[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12484) Combining the defense buildings

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12484 >

Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12484 >
> 
> This was suggested by Vasco one day on the irc channel, and I think he is
> right: The splitting of the defense building from civ1 to civ2 was a
> mistake. City walls are not good enough, and nobody I know builds Coastal
> Fortress, ever. The same goes for SAM and SDI. They are grossly expensive
> and set you back when you should be doing offensive. Not to mention that
> it is a bother to build so many defensive buildings if you want a
> somewhat decent defense somewhere.
> 
> There are several options here.
> 
> 1) Combine Walls, Coastal, SAM and SDI into one super-defense building
> ("City Defense").
> 2) Combine Walls, Coastal and SAM into a single defense building ("City
> Walls"), and leave SDI separate.
> 3) Combine Walls and Coastal ("City Walls") and combine SAM and SDI ("Air
> defense"?).
> 4) Combine Walls and Coastal only ("City Walls"), leaving SAM and SDI
> separate but perhaps cheaper.
> 5) Don't combine them, just make them cheaper.
> 
> Thoughts? I think I favour solution 3.

Personally I do build them.  In MP games coastal defenses are the only 
way a largepox strategy can succeed against the superior early 
production of smallpox, and city walls are thus necessary as well to 
prevent land assaults.

Combining these would be advantageous to largepox, assuming the combined 
building has lower cost but still a reasonable upkeep.  However one 
suggestion was that the sea/air benefits should be dependent on the 
production of a certain tech - is this too complicated?  Also I think 
(like SMAC) an advanced form is needed for later in the game (each form 
can have a value of 100 maybe).

Another good feature would be something to extend the vision range of 
cities (a la MoM).  This is quite problematic in the current code since 
cities don't have vision, but this should be changed IMO.

-jason