[Freeciv] Re: some questions

[Paul Dean <Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

K@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> 2.) It means huge cities. Do we want hundreds of cities of size 1 or 
>     some smaller cities and some of size 20++? Only with huge cities 
>     improvements like libraries are worthwhile and sanitary improvements 
>     like aqueducts become essential.

When we tested Mike Jing's patch, even with cities of size 4 or 5 a
library has a useful effect.

> 3.) To overcome ICS, as I understand it, no additional
>     worker for a size 1 city is essential. Any model which gives the
>     first worker more food allows for exponential growth by ICS and
>     might bias towards ICS.

I think you're assuming unlimited land.  Clearly, given infinite land,
the growth that is exponential will be best.  People are still going
to go to war as sooin as they have Steel, and you can only expand a
certain amount in that fixed time.  So exponential growth is not
automatically best.

A library increases science by a half.  Where did that figure come
from?  It was plucked out of the air, tested and kept because it
appeared to give the game good balance in conjunction with the values
of the other improvements. It seems to me that we have found it not a
good balance.  If, in the time before Steel, I can make my size 1 city
into EITHER 15 size 1 cities OR 2 size 5 cities with libraries, then
clearly it's nothing more than an equation from which you can deduce
what the value of a library ought to be.

> many people proposed to adjust very special parameters to punish ICS
> or reward building some improvements, e.g., by increasing minimum
> city distance or tremendously increasing the effect of a
> library. Somehow, I prefer to change some basic parameters that then
> naturally results in larger cities (larger cities are then a
> consequence of the underlying growth model!)  compared to an
> artificial punishing and rewarding here and there.

But there are more than two types of growth.  You've restricted
yourself to outward(ICS) and upward(huge cities) and assumed that
whichever it is needs to be exponential.  There is also growth
inward(valuable city improvements), for example.

We did try Mike Jing's patch, and it *did* seem to work!  One of the
big problems with it, however, was that small changes in initial
conditions were more important than usual.  Normally, ones early
proximity to whales determines a lot of your future strength.  Now,
ones early proximity to wheat is even more crucial.  I think we want
to get away from such dependency upon initial conditions.  The
generator 2 was an attempt to provide some sort of similar initial
conditions, but clearly it doesn't work.

Again, I think that *alternatives* have to be available.  It's no use
replacing one computable exponential strategy with another, because
people will get sick of that one too, as soon as some have worked out
exactly what they need to do and in what order.  I think ICS should
remain a valid strategy, but make other strategies as powerful, so
that we can have even matches between an ICS and non-ICS
civilisations.  Which one will win will depend upon the map, and how
crowded it was.  That's the sort of judgement I'd like to see - "How
soon will I have to go war?  How much time do I have for ICS-like
expansion?  Is it going to be an efficient use of that time?"  now
that's a judgement, not a calculation!

-- 
Paul.