[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#13845) Increasing the appeal of very large cities

["Antoine Bouchard" <osyluth@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=13845 >

>From: "Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>What you're talking about is basically equivalent to
>fulltradesize/notradesize (which used a penalty rather than a bonus).
>And this didn't work very well.
>
>-jason

Ok, these number crunching exercises are getting painfull, but it is a good 
pain (!).

S1 is a size 1 city and S10 is a size 10, etc.

4 S1 uses 8 tiles
1 S7 uses 8 tiles
therefore 4 S1 == 1 S7  in freeciv turns.
yet the S7 grows slower, has more population and is concentrated into a 
single city (strategically unsound). Common sense says that more population 
should be more productive yet it isn't.

Since it is a LOT easier to get 4 S1 then to get 1 S7, i fail to see why you 
should go with the large city. I think that here everyone agrees. What we do 
not agree on is what next?

The notradesize/fulltradesize stuff failed. IMHO it failed because it made 
the start of the game too slow by removing the effect of the extra tile that 
S1 gets. That extra tile was added for a reason initially and that reson was 
to make the start of the game faster.

The reason to give a bonus later is to offset that initial bonus by making 
(for example) 4 S1 = 1 S4. So that we get a regime where 1 pop == 1 pop == 1 
pop. Now that regime can be reached by removing the extra tile initially 
granted (that is partly what  notradesize/fulltradesize did). Nobody here 
wants to remove that bonus.

So we are left with the problem that the 2nd pop = 50% of the 1st pop, 3rd 
pop = 25% of 1st pop, 4th pop = 12.5% of 1st pop and so on.

What i am proposing does not remove that initial free tile at pop 1 nor does 
it remove any parts of it. What it gives is a push up for large cities that 
get larger with the city size. The current scheme of 5% per pop (starting at 
pop 2) makes exactly 1 S20 = 20 S1 without marketplace, libraries, factories 
or whatever. Because 20 S1 exploit 40 tiles and 1 S20 exploit 21 tiles while 
getting 95% bonus so it is the equivalent of exploiting 40 or 41 tiles 
(depends on rounding).

It can become better: 10% bonus makes 10 S1 = 1 S10.

That is something that notradesize/fulltradesize was never capable of doing.

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