[Freeciv] Re: the struggle against city smallpox (was: Some questions)

[Andrew McGuinness <andrew_mcguinness@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I looked at the ICS discussions on apolyton that were pointed to
earlier, and I have some questions, really, rather than concrete
ideas.

I like to look at freeciv as a simulation, so I'm trying to thin
down the ideas according to their simulation value.

First, it shouldn't be difficult to spread many, many, small cities
across the world.  This, historically, has been the normal way.

Building big cities should be difficult, *but*, it should bring
rewards in terms of science and production.

So the happiness modifier based on number of cities is not the
right way from a "realism" point of view.  Also any disease feature,
as suggested by a few people on apolyton, would work against big
cities or be completely anti-realistic.

The central underlying dynamic of ICS seems to be that even if you
keep food production steady in terms of surplus food points per turn,
you can generate workers in new cities much faster than in old cities,
because of the "scaling" in the foodbox.  What is the justification
for it taking so much more food surplus to produce the 10th worker
than to produce the 2nd?

What would happen if the size of the foodbox was independent of city
size?  Massive city growth would still be difficult because of 
unhappiness and hygiene, but the advantage in deliberately keeping
cities small by producing settlers all the time would go away.

What you might see would be long periods of fairly small cities,
followed by explosive city growth when it becomes possible.  That
would be realistic.

Note:  While I say I am in favour of realism, I do not mean at the
expense of playability and balance.  I am trying to find a solution
that gives a good game *and* a realistic one.

It might be that my suggestion would take the game too far the other
way, in which case it would then be appropriate to put disadvantages
on large cities or fast city growth using disease and plagues, etc.

-- 
Andrew McGuinness     Luton, UK        andrew_mcguinness@xxxxxxxxxxxxx