Re: 3 city maximum? (long)

Since nobody more competent has replied, let me try.

:     Is anyone else like me?  I play Freeciv (FC) exclusively
in
: single-player mode (like Civ2).

Even if you don't intend on competing against other people,
playing several games online is a good experience. It gives you
an idea where you should be skill-wise. After that, playing
single-player is like sim-city.

:     I have tried to play FC while managing a large empire.  I
have
: even finished games where I've had 8, 12, or even 20 cities.
But I
: found that those games were more like work than fun.

City manager feature was put in to address this.

:     To prevent that, I tried adjusting the server options.
Setting
: cityfactor to 6 and unhappysize to 1 prevents the AI from
overwhelm-
: ing my empire.  However, it has a side-effect:  the AI starts
out
: strong but eventually becomes ineffective.  The problem is
that the
: AI continues founding more cities even when it shouldn't.
Once the
: AI builds its 3rd or 4th city, many of its cities get another
: unhappy citizen and then fall into civil disorder.

There's an option to set minimum distance between cities
(citymindist or some such). Try just setting that instead. You
actually mention that elsewhere in your message.

What you are talking about is known smallpox vs largepox
dillema. As the current rules are set up smallpox (cities of
size < 4 every one or two squares) makes the best use of
resources and is the way to go. On the other hand, largepox is
what civilization building is all about. You may want to search
through the archives (and freeciv website tutorials) to read
more about this.

IMO the resolution to the dillema would have been to alter the
resource and production rules, so that smallpox and largepox
could compete in the same games as equals. Somehow I have not
seen that discussed.

Paul