[Freeciv-Dev] (PR#7047) ICS

["Arnstein Lindgard" <a-l@xxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7047 >


To make city development a viable winning strategy, there are
two main problem areas that must be solved:

1.  The trade and production output of the builder must match
    that of the warmonger, and that of the smallpoxer.

2.  Cities must be defendable.


1.  Trade and production.
=========================
I suggest we dig up Mike Jing's old patch that keeps a record
of the order in which your cities are founded. The first n
(about 10-14) cities have normal corruption and waste. Later
aquired cities get increasingly draconian levels of both. n is
affected by goverment.

In Civ3 corruption and waste can easily be 90% for all your
cities. You may reduce it with courthouse buildings. But since
the building is expensive in the first place, and works by a
percentage of the total production, you'd have to grow the
city in order to justify the expense.


2.  Defense.
============
There is absolutely no point in investing resources in large
cities if you can't defend them. Currently you can't. All
wargames since RISK are based on the fundamental realistic
principle that you need at least twice as big an army as the
enemy in order to attack, preferably 4 times bigger. The
defender always has the upper hand.

This is partially implemented in Civ2 and Freeciv: Defender
gets terrain bonuses and the ability to fortify, and use
fortresses. However, this principle is completely bypassed in
two ways:

  2A. Diplomats used to be able to buy landlocked cities cheaply.

  2B. Ship bombardment is overpowered. Ships have way more
      hitpoints than contemporary infantry, ignore terrain
      defense bonus (has this been changed?), and can attack
      multiple times. For the purpose of wiping out enemy
      infantry divisions, one Freeciv ironclad is currently
      more powerful than a real world nuke.

Seems like 2A has been fixed recently. That's pretty good.

The solution to 2B is trivial, implement realistic
bombardment:

  When bombarding, all enemy units on the tile may or may not
  loose a small number of hitpoints, but never be reduced to 0.

You would actually have to bring an army in order to invade
someone, imagine that. You may need a logistics tool.

The remaining of this post is primarily concerned with
generator 2, although other generators also usually have many
coastal cities. In addition, the trade bonus from ocean tiles,
combined with harbor 2 food, dictates that any specialized
trade city that wants to grow fast, must be coastal. Irrigation
and road construction is slow.

The current reversal of standard combat simulation causes
Freeciv to be a contest of aggression; constant and unending
attack is not the best way to win, it is the only way to win.
(This is fun, makes a faster game, and also makes it much harder
for players of other wargames to become good at Freeciv.)

Therefore, you may not grow expensive cities. You must see all
your cities as equally expendable, as attempting to defend one
particular area will impose crippling limitations on your
tactics. Therefore, you may not invest in city improvments for
any one particular city. Fast-moving attack tactics rules,
which is why Magellan is the only serious wonder.

The only defense is to have a large counter-attack capable
fleet stationed. The player who attempts this simply forfeits
the option to expand by attack, and thereby forfeits victory.

There is absolutely no point in even attempting an ICS
solution before the defender (ground units) gets the upper
hand, like he has in every other wargame.

I'm pretty sure that what the smallpox-haters really dislike,
is that some bastard is always able to attack and take all
their cities rather quickly and easily. They probably want a
slow, static playing style to be winnable, but may not be able
to formulate their griefs.

Then we could make one clear server option that turns all of
this on. Maybe a fat shining button in the setup dialog, which
I assume can be used for starting the server in the next
version.

It should be advertised as a game style that causes games to
last (much) longer, and favor city development more than
traditional Freeciv. While we're at it, I would throw out a
whole bunch of the cryptic server options... Citymindist,
notradesize and fulltradesize are particularly futile.


Arnstein