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[korn469]

Here's my definition. ICS is a strategy primarily based on gaining an advantage over players who do use ICS by utilizing game mechanics that allow several small cities to outperform a few large cities in a variety of different metrics.

Here's a very crude Civ2 example:
Player A has one size ten city in monarchy 50/50 taxes/science.

Base Square Production
1 x 2.1.1=2 food, 1 shield, 1 gold
Other Worked Squares
9 * 3.1.1 (irrigated grassland with roads)=27 food, 9 shields, 9 gold
Unadjusted Happiness
3 Happy Citizens 7 Unhappy Citizens
Adjusted Happiness
+3 for martial law, +2 for temple, +1 for entertainers
Support
3 free units
City Upkeep
Barracks 1 gold (40)
Granary 1 gold (60)
Temple 1 gold (40)
Marketplace 1 gold (80)
Library 1 gold (80)
Aqueduct 2 gold (80)
Food need to grow to size 11
55 (7 turns to grow pop by 1)
Total output
9 food 10 shields 8 science 1 gold

Player B has ten size one cities in monarchy 50/50 tax/science

Base Square Production
10 x 2.1.1=20 food, 10 shield, 10 gold
Other Worked Squares
10 * 2.1.1 (grasslands with roads)=20 food, 10 shields, 10 gold
Unadjusted Happiness
10 Happy Citizens
Adjusted Happiness
none
Support
30 free units
City Upkeep
none
Food need to grow to all cities to size 2
200 (10 turns to grow pop by 10)
Total output
20 food 20 shields 10 science 10 gold (no corruption)
20 food 10 shields 5 science 5 gold (maximum corruption)

So depending on just exactly how much corruption eats into the advantages of the ICS empire the may go from having advantages in every category to have equal or lower stats in possibly production and science with a small advantage in gold, while having a large advantage in growth, happiness and military support. Nine settlers would also cost slightly less than the buildings in the first city. Also note that the non ICS player has the advantage of having all of its squares irrigated while the ICS player doesn't. Granted this is a very crude example, but hopefully it points out some of the reasons ICS works in civ2.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by korn469
Here's my definition. ICS is a strategy primarily based on gaining an advantage over players who do use ICS by utilizing game mechanics that allow several small cities to outperform a few large cities in a variety of different metrics.
(SNIP the good example)

Very well explained. Nice job.

[yin26]

So Korn is the only one of the 3 who might have the game in time? Man, that sucks...Let me ask the 3 of them, then: Whom shall we choose to add to the judging team? Hex, I know Dale has worked with you, is he a good choice? Adm.Naismith, do you have somebody in mind?

As for Korn, my God, just look at his post on ICS. I think that's the basic way to look at the issue in Civ 4, too: We should run several startup scenarios where we try flavors of "expand at all costs" vs. a handful of well-developed cities to see how it plays out long term. I already expect the early game to be rougher with the expand plan, but it's the mid to late game that might tell an interesting story.

Still bummed about losing Hex and Adm.Naismith. Frankly, Hex, you have no good excuse!!!

[GAZ082]

Tell Firaxis so spare an empty box to Yin and that would do the trick.

[sabrewolf]

korn469, your comparison is a bit flawed as 10 size-1 cities work on 20 tiles while 1 size-10 city works on 11 tiles.

it also does not take into account that
A) the cities don't have potential,
B) the OCN is reached quicker,
C) while losing a war you'll get much more war weariness
D) more weak spots and more things to defend
E) less city-size defence.

[sabrewolf]

i fully agree with aeson's POV: you cannot compare ICSing against a bad AI to ICSing against a more or less equal oponent. would firaxis have fixed many of the civ3-AI-flaws, ICS may not have even been considerable. and as he said, eliminating a strategy is imho not the best anyhow.
with the ultra-expensive settlers and workers ICS feasability was already reduced. with the maintenance increase it is probably completely limited (î hope at least that higher world sizes have higher city number tolerance)

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by yin26
Frankly, Hex, you have no good excuse!!!

Well, our family is strapped for cash (especially this year - I have to get a new roof for the house in November, my wife lost her job recently and had to take a pay cut at her new one, I just dropped $1300 on a car repair, and my son is getting ready to go to college next year), and I always get grief because nobody knows what to get me for the holidays and my birthday.

So I kill two birds with one stone.

My holiday list so far...
Civ4
Battlestar Galactica Season One DVDs.

That's it. Don't need anything else... And I don't want to deprive my family of bringing me joy.

Still, I guess I could rob my change jar. There's got to be enough quarters in there. But I'm also a cheap s.o.b., so I will probably wait until I can get a discount (Best Buy usually has a good deal when games are released).

I'll just have to think of something else to ask for...

If that fails, I'd recommend (and I bet no-one saw this coming...given our past) Sir Ralph - mainly because he has extensive MP experience, so he has probably seen the effects of ICS there and the means to combat an ICSer - and he has also played the gamut of civ games.

Plus he is usually blunt with his assessments, and the main reason, at least for me, he has no great love for Firaxis (...a little skepticism is a good thing at this stage of the game)

[yin26]

Hex: Bringing good excuses in to this equation does nobody any good except for yourself. Think of the bigger picture! Well, I understand those same pressures myself. Sir Ralph, eh?

What say you, Sir Ralph? I might need to PM him I suppose...

[conmcb25]

I agree Sir Ralph would be good doing this

[korn469]

Originally posted by sabrewolf
korn469, your comparison is a bit flawed as 10 size-1 cities work on 20 tiles while 1 size-10 city works on 11 tiles.

it also does not take into account that
A) the cities don't have potential,
B) the OCN is reached quicker,
C) while losing a war you'll get much more war weariness
D) more weak spots and more things to defend
E) less city-size defence.

