[Freeciv] Big cities vs small cities (was: smallpox syndrome)

[Maciej Czapkiewicz <czapkiew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Smallpox is not bad, only setting are non realistic.
IMHO, it is not good idea to fix it by "no more free city center"
- it will slow game, nobody want to spend many empty turns.
I also played game with min_city_distance=4 and I found it
not very convenient (it is hard to fit cities on medium
size islands etc)
[BTW, min_city_distance should vary depending on map size,
value 2 is good for small/medium map, value 3 is good
for medium size map with big landmass or big map].

I have onother proposition for smallpox syndrome.
In reality, many small cities/villages are 
producing very small amount of literacy,
in comparison to big cities.
In this simulation, we have opposite situation:
player with many small cicties will won over
player which take carry on his few big cities.

My proposition:
Maximal science production should be very small,
for example 20% for Despotism, 30% for Monarchy,
40% for Republic, 50% for Communism and Democracy.
But each settler in the city (for cities bigger that 3)
can be set as a "researcher", and is collecting large 
amount of science (for example 0.5 science point from
every trade point surplus in Despotism and Monarchy,
0.75 in Republic and Communism, 1 in Democracy).

Now, player with many tiny cities can be still powerfull
at the early stage of the game.
Like Mongols ;-)
But if you take care on your "core" cities, 
you will win like Europe won.

On the other hand, simulation with current settings
is very unstable - if one nation is starting to conquere
another one, it's science power become higher,
and his opponent his loosing cities _and_ science power.
Science power depend also on territory.

But with new setting, it work more realistic:
if you loose large amount of your overseas territory,
but you still have "core" cities, you still have
some chance. Game is not so umbalanced.
Had Great Britain loss its science power 
after II WW?
On the other hand, if you loose your "core"
cities, you will rather loose your game -
it is quite normal.

Large amount of small cities is still important -
it give you not only control over territory,
but also big production of military units
(peasants were always used as "meat" :-)

But science production should concentrate in big
cities (look at Athens, Roma etc).
With current settings, building Library etc,
is not sufficient to conquer player with many
small cities (you must also build temples etc).

Regards,
MC