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

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

Josh Cogliati wrote:
>
> I am going to pretend that you said smallpox, not ICS, because
> I think that you are refering to smallpox specifically.

There's a difference?  What is it?

> The other possibility is to make it more profitable to
> improve a city.
> For example, make marketplace, library, and temple free upkeep.

This will not change anything.  Paying upkeeps is not the slightest bit
difficult as it is.  The reason people don't build city improvements is
it takes a long time to build them in the first place.

> Make it harder to destroy city improvements by diplomats (but create
> some kind of ignore's city walls unit earlier in the game).

Irrelevant when playing against AIs, as they never destroy your city
improvements.  You are rarely interested in destroying theirs, because
AIs are easy to beat and you want to grab their cities as intact as you
can.  I think the whole mechanic of selling off city improvements is
pretty silly.  You attack some huge AI city, boom! in one turn it's
suddenly a farming hovel.  Unless you're talking strategic bombardment,
it's totally unrealistic and worse, it's not a fun play mechanic.  I
want to take the big AI city and get the stuff!

> Make a worker unit that has no food upkeep, so it is easyier to
> improve the countryside.

I agree that would definitely encourage big cities.

> I propose that there should be a new directory in freeciv called
> experimental, which is basically exactly that.  It should have a far
> lower threshhold for making a change as compared to default.
> For example, the proposed worker unit should have gone into
> experimental
> almost as soon as it was proposed, since it makes an
> interesting change.

See my post "alpha, beta, release."  Important difference of philosophy:
proposed worker would go into alpha *immediately*.  No Gatekeepers for
alpha.  Code removed only if it's malicious.  The point is to get it out
into the field and used.  It's no longer the Gatekeepers' job to decide
merit / demerit, only the degree of the code's stability.


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.