[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [SPAM] Re: (PR#7021) fighting ICS (was: allies give all their techs for nothing)

["Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7021 >

From: imbaczek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:imbaczek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> 
> >> - increasing settler cost with each built settler,
> 
> AL> Several implications:
> 
> AL> 1. I don't see any realism aspect.
> 
> It shouldn't be an issue, we're trying to make the game better. Life
> sucks already, why make games as bad? :)

Ok, I'll put it the other way.  This is stupid.  It will piss players off.  
Find some other way to deal with smallpox.  It's not realistic, and worse, it's 
gratuitously annoying and tedious.

Civ III is guilty of that in spades BTW, with their rampant corruption and 
revolt rules.  The designers thought it would be cool if only your cities near 
your capital are any good.  It is *not* cool, the player wants to colonize and 
terraform the whole planet!  Let them.

There needs to be a payoff for cities being bigger.  That's the core problem.  
No payoff, no point.

> >> - having settlers cost 2 pop; splitting settler to settler/worker,
> 
> AL> Genereal slowdown. But since we have the nice worker unit 
> graphics..
> 
> And it works in SMAC, IMHO :)

Civ3 also distinguishes between Settlers and Workers.  However, the idea of 
requiring 2 pop to produce a city of 1 pop is insipid.  Please don't spend your 
time on how to piss off all the Civ/SMAC fans out there.

> This is a very important (and really trivial) fact. Your solution is
> pretty nice, but needs refining wrt history. In the middle ages (and
> in the midgame) the production wasn't much higher (or was it?) than in
> the time of Romans. I suggest an extra city improvent (relativly cheap
> -- that's important!), for example a workshop or a blacksmith (or
> both :), which would increase city production by 100%.

If it's a relatively cheap improvement, like a Barracks, or Harbor, or City 
Wall (40..80 shields), then a smallpoxer simply builds "one of those."  Or 
better yet, buys them outright when they're wealthy enough.  That's especially 
easy to do in the current game, you really only need a 10% Science budget if 
you've got allies.

Best suggestion I can think of: implement the Civ III notion of "Culture."  
Make larger cities worth more culture, and of course having temples, 
cathederals etc. are worth culture.  People make big cities because they're 
afraid of being acculturated.  Little smallpox farming hamlets should be easy 
to convert.

On the same idea, you could make small towns much easier to bribe than big 
ones.  That way, you wouldn't have to change the game much at all.  You would 
need to implement AIs that take advantage of that strategy, though.

Incidentally, my usual popluation strategy is (1) plant cities as far apart as 
possible while not leaving any "cracks" for allies to build cities on, (2) 
under a Monarchy, build lotsa Settlers, roads, and harbors, (2) research 
Monotheism and Theology, (3) build the Sistine Chapel, later the J.S. Bach 
Cathederal, (4) go Democratic, (5) put most of the budget into Luxury.  Watch 
the population get huge!

This is even easier in the current Freeciv, because your allies are doing all 
the needed tech research for you.  Hm, actually I wonder if I can get away with 
an almost all Luxury budget even under a Monarchy?  Wonder if I can get big 
early game growth rates?


Cheers,                         www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA

20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.