which is better?

[drake]

ICS people say:

Expand! Expand! Expand! More! More! More! We don't care if our empire is made up of shacks and shanty towns!

Perfectionists say:

Get the hell off of my buffalo square you goddam plague of locusts! Our grand metropolis is trying to complete a stock exchange!

ICS people say:

What is....Stock Exchange?

Thats what I relate to players who only use Ics- a plague....a sleazy plague

But I say do whatever you find to be the most fun...thats whats most important after all.

[Ming]

And just a further point when it comes to MP. The days of building on a four special spot are passing into the night. Unless you are willing to agressively defend those squares, somebody is going to appear our of nowhere and build a city right on one of them. If I find gold, I build on it!

[drake]

Love to play you sometime ming....

[Smash]

hehe..nothing worse than seeing a vet pike with settler on your gold mountain in no city bribe games.
Building on specials is not as viable on 1x.2x you are just asking for trouble if you leave your specials "open"

[East Street Trader]

A part of the argument for sleazing is that the cost of building city improvements doesn't pay off as compared to establishing more small cities and building units.

I lack any impirical basis for challenging that but I suspect where the balance truly falls depends on how long the game lasts. That is because the benefit of improvements grows exponentially as the game progesses. The marketplace alone may not pay as compared to establishing a dozen or three more cities, but what about when a bank, stock exchange and superhighways are added (plus three good routes, of course)?

If the sleazer, with all his units, can finish off the AI before the perfectionist's strategy would have had time to come to fruition (or, in MP can, I take it, get at the perfectionist before the exponential benefits cut in) then his strategy may well appear superior.

No surprise to find that exponents of ICS appear to be militarily aggressive whereas perfectionists mostly depend (early on at least) upon good defence.

But I harbour doubts. If the perfectionist can get onto the attack militarily (as a means of long term defence) and make use of the windows of opportunity which exist when technically more advanced units temporarily can overcome the defence advantage which exists pre-howie; plus bog the sleazer down at a front line far enough away from his home cities then I suspect that the balance will steadily swing to the perfectionist the longer the game lasts.

I rather imagine that one of the tactical questions to be answered in MP is how to make use of the diplo/spy? Easy for the sleazer - he just destroys improvements or bribes the fat perfectionist cities, dealing hard blows to his opponent thereby. But how to hit the sleazer? His little cities are hardly worth giving up a diplomat to acquire (briefly no doubt) by bribery and they have no improvements to destroy?

Certainly the perfectionist must (1) try to deny the sleazer HG. If he can't achieve that he must (2) organise his research path with an eye to making HG obsolete asap. Maybe he also (3) asks the diplomatic corps (in collaboration with the military) to look very hard indeed for the city with HG in it?

In time, these matters will be tested. We owe it to those who devised the game to demonstrate that no one strategy can always prevail. SO DEATH TO ICS I SAY. LET THE SLEAZER BEWARE, THE CARAVAN HAS HIM IN ITS SIGHTS.
[This message has been edited by East Street Trader (edited November 17, 2000).]

[Jim W]

quote: Originally posted by HsFB on 11-16-2000 02:59 PM i personally often overlap in order to fit in cities more efficiently. also, in small free spaces i always fund cities which remain small...

I'm always playing SP, and my concentration is on fighting off the Bad Guys until I can laugh at them from far-off Alpha Centauri.

This thread makes me wonder if I'm missing something, because I invariably have to go to supermarkets and farms in order to feed my cities, otherwise they expand until they starve.

This also means that I can't overlap cities, for fear of not having enough land to feed all the people.

Is there something I ought to be doing instead, or maybe just something I _could_ be doing instead, which would allow me the same effect?

Jim W

[Ridock The Savage]

wow, I leave for a day and come back to all these very useful replies. thanks everyone.

ok...one more =)

for those of you who place cities close together, about how close is the best?

[kcbob]

quote: Originally posted by East Street Trader on 11-17-2000 12:13 PM SO DEATH TO ICS I SAY. LET THE SLEAZER BEWARE, THE CARAVAN HAS HIM IN ITS SIGHTS. [This message has been edited by East Street Trader (edited November 17, 2000).]

LOL!

En garde!

------------------
Frodo lives!

[Dr_Strangelove]

All 20 square usage works best... A fair ration between food, shields and arrows and all is perfect.

[kcbob]

quote: <font size=1>Originally posted by Ridock The Savage on 11-17-2000 12:35 PM</font> wow, I leave for a day and come back to all these very useful replies. thanks everyone. ok...one more =) for those of you who place cities close together, about how close is the best?

I think you would probably get from most ICSers that you should go this route:

X-X

A larger model might look like this:

X-X-X
|. |. |
X-X-X

Where 'X' is a city and '-' or '|' is a road. (Ignore the '.'s) In other words, build a city, move two spaces, and build another city.

BTW. See what I mean about my diagrams?

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Frodo lives!
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by kcbob (edited November 17, 2000).]</font>
[This message has been edited by kcbob (edited November 17, 2000).]

[Ming]

How close? As close as I can. As long as each city has some basic resources to work with, who cares.
I don't need every city to grow to giant size. I've built cities when all they have is a few squares to work with... but maybe I built it as a choke point, a place to monitor "incursions", take advantage of a resource I missed, access to an ocean... whatever

[Moker Guy]

quote: Originally posted by Ming on 11-17-2000 12:46 PM How close? As close as I can. As long as each city has some basic resources to work with, who cares. I don't need every city to grow to giant size. I've built cities when all they have is a few squares to work with... but maybe I built it as a choke point, a place to monitor "incursions", take advantage of a resource I missed, access to an ocean... whatever

well said ming, i couldnt have said it any better

Moker


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Im here to play civ. Screw all of this political BS. Give me a game of civ with good players, that are more than just robots, and im having fun. I bet everyone else is too. Who cares who wins or loses? Its better to make friends than make enemies. Who knows you might run into a very important person on here.

Oh yeah EyesOfNight is the most pathetic person i have ever ment in my life.

[debeest]

Well, the AI tends to have overlaps of about two squares on each side of a city. So I figure either more than that or less than that must be right....

Jim W, I think it's pretty inevitable that cities will grow until they run out of food. In republic or democracy, it will happen very quickly because of WLTD. Even under non-trade governments, you'll still grow until you don't have any more food, and then maybe go hungry. Don't worry about it. However many citizens your available land can support, grow the city to that size. Size 8 or size 12 is often good, so that you can skip the aqueduct or sewer. If you've got a small area in between cities, put a city there and just build settlers from it.

[kcbob]

quote: <font size=1>Originally posted by Ming on 11-17-2000 03:43 PM</font>If I find gold, I build on it!

Again, the question of whether to build on a special square comes up. If you do build on the gold, you get a food because of the city, correct? And what if you begin to mine before you build the city? Don't you get an extra shield?

Quelle power, n'est-ce pas?

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Frodo lives!
[This message has been edited by kcbob (edited November 22, 2000).]

[Blaupanzer]

No, on the mine; the city displaces it. As to distance when sleazing, I try to keep them all within three of at least one other. That way, with roads, I can slide troops to the threatened city from at least one other. (In the old, old days, this troop shift used to be called the "Avalon Hill shuffle" after a similar practice in those old war games.)
[This message has been edited by Blaupanzer (edited November 22, 2000).]