Do you think ICS has been solved adequately?

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Arrian
The way around that, I guess, is to tie growth more to happiness and/or prosperity than to having excess food.

Amen.

[OPD]

Originally posted by Arrian
The bonuses... well, maybe give +2s/+2c (or 3, even) to the city tile every time the city hits a new size bracket. Towns (which, IMO, should start at size 2 or 3, with size1s being villages) could get +50%, cities (starting around size 8) could get 100%, and metros (starting around 14) could get 150% and some sort of guerilla militia.
-Arrian

Yeah anything that would make not building a load of settlers early would be a good. Or perhaps just to provide an alternative to the typical initial rex phase.
More differentiation between the small city sizes would be cool. Also perhaps the early builds could be stronger and more abundant, choosing between an early temple/library or another city is typically no contest.
I think the thing where culture value becomes more effective after 1000 years is cool perhaps buildings could even increase in effect after a certain period of time so as to encourage early infra-structure builds.

Basically I think it would be good if you had to make a choice over the early settlers or infrastucture/growth so that a few strong cities could be more valuable than many smaller cities

On the other hand you could just balance the out the effectiveness of rex/ics by increasing the food cost of settlers to a certain point.

[pg]

i think the one thing this thread shows is how many obviously and relatively simple ways there are to combat or eliminate ics. i can't help but think ics should have already been fixed in civ 3. if ics doesn't drastically change in civ 4(gone or severly reduced) couldn't we basically say civ is ics? it's much like mmorpgs where the leveling treadmill is so strong one can argue the only gameplay left is the grind to level up. if you master ics you basically have mastered civ. there are many other elements of gameplay but none as important as ics.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Food shortages don't decrease the standard of living if merchant trading to make up the shortfall is taken as given. There are, and have been in the past, many areas that do not grow enough food to support themselves and import the necessary shortfall from another part of the country/empire without batting an eyelid.

Shortage of food in one area drives up the price of food. Thus the decrease in quality of life -- perhaps temporarily.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Drachasor
I prefer player control over this aspect. This represents that the government can influence what is going on.

Influence != control

Originally posted by Drachasor
Also, you avoid messy AI issues that might crop up (and take forever for an official patch)*.

Nothing to do with AI.

Originally posted by Drachasor
Lastly, players might find new and creative ways to apply the system that the computer AI wouldn't think of.

These generally are known as exploits and are frown upon.

Originally posted by Drachasor
This is effectively the same as increasing the distance minimum distance between cities.

Maybe, but without the artificiality.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dauphin
I agree. City location is one of the most important decisions in Civ. It has to be a human decision and not indirectly controlled.

Direct control leads to cities in deserts and on top of mountains.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Direct control leads to cities in deserts and on top of mountains.

Just like Las Vegas in the middle of the Mojave and Quito at an altitude 9,000 ft?

[Arrian]

Yep. Although I could definitely see tying building cities on certain terrain to the acquisition of technologies (like in MOO - wanna settle a nasty place? Research, unless you're the Silicoid...).

-Arrian

[Drachasor]

Though, it doesn't take much technology to have a city on a mountain...it might take a fair amount to have it grow to a large degree. Also, there might be good reasons to found a city there, that some weird

Lastly, governments can and do say where cities will be. It doesn't always work this way, but I seem to recall Alexander making decisions about where to put many cities. Maybe a broader set of names for them would have been nice, but that's not the point. Also, while influence doesn't always equal control, it often can mean that. Anyhow, this is a game afterall, and with regards to your own empire, control over influence tends to be more fun, and realistic enough.

Again though, you aren't going to have a lower quality of life in the people producing food. They'll be getting goods and money from trading and will therefore have a *Higher* quality of life.

-Drachasor

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dauphin
That would be in the running for the prize for the most annoying feature.

How so? I actually played with it for quite a while, until I got Conquests (and didn't bother to transfer my self-mod over).

