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

[saywhat@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Eddie Anderson)]

Marco Colombo <marco@xxxxxx> wrote:
>Paul Slusarz wrote:

Paul and Marco,
    Thank you both for your replies.  I have a few questions about
them.  Also, it seems that I need to clarify my original question.

>> 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.

    Playing online is very inconvenient for me.  So, unfortunately,
the advantages of online, multi-player Freeciv are irrelevant to me.
                
    I posted my question because I want to find out if others (who
play single player games) have found a way to make the AI play a
more challenging game (and less "like sim-city"  :-) ).  I've found
some success in doing this by using teamed AI players, server
settings that produce small maps, and ruleset mods that limit ICS/
smallpox.  I wanted to know if other Freeciv players have found
other effective ways of manipulating the game conditions to create a
more interesting single-player game.


>> 
>> :     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.

    CM helps some.  But I find that it doesn't help much with the
"big picture" tasks of multiple city management.  One example of
that is coordinating celebration growth.  Getting every city
prepared so that several cities grow by celebration at once can be
difficult.  And that difficulty grows exponentially as the number of
cities in my empire grows.

>> :     To prevent that, I tried adjusting the server options.
>> Setting
>> : cityfactor to 6 and unhappysize to 1 prevents the AI from
>> 
>> 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.

    I agree that the smallpox vs. largepox issue plays a part in
this issue.  But the thing is:  I'm *not* necessarily opposed to the
AI using a smallpox (or ICS) strategy.  ICS (and the high research
rate that goes with it) is one thing that the AI does well.

    If the game parameters take ICS away from the AI (as a viable
strategy), then how will the AI adapt?  What if the AI can't adapt?
Then it will likely become ineffective - making the game boring
again.  I don't want that.

    If the AI needs to use ICS to be effective, that is OK by me.
What I want to avoid is the AI's "all or nothing", "full throttle or
stalled", approach to building cities.  Neither approach produces an
interesting game, IMO.

    Instead, I'd like to, in effect, say to the AI, "You build your
10-15 cities and then stop.  I'll build my 3 cities and stop.  Then
we'll continue the game with just those cities and see who wins".


>>You may want to search
>> through the archives (and freeciv website tutorials) to read
>> more about this.

    Are you talking about the mailing list archive webpage?  I have
never been able to get the search function to work there.  Does it
work for you?


>> 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.

    I *have* seen several threads about this in the Freeciv web
forums.  Have you seen those?  Unfortunately, there is no consensus
solution (IIRC).  This is due, in part, to the fact that many online
players apparently *prefer* playing a smallpox/ICS-type game online.


>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).

    Thanks.  I'll look at it.

>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).

    That's helpful.  I haven't experimented with the *tradesize
options yet.  In fact, I had forgotten about them.  However, IIRC, I
read somewhere that the AI was clueless about those options (and did
*not* work well under them).  Maybe that's changed over the last few
months.  It's worth trying once or twice to see if it improves the
game.

    Thanks for the responses.

Eddie

P.S.  IIRC in my original post I mentioned using the "gen 3" server
option.  Apparently, that option has changed significantly in the
2.0.0 Beta2 version (compared to the cvs version of a few months
ago).  Now, "gen 3" apparently is more fussy and usually reverts to
"gen 2" (at least under the conditions (i.e. server options) that I
was using a few months ago).  Fortunately, tripling the "size" to 3
and cutting the "landmass" to 20 (i.e. one third of 60) seems to fix
that.  But it's too soon to say for sure (I'm still experimenting
with those options).