[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Fixing ICS (simply)

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

From: Hellen Claggett [mailto:hellen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
>
> My thought is that slowing down the initial building rate of
> new cities
> in the opening part of the game will significantly cut into the
> geometric growth of an ICS player so that he is not already
> unstoppable
> by the midgame (which, ATM, is really the endgame for all intents). I
> don't want the Mongol hoards to be removed from the game entirely. I
> just want to give time for the Chinese empire to put up a fight when
> they do sweep across the land.

This depends rather highly on whether you are assuming a game with AI
players or not.  "Parasitic Empire Expansion" or "First Contact, First
Kill" is a rather effective strategy for massively growing your empire.
The basic idea is that AIs are so stupid, that human beings will always
conquer them easily.  That could be rectified with much better AI, but
it will be awhile before the Freeciv codebase is to that level.
Meanwhile, the drill is not to worry about sprawl for its own sake at
all.  You build your cities in a straight line towards the nearest enemy
AI civilization, get a nice road network together, and take them over.
You don't need to build hardly any cities at all, the AI has already
done the boring heavy lifting for you.  *WITH* AI cheat resource
advantages, in many instances!

"First Contact, First Kill" is the only way I know to beat SMAC on
Transcend in 8 hours play time.  Allying with an AI that spews out tons
of units and technology for you is a variation on the strategy.  The
best way to guarantee that in SMAC, is to beat your first AI
civilization to within an inch of its life, force its permanent
surrender, then give back all of its conquered cities so that you don't
have to take the Happiness penalties.  Now it's a strong ally rather
than a weak one, building lotsa good stuff for you *WITH* AI cheat
resource advantages.

This principle applies in spades to the current Freeciv.  Make an
alliance with the first AI civilization you meet.  That's your research
factory.  It should be corrected; for now, it's the only way to win the
game.  With no AI ally, your research is so slow that you find yourself
getting attacked by alpine troops when you've still got knights.  When
you fully perceive Freeciv strategy in these terms, you do things like
buy Marco Polo's Embassy so that you can pick and choose the best
research alliances, so that you can stay ahead of all the silly AIs.

In general: you cannot assume that startup costs are a check on
anything.  Taking over complete, packaged AI empires is rather easy, and
AIs generally get resource cheats.  You must always consider the
productive value of small cities once their startup costs are long since
paid for.

> Welll, if you _really_ want to drive a stake through the ICS strategy
> (why do I feel like I'm betraying my own kin?), then in addition to
> removing free terrain improvements given to a city, removing the free
> worker given to all cities ought to finish the job.

As stated above, with AIs in the game you will reduce but not solve the
problem.

> Each new city site would have
> to strongly favor rivers and high food squares just to stay alive at
> all.

Actually I currently favor high food squares anyways, because the
current "Make Money Fast" tile defaults are brain dead.  They discourage
growth and production.  I can either choose to manually futz the tiles
almost every turn of the game (it's gotten old), play the GTK+ client
with CMA (haven't tried it yet), or build my cities more judiciously to
compensate for the stupid Make Money Fast default.

What's the ultimate effect on the player's sense of enjoyment?  Well,
when you don't know what to do about it, i.e. you're a newbie, or you
just haven't gotten used to the way Freeciv does things yet, it's damn
annoying to be penalized.  Once you know what's going on, when land is
plentiful it isn't a big deal.  And when land *isn't* plentiful, you're
at war and micromanaging the tiles of your first 3 cities for maximum
shields.

> Building a settler would be a significant risk since it
> is taking a precious food from your despotic little village;
> possibly risking starvation.

There's nothing risky about being deprived of 1 food for 5..8 turns
while you send a Settler to somewhere fairly nearby.  It's the cost of
doing business.  If you have a food surplus, you can settle.  Under the
Make Money Fast defaults, Republican cities are down to 0 food all the
time when they're supporting Settlers.

> I definitely don't see someone blithely founding new cities
> at will until late Monarchy and maybe not until they had engineers.

I don't understand your comment, unless it's a human concern.  Against
AIs, one blithely settles until one hits the uncrossable ocean and
you're so big you really don't feel like bothering anymore.  The main
constraint here is boredom!

> He'd still have an empty city after it was built. But now six or so
> turns have elapsed giving barbarians and opposing players
> that much more time to attack it.

I suppose.  But it's not a huge risk against AIs.  You don't build
cities where the AIs are going to get them.

> > Then adopt Civ III rules.  You can't do this in Civ III, you need a
> > water source.  This change won't solve ICS, but it's a contributing
> > factor that would help.
> >
> > Another minor but significant Civ III rule is that if you plant your
> > city by a river, you don't need an aqueduct!  And it is
> "by" a river in
> > Civ III, the rivers are on the borders between tiles.
>
> I think both of those refinements sound great!

Yes, they are good rules.  Civ III did have some improvements.
Strategic Resources is an excellent rule, BTW.  Really lets you know
what the Middle East is all about!


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.