[Freeciv] Re: City utilization range

["Jonadab the Unsightly One" <jonadab@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Schaefer <peter.schaefer@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

> The smallpox issue will not be cured unless economy would be
> reworked such that there are bonus buildings very early and such
> that a city requires certain buildings before giving more output.

I don't think it's necessary, or a good idea, to "cure" smallpox in
the sense of making it lose to largepox.  I do think, however, that it
would be good to give some advantages to building larger cities
(probably not all the cities in an empire, but growing certain key
ones very large should be significantly advantageous; currently, it's
not).  To that extent, I think it's possible to create the needed
amount of change of game dynamic simply by adding a few key
advantages, here and there, for larger cities.  Things like the
following...

 * The maximum value of six for unhappysize is FAR too low, for a
   maximum.  Leave the default where it is, but the maximum should be
   MUCH higher, so that if a player wants to play a game where it's
   easier to build larger cities, he can choose to do so.  I'm
   thinking the maximum should not be any less than thirty at the
   least; people who don't want it that high are free to set it lower.
   
 * Cities larger than a certain (ruleset-specified) size (probably
   defaulting to unhappysize or so) should be able to build settlers
   without taking a hit to their own population.  Frankly, it's absurd
   that a city of size 14 has to drop to size 13 to generate the same
   number of settlers that take a city from size 2 down to size 1.
   That represents a *lot* more foodbox and growing time and so forth
   and a much larger number of people, but you get the same number of
   settlers?  It doesn't make sense, and it seriously penalizes large
   cities that build settlers, resulting in a strong strategic
   motivation to always build settlers *immediately*.  (There would be
   significant strategic motivation for that anyway; it doesn't need
   to be augmented by this.)  The production cost of the settlers is
   enough to charge cities of that size, along with whatever food the
   settlers consume on their upkeep until they settle.  Let the
   ruleset specify a size at which cities can build settlers without
   the size hit, possibly with a moderate (ruleset-specified) hit to
   the food store instead (to "supply" the settlers).

 * Supermarket costs *WAY* too much to ever be worth building for a
   medium-sized city (and without it, a city will never get really
   large).  It should either be much cheaper or much more effective,
   or most likely both.  This is just a ruleset change, no code
   required.  There are other buildings that need considering too.
   I like the smithy idea; I assume it gives land tiles +1 production,
   or something along those lines, and is a prerequisite for factory?
 
 * Large cities run out of tiles to work, and they shouldn't; once
   cities reach certain sizes, their radius should expand.  I'm
   thinking something along these lines:
    Size | Radius
    -----+-------
     1-2 | 1.5 (i.e., the tile the city is on, and adjascent tiles)
     3-4 | 2.5 (same as the current radius for all cities)
     5-8 | 3.5 ("Metropolis")
     16+ | 4.5 ("Megalopolis")
   But obviously the exact levels should be ruleset-specified.
 
 * There are citizen types, besides worker, for boosting science,
   happiness, and gold, but there should be ones for boosting food
   ("Farmer" seems obvious) and possibly also production, directly, in
   the same way that a scientist boosts science output directly, or a
   taxman boosts gold directly.  This also reduces the depencency on
   the limited number of tiles right around the city and is probably
   quite a lot easier to implement than the expanding work radius.

 * I'd like to see an improvement, Outer Wall (requiring City Walls as
   a prereq probably) that boosts defense for units on land tiles
   within the city's work radius.  Yes, you can build fortress
   anywhere, but that doesn't scale as well to multiple tiles
   (especially with the expanding work radius), protects any nation's
   units equally, and has different requirements (workers' time,
   rather than city production).

> Currently I think that some buildings should be cheaper and I like the
> idea of a smithy as early bonus. 

I agree with these things.

> Buildings will naturally increase the players desire to have bigger
> cities. 

Only if they're worth building.  A lot of the buildings in the current
default ruleset are usually not worth building, because of balance
issues (balance between cost and benefit, mainly).

Bear in mind, I'm not a largepox advocate, on the whole.  I view
classic largepox as an imbecillic approach virtually guaranteed to
loose to almost any other strategy.  But I do think that an empire
should be able to build a few large cities (in addition to its
numerous smaller cities) and gain some significant benefit from that,
usefully build various city improvements that currently are virtually
never beneficial, and so on.  Historically, all great civilizations
have had many small cities and villages, but most of them also have
had a handful of much larger cities.

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