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

["Anthony J. Stuckey" <astuckey@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 06:23:44PM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Thomas Strub wrote:
> > > If we want to make buildings not irrelevant, we should make them better. I
> > > have already suggested doubling science bonuses of all buildings and
> > > doubling research cost. If this is not sufficient, this can be combined
> > > with giving most units gold upkeep and doubling buildings' tax bonuses. If
> > > _that_ is not sufficent, we can require that very advanced units like
> > > tanks, mech inf etc are built in cities with adequate mass production
> > > facilities (ie factory), that diplomats require Courthouse, or ...
> > > something, you get the idea.
> >
> > You can't have one cityimprovement for all unittypes so there are
> > allways good units which could be build without the building.
> 
> Quick suggestion that would pretty much kill ICS:
[...] 
> This is a very quick suggestion only, but note how you are going to have a
> hard time defending your new ICS cities and that you cannot expand without
> building in depth in your interior so that you can produce units capable
> of defending your empire. Relax too much on your improvements building,
> and you have no capability to produce military units to defend yourself.
> No more "100% tax, 50 cities, I'm Mr Invincible".

        Another quick suggestion:  Play on Small maps.

        At 40x25, there's only 1000 tiles available.  Playing on Earthlike 2/3
water maps gives you 330 land tiles to split among N players.  Have fun
trying to build 50 cities!