ICGames review

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Solver
Yeah, Russia is huge territory where half of it is in a horrible state, Luxembourg is a small and efficient territory with a good overall level .

Yeah, but one nuke and it's gone.

[Guynemer]

Maybe two nukes. One nuke for Lietchtenstein (or however the hell you spell it).

[Robert]

Originally posted by Solver


Yeah, Russia is huge territory where half of it is in a horrible state, Luxembourg is a small and efficient territory with a good overall level .

But Russia is still the stronger country. And I'm sure that Putin has more money to spend then the premier of Luxembourg.

Size does matter in the end. But a luxembourg-alike country with 60% of the size of Russia will beat Russia every day.

[Aro]

Originally posted by CyberShy


But Russia is still the stronger country. And I'm sure that Putin has more money to spend then the premier of Luxembourg.

Size does matter in the end. But a luxembourg-alike country with 60% of the size of Russia will beat Russia every day.

I'll not go so far. Not every day... Some winter days are really cold over there - but close.
CyberShy you're damn right. A Luxemburg-alike country with 60 - no, say 40% (or less!) of the size of Russia would be a super-power.
Size matters, but in a relative way.

[Solver]

In Civ terms, Luxembourg would be maybe 2 size-6 cities while Russia would be a dozen size 20 cities and two dozen smaller cities, so yeah, it's not fair to compare.

I hope though that in Civ4, such a Russia would require a highly powerful economy to even sustain itself, and without that, start to fall behind in productivity and tech.

[Robert]

I just try to paint how size does matter, so ICS should always more or less work. But it shouldn't be so that the biggest empire automaticly wins. I think that doesn't happen in cIIIv though.

I have never had any ICS problems in civ3.
I can beat the civ3 Deity eventhough it ICS's like an idiot.

[sophist]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yeah, but one nuke and it's gone.

Then you try really hard to avoid that nuke. It's the age old choice of whether to put all your eggs in one basket. There's no right answer all the time.

Originally posted by Guynemer
Maybe two nukes. One nuke for Lietchtenstein (or however the hell you spell it).

Liechtenstein is not part of Luxembourg.

[Nikolai]

Lichenstein is smaller. I'd believe that's what he meant.

[Guynemer]

Nikolai gets a gold star.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You see, I have this theory that Health and Great People are going to be two things which will make ICS a very poor strategy indeed. Why?

Well, firstly, I have a gut feeling that workers, settlers (and possibly even other units) will cost you HEALTH , not population points. If base growth rate is also tied to current population, then these two factors I feel will make it vitally important for a city to have either a decent population or a decent health if it is going to produce enough settlers to engage in ICS behaviour.
Secondly, I believe that cities will be able to become more specialised than ever, as city growth will no longer be tied to a need to work every fertile tile in sight. Instead, city growth will probably be sustainable by the health generated by 'food trade' and improvements. What I feel this means is that churning out settlers and sending them out in all directions during the BC era (and settling them in a way as to minimize space between cities) will be counterproductive when compared to nurturing a few key cities, specialising them in order to produce Great People who can give your culture, production, economy and/or science a massive supercharged boost.
Anyway, maybe I am being overly optimistic, but thats how I see it coming together.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Senethro]

I would like to see what news articles you've read that have encouraged that interpretation.

Although it will be governed by different ways, I suspect Health will be more akin to SMACs growth, giving a 10%/30%/50% etc growth bonus. Settlers would cost population as normal.

However, the intriuging possibility exists in my interpretation that the highest state of Health is Pop Boom.

But we're both hoping for too much I suspect.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Senethro, did you notice I used words like 'Gut Feeling' and 'Theory'. Now I admit that I have nothing on which to base the first part of my theory except hope-and a belief that it would make perfect sense to make units cost health that way. The second part of my belief, though, in regards to Great People is based largely on the most recent article.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Solver]

An excellent gut feeling there Aussie . This should be also marked down on the list of posts to come back to after the game is released.

[alva]

Why is that Solver?

[1889]

In one article Soren said that he wanted to reduce the unfunness of late the game by encouraging players to make fewer, but better cities. Yes, yes I'll look for the link.


Edit:

Actually looking through all the previews for that one line is unfun. You'll just have to be satisfied with this uber compilation:

city essentials

"The game is more balanced towards not having as many cities. You will, however, still have a broad area. The focus is to have fewer but more specialized cities."