forum.freeciv.org

Hello!

1. What's the point?

While playing Freeciv with AI's (as well as original Civ's), I noticed, that - in many cases - most Wonders of The World (at least in easier AI levels), are concentrated in one particular city with an extraordinary high level of production (thus, one civilization with the city with great production level, gets great benefits from nearly all of the Wonders; that gives it an additional boost to easily defeat the competitors). It happens, when a nation, which currently leads in the scientific competition, has also a city with great production level (I call these cities "the regular Wonder-builders"), is getting additional bonus from Wonders, which... benefits his Civilization even more! I often did it myself: I was choosing one, particular city, just for building all of the wonders I could in at the time in one place. Then I get the benefits and advantaged my supremacy even more. However - I consider this unfair, since it never happened in history, that one civilization (especially ancient ones), has built more than 2 or 3 Wonders. I would like to flatten the chances of all players, but without getting rid of the concept of Wonders (which I consider as an extremally cool feature). My proposition is to add an option, which limits the number of Wonders per city (for example one-city-one-wonder limit).

2. How to do that?

So, here's my idea:

The option is called "how many wonders in a city":
=> the default value would be -1 (minus one), which means there is no restriction of the number of Wonders in one particular city, just like in an ordinary gameplay, where you can have 20 Wonders (or so) in the city;
=> 0 (zero) - this would mean every city in the game can build zero Wonders (thus, there are no Wonders at all in the whole game);
=> 1 (one) - this would mean every city in the game can contain one Wonder (which I think is the best option);
=> 2 (two) - this would mean every city in the game can contain up to two Wonders,
=> 3 (three) - this would mean every city in the game can contain up to three Wonders,
...an so on.

3. Why to do that?

There are following benefits of this option: the dispersion of Wonders in more cities of the empire would make the gameplay more entertaining, since it's not so easy to protect five one-wonder-cities than to hold one city with five wonders (presumably the capital); it's much easier to ensure protection to one, extremally important city (especially if it's the capital), than to ensure heavy protection to all of the five. It would mean that the provincial (non-capital) cities would probably pass from hand to hand during the wars, hence the benefits of Wonders. In other words, there is a chance, that Wonders would be often conquered by others. And you could do it with the other ones. It's not enough just to build the Wonders, you'd also have to retain them!

4. What would that change in the gameplay?

The dispersal of Wonders would also give a chance to other players to build them to another Civ's, when you have limited number of cities. When you have 5 cities of your empire, each with one Wonder, and you want to build another one, you have two options: establish another city (and, presumably, use Caravans to help with building it, since the just-now established city is small), or... just conquer the nearby city with the already existing Wonder!

Of course, with large empire with a lot of cities, you wouldn't have a problem of place for Wonders, but other Civ's would nevertheless had a chance to build the Wonders you want because of the production levels; the one-city-one-wonder system highly prefer the Civilizations with no Wonders to get at least one of them, because usually there is always at least one city with good production level in every empire, even the smaller and underdeveloped (it's usually the capital that has a good production capabilities). So it's a sort of a lifeboat for the weaker.

Also, it gives the retarded, but agressive civilizations, a chance to obtain the benefits of the Wonders. You want a Sun Tzu's Academy? Go and get it! As it's placed in a nearby city, in an out-of-the-way place, not very well protected, because your competitor can't protect very well all of his cities. It also implies, that every following Wonder is harder to build than the previous one (firstly, because it needs another location, secondly, because recently established cities doesn't have the needed production power); so it works exactly opposite to the original, where already existing Wonders facilitated building next Wonders. This gives some handicaps to the weaker players.

For historical reasons - it never happened that one city has several wonders; Paris has the Eiffel Tower, but doesn't have Pyramids and didn't have a Great Library, there's no Michelangelo's Chapel near Hoover Dam, etc.

5. How to code that?

Well, there's a problem for me, because I'm not too keen with the coding. But what comes to mind is the function, which checks, how many wonders are already in the city; if the number of Wonders is already equal to the coded one, it blocks the possibility of building another. For example if it's set to 0 (zero), it always blocks the possibility of building a Wonder (because city already has zero wonders). If it's set to 1, it checks the number of Wonders and if there is none, it allows to build a Wonder; if there already is one, it blocks the possibility of building another. If it's set to 2, it checks if the number is equal (=if there are already two wonders in the city). And so on. And if the number is negative, there is no restriction.

6. Necessary AI changes.

There are some minor changes in AI behavior needed. Specifically, when AI has equal chance to attack City A with no Wonder, and City B with Wonder (if there's equal chance to conquer them), it should always choose B. There should be some sort of a "Wonder lust", or "obtain wonder by conquer behavior, if there's none coded yet. It means, the AI should always look for less protected one-wonder-cities to grab them, which would presumably come over form hand to hand. I'm not sure if AI does already behave this way. I, as a player, would gladly try to grab that city and try to retain it, even if just for a while.

(sorry for my English; as because it's not my native language, I had to explain my thoughts lenghty, or else my post would be incomprehensible)

Adamo, your English is flawless, and your thoughtful idea is well presented, but it is a solution to a problem I do not have. I develop trade early in the game, and then I have cities build caravans. More productive cities build caravans more quickly, but that does not mean the more productive city will then build a Wonder. Instead, I move the caravans to whatever city will be available to build a Wonder when the technology is available and the needed caravans are constructed. Part of my optimization process is to have a just in time convergence of caravans and technology so I can complete the Wonders my game plan needs as quickly as possible, without concern about which city the Wonder will be completed in.

