Constructive vs restrictive ruleset changes: Proposing national boni

[mu]

Flexibility of the ruleset is always under threat by the tendency to restrict possibilities or to block certain ways of playing, not because they would be competitive, but just some individuals don't like them. I would like to remind all those that think that forcing conformity on the style of playing is a desideratum, that there already is a ruleset that was honed through decades to fulfill this purpose: warciv.

Longturn should be a flexible ruleset that does not restrict available ways of playing, or in other words to adapt to certain circumstances, but it should open new ways or make uncompetitive ways more viable.

To that end I bring up for discussion the idea of national boni. The idea might or might not be implementable in current versions of freeciv, but for sure there is a programming language needed for calculations.

National boni are boni that are granted to the nation and are portioned out amongst the cities. They compensate the handicap a player has if he decides to build only a small nation. While they make a big difference for one or a few cities, the effect is negligible or even zero for large nations.

If for example a national defence bonus is 200%, 1 city would get 200%, 4 cities 50%, 50 cities 4%, 100 cities 2% and 200 cities 1% defence bonus each.

In principle all goodies like luxury, shields, food, etc should be able to serve as substrate for national boni.

Since national boni shall serve as a means to compensate the disadvantage of a small nation or even city state, I propose that the bonus remains at its all-time minimum, even if a nation shrinks again. In other words, the all-time high of the number of cities of a nation defines the bonus for the remainder of the game. A player with 4 cities max losing 2 still gets 50% defence bonus in the example above, not 100%.

National boni are more transparent, scalable and fair than to introduce specialized governments for example for "city state".

[Hans_Lemurson]

The more "Per Nation" bonuses you provide, the better chance "small, well developed" nations will be able to compete with "large sprawling" ones.

Small Wonders are a good tool for this, since you only get one per nation. If you can give good bonuses to a small handful of cities, it makes "more cities" comparatively less valuable.

[Corbeau]

https://github.com/longturn/freeciv21/issues/590