[Freeciv] another proposal for countering smallpox

[saywhat@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Eddie Anderson)]

    I recently reread Mike Jing's article nopox.html.  While reading
his ideas about future mods to further curtail smallpox's viability,
I had an idea for an additional rule change.  I'm posting it here to
invite comments on it.

Here's the rule:

    When a civ adds a city, if its city count exceeds the smallpox
threshhold (i.e. from cityfactor, empireinc, etc.), then make all
the city centers of that civ "polluted".  As with pollution from
other causes, a settler or engineer can clean it up in the normal
way.

    That's it.  Now for some comments about the possible effects
this rule might have (if implemented):

    Until the pollution is cleaned up, the halving of each city
center's production will serve as a brake on that civ's smallpoxing
ambitions.  And the time required to clean up every city center
(assuming the player does that) could be considerable.  E.g. for a
civ with 20 cities and 4 settlers, the cleanup will take a minimum
of 20 turns - and that doesn't even take into account the settlers
travel time between city centers.

    If, despite this rule, the smallpoxing civ grows again (and is
still beyond the smallpox threshhold), any city centers that had
been cleaned up since the last expansion will become polluted again.

    I think that covers it.  So what do you think?  Please post
comments to the list.

Eddie