[Freeciv] Re: 3 city maximum? (long)

[Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx>]

Paul Slusarz wrote:
> Since nobody more competent has replied, let me try.
> 
> :     Is anyone else like me?  I play Freeciv (FC) exclusively
> in
> : single-player mode (like Civ2).
> 
> Even if you don't intend on competing against other people,
> playing several games online is a good experience. It gives you
> an idea where you should be skill-wise. After that, playing
> single-player is like sim-city.
> 
> :     I have tried to play FC while managing a large empire.  I
> have
> : even finished games where I've had 8, 12, or even 20 cities.
> But I
> : found that those games were more like work than fun.
> 
> City manager feature was put in to address this.
> 
> :     To prevent that, I tried adjusting the server options.
> Setting
> : cityfactor to 6 and unhappysize to 1 prevents the AI from
> overwhelm-
> : ing my empire.  However, it has a side-effect:  the AI starts
> out
> : strong but eventually becomes ineffective.  The problem is
> that the
> : AI continues founding more cities even when it shouldn't.
> Once the
> : AI builds its 3rd or 4th city, many of its cities get another
> : unhappy citizen and then fall into civil disorder.
> 
> There's an option to set minimum distance between cities
> (citymindist or some such). Try just setting that instead. You
> actually mention that elsewhere in your message.
> 
> What you are talking about is known smallpox vs largepox
> dillema. As the current rules are set up smallpox (cities of
> size < 4 every one or two squares) makes the best use of
> resources and is the way to go. On the other hand, largepox is
> what civilization building is all about. You may want to search
> through the archives (and freeciv website tutorials) to read
> more about this.
> 
> IMO the resolution to the dillema would have been to alter the
> resource and production rules, so that smallpox and largepox
> could compete in the same games as equals. Somehow I have not
> seen that discussed.

http://www.freeciv.it/itStyle/

See the discussion there. I've been playing a while at the time on ItStyle
servers, I must say I doesn't feel bad, but it seems that largepox is the
only viable strategy there (that is, those server were on purpose biased
vs largepox).
I've found that the trade penalty (notradesize and fulltradesize) is effective
in stopping massive smallpoxing. With notradesize=2 and fulltradesize=6,
you need to grow your cities to 3 before you get _any_ trade income, and
to size 6 to get full trade (excluding corruption). If you combine that
with the 'hard' happiness settings, you'll have an hard time playing
smallpox (you still get good production in early stages of game, but you
need at least one big city to get some science unless you want to stick
with despotism and warriors).

Anyway, you can't really get the feeling of such a game until you try one.
I don't know how AIs perform with those settings, tho.

.TM.
-- 
       ____/  ____/   /
      /      /       /                  Marco Colombo
     ___/  ___  /   /                 Technical Manager
    /          /   /                     ESI s.r.l.
  _____/ _____/  _/                    Colombo@xxxxxx