ICS is back with a vengeance

[Dinner]

I played a bit today and it seems like this ICS plan actually works.

[MxM]

You're not artificially constrained, you fool. You're constrained to making cities that are valuable to your empire as opposed to cities that are just there to be there and have another city. Jesus, if that's an "artificial constraint" to you, then what you are saying is that you WANT the ICS problem to remain in Civ V.

Halving the hap cap would just make it a little harder to do ICS, but the fundamental problem would remain in the game. Cities would just be slightly less profitable.

Collider, I am tired of politely asking you STOP CALLING NAMES. This is against forum rules, and on your next instance I will start reporting your posts to moderators, I am tired of this.

As for the topic, yes, I do want ICS to stay in the game as a possibility, I just do not want it to have it dominating wining strategy in all games. But it is nothing bad if there is an option for this and if there are rare cases when you should go for it. This is why I do not like to have this "hap cap" and call this as an artificial construct which is not needed. It is also strange if you have lots of empty space and are not able to populate it all if you chose to. In real life big cities are formed because they give efficiency bonus, not because people become unhappy when there are 5 small cities (or chose any other number). I want the same mechanics in Civ V.

[MxM]

MxM doesn't it sometimes seem to you that you are arguing just to argue?

binTravkin, doesn't sometimes seem to you that you post empty post and trying to provoke people on some kind of negative response?

[binTravkin]

No, the post had a very high value-to-symbol-count ratio, you just don't seem to recognize that.

[N35t0r]

As for the topic, yes, I do want ICS to stay in the game as a possibility, I just do not want it to have it dominating wining strategy in all games. But it is nothing bad if there is an option for this and if there are rare cases when you should go for it. This is why I do not like to have this "hap cap" and call this as an artificial construct which is not needed. It is also strange if you have lots of empty space and are not able to populate it all if you chose to. In real life big cities are formed because they give efficiency bonus, not because people become unhappy when there are 5 small cities (or chose any other number). I want the same mechanics in Civ V.

IRL, more cities does mean more unhappiness, since there's more different 'sides' competing for resources... It's not a coincidence that a lot of the world's largest nations have a federalistic internal structure, in some cases with significant degrees of internal freedom. There's also the limit of how much land / population can be managed coherently, which is whay most large empires historically collapsed due to their own weight, after overstretching themselves (Alexander, the Mongols, several Chinese dynasties, Charlemagne's Empire, the Ottomans... hell, even the roman empire had to split in two before it got invaded)... If you think that geometrically increasing costs, either in maintenance, happyness, or both are 'artificial', then so is the concept of 'tiles' and discrete, one-off buildings (which large city you know has only one library?), and pretty much everything else in the game.

[MxM]

IRL, more cities does mean more unhappiness, since there's more different 'sides' competing for resources... It's not a coincidence that a lot of the world's largest nations have a federalistic internal structure, in some cases with significant degrees of internal freedom. There's also the limit of how much land / population can be managed coherently, which is whay most large empires historically collapsed due to their own weight, after overstretching themselves (Alexander, the Mongols, several Chinese dynasties, Charlemagne's Empire, the Ottomans... hell, even the roman empire had to split in two before it got invaded)... If you think that geometrically increasing costs, either in maintenance, happyness, or both are 'artificial', then so is the concept of 'tiles' and discrete, one-off buildings (which large city you know has only one library?), and pretty much everything else in the game.

Interesting point. However, from historical perspective the MOST successful empire was Roman empire and it existed very long time. In modern language we would call it "dictatorship" and in Civ V terms it is ICS.
The modern most populous country is also with one of the least freedoms (China). And I also can question if an average Chinese is much less happy than average, say, American.
And for each example of large empire collapsing, there are numerous examples of small empires collapsing as well. More over I do think that larger countries at the end are better in competition and more efficient. Why do you think EU is uniting? Single language, single currency, single cultural and economical rules are more efficient in terms of economy than 50 of them on the same territory.

And in any case, in modern world I can not say that people in very small countries are happier or more productive or anything different than people in very large countries. I can not say that one city or 100 make any noticeable difference. Other factors (like political and economical traditions, laws, history) are dominating in defining the success of the country, and not the size.

However, regardless of all that, gameplay > realism.
And I think the game will be more interesting if there is some why to do ICS without limitation of geometrical growth of unhappiness. It just for most (but may be not all) of the time it should not be wining strategy.

[binTravkin]

MxM, you are now going into uncharted territory.
ICS is a game concept, it exists nowhere in real life.
Civ cities are a game concept, there are no such "cities" with "radiuses" IRL, instead you have a multitude of settlements of various sizes and various distances from each other.
Happiness is a game concept and is not in comparable to what you have IRL, since the latter is on a completely different level of complexity.
That's not to say that down to the individual level happiness is rarely related to "resources", "religion", "garrison" or anything else you can have for it in Civ.
EU is uniting because unity can lead to better economy and more political weight if executed properly.


If touching the "overstretching" subject, again it's a complex issue, but intuitively I would say that it has very little to do with "happiness" as represented in Civ.
It has much more to do with "culture" as represented in Civ, "unit upkeep" as represented in Civ and "city count penalty" and "distance penalty" as represented in Civ (4), "civics" as represented in Civ (4).
Here's why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire

Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups) united and ruled either by a monarch (emperor, empress) or an oligarchy.

