Column #200; By MBloomIII

[DanQ]

The historic 200th edition of "The Column", dated December 22nd, 2001, <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/misc/column/200_ics-embraced.shtml">has arrived</A> albeit somewhat late. Entitled "Civ III: ICS Embraced", MBloomIII discussed the origins and future of "Infinite City Sleaze". To comment on this article, respond to this thread.

For the next three weeks, Thursday's will show off one of the other three submissions received since mid-December last year. You can find a preview of them, plus a summary of all past columns going back to August, 1998, by <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/misc/column">clicking here</A>. We are in desperate need for more submissions. It is hoped that "The Column" will begin publishing regularly every Saturday starting in April if enough interest and contributions are generated.

If you would like to submit one, please vist the "<A HREF="http://apolyton.net/misc/column/submit.shtml">Article Submission</A>". If your article is not featured in a preview on "The Column"'s index page, please re-submit it as it was not received for one reason or another.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Great blurb for the Jan 5th one, Dan. It's December 15th all over again.

You realise that this means you're damned as a part of the conspiracy?

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Nice one, MBloom. I'd noticed that weird obsession to build cities- particularly in jungles. I assumed it was a coders tribute to "Fitzcarraldo".

[DanQ]

Minor oversight on my part, Bugs, easily corrected -- done (re: Jan 15th, 2002 column description). Thanks for pointing it out.

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Dan; Apolyton CS

[civman2000]

The reason for them building so many cities is that city quantity over quality is so much more important in civ3 than in earlier versions because of borders and resources.

[Zoetrope]

One advantage of SMAC over Civ3 is the way borders are implemented. There are no narrow unclaimed gaps between SMAC bases.

Imagine how the ancient Egyptians would have reacted in real life to the Libyans trying to establish settlements in the gaps between Memphis and Pi-Rameses. The Libyans would have soon learnt that the only sensible way to expand territory was to push the exterior borders of the Kingdom, or to mount a massive military incursion.

Whereas in Civ3 there's not even a way to express displeasure at "deep invasions by settler" except to start a war by killing them, and even then the AI doesn't get the hint.

As we players seem all to agree, the eventual cultural absorption of unwelcome and poorly placed cities doesn't compensate for the sustained inconvenience of having to put up with those actually hostile actions, or the sheer tedium of plugging all the gaps in an effort to prevent them.

Having said that, i also populate the desert, jungles and tundra, so as to claim territory. By irrigating heavily, those cities grow to size 4 or more, and by building a continuous supply of settlers when my cities top up, i can cover most of Eurasia.

These cities are mostly industry "one" due to waste, but by also building scores of workers i can plant and chop down down forests every turn, which nets me another 10 minerals per woodchop.

Nonetheless, these tactics are no more than exploits of a poor and "unfun" design.

[Father Beast]

We discussed ICS as a serious problem in a number of threads in the Civ3 suggestions thread. The problem was that it was a game killer. you want to win, just ICS!!

I discovered this myself after never winning on deity (or anything above prince, for that matter), and then killing myself to finally win on deity using OCC after several tries. I decided to try DaveV's guide to ICS, and found myself conquering the world in the 1700's!! on my first try!

well, I was somewhat disappointed by Firaxis' fix for ICS. instead of ICS not working, it's no longer a game killing strategy because the AI ICS's worse than you do!

Dang......

[Lancer]

You can combat this strategy by an early war as I'm sure you all know and with 1.16 it was possible to do so. You trade sci until you get ahead, attack the Civ that's closing on your area and trade your advanced sci with Civs that border on your enemy for a declaration of war. With several Civs against your enemy it is fairly easy to clean out and replace or take over cities that are too close.

Unfortunatly with 1.17 this strategy seems almost impossible as the AI is almost always ahead on tech. Without tech leadership it's almost impossible to convince other Civs to join you in the fight, and if they aren't with you they'll be against you in a turn or two. Then, instead of combating ICS you'll be fighting just to survive. Of course, if you're Fredrick the Great reincarnate and win such a tedious long term fight against all the odds you can cut peace deals and gain the sci you need to catch up. However!... then your cities are way behind in the buildings needed to sustain your sci, those pesky AI ICS cities are still all over the place, and all the AI civs are hardly friendly.

This was a tad frustrating for me for a bit until I hit on a solution. I play CTP w/ downloaded mods until the next patch comes out.

Great 200th

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by Father Beast
We discussed ICS as a serious problem in a number of threads in the Civ3 suggestions thread. The problem was that it was a game killer. you want to win, just ICS!!

I discovered this myself after never winning on deity (or anything above prince, for that matter), and then killing myself to finally win on deity using OCC after several tries. I decided to try DaveV's guide to ICS, and found myself conquering the world in the 1700's!! on my first try!

well, I was somewhat disappointed by Firaxis' fix for ICS. instead of ICS not working, it's no longer a game killing strategy because the AI ICS's worse than you do!

Dang......

Ironic isn't it? That the method which most players abhor in the game but reluctantly use anyway would become the foundation for the next one. And we all wanted it, or thought we did!
Reminds me of some advice Chris Crawford once gave about the fans being the worst customers ('enemies'?) you could have for your next game.


Next time we should be a little more careful what we wish for....

edit: addes "enemies" to customers to make the point more clear. The ICS issue was debated time and time again by the fans so the blame doesn't rest with Firaxis/Infogrames for doing their best with it.

[korn469]

MBloom et al

I must respectfully disagree with your take on Civ3 and ICS, in Civ3 ICS is dead and buried!

The new AI has embraced the dreaded ICS strategy of expansion.

