Cities getting a defense bonus with size 8 or 9?

[wieder]

Opinions? The cites now get a 50% defense bonus when they reach size 8.

What would you say if the cities would get a defense bonus with size 9 instead of size 8? This would definitely encourage building bigger cities. It was also proposed, some time ago, that cites would also get another defense bonus at size 16 but if this was size 17, it would also encourage building bigger cities.

Then again we could change this only for LT39.

This would be a major change since the current ruleset encourages stopping the growth at size 8 and getting the defense bonus a size 9 would benefit those who want to build city improvements.

[Corbeau]

You mean additional 50%, on top of the original 50% they get at default?

How about 10% per population point? Size 1 - 10%, size 2 - 20% etc.? It would also be much more realistic. Simply, the bigger the city, the harder it is to conquer it.

[wieder]

Yes. Additional 50%. The cities will always give 50% bonus similar to fortification bonus. Units fortified inside cities will not get any additional bonus.

Interesting idea about getting more defense for each city size. The problem with that is that each size would need the defense bonus defined on he ruleset and adding lots of those would mean lots of work. Maybe not too much but still some. Might be enough if sizes 5, 9, 14 and 17 would get the bonus so that size 17 would have effectively the same defense bonus it would get with 50% + 50% + 50% values. Those should be carefully calculated since the defense bonus is a multiplier.

Maybe something we could try on an experimental game first? Too many changes complicate everything and we may risk an unbalanced game.

[Corbeau]

Well, I don't know what the exact option is, but if it's anything like the others, it may simply require hitting ctrl-c once and ctrl-v ~20 times and then adjusting one or two numbers in each of the pastes

[wieder]

You would also need to decide and calculate the correct defense values for each size.

[Corbeau]

What do you mean?

[wieder]

The base defense is 50%. With size 9 a city would end up with another 50%. For that the city size 2 should have a defense factor of 1.0625, size 3 also 1.0625, etc... It might be difficult for people to calculate and understanding the exact defense values for each city size. Also, I'm not sure about how well Freeciv manages the calculations with that kind of numbers. We might need to use rounded nuumbers to make the number exact % values.

[Corbeau]

Is the 50% base defence a part of a ruleset or central code?

[wieder]

Looks like part of the ruleset. But I wouldn't change that because fortifying inside cities is not possible and I doubt if that could be made possible with a ruleset. It's to compensate the lack of fortification inside cities.

[arkan]

Opinions? The cites now get a 50% defense bonus when they reach size 8.

Well since some time this is no longer the case.
Only cities with a population >= 9 now have this increased defense.
That change was silently introduced when LT36 ruleset has been copied from LT35 one (effect_city_defense_1).
This accidental introduction of an important change in the ruleset is another reason why we should use git branches instead of copying folders between LT games.
Another reason is that this would make following ruleset changes throughout LT games much easier.
This would also allow us to have the LT ruleset become a "fork" of the standard civ2civ3 ruleset. Doing so would make it easier to rebase LT ruleset on civ2civ3 as updates are made there.

[wieder]

Yeah, indeed

I changed the free units bonus also to 9. This will at least notify people about the change. If nothing else does.

[arkan]

Why changing the free units bonus too? I would rather keep it as it is, as growing cities past size 8 is costly and takes time to achieve for many players.

[wieder]

It will encourage people to grow the cities. It's also logical that the defense bonus and the free unit bonus both happen at the same city size.

Growing beyond size 8 is now made easier with lower city improvement costs. Now the upkeep cost for the amphitheater is also 3 instead of 5. We could also try to think about more ways to make this easier.

[arkan]

The defense bonus alone is an encouragement that is enough for me. Depriving cities of size 8 from the free units will only make it harder to wage early wars.
I really don't like that change.

[wieder]

The other way to look at this is defense vs. attacking. With more free units with size 8 but the extra defense with only size 9 would change the balance of the game. There are also governments with more free units and less unhappiness. Monarchy should allow that to be done with 3 free units. Tribalism allows even more (4) free units for people who want to conquer from the start.

This is also why zeus and mausoleum were removed from LT38. Building early pyramids and then going for republic worked too well at least for me. I didn't see too many reasons for using those governments in the early game.

Maybe we should switch back to size 8 giving both defense and free unit bonus? Or think a way to make it easier to grow the cities beyond size 8. My personal preference would be seeing bigger and better developed cities but it's also one more step away from smallpoxing.

One way to prefer bigger cities would be changing the base number of content citizens from 4 to 5. This would allow going to size 9 with the same happiness improvements people already use to go for size 8. The aqueduct is already relatively cheap. The river/lake one costs 20 and the one you can build with construction is only 40. The downside is that using migrants for getting the defense/unit bonus would not be possible, but it might also encourage to build beyond 8/9.

It just looks weird to see good players hitting size 8 and then stopping there. With the current settings it has been only smart to stop at size 8 until late mid game.

One more way to make it more easy to go beyond size 8 would be making the aqueducts cost only 15/30.