I look forward to reading more of your posts.

Aaahh... Love Jim-11's post. My way of doing things exactly. Which means I must be doing something right.
As for the first wonders, early in the game (up to 30/40 turns) I go for broke with Pottery -> Great Library -> The Republic -> and finally Trade. Thus, I go easy with techs and heavy in money. Continue expansion like mad and find myself among the 3 best Scores out of 6/7 AI.

I wish more posts like these

@Jim-11, @Argobast

your idea is well presented

Yeah, because I spent 2 or 3 hours writing this post (with a dictionary) English is not my favorite language.

Instead, I move the caravans to whatever city will be available to build a Wonder when the technology is available and the needed caravans are constructed

I did so. That's one of the things I didn't like in original Civ's. Wonder is too important thing to be built just like that (I would even use an option whether to disable helping caravans to build wonders, or at least to reduce the help obtained from the Caravans - if I'm not wrong, the flexibility of Freeciv allows that ATM). The advantages, obtained from the Wonders (especially those important ones, like Great Library) are too big, comparing to the actual labor input, spent to build them. In the past, I used the editor to double the shields needed to build a wonder in my custom scenarios, but that's not a good solution.


The presented idea (number of wonders per city) is just an option for the user-prepared scenarios; that's why the custom value would be set to -1 ("no restriction"). If someone would like to make a scenario with no wonders at all, or one wonder per city, two wonder per city etc., this option gives him a choice - the choice is up to the designer. The flexibility of the game should allow experimental modifications. But there are other options:


*(old, not-a-good-ideas):

=> ...previously, I was thinking about other ideas for dispersing Wonders, like limiting the possible number of Wonders per player, no matter the cities; but this seems to be too controversial and complicated: if that was an option, before starting to build another Wonder above the limit (eg. you already have 5 wonders - which is the exemplary limit - in your empire, and you need another one), you might have to demolish one of already existing ones. Also, above-the-limit wonders in the newly conquered cities should be instantly demolished not to exceed the limit. So that's not good idea...

=> ...another bad idea are the facilitations, given to for actual nations; historically, it's the Egyptians who built Pyramids, so they need less production to build them (eg. French need less production to build Eiffel Tower, Americans to build Hoover Dam etc). But since we have 100+ nations in Freeciv to choose, it's not the solution. Also, that would favor highly developed nations (Americans) against the others. So that's not a good idea, too...

=> ...like I said, increasing the amount of production needed for Wonders; if a Wonder need 400 shields, we increase it to 800; if a Wonder needs 1000 shields, we increase it to 2000. I used to do that in my scenarios. But this, in fact, doesn't change anything. It just makes them harder to build, but does not gives any facilitations for underdeveloped players (in other words, it does not flatter the overall chances, independently from the current level of science; tested). Another bad idea...

=> ...when a science, which allows building a wonder, is developed by someone, this wonder is automatically given (instantly) to randomly chosen city in the world (you cannot build it in a regular way). This seems to be highly controversial. Though it might be interesting to test that, because it would give the great value of game randomization, because it would generally very much randomize the game and make it more like playing poker: you never know which card you get (where even a very bad player could randomly get the suit, just by the chance)...


Comparing to these, limiting number of wonders per city, seems to be reasonable compromise, and, most importantly, it's easy to code. It also allows to make experimental scenarios with no-wonders-game (= to disable wonders at all, which I wouldn't like, but maybe someone...), when we set the value to zero. I mentioned some bad ideas, but there's also...

*...a good one:

=> ...actually, it's a variant of the last above: when a science, that allows building a wonder, is developed by someone, any civilization got the possibility to build it (even though it doesn't know the actual science yet). This is called "allow anyone to build wonder". This might be interesting to test, because it would flatten the chances of wonder advantages (thus, winning the game) for scientifically underdeveloped players (implication: a militarized civilization, which relies on the conquer rather than developing science, would have equal chance to build a wonder)...

What I have noticed in the Civ-like games, is that war doesn't profit. It's better to stay away (eg: on isolated island) and develop science, while other players are involved with endless wars with themselves (thus, they put effort to waging wars). It's better to wait it out stand by developing science and, in the critical moment, build the spaceship. So, generally, wars just doesn't pays off (doesn't earn interest). Freeciv is a strategy game, I want it to be more military-based. The more wars, the better game. Waging wars should benefit more profits than looses (eg.: in the developing of science), and the possibility of building wonder by anyone when a science was just discovered by someone, would make it more military-based. Also, limiting number of wonders per city (1 wonder = 1 city), would also make the game more viable (profitable) when waging wars (because, as I described in first post, it would ease obtaining wonders by conquest: you want a Wonder? conquest your opponent's city).


Yes, in RL wars are excrutiating and awful, but in a strategy, military game, they should be as profitable as possible (the more, the better), and the nations, which wages wars, shouldn't be disadvantaged by loss of benefits, which is a consequence of science underdevelopment (eg. less peaceful civilization wages wars and doesn't spend as much wherewithal for developing the science comparing to the more peaceful one, thus doesn't have a chance to develop a science, which allows him to build Sun Tzu's Academy, which he'd need; the more peaceful one puts on science rather than military and builds it - thus, he have indirect benefits for not waging wars; that's the style of playing I don't really like). That's why I would like to disturb these regularities and test mentioned variants.

I don't like this idea, I want to do whatever I want.