[Freeciv] city smallpox (was: Some questions)

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 03:35:07AM -0600, Bobby D. Bryant wrote:
> Jesdyn Flamestrike wrote:
> 
> > I never show up for one darn good reason.
> >
> > I get whooped by ICS players.
> 
> I've been skimming to lightly to pick up what ICS stands for, but I suspect I
> could guess.

We call it 'city smallpox', I don't know who came with that name but
i like it and it certainly beats a TLA.

> I wonder if you could break some canned strategies by adding some 
> randomization
> to things like the cost of researching a given strategy?  For example, let the
> cost in the data file be the statistically expected cost, but let the actual 
> cost
> for a given player fall in a gaussian distribution around that median, to be
> determined when s/he starts building it.  For maximum effect, don't tell the
> player what that cost is -- just have the client keep on displaying the time 
> to
> the *expected* completion, as if that's what the royal advisors are promising.

I think there's a silent agreement among Freeciv users and developers
that introducing randomness as a means to spread chances amongst players
is bad, and making the interface lie to the user would be even worse.

Several server settings can be used to reduce the power of city smallpox:
generator, xsize and ysize, landmass, unhappysize, etc.  Playing with
different rulesets is another option.

> Another option would be to give you a discount for exploring the breadth of 
> the
> tech tree, and a surcharge for exploring the depth,

Yes, this is what Civ II does by requiring that all (?) techs from a
given level must be researched before some at the next level can be
reached.  In Civ II you can't go for Republic just by researching its
requirements.

> A third, perhaps easier, option would be to fix it with a modpack.

Yes.  I've once played the mystery modpack (which allows flight early on)
and it is very interesting.  Unfortunately it requires a different
tileset, and there is no mechanism to make the server select a tileset
at the client side.  Would it be a good idea to implement a check for
this with capabilities?  Ideally the client would be capable of loading
different tilesets on demand, how hard would this be?

-- 
Reinier