[Freeciv] Re: How to solve ICS - increasing settlercost

[Raimar Falke <rf13@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 10:43:52AM -0400, Miguel Farah wrote:
> 
>  Thomas Strub [14/08/2002 17:53] dijo/said:
> >
> >On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 08:31:34PM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> >> 
> >> On Wed, 14 Aug 2002, Thomas Strub wrote:
> >> > 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.
> >> 
> >> I don't like this. It undue penalized big maps and players who like
> >> playing big empires. Instead, I would increase the cost of ownership for
> >> multiple cities. This is the civ way, IMHO.
> >
> >Thats all a problem of balancing the game. Why 1-10 starting settlers, 
> >techcost 5-40 and so on? 
> >
> >What is a large empire in your eyes?
> >
> >My suggestion is to make the growth slower the more cities an empire gets. 
> >You want to make it more expensive to have many cities. For example a 
> >production penalty when the empire is getting bigger. Hmm .. perhaps we 
> >should multiply a term like (100-number of cities)/100 to the shieldoutput? 
> 
> Some time ago I suggested a statistic for measuring how much of ICS a
> player is doing.
> 
> I'll repost the relevant part now:
> 
> -----8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-----
> Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 18:58:49 -0300
> From: "Miguel Farah F." <miguel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: Mike Kaufman <mkaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: freeciv-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [Freeciv-Dev] Re: As if we needed another ics solution...
> 
>  Mike Kaufman [01/03/2001 19:00] dijo/said:
> >
> >I haven't looked through the code to see how feasible this is, but...
> >
> >perhaps adding (as a server option of course) a production penalty might
> >be a solution. 
> >Ex.: up to a certain number of cities, a chariot, for example, costs X.
> >If I would build Y% more cities, then a chariot would cost X+Y to build
> >(or whatever algorithm you choose, you could also make it discrete
> >increments)
> 
> I disagree on this proposal (as it is): it's not the same to have 50
> cites, all size 1-2, than having 50 cities, most of them bigger than,
> say, size 8.
> 
> Most proposals to eliminate ICS, IMHO, forget to pay attention to this
> factor.
> 
> What I propose is to have first some sort of measure of ICS (an
> "ICSmeter") to determine wether penalties of any kind sould be applied.
> 
> What I propose is this: we know that a city uses up 21 squares
> (including the free city center). An ideal nation that has NO
> overlapping cities of any kind, will control exactly 21*N squares
> (N=number of cities).
> 
> ICSmeter will defined as this: 
> 
>             squares occupied by a nation
>    I := 1 - ----------------------------
>             21 x number of cities owned
> 
> (a square is considered occupied by a nation even if its owned by an
> enemy - that can't be counted against the player)
> 
> Now, and ideal nation will have I=0%.
> 
> A nation that places 25 cities all in a square grid, all at distance 1
> will have I=1-(165/(21x25))=68,6% and commits HEAVY ICS.
> 
> 
> Considering the defects of the terrain, and conquered cities, an I=0%
> will be unattainable, and therefore an index of, say, up to 15% should
> be acceptable.
> 
> Nations with a bigger index should then begin suffering penalties.
> 
> -----8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<--------8<-----

You can counter this part of ICS with city_min_dist.

But even if you leave a lot of space between the cities you get
exponential growth and a free city center for every city.

        Raimar

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