The war on ICS

[MORON]

I do not understand the war on ICS. Because of ICS we now have all shorts of crap like culture boraders, 2 pop settlers and colonies that makes no sense.

I fail to see why expanding by building cities is such a bad thing and we have to start with 0 culture boarders and not be able to mine special resources in the 21 tile area.

Why can't we just give big bouses to big cities.

[Grumbold]

I think you are confusing the culture concept withthe anti ICS moves. Borders were wanted and now we have them. That the border extends further from a big important city than a newly founded one makes sense to me. Not automatically mining special resources in the 21 tile zone seem to be part of the colony concept, not an ICS issue, and I could even give you a plausible justification for it if you really want. The moves to halt ICS are partly the 2 pop settler and separating settler from worker. The rest we have not heard yet.

[KrazyHorse]

MORON, you're obviously an ICS fan. The problem with ICS is that it makes for such a boring game. There's no finesse in pumping out settler after settler. The whole process becomes one of clicking as fast as possible. That out of the way, I like the idea of colonies and of expensive settlers, even on its own merits. Founding a city is a big deal, and shouldn't be entered lightly.

[Ralf]

Re: The war on ICS

Originally posted by MORON
I fail to see why expanding by building cities is such a bad thing and we have to start with 0 culture boarders and not be able to mine special resources in the 21 tile area.

ICS (Infinite City Sprawl) is very destructive thing because it works so damn inflationary on the whole game-concept. You just found another city, and then another city, then yet another city - and it just goes on and on like that, with all these city-area overlaped closely packed cities. This repetitious and rather empire-ugly looking playingstyle alone also more or less castrates any hopes of a worthwhile AI-competition - and it does it without any real drawbacks, besides the added micro-management.

Besides: ICS have destroyed many mp-games.

I have more arguments against ICS, but I dont feel the need to convince you. The important thing is that the Firaxis-team seems to have been anti-ICS convinced from the word GO.
And boy, am I glad about that! Finally; quality before quantity - and bigger not always (and only) better anymore. Not a moment too soon.

[Inverse Icarus]

borders werent introducted to stop ICS, they were introduced to stop people from colonizing within someone else's empire (its now an act of war).

now a question:

if ure at war with a civ, can you build colonies in their territory, and harvest their resources?

[Lung]

Damn ! There goes one of my best excuses for going on the warpath!!

I always had a solution to those who insist on ICSing, with my motto - Attack early, attack often! If you're a sleazin', i'll come a knockin'! Of course, if you're lucky enough to be isolated, you can sleaze to your heart's content, but if you're near me, prepare to be visited!

That said, i think Firaxis' moves to discourage ICS is commendable, and promises Civ3 to be the best yet

[polypheus]

The war on ICS

Originally posted by Ralf
...The important thing is that the Firaxis-team seems to have been anti-ICS convinced from the word GO.
And boy, am I glad about that! Finally; quality before quantity - and bigger not always (and only) better anymore. Not a moment too soon.

I definitely support the new settler model as it is more realistic and also slows down ICS. However, unless Firaxis implements "Rise & Fall of Civilization" features (such as a better civil war/secession model), then I do not see how the "bigger is always better" problem is truly solved as you suggest.

The real problem is the linear, evolutionary game mechanics of Civ. Because of lack of "rise & fall of civilization" mechanics, you are encouraged to build as many cities as possible as soon as possible like planting seeds in a garden which are guaranteed to ripen and bear fruit without any possible drawbacks later on.

So it costs 2 pop to get a settler instead of one. But the game mechanics still have not changed to suggest that expanding aggressively early on might not always work.

I know that in Civ2, I expanded as aggressively as possible as early as possible because this is what I needed to do to become powerful. And it always worked!

And in Civ3 I will still try to do this albeit at a slower rate because of need to wait for cities to grow to size 3 rather than size 2. But nothing has really changed to discourage me from trying to expand as aggressively as possible in Civ3 only that I can't expand quite as aggressively as before because so far, I still have not seen any reason to believe that this would backfire in Civ3 (it never does in Civ2).

That is why good civil war/secession models (and any other features needed to simulate rise & fall of civilizations concept) is key. That way even if you expand as fast as you can as early as you can, you are not guaranteed to become the most powerful. And ulimtately this is the only way to stop ICS.

[TechWins]

Polypheus I agree with you. Although, Firaxis has said in one of their update things that a large empire doesn't neccesarily mean you'll automatically be more powerful than a smaller civ. I don't see how you wouldn't be more powerful. You'll get more resources, science, trade, land, exploration, diplomatic power, etc... the list goes on and on. I want something that is going to make me think twice about having a trememndous amount of cities.

I don't neccesarily find the rise and fall of empires has a great way too counter part ICS. It would just take too much work and ideas to make it work. It's kind of like that fun vs realism thing. I think that if your civ gets too big other nations should see you even more as a threat and try to gang up on you. I just that there are more ideas yet to be revealed to stop ICS and the huge benefactors of a large civ.

