[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#17777) Remove unit homecity

["Daniel Doran" <dadoran@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=17777 >

At some times in the past, there were mechanisms proposed to support 
units with Gold instead of directly from homecities.
I've yet to see a version of Freeciv in which that was done, but I have 
seen it talked about. 

If Freeciv was changed to include one or more server settings to permit 
and control a changeover from city support to gold support for units, 
then it should be possible to, depending on the settings,
    A) continue with existing behaviour, consistent with Civ I and Civ II
    B) set support to Gold Only, which could approach Civ III
    C) set support to switch over at some point from one to the other 
based on city size(s) or number of cities or type of Government.

Since small cities produce very little gold, it should be possible to 
set the amount of gold needed to support a unit as a multiple of some 
fraction of a Gold, as in tenths or even hundredths of a Gold per unit.  
If you are going to go that way, you might as well include some way of 
altering the support value based on some combination of Attack value, 
Defense, Speed and Firepower, which could make maintaining, for example, 
a single battleship more expensive than an army of musketeers.