[Freeciv-Dev] Re: [SPAM] Re: (PR#7021) fighting ICS

["raven@xxxxxxxxx" <raven@xxxxxxxxx>]

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

Per I. Mathisen wrote:

>I still think we can solve ICS,
>smallpox and city-improvements-are-worthless using the tools we have today
>and general effects.
>
>  
>
That reminds me of another thing:   Another reason city improvements are 
worthless, is that there's a wonder that does the same job as most of 
them without any upkeep and usually for cheaper (I'm talking wonders 
with national effect, in a decent sized empire).  If you can get the 
wonder, that's great for you, and you don't need the improvements.  If 
you can't get the wonder, you're fucked and the improvements are too 
expencive to bother with.  I've mentioned a couple times that I wish the 
buildings.rulesets worked a bit better when it comes to editing wonders 
(and I've been told that's in the works), but even just as a much 
simpler thing, I think a single server option for turning all the 
wonders on or off would be great.

>>This isn't the ONE solution. There are other solutions:
>>    
>>
>
>My prefered solution is (again) to make city improvements necessary.
>Increase research cost, gold upkeep and other costs, and then
>significantly increase the benefits of city improvements. This way you
>will not be able to afford to run rampant smallpox.
>
Yeah, I'd agree.  I think an important addition to that would be 
Arnstien's note about improving defense and lowering the power of ships 
in the early game.

> ICS can be balanced by
>more aggressive use of corruption and waste from number of cities. (Note
>that our civ2 ruleset has more aggressive corruption and waste than
>default.)
>  
>
Yes, and perhaps how to use those effectively, would not be to make them 
so devestating and overbaring as Civ3.   For instance, say small cities 
didn't have such bad corruption and waste, so they wouldn't be 
completely stagnant, you could build things there.  But, that would 
again give the advantage to small cities, so to counter that, we'd have 
to make small cities nearly useless.  Ie, you have to grow big cities to 
get noteworthy trade and production out of them, but would have to build 
some basic improvements to get them to grow at all.  Also, we'd need to 
get rid of the ability to just grow out, boost your lux in Rep/Dem and 
suddenly 4x your population.

Just a thought, I'll refine it when I'm not as sleep-deprived.  This 
would need to be carefully done - the empire building of the slow game 
is fun cause it's about needing to balance everything just right to 
succeed, if it's really just jumping through monotonous, repeditive 
hoops of prerequisits I'd rather just go to college.  ;-)

I guess a better way to put it is; largepoxers/empire builders/the 
people who want improvements to matter, want building the empire to be 
the main chalange.  Make building a robust, stable, powerful empire a 
creative chalange, culminating in the ability to put your industrial 
super-power status into smiting your enimies (which should also be a 
chalange) and you've succeeded in making the game be what I think the 
largepoxers are aiming for (by which I really mean, I would -love- it, 
and so I presume that it's what other people are looking for too.)  
Corruption and waste need to be limiting factors requiring some finesse 
to overcome, rather than just un-beatable, or overcomable only through 
predictable busywork.

>If advanced units in Freeciv required advanced city improvements, players
>would just have to build up their cities.
>
>  
>
Yes!  This doesn't seem like just some annoying limitation to me.  Right 
now in freeciv, you've basically got Podunk Nowhere Farming Town putting 
it's 2 units of generic production into a project for 40 turns, and bam, 
you've got a modern Cruiser unit.  Enough podunk nowhere towns and 
you've got a huge navy, without any actual industrial base.  Talk about 
lacking realisticness.  Require Factories to build modern ground troops, 
Manufacturing Plants to build Armor and Howitzers, a Harbor to build any 
Sea unit, a Port Facility to build any sea unit more modern than a 
Frigate, etc, take into account the exorbitant maintenance cost for 
those city improvements, and suddenly an industrial base and therefore 
ecconomic base and big cities, is vital to wining the game.

Add to that no wonders, turn off the ability to explode your population 
with lux, make rushing production with cash much harder, set diplchance 
to 10, make cities 3x as hard to conquer, and you've got a hell of a game.

--Zack