreads out more will always beat the 
> player who concentrates on infrastructure.  This is much harder to 
> counter-balance. 
[...]
> jason