[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12905) RFC: normalizing the effects of happiness buildings

["Peter Schaefer" <peter.schaefer@xxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12905 >

On 4/30/05, (Eddie Anderson) <saywhat@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12905 >
> 
>     There are several interrelated proposals here. 
> ...

>   3) and 4) - I proposed the 50% trade increase for a three reasons:
> 
>     a) It's somewhat similar to Monarchy's and Communism's existing
>        celebration bonus.
> 
>     b) AFAICT the math is the same as that already used for a
>        railroad's effect on food and shield production.
> 
>     c) I was hoping to narrow the gap in desirability between
>        Monarchy and Republic (and between Communism and
>        Democracy).  Unfortunately, that idea was ill-conceived.
> ...

>     But what if Monarchy/Communism's bonus *was* 100% per tile?
>     Then 50% more for Republic/Democracy's celebration bonus would
>     be smaller by comparison.

Well, for many land tiles, +1 is a 100% trade bonus - basically I
think a celebrating city has the same trade bonus as it would have
under Republic, so it brings Monarchy close to Republic.

So for me the question would be, if celebration growth is removed,
what would a Republic/Democracy receive as a bonus? I think just any
bonus that you give the Republic will work counter-current to your
idea of making Monarchy a better choice. You could give it the
corruption lowering bonus of a democracy. I must admit I have no idea
what Democracy would get then, maybe its ok if it gets nothing.

I don't think you can really stop a smallpox island game from making
players go for Republic, simply because it has more research and that
cannot change. You could insert additional techs into the paths to
Republic to make it less interesting to research, but the Greek Plato
wrote "The Republic", so I guess the Republic "technology" really is
kind of ancient.

Monarchy is supposed to be the better tech when a nation is at war.
One could try to make Monarchy an even better choice for the reason of
production, for example by making it cost much more to buy shields to
rush production (under Republic i.e. a Republic uses trade to buy
shields). I suspect there might already be a setting for this. So
maybe then players would switch back to Monarchy.

> >Let's just start coding my migration algo, I'll try to help :-P ;-)
> >After that migration can replace the city growth part of celebration :)
> 
>     I'd like to try your algo.  As I said, I've already dumped
> celebration growth from my games.  So having a working migration algo
> would be a bonus.  :-)

:-)

> 
> >>
> >> >So you might get away with 4 steps(city status' ) instead of 5 as they 
> >> >are now:
> >> >- get initial unrest and determine military unrest
> >> >- calculate luxuries and content modifiers and include wonders in these.
> >> >(steps)
> >> >- set up city for initial unrest
> >> >- apply content modifier
> >> >- apply luxuries modifier
> >> >- apply military unrest starting from lowest content citizen
> >>
> >>      Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote, but I don't see how
> >> this produces a better result.  In fact, as I read it, this would
> >> also render Shakespeare and Bach as impotent as Michelangelo.
> >
> >I did not suggest putting all wonders into the "content" category, but
> >placing some of them into the "luxuries" category(which btw. follows
> >your master plan partially).
> >...

>     OK, I think I see what you meant now - convert the effects of
> Temple, Colosseum, and Cathedrals into luxuries at the beginning of
> the calculations.  Is that right?

Not really, only the effect of some of these buildings. After all, a
temple has an effect on happiness as long as the number of unhappy
citizens in step 1 of the happiness calculation exceeds or is equal to
the number of "content"-effects from buildings. One could follow your
plan a little, though.

I suspect the real reason that Cathedrals are not as important is that
cities in smallpox games rarely grow beyond 8 or 12 size. I think the
"content" effect of cathedrals should not be changed to follow the
temple logic. However, you could convince me that the colosseum should
have a luxury effect so that wars are easier to lead. After all, that
is how the Romans did it. There is a "content" effect already, but no
"luxuries" effect of buildings, I think.

!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------!
So you could test this plan in a ruleset if a luxuries effect of
buildings was added.
!--------------------------------------------------------------------------------!

This wouldn't simplify the working of freeciv though, although that
was one intention.
Now, regarding my idea to simplify the calculation by including the
wonders in the content/luxuries modfiers, I think there is too much
inertia in that the client side would have to be changed. Also I just
took another look and it seems some wonders already turn up in the
usual calculations(, which is kind of amazing to see on the client
side since that is not straightforward to code, good work :-).

> >Btw, I think Republic should also have a military law of 1 unit/city.

Well it is just that some of my brain cells tell me there was such a
feature in Sid Meier's Civ1, but maybe I am wrong. I also think that
it would cure some other (smallpox) symptom, namely that islands just
fall over when a conquerer comes along, due to that fact that none of
the cities has a defender. People even recommend not to build roads
because then the islands fall even quicker. However roads should be a
good thing to build - autosettlers build them as well.

--Peter