Keeping the empire sizes as they are on experimental games?

[wieder]

How are the empire sizes? It's still early game on LT40 but we can start throwing ideas for the next more experimental LT game.

The sizes are now 22-29.

This was already talked about on the in-game chat (LT40) but not properly on the forum.

In a future game reaching that size might not happen instantly in the start. Instead the empire size might grow from maybe 10-17 to 22-29. This could be done with techs. Reaching certain tech would increase the empire size by one. As a result the players would get kind of bonus for researching new techs and it wouldn't be possible to reserve all the land in the early game. Not even if there are no takers.

Combine this with following changes:

- colonists taking 4 population (adding to city possible, adds 4 to the population)
- adding population to a city would be possible up to size 12
- citymindist 3

This would allow relocating cities and also making it harder to spread out cities on a wide area so that you can prevent other from taking that land. It would also make it more interesting/resonable to build cities more closer to each other in the start. Kind of more realistic and allows new kind of strategies. A smaller citymindist alone might not do the trick but all those changes combined just might.

[fran]

In a future game reaching that size might not happen instantly in the start. Instead the empire size might grow from maybe 10-17 to 22-29. This could be done with techs. Reaching certain tech would increase the empire size by one. As a result the players would get kind of bonus for researching new techs ...

As you say, it's a bonus for the most advanced, most powerful player. What's needed, and what we do with tech leakage, is the opposite. So if you turn it around and start with 29 cities and reduce that size the more techs are researched, it would be a penalty, and in that case I'm with you.

In freeciv you have exponential growth, he who leads the growth curve will win. So what's needed are contradicting developments that curb that law. Unhappiness is a means for that, but in standard ruleset, it's not strong enough. So now you strengthened unhappiness with empire size restriction. To change it in the suggested way not only would make empire size restriction senseless, it would make it worse.

[ferg]

I forget if it was mentioned, but what about diplomats reducing unhappiness in city due to empire size?

I like the idea of reducing the citymindist, I think the ability for cities to grow really big thru wonders/tech will reduce incentive to group the cities closely. citymindist of 3 would allow you to build your cities with 2 squares between which may have defensive/offensive implications.

[wieder]

The idea with limiting the number of cities was not to make everyone equally powerful but instead make it harder for the really good players to become so powerful they could win the game alone. In the early game tech based empire sizes would just limit the speed of the growth. The more advanced players might have few more cities than the less advanced but the difference wouldn't be really that significant.

Tech leakage would also allow the less advanced players to eventually have more cities. Or maybe not allow but change the upper limit for them.

[wieder]

Growing the empire size with techs also prevents the experienced players from grabbing the good land in the start. Well. Not really prevent but making it really hard. This would probably lead to more conflicts or to making deals and stuff. In any case more interaction would be needed for resolving the new possibilities for building the cities. It doesn't only make it easier for the good players in the end but also much harder for them in the start.

[wieder]

If something is needed to make the best players less powerful, we should first try to define what kind of limits do we want and what's the actual purpose of those limits.

How limiting should it be? Preventing one player from winning two players? Three? How hard should it be to have absolutely superior techs?

i the limit would be on production, should we try to make it hard to have more than 100% ... 300% of the average production? The current city limits on LT40, in my view, "limit" production to about 200-300% of the average. In the beginning of the end game.

ferg, about diplos/spies increasing the empire sice. Military units already do that with some govs. How would the spy/diplo based stuff differ from that?

[fran]

Growing the empire size with techs also prevents the experienced players from grabbing the good land in the start.

If I look at the map of LT40 I have the notion the map generator is quite unfair. If the start area you are located is bad quality and dispersion sucks, it could be a good strategy to go for many small cities instead of few bigger ones.
There could be other reasons to do so. If you restrict city number to 10, those with good land will have a greater advantage than they have now.

[wieder]

Not everyone can be guaranteed to have the same number of cities or land. Some attempts to make the maps more balance have been made but there is only that much we can do.

I'm not sure why those players would have even greater advantage if the city limit was lower. If player A has space to build 20 cities and player B only 10 then limiting the number of the cities in the start would more like balance the game and not make player A even stronger. Or am I missing something?

In my view players A and B would have the same number of cities in the start and while player A would be able to grow when researching new techs, player B would have the option to attack player A and take space. Of course in a real game A would be racing for that space with other players since reserving the land would not be easy without cities.

if the cities are spread out more the corruption goes up and this will also help the player who is placing the cities on a smaller area.

It might not need to be number of cities 10->22 but instead could also be something like 15->22. Also, without new cities this effect of increasing the empire size could also be used to let the players with less cities to have more happy citizens. This would balance the difference between a small nation and a bigger one while not completely removing it.

The downside on this is the possibility of building cities on "enemy territory" with forts. That however might be worth risking with this setup. Not letting the forts to change ownership would be a major change because it would also make it less risky to build badly defended forts and also incredibly hard to attack other players by allowing really good usage of defensive terrain.

[fran]

I'm not sure why those players would have even greater advantage if the city limit was lower.

The more cities you have, the more likely will the average quality of the land of your city locations converge to the
average quality of all possible locations on the map.
The practical question is, how many cities are needed to make it sufficiently fair. Depends also on the map, and I have no idea.

[wieder]

Not sure if I can follow now... More cities makes the cites more average? Yes... I guess so....

The LT40 ruleset currently allows the less developed players to steal techs from those who are more advanced. This helps the players to team up against the more powerful ones. Maybe not an easy task but with team play it's possible to challenge even the more advanced players. At least until some point.

Of course if expanding the empire sizes in small steps doesn't work it will not be implemented.