1. "Culture" / "City count penalty" / "Distance penalty"
Inevitably, one or few groups (in the extended sense of "group" - any set of common features can cause people to be recognized as group, even "they are in power", like elite in oligarchy or ruling family in monarchy) of the people in empire become dominant.
First and foremost "culture" means that the people who have this certain "culture" are looking at others (the whole empire) through the prism of their understanding of world.
This can range from global stuff like religion to how a business or household should be run.
The result is that inevitably there are important differences between the group that is dominant and most or all other groups.
This creates friction, the larger the empire gets the more chance the (territorically, ethnically, etc) outlying groups will be even more different from the dominating group, thus creating even more friction.
This friction is not necessarily due to cruel intent or something, but is a logical and natural occurance, I've seen it in action while doing business with people from other region (Baltic vs Scandinavia) - they just look at things differently, not neccesarily wrong.
Friction manifests itself in many ways, both peaceful and not so peaceful, but the end result is that the dominating group needs to devote it's resources to either resolve this friction (happens very rarely, as Stalin said - "no person, no problem") or restrict it through various (incl. repressive) means, which can result in even more friction if not executed properly (see next point) and sometimes even if properly, if it is just too large to be suppressed.
You could possibly think of friction as civ "happiness", judging from its manifestation, however, the cause lies primarily in "culture" and the mechanismus is much more complex and much less straightforward (more cities => less happiness).

2. "Civics"
Since friction is often resolved by restrictive means, a government form and laws that are appropriate to execute such are a logical requirement.
Thus, most empires are not and cannot be democratic.
At best they are "democratic" to the dominating group and some groups with smaller differences (e.g. dominating group + groups that are from same ethnicity, religion, etc), which in effect is an oligarchy.
Nondemocratic rule tends to worsen over time, some good examples of this is Roman Empire, Ottoman Empire, Abbasid Empire, Persian Empire, etc.
This means that eventually there will be additional friction arising from bad policies.
Also, this means that using Police State IRL to "maintain" a larger empire can and often will strike back in long term as this is classical example of friction being suppressed as opposed to managed/resolved and also because it comes together with degradation of policies.
History is full of examples.
In fact you could say that the Civ4 civics are pretty screwed as you cannot realistically have "Police State" and "Free Speech" at the same time, it is just not possible.
There are much less options for government/legal situations IRL than in Civ4.
You could just have an axis where on one end there is "Democracy" and on the other end "Autocracy" and just plot the different forms somewhere in between those points.
You'd barely even need a second axis since for example Absolute Monarchy is not much different from Police State for the vast majority of subjects.

3. "Unit upkeep"
This is actually is a more "practical" and also more "visible" factor IRL - if you check most past empires they had to maintain large numbers of troops to kill off their enemies, which were many (as their borders were long).
This is one of the success points of Roman Empire as it managed to align it's borders very close to optimum (minimal length, natural obstacles limiting invasions) and one of the obvious "secrets" of it's longevity.
Also, bear in mind that in past times up to late medieval, at least, most warfare was not professional, which meant that the soldiers had to be gathered, trained (training happened only in select states like Rome before professional army) and moved to right spot.
As empires grew larger it was less and less possible (and more detrimental to economy as workforce was distracted) to do this with drafted troops, thus either a dedicated "warrior caste" or professional army was brought in existence.
However, since the economies of the time were so much smaller than the modern ones, the cost of maintaining a professional army was very large (vs their GDP or state budget).
Think of USSR (15%-17% of GDP) or even more.
For proof go medieval Europe where kings often had to loan money to permanently support 5-10k fighting men in the field (Hundred Years War).
Basically, looking from a strategic viewpoint, the increase in size did lead to increase in expenditures in a disproportional way, but the increase of state income, even if it was non-linear (over-linear), often did not catch up.
Again, this is one area where Roman Empire excelled - it had a sustained peace in most of it's territory for around 200 years (~30BC - ~180BC), which was unprecedented in that time.
The peace allowed economy to flourish and it was possible to support its professional army.
Then, several factors kicked in:
- the streak of good rulers ended (this can be seen in very many empires, Ottomans come in mind as an almost-copy of the occurence)
- the military pressure on borders raised
- possibly, internal frictions also rose, independently of rulership decline (meaning not as a consequence of bad policies)


Now I'm not pretending what I wrote here is 100% correct, but I believe explaining the dynamics of large empires this way is much more appropriate than using abstract concepts from game and pretending that they are exactly like that in real life.

Also, bear in mind that U.S. and China are not empires since majority of their people are from one ethnic group, one area and have many other similarities which would logically cause them to unite and form a nation/country.
E.U. is also not an empire and modern Russia is neither due to majority (80%) of people being Russians (and even more being part of the same "culture").

[Sir Og]

Here is a nice screnshot showing the glory of ICS

[Zoetstofzoetje]

+163 happiness? what is this, chieftain? lol.

what we need is a hit in happiness and/or commerce per additional city. alternatively, a risk to expansion.

i kind of liked the stability factor in rhye's mod. the downside was that a stability zone was static.

in civ5, we could have a dynamic stability zone. for example, happiness hit per city double what it is now - but as the outback becomes more civilized, this impact decreases per turn. this means you gradually decrease your happiness/commerce corruption by building buildings. what that means is initially you will not see many benefits from additional cities, and you only receive them if you invest, which reduces the incentive to spam.

[binTravkin]

in civ5, we could have a dynamic stability zone.

Just base it on distance from cap, should be enough and together with terrain constraint should look realistic enough.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

Travkin, the only problem with that is, colonies become difficult to support/develop. Not being bound by the initial tiles means you get more interesting strategies in the long run, empires not being round.

[binTravkin]

colonies become difficult to support/develop

That is correct and also historically correct, so I see no problem there.

[notyoueither]

Instead of artificial constraints on number of cities, perhaps rebalancing to give incentive for larger cities would be the way to go.

[Zoetstofzoetje]

larger cities get more bonus on science and commerce, i like that... it allows colonies, and inhibits spamming. combine that with toning down the MCS and you've got a winner

[Sir Og]

+163 happiness? what is this, chieftain? lol.

Emperor/Pangaea/Standard according to the guy who posted that screen shot.