[Freeciv-Dev] Re: buying cities

[Mark Metson <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 23 Dec 2003, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> > I have stockpiled enough freight to buy up
> > the Manhattan Project in a hurry if I am forced to but do not
> > expect to be forced to,
> 
> I wonder if freight is really worth it compared to just buying a Wonder
> outright with money?

I think so, because with money each shield costs two gold whereas using 
shields directly they only cost one shield each. From the very start of 
the game I always focus on shields not on money, hence my annoyance with 
the default city-management. I build factories and offshore platforms and 
manufacturing plants wherever possible and do not use them to manufacture 
currency because doing so would only give me one gold per shield whereas 
shields are - according to the prices of buildings - actually worth two 
gold each. So for me, with massive production and with my gold earmarked 
for buying complete cities usually including units inside them, I am 
better off building using shields than gold. My gold gets much much better 
buying-power buying other people's cities. Heck sometimes I get LOTS of 
units INSANELY cheap. I do think cities seem too cheap. I bought one for 
177 that includes a port facility I was able to sell for 80, and it had at 
least one unit included too. I bought several for maybe about 175 to 450 
that had eight or more riflemen+apline troops in them, just one apline 
troop alone starting from scratch would have cost more than that. So even 
just to get units they are a bargain let alone often getting a city 
complete with city walls for less than the 150 or so it would cost to 
build city walls having already at least tokenly started building city 
walls.

I do not know where the caluculations of price of cities come from, as in 
whether they were reverse-engineered from some commercial version of Civ. 
In the commercial one I used to play, Civ I since I never got into Windows 
and Civ-I ran in DOS, I never really used diplomats much. I maybe should 
note that it does sometimes take three spies or sometimes even more than 
three diplomats to succeed in taking a city, especially if it has a 
defending spy or diplomat. But spies/diplomats are cheap once you have 
manufacturing plants in big cities...

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