The AI has also embraced force rushing itself into oblivion, so just because the AI does it doesn't mean that it is a good strategy

For those of you who don’t know what ICS is, it stands for Infinite City Sleaze. This style of play was developed in an attempt to beat Civ at the Deity level.

While you are correct about this point you do not really explain why ICS was a problem. The reason why it plagued Civ2 was because it exploited a number of rules and gave the player an unfair advantage.

1) It exploited the growth rules. Ten size one cities grew much faster than one size ten city.

2) It exploited the unit support rules. Ten size one cities supported far more units than one size ten city.

3) It exploited the production rules. Ten pop points worth of settlers would give the player an equivilent of twenty pop points worth of production.

4) It exploited the happiness rules. Ten size one cities were far happier than one size ten city.

5) It reinforced the bigger is always better philosophy. No matter how many cities you had, a few more always made your stronger. The only limit to expansion was the player's patience

6) Once you started ICS it was self sustaining. Using ICS principles to continously churn out settlers meant that each settler came faster and faster since settler production was limited only by shields.

Civ3 has implemented various solutions to most of the exploits so that it really takes away the power of exploits.

1) Each city level has a fixed size food box which completely eliminates the smaller cities grow faster exploit. A size ten city in Civ3 with a granary takes the exact same amount of food to grow as a single size one city without a granary does.

2) With the different support levels for each city size means that larger cities aren't as poor support wise as what they were in Civ2.

3) In Civ3 it takes twenty pop points worth of settlers to give you the equivilent of twenty pop points worth of production.

4) No changes here

5) Corruption kicks in after you go beyond the optimal number of cities. This means that infinite expansion can slow your overall rate of production down.

6) Population limits means that in Civ3 continuosly churning out settlers isn't an advantage.

So while Civ3 is dead and gone, Rapid Expansion (REX) has taken its place. The thing about REX is that it is non exploitive, so it is far better than ICS, and REX rewards the players that carefully position their cities, because cities grow faster in Civ3 than they did in Civ2, so tightly spaced cities quickly become inefficient. While the AI can be annoying, especially when it practices REX, you don't have to REX to get ahead unlike ICS in Civ2. Carefully choosen city sites along with a good cultural infrastructure means that you can expand slower yet still remain as productive, and even have a chance to assimilate the enemy. All it all it seems like a huge advance over earlier Civ games.

[MBloomIII]

Originally posted by korn469

So while Civ3 is dead and gone, Rapid Expansion (REX) has taken its place. The thing about REX is that it is non exploitive, so it is far better than ICS, and REX rewards the players that carefully position their cities,

The main point of the article, was that the AI was putting up cities in places that make no sense; the middle of a jungle, the middle of the artic, the middle of a desert, etc... You may call this REXing, but I consider part of ICS to be building a city with no thought towards its future. Something the AI was fond of when this article was written (early Dec). I'm not sure if this is still the case since I lost interest early in the drawbacks to CivIII. I won't go inot all of them here, but I was more than let down by the release of CivIII.

[korn469]

This style of play was developed in an attempt to beat Civ at the Deity level. The idea carried over into MP play

The main point of the article, was that the AI was putting up cities in places that make no sense; the middle of a jungle, the middle of the artic, the middle of a desert, etc... You may call this REXing, but I consider part of ICS to be building a city with no thought towards its future

the first quote alludes to why ICS was a problem, because it worked...it was an exploit

the second quote is a complaint about the AI acting stupid again, but it is not an exploit, nor a very good startegy, and with the addition of multiplayer in an expansion you won't have to worry about real ICS or stupid AI in Civ3

but if you don't play it you won't have to worry about either

[LitheDuke]

Ah, but there is a reason for planting cities in jungles, deserts and mountains - resources. Just as in the real world not all the stuff you need comes from handy to get to and nice to live in places - so in the later game you need the oil in the desert the uranium in the mountains and the rubber in the jungle.

The AI knows this - so it grabs those places early. Fairer and more realistic situation would be if it did not grab such hostile sites until the relevant resource appeared - when wecould all race to fight huge wars over otherwise worthless desert just to get the oil...but then that would leave it open for the player to have snuck in first and planted cities speculatively (just as the AI now does)

[realpolitic]

Originally posted by civman2000
The reason for them building so many cities is that city quantity over quality is so much more important in civ3 than in earlier versions because of borders and resources.

That's one aspect, but in Civ II, when you settled, you used 1 pop when you built a city, and got 2 back ie the center of the city plus the square that where the worker was. In Civ III, you use both pops, your new residents no longer have access to the old city improvents, and you use 30 shields, which can often be better used to build 3 Jaguar Warriors.

[canamrock]

ICS Issues

ICS... I have had to switch my play style from Civ2 and SMAC significantly for this reason. The AI has no good reason for putting many cities where it does.

1) Resource speculation - If the AI was cheating and building over "undiscovered" resources, this would make sense. However, many times, the AI overextends itself greatly just to have more space.

2) Economic strength - Corruption is supposed to impact greatly upon those who ICS their way into the world, the AI is shooting itself in the wallet with each useless township it founds.

3) Military strength - The only sensible reason an AI (or player, for that matter) would ICS is to protect itself from cultural bombing by building a city in the middle of an open area within a civ, and to take advantage of the extra troops afforded by an extra town.

That is what I had done in one game to quickly eradicate my neighbors: I built many towns in areas that held no economic value, but allowed for easy defense, and used them as staging areas for my troops. I refuse to believe that the system of "One-Unit Slaughtering" does not work in Civ 3 as it did in Civ 2 or SMAC. Bwahahahaha!