[Freeciv] Re: naval attacks on undefended cities

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

Per Inge Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> That is why 1x1 islands are normally not generated, that is unless
> you turn on the tinyisles option. However, someone insisted on
> adding this as an option. In my opinion this was a bad idea.

I usually play with it turned on, just for the extra variety.  In
practice, this supposed problem (invulnerable cities) is essentially
never a real issue; I have yet to see a game where it had any impact
at all on the outcome.  Yes, it makes it hard to conquer those
particular cities in the early game, but it's not a big deal; a
civilisation cannot survive (in any meaningful way) on only island
cities like that (at least, not on any even vaguely normal map), and
having one or two such foreign cities in what would otherwise be your
nation's territorial waters is, in practice, not a large problem,
assuming you have anything resembling naval control of the waters in
question in the first place; the cities in question cannot be used as
a staging point for anything, because as soon as they have units in
them your ships can kill the units and possibly (depending on another
setting) reduce the size of the city by one in the process.

Such cites are *far* less likely to have any strategic importance
than, say, a city on a one-tile-wide isthmus.

Naturally, if you don't like it, you can leave that option turned
off.

It would be possible to construct, artificially, a set of settings for
various options that would make this a more significant issue -- very
large xsize and ysize, the generator setting that makes the smallest
islands, coupled with very low setting for landmass, low value for
foodbox, high value for research cost, max endyear, and so forth.

However, it's always possible to make pathological cases by combining
normal configuration options in abnormal or inappropriate ways, e.g.,
combine the max value for aifill with the min values for xsize and
ysize and give everyone ten settlers to start with a high value for
mincitydist.  This does not imply that any of those options taken
individually are bad or should be excluded from the game.

-- 
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