[smellymummy]

firaxis could always just dump the old model of cities and think more about people..

that is, on the map, we would see huts/houses/buildings all over the place, just as population disperses itself, where food permits etc, in RL.

the player would then have to create town centers, maybe like a city hall or a feudal mansion of sorts, and then win the support of the people through entertainment, employment, temples and other things that can be built. through culture, or whatever other means of border expansion, a town center's area of influence would grow, and therefore control more and more population.

as such, population would then be linked to a global function, where of course a player's action would influence it's growth or reduction. Instead of having population fully dependant on individual cities that can be built over and over again.

and what about production limitations? there's no point in limiting a city to produce one military unit per turn. If industry permits, why not allow a city to spit out a stack of 5 warriors a turn instead of just one?

think about it, if I can build two cities within a few tiles, and each reach a population of 10+ million, there's something seriously flawed in that. Are all the citizens just crammed thightly like a can of sardines in my one city?

sure this brings up many many more issues that change how civ is (military units that can pillage and raid population all over the place, among many other things) and well civ4 should change everything anyway

myself, i'd enjoy something fresh

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Kucinich


How so? I actually played with it for quite a while, until I got Conquests (and didn't bother to transfer my self-mod over).

If you don't start the game near a river or fresh water you aren't going to build an aqueduct until you get construction, and so you have only a size 2 city until you get construction. Great fun.

The only viable course of action is to look around for fresh water at the start, which is a major disadvantage compared to other players who start with fresh water close by..

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dauphin
If you don't start the game near a river or fresh water you aren't going to build an aqueduct until you get construction, and so you have only a size 2 city until you get construction. Great fun.

Easy solution: make the Palace act as an aqueduct.

[Dominae]

IMO, two things are needed to fix the ICS problem:

1. A few big cities needs to be better than many small cities.

Civ3 tried to achieve this with its Corruption system, but more or less failed (although it was a drastic improvement over its predecessors). The reason is that ICS and the "big cities" strategies reach economic parity far too late in the game: until the late Medieval or early Industrial, ICS-type city placement always beats out a sparser arrangement; only with the advent of Industrialization does it really make sense to have a small number of powerul cities. But the game is more or less "over" by this stage of the game. If "big cities" are to be an important part of Civ3, there needs to be better incentives earlier on. Many good such incentives have been proposed above. I would like to add:

a. Wonders can only built in cities of size >x.
b. Only cities of size >x generate Culture.
c. Cities of size x can only benefit from y Luxury resources.

2. Local geography needs to play a more important role in a city's usefulness.

Strangely enough, this idea appears in space-based 4X games but in the Civ series: MOO and Galactic Civilizations each assign a quality rating to planets, and penalize the settlements with poor living conditions (and reward paradises).

Here's the idea translated into Civ:

Let the game calculate a "quality" metric for each and every square of the game. If the quality metric of a tile is low, a city founded there woud incur penalties to everything it does; if the quality metric is high, the city would kick butt without too much effort.

This metric would be a combination of each of the 21 tiles the city would eventually have access to (tiles closer in could be worth more since they're more readily exploitable). A powerful River-adjacent Bonus resource tile would be worth a lot; an crappy Desert tile would be worth very little. Notice that casual Civ players employ a similar metric already, regardless of the distance between cities: "I'll put my next city over there because it looks like a good spot".

Here's the interesting part: pre-existing cities within a site's 21-tile radius would factor in negatively toward that location's metric. So, all other things being equal, putting three cities within a confined area would be less effective than spreading them apart. Of course, if the local geography is amazing, it might be a good idea to place those cities close together. Thus there would still be interesting decisions to be made with respect to city placement (as opposed to GalCiv and MOO).

The reason this "solves" ICS is that in past Civ games all you need was one or two Grassland tiles per city to make it contribute to the empire. Put all those cities together and you get a serious contribution. The rest of the tiles in the city's radius could be very poor (Desert, Tundra, in use by another city, etc.), but it would not matter because you would never use those. With the "quality" idea, players would have to chase down city-sites that have high long-term potential. Most of the real world's big cities (especially in ancient times) fit this description.

What about colonies, and other such "functional" cities? Would they have a role? Sure! Just that they would never prosper much if founded within a bad area. Actual Colonies (as built by Workers) might become that much more important.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by Dominae
IMO, two things are needed to fix the ICS problem:

1. A few big cities needs to be better than many small cities.

a. Wonders can only built in cities of size >x.

Agreed. And not just wonders. Most improvements should have some kind of minimum population requirement.

b. Only cities of size >x generate Culture.
c. Cities of size x can only benefit from y Luxury resources.

2. Local geography needs to play a more important role in a city's usefulness.

Here's the idea translated into Civ:

Let the game calculate a "quality" metric for each and every square of the game. If the quality metric of a tile is low, a city founded there woud incur penalties to everything it does; if the quality metric is high, the city would kick butt without too much effort.

And this is the biggie. It should definitely be implemented. Strangely enough, it isn't even a new idea - it was in Master of Magic.