[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#7045) Double trade route revenue

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

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=7045 >

In this savegame (fulltradesize=8 played in good faith to prove a
point) there are 22 big cities of which 3 are maximized. The 3 cities
constitute 42% of the total base trade, and 59% of the total science
output.

There is no point making trade routes for any other city before you
have filled the 4 slots of one city that already has buildings.

There is also no point investing in buildings for other cities before
you have milked or maximized the first big one fully.

A feature unique to Freeciv is that caravans can change homecity.
I doubt this was considered vs. game balance when implemented.

The result is smallpox with one big city, and then another one
(much) later on.

So I'm thinking it'd be better to reduce the max number of trade
routes to 3, like in Civ2, and at the same time increase
profitability with more than 1/3. That should reduce the time to
construct a big one, give incentive to build more, and generally
encourage vertical rapturing. Or, we could drop our unique feature.

However, I think a patch should only be part of a "mode" that also
includes the realistic bombardment and maybe Jing's corruption. Since
nobody probably can be bothered to implement the proper major modes
yet, we could use the ruleset function, and make it clear that "civ3
ruleset" should not be seen as a very incomplete port of civ3, but
rather emulate the game style that people associate with it.

Or we could call it slow freeciv and rename the default to blitz mode
or south park freecivism, or something.

The patches are trivial, the gameplay effects enormous.


Arnstein

3_trade_cities.gz
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