[Fidel]

ICS....
does anyone remember 'tank rushing' in Red Alert? It virtually killed it online...
I really see no fun in micromanaging 100 cities every turn. Perhaps you have to be a Moron to enjoy it .

[Ralf]

Re: The war on ICS

Originally posted by polypheus
I definitely support the new settler model as it is more realistic and also slows down ICS. However, unless Firaxis implements "Rise & Fall of Civilization" features (such as a better civil war/secession model), then I do not see how the "bigger is always better" problem is truly solved as you suggest. [...]


And in Civ3 I will still try to do this albeit at a slower rate because of need to wait for cities to grow to size 3 rather than size 2. But nothing has really changed to discourage me from trying to expand as aggressively as possible in Civ3 only that I can't expand quite as aggressively as before because so far, I still have not seen any reason to believe that this would backfire in Civ3 (it never does in Civ2).

I sent a lengthy mail long ago (october 2000) to Firaxis about the AI problems of Civ-style games, and some general ideas to work around it. Heres what the they responded:

------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for your email!

Many of your suggestions (though I can't say which ones) are already in the game and we will certainly think about the others.

Just so you know, I think we've finally fixed both the ICS problem and the Bigger-is-always-better problem.

Thanks for all of your input and for thinking about the game,

Chris Pine
Lead Programmer
Civilization III
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Now admittedly, just writing a one-line statement that they have done something about the linear & 100% predictable "bigger is always better" game mechanics in Civ-games, is one thing. If they have implemented effective enough anti-BAB and Rise-and-Fall measures in Civ-3, that actually can stands the test-of-time, is perhaps quite another thing. Above short letter at least proves that they dont just ignore the problem.

I certainly have nothing against good Rise-and-Fall ideas - I welcome this with open arms, although some of the suggestions I made in the How do you want the "Rise and fall of empires" idea implemented... thread, perhaps where a little too drastic and clumsy, seen in retrospective.

Dont forget the anti-BAB measures though. While bigger empires always should give you an linearly predictable advantage when it comes to raw shield & resource-production; the economical support-cost for combat-units in each city + the economical administration-cost + the increasing trade-corruption cost should rise more sharply - infact it should rise so much that all the added trade-tiles for each new city + the added domestic/ foreign trade finally just cant keep even steps anymore.
This should lead to an effective upper rubberband max-limit, in how many cities its meaningful to found & conquer before the empire faces the risk of financial collapse (= deserting trops; no wages), which in turn leads to unpleasent self-feeding chainreactions = severe happiness problems; multiple city-revolts, leading to independence declarations.

An important anti-BAB detail, is also that big cities in smaller empires should be given a limited advantage, that equally big cities in huge empire-counterparts dont have.

My suggestion is to make the big city happiness-control gradually more easy, the smaller the empire is. So really HUGE city-populations should only be possible in really small empires with few cities in them. This means that the total costs of city-improvements and needed combat-units is less, while the big pop tax-income remains the same (= prosperous economics), compared with bigger empires. Also; since the libraries & universitys outputs benefits greatly from bigger populations, this also counteract the huge empire automatic science-advantage somewhat.

[TechWins]

Hey Ralf, do you still have that e-mail so we could read it? I doubt you do but it's worth a try.

[Rhuarc]

Wow Ralf! It sounds like you have this whole thing really thought out, but why not just increase the unhappiness after your empire becomes so large. I mean just reduce the governments allowed number of cities. THat way you could say for every city over the limit your empires happiness goes down 2 points, or something to that effect. I sure my theory has holes all over the place, so you are welcome to shoot it down, it is just a thought I had!

[rah]

Rhuarc, the main hole is the second major reason why CTPII sucked (1. being the ai)

I assume one of the victory condition will be world conquest.
In CTPII this made for a boring starving/disbanding city role.

I had one game were i had every happiness wonder every happiness improvement, and the sliders set for almost all happiness (basically no production, food, science) and still had happiness problems. You can't conquer the world that way without spending 75% of your time starving cities down to where you could disband them. Now some people would say it should be difficult to conquer the world. Fine, but it shouldn't be boring and tedious.

I really hope that this type of thing isn't in the game. It would kill it in my opinion. There has to be other ways to discourage ICS.
(I really don't think 2 pop points is going to do it)

RAH

[Fidel]

difficult?
i'd say it is impossible....virtually. you can corner the market, be a hegemon, lead a coalition but there was no case so far that anyone conquered the whole world. ctp sucked simply because its AI was abominable and its tech tree and gaming pace were very uninspiring.

[Fidel]

difficult?
i'd say it is impossible....virtually. you can corner the market, be a hegemon, lead a coalition but there was no case so far that anyone conquered the whole world. ctp sucked simply because its AI was abominable and its tech tree and gaming pace were very uninspiring.