Sabrewolf,

About my example, first i said it was a very crude example, that demonstrated simply how game mechanics enabled ICS. Nothing more, nothing less. Also you didn't read it very closely, because I said it was a Civ 2 (not Civ 3) example. Still let me address your points.

A)Please define potential in game terms, since it could have several meaning. The most obvious one as having numerous cities ready to grow seems to support the ICS argument. Also it would take fewer culture points to expand your territory.

No Points

B)OCN is a Civ3 term and doesn't apply to my Civ2 example. Still even in Civ3 as long as you haven't hit the OCN limit, you should expand like crazy until you do.

Point ICS

C)War weariness is a Civ3 concept. However, I specified Monarchy for the government which doesn't suffer war weariness. Even if it did, the ICS cities would suffer less because they could use soldier to suppress war weariness. The size ten city would have to have luxuries or turn more citizens into entertainers.

Point ICS

D)You wouldn't have to have more weak spots, but I'll conceed this point to you since you do have more things to defend. However, in civ3 you'd probably have more territory, which is an advantage not a weakness.

Point Sabrewolf (Civ3)

E)Less city size defense is a Civ3 concept as well. However, I think that towns have a defense of 0 and cities have a defense of 50%. City walls give +50%. It's not as bad as it first seems since the ICS cities can build city walls, and larger cities can't have them. So how about calling this a tie for Civ3. In civ2 all cities have the same defense as far as I remember, so everbody would need to build city walls.

Tie

So ICS wiins 2-1.

[sabrewolf]

sorry, i was referring to civ3... i missed your civ2-reference, my bad. i have not touched civ2 in this century yet, mainly because i liked civ3, despite all the sub-optimalities

it's clear that in civ2 ICS was unconditionally superior. i was only disagreeing that this was also the case in civ3.

nonetheless, i'll clarify what i meant:
A) i meant that you'd place the 10 cities very very close to each other, not caring about surrounding terrain, which that one super-power city will likely be placed in a good position with lots of food, production and commerce.
with potential i was speaking of the chance of those 10 cities to grow. they could not exceed working on in average 3 tiles in average if you did the super-tight ICS city placement.

B) in civ3 the OCN limit is hit pretty soon. even in well-spaced games i mostly exceeded it and had to deal with city-count based curruption.
so no points for either of us

C) yep, monarchy is without WW, your point

D)

E) a tie, ok.

so 1-1

but anyhow, my argumentation was not considering the third oldest civ game (about 10th oldest if you consider all expansions ), so i withdraw

[korn469]

Sabrewolf,

I agree with you that Civ3 didn't have nearly as many problems with ICS as the previous games did. Certainly ICS wasn't Civ3's greatest problem, nor even in the top five (to me at least). Personally I think that REX (rapid expanion) wasn't the same thing as ICS. Basically with a weakened combat system where not only were the odds purposely compressed, but the low amount of hit points made nearly any combat a crapshoot. So if you didn't limit the AI's expansion, with rampant tech whoring it could pose a threat on the higher levels when it marched in massive stacks of units. Between 2 pop settlers, global unit support, semi fixed size food boxes, etc. ICS wasn't the problem in Civ3 that it was in previous civ games.

Here is how I propose we should judge ICS as a strategy in Civ.

Basically have each judge play 6 games on three standard maps. One game on each map will be an ICS rules game, one game will be a super city rules game. All judges use the same three maps. One map could be a high water islands map, one map could be a medium water continants map, and one map could be a low water pangea map. Difficulty level set on noble (no bonuses to player or AI). Each player submits saves from a preset year. Maybe like 3000bc, 1500bc, 1ad, 500 ad, 1000ad. Once you pick a map you have to play both games on it before moving to the next map. You will play at least one map with ICS rules first, and one map with Supercity rules first, then decided the final map with a coin toss. Then we compare all of the games and see what we think is best.

ICS rules:
*Most focus on building as many cities in as short of time as possible.
*If a city hits size four and doesn't have at least 4 cities within 5 tile radius then it MUST start building a settler, unless it is under direct attack and building a military unit.
*Can't build any wonders until the player has founded at least ten cities.

Supercity rules:
*Must focus on building reletively few HIGHLY developed cities in as short of time as possible.
*You must have at least 10 population before producing a settler.
*Supercities need space, so cities can't have more than two squares of overlap with any individual city. For example Berlin could have two overlapping tiles with Munich and two tiles that overlap with Frankfurt. However, Rome could not have three tiles that overlap with Milan.
*You can keep conquered cities even if they have unacceptable overlap, butthey still much reach size 10 before they can produce settlers.
*If you have four or more cities (even conquered cities) under size five you can't build settlers in any city, and any city currently building a settler must switch its production to something else.

[yin26]

Hey, I like how this is shaping up!

[Aeson]

I don't think comparing those two rulesets would mean much of anything. The relation of the results between the two could mean anything without some sort of control to measure both off of. If your ICS ruleset came out on top, is that because ICS is the end-all-be-all playstyle? Or is it because the Supercity ruleset is completely inefficient gameplay and ICS is only marginally better? And vice versa.

If something like this is done, it would need to have a "control" where the judge plays in the manner they see best with no self-imposed restrictions. (My bet is that both forced rulesets would result in rather inefficient gameplay.)

[yin26]

Originally posted by Aeson
My bet is that both forced rulesets would result in rather inefficient gameplay.

This is the point, though, right? You don't know.