[Freeciv] How to solve ICS - increasing settlercost

[Thomas Strub <ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

many people are complaining about ICS or smallpox. Me not, i like to build 
cities like measles. But if want to prevent me from doing that perhaps the 
following suggestion will help.

1. Increase the number of shields a settler costs with every settler is build. 
There are some nuances but they can be discused later.

So 
settler 1 costs 40
settler 2 costs 40 + x
settler 3 costs 40 + 2x

And so on.

With increasing costs for a settler its better to build cityimprovements before 
building a new settler. Defending Cities will be more important because if you 
payed for example 400 shields for building the new city you don't want to lose 
it. 

2. There are some open questions:

2.1 How big should x be. 

Think something between 10 and 20 is a good default value. As an option it 
should be free to changable between 0-40.

2.2 Should the number of built settlers be taken or another modifer.
Ideas are: number of cities (= noc), built settlers (= bs), built cities (= 
bc), active settlers (= as) 

2.2.1 noc:
With built cities alone players would stockpile mass of settlers to build the 
cities in few rounds.
Invading would give a penalty ...

2.2.2 noc + as:
This give bs + invaded cities - lost cities + starting settlers/cities

2.2.3 bs:
i prefer this.

2.2.4 another weighted sum from {noc, bs, bc, as, ...}

2.3 With increasing settlercost the unit which is making terrain improvements 
is getting very expensive. So noone will do terrainimprovements. Should there 
be a terrain-improvement-unit?

3. Think i forgot something, but will be here for discussion and will try the 
new option to see if it works or not.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Strub  ***  eMail ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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