Engineers also have the power to transform terrain, which is pretty great. And they move and do everything at double speed, which actually makes them more than twice as good. However, in Freeciv there are Settlers (which are NEVER replaced) and Workers which are unlocked by the Pottery tech and are eventually replaced by Engineers. Settlers can both found new cities and build Roads and such, but Workers and Engineers can only do the Road building and terrain transforming and so on- no cities. Imo, the way Civ 2 does it is by far the superior system. The addition of Workers was a significant part of what completely broke all balance in Freeciv and turned the multiplayer metagame into an absurd and boring mirror match of Democracy Smallpox -> Celebration vs Democracy Smallpox -> Celebration with the guy who starts with more Whales winning. Players of that game have been whining at people to pretty please not play that strategy and wondering where it all went wrong ever since. The reason that Workers as implemented were a bad idea is upkeep costs. Nearly every unit in the game costs 1 shield per turn as upkeep, right? Well in both games, Settlers also cost some Food. 1 Food under most primitive governments and 2 Food under Republic, Democracy, Fundamentalism (no such thing in Freeciv actually, which is another part of the problem), etc.Īdditionally, as Carbolic Smokeball pointed out and I also mentioned in the initial post, in practice Republic/Democracy pays even more for Settlers relative to Monarchy because Monarchy gets 3 units' support costs for free per city and Republic/Democracy gets 0. It's not quite for free actually, it just pays the shield cost. So under Monarchy you pay 1 Food per turn for Settlers. Under Republic you pay 2 Food and 1 shield per turn. That's a pretty huge difference, the Food cost especially sometimes. Well remember, a city shrinks by size 1 when it produces a Settler, right? Which means it must now work 1 fewer tile. Which means its total Food production decreases but the existence of the Settler means it has to pay the same high cost. Or even at deficit Food in which case the Settler immediately disbands.This may be hard to follow without some numbers, so let me give an example. The city of Badberg is the kind of place you end up with if you try to play strict Smallpox but aren't quite dumb enough to build in an empty range of Mountains and Hills and Deserts just because your grid says to. It was built on a Plains and has only Plains or Forests or Hills or truly bad terrain around it. Well at size 1 you have a Food cost of 2 (because your default cost is always 2x city size) and a Food income of 3 (2 from the automatically Irrigated city Plains, 1 from a Plains or Forest or Hill or whatever). So you have a bad net Food gain of 1 per turn, which means you grow to size 2 in 21 turns. And you've got a Production rate of about 1-3 shields depending on what tiles you work. You want to finish your Settlers JUST after your city grows, which you can do by microing which tile you work every turn a bit. And maybe building a Phalanx or Horseman first and then still microing Production a bit. So when you grow to size 2, what happens? Well your Food costs rise to 4 per turn. You also get to work another tile but all you have is another Plain or Forest or something. So your Production rises by 1 and your Food income rises by 1 to 4 per turn. This city will sit there at a worthless size 2 with cruddy Production and a horrendous 1 Trade for all eternity. It was not worth building in the first place. They can possibly Irrigate some of the Plains (assuming you actually have water somewhere, which is a reasonable assumption). A few Irrigated Plains will give you enough Food that you can actually keep growing more or less forever. At a terribly slow pace of course, but it's still a BIG improvement. Plus they can put Roads on those Plains so your city will have some Trade too and thus not be worthless. When those Settlers come out, your size drops back to 1. Which means your base Food cost per turn drops down to 2. It also means you have to work 1 fewer tile, so your Food gain drops back to 3. But the Settler imposes a Food cost of 1 per turn. So your city is now stuck at size 1.īut that's ok! That Settler can now walk out and start Irrigating.
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