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

["Raimar Falke" <i-freeciv-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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

On Sun, Dec 07, 2003 at 10:24:12AM -0800, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> 
> <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.

I really like Thomas's suggestion because we came up with it at the
FUADEC. Yes know it is unrealistic. But this is the solution to the
math problem. There is exponential grow. When one player somehow got a
small advantage at the start (hut with a city or even whales for the
first 3 cities) this advantage will grow quite large very quickly.

One solution is to remove the exponential grow. Increased settler
costs do this. Except for some overhead (because you can't pool all
shield stocks across your cities) every player can build the some
number of settlers and so cities at a given time. Linear growth.

This isn't the ONE solution. There are other solutions:
 - add more random events which may give the player who is behind also
 an advantage. Something like "a large merchantman supports your idea
 with 500 gold". People will find this unfair and will disable it.

 - remove the dependency on "city power" (the number of people you
 have/the number of tiles you harvest) to win the game. Let the player
 gain an advantage by staying small (low number of total
 population). I'm not sure what this may look like. This only works
 when the small player can specializes itself in some way. Very rought
 idea may look like: small player research a tech which is at the end
 of an otherwise dead tech tree. The smaller player than produces a
 certain unit. The production cost of this unit goes down. The smaller
 player sells these units to the other players. The players don't do
 this because the initial investment is too high.

 Now this idea would really benefit from nation effects. In pregame
 you choose an item which grants all your units +10% movement. But for
 this you have to accept -10% research speed. You could sell these
 fast units to other players or (if you use something more combat
 oriented) use them for your own advantage.

Bottom line: in the current game you win if you harvest the most
tiles. At the start small cities have a small advantage here (free
city center). Because of exponential growth this small advantage is
very fast a big one. The investment you do in large cities doesn't pay
off fast enough. Making a large empire inefficient (corruption/waste)
or unstable is only a band aid for the symptoms.

Note that exponential grow is what is really occurring in nature given
no constrains (running out of food/land). If freeciv would be a
simulation we would have to keep exponential grow. But freeciv
isn't. It is about providing a challange throughout the game. With
exponential grow this is very hard to achieve.
 
        Raimar

-- 
 email: rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
 "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."
    -- D. E. Knuth in "Structured Programming with go to Statements"