[Freeciv] Re: ICS : Are map resources part of the problem?

["Mike Jing" <miky40@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mathias Uhlmann <Mathias.Uhlmann@xxxxxx> wrote:
> And they were sometimes founded really close to each other. So smallpox ist 
> realistic. ... Industrialization was the starting point for city growth. 
> This is in a way already implemented in FreeCiv. I always felt that once I 
> discovered Industrialization, larger cities (that could afford Factories
> and so) were good. However since you need all the small cities in the 
> beginning, you cannot really grow large cities later on. The cities simply 
> don't have enough space. What is needed is some way to combine cities. 
> (What did happen/is happening in the real world all the time.)
You are absolutely correct.  However, I can't think of an easy way of doing 
this in Freeciv.  The game is simply not meant for that kind of realism and 
detail.
The city model is rather simplistic, but more than adequate IMHO.  It is 
actually very realistic, if only a little imagination is applied.  A city 
covers up to 21 tiles, and is meant to cover a large area, including rural 
population in small villiages and towns.  As the city grows, more and more 
land gets cultivated.  With the arrival of Industrialization, productivity 
rises sharply.  As the population continues to grow, urbanization occurs, 
and people are more and more concentrated around large metropolises.  Still 
later, the economy shifts from production to service/information through 
specialists (once a city grows to size 20, all new citizens are specialists) 
and capitalization.
It is actually very surprising to see all this happen given such a simple 
model, once again proving the genius behind the game design.
Given how the city model works, smallpox simply doesn't have a place in the 
game.  And due to the inherent advantages smallpox enjoys, at least early in 
the game, you simply have to limit the number of cities in order to get rid 
of it, unless you modify the city model and remove these advantages 
completely, which is hard to do as I have found out.
It is important to realize that the real issue here is not that we need 
bigger cities in the game, but better game balance -- including balance 
among different strategies and balance among players.  Smallpox is only a 
symptom of a much larger problem, namely that the current gameplay is 
awfully imbalanced.  And as I have painstakingly explained in this writeup 
here:
http://www.freeciv.org/tutorials/nopox.html

the real solution is simple and elegant.  It's all in the game. (Well 
almost.  It does require a very small patch.)  Using it or not is entirely 
up to you.
Mike

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com