Re: [Freeciv] AI Too Strong!?

[Tony & <stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Nov 02, 1998 at 12:17:54AM -0500, iquin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> However, my encounter with the AIs gives me the
> impression that it is so good because of its ablity to
> manage so many cities without getting tired.

        That's one reason.

>       What's worse is the difficulties in removing
> the cities you conquered. I wonder if we can impose
> some penalty on building excessive amount of cities.

        Oh, no, not again.  Absolutely not.
        I have posted this before, and I'll post it again as long as people
keep saying this.
        Do the math.  On a 100x100 world, there are 10,000 squares.  In an
eight player game, each player gets 1250 squares of land assuming basic
equitable distribution. Each city controls only ~25 squares of land.  Thus
a fully built-up map could have 50 cities on it without ever taking a city
from another civilization.
        If you want to have fewer cities, play on "Earth", where the land
percentage is 30% of the map, or make a smaller map, or make the map more
mountainous/desert, so that there are fewer useful places to put cities.

>       The only thing we have now is the cityfactor
> option but it has limited effect. Can we make it such
> that one unhappy face is generated for every multiples
> of cityfactor instead of one unhappy face when
> cityfactor is exceeded and that's all? How do Civ 1&2
> behave?

        Civ1 does it exactly like Cityfactor already does -- one unhappy
face is generated when you are over a certain population.  For chieftain
level, this is 6, for Emperor level, it's 2.
        I don't remember Civ2's full characterization.  It's much more
complex.
-- 
Anthony J. Stuckey                              stuckey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"When I was young, the sky was filled with stars.
 I watched them burn out one by one."  -Warren Zevon