The war on ICS

[MORON]

I still wish that the anti-ICS crowd will not make Civ into a one city game.

Can some one explain to me the logic of smaller cities growthing faster than big ones? I thought the reverse should be true, until overcrowding and resources becomes a problem.

[rah]

It takes less to fill the food bin which adds an extra row for each pop count.
1-2 20
2-3 30
3-4 40
4-5 50
etc.
which means a city can grow to size 3 in the same time a city grows from 4-5 (if terrain is similar) And the larger a city the longer it takes it to grow one more.
So i expect that future ICS will evolve to a lot of size 3 cities spitting out settlers. (but you never know what other changes will influence it.) It does look like they've put some thought into it, but as stated before, I'm sure the designers didn't think you could win with one size one city. The people here are very clever.

For the logic side, suburbs to main cities follow the same logic. To grow twice the size becomes increasingly difficult as the population grows. Small suburbs usually grew quickly but then leveled out as resources/choice land was used, but would continue to grow at a slower rate as the more undesirable land was put into use.

RAH

[TechWins]

Here's something I wrote in a seperate thread that I think will give another disadvantage to ICS. "I think if your culture rating is low than your cities should be able to be bribed more easily. Also the smaller your cities are the greater chance that they could be bribed. If bribing would work this way it would be another way too counter act ICS."

It takes less to fill the food bin which adds an extra row for each pop count.

I'm not sure but I think Moron understands the system it's just that he doesn't find it to be reasonable. As I agree, when a city gets bigger it should start growing even faster. I hope the growth of your city isn't depended on the surplus of your food still. There are many more factors than that. Such as how is the city doing. Is the culture good, are the citizens happy, certain improvements, enough protection, surrounded by good terrain, etc... I know that having all these would be too complex but there just has to be a better system than more food=more growth.

[rah]

Yeah, you're right, he probably did understand it. I think I figured that out about halfway through writting it and was too lazy to erase it. So I wrote the last part about the logic of it.

But I still believe that city growth in the real world is a rapid growth to a point, and then continued (but reduced growth)
This is one reason that I never really had a problem with WLTKDs. You get the city to a point, everyone happy, and it just attracts people untill it get to a certain point, then it levels off. Even though that growth is one of the most unbalancing notions in the game. I guess I just saw the perverted logic behind it.

You point about bribing is good. But for some of us, the impact of that will be minimal. When we play MP, most of us don't allow city bribing. And since I assume you've been reading the other threads, there are quite a few people that would like it to be a game option whether it should be allowed.

Yeah, my focus is on MP so I guess I'm looking at things from a slightly different angle. I have no faith in the AI being a challange (god, I hope I'm wrong) real people are the only challange. And since my focus is MP, ICS is an important issue. Which is probably why I get so irrational about it.

RAH

[Father Beast]

RAH, I just ran a quick check on all my civ games, trying out building a settler before my first city reaches size 2. Maybe I've got the patched versions or something, but it doesn't work with any of them. civdos, civwin, civnet, civ2, TOT. All of them just keep adding more production past the max until the city reaches size2!
the only one it seems to work with is AC. I seem to be able to build endless colony pods from a size1 base without penalty. maybe the rules are different....

[TechWins]

Some of the ideas in Polypheus's thread "An Improved Barbarian/Insurgent Model" would also take away from the greatness of ICS.

My opinion on ICS is that there is going to have to be a lot of little things to stop it because too many big, radical implementations to just stop ICS could very well make the game not fun.

[rah]

Techwins, I agree. I'm paranoid that they will do something big and screw the pooch. (# city limits by gov. model like CTPII)

Father Beast
How many cities did you have? It only works if you only have the one city. We're using MP gold with the lastest patches.

RAH

[MORON]

IMO the reasons for ICS are

1. Inlogical faster growth
2. Two tiles worked for the price of one, which adds to 1.

As for Barbarian/Insurgent, I doubt it would work that well. Mind worms didn't stop massive polluting in SMAC (instead, energy farming). We might have similiar results if the cities are very close together and road connected, meaning its easy to defend and the larger production of ICS and the existance of 'free support' under certain gov. systems will mean that a large army would be ready once the ICSer builded up.

Happiness based on distance also faces the problem of close cities and discourage the founding of large cities because its hard to find good spots for them and the 21 tile overlap thing, and as a result they are further apart.

The only thing we're left with is pop/cities based unhappiness model, or fixing the top two.

[polypheus]

Embracing ICS

Although I am no fan of ICS, I am beginning to feel that perhaps maybe there is no way to defeat ICS.

An alternative then might be for Civ3 to embrace ICS.

1. Program the AI Civs so that they can effectively perform ICS to match the human player.
2. Explicitly state that ICS is the method of choice in the manual so it is clear that Civ3 is designed to be an ICS style game.

If the AI can exploit ICS as well as the human player then at least the game is balanced and challenging even though there will be massive numbers of closely spaced cities everywhere.

[Lou Wigman]

I have a suggestion that will solve the ICS problem. The fundamental issue here is that in the current versions of Civ and their clones cities grow due to the availability of food. This premise is clearly incorrect. If food is readily available then towns will spring up to service the farms. Blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, publicans, prostitutes etc, etc. It is COMMERCE that causes a town to grow. An extreme example is a gold-rush town. It springs up overnight but when the gold runs out the town dies. Take the city of Rome circa 0 AD. Its food (grain at least) came from Sicily and North Africa, many miles from the city. Rome owed its existence to being the political/cultural/commercial centre of the Roman empire. Availability of food had nothing much to do with it.

My idea, then, is to tie population growth to commercial activity. No commerce - no growth. Commerce depends critically on the presence of a suitable resource. A town plonked in the middle of a plain without a nearby resource would simply not grow. Admittedly this would require a major rethink of the commerce generated by various tiles but then this was never going to be easy.

[Lou Wigman]

Sorry about this but I probably didn't spell it right out in my previous post. Take the example of a city built next to gold resource in the mountains. The commerce value of the gold might allow a population of 30, however the lack of food will prevent growth above, say, 3. Perhaps an advanced farm is built which would then allow a modest growth in population. Compare this to a city built in the plains with a food potential to support a population of 30. The low commerce value however limits the population to say, 5. (There is nothing for people to do - massive unemployment.) Such a city would grow with the addition of commerce generating improvements such as marketplaces and banks. Both these cities would be stagnant compared to a city with a high commerce AND a high food potential.

[Lung]

While it would be a better model to base city growth on economics, it would open up a can of worms in regards to game development. You would probably need to redesign the whole game from scratch. Besides, if the game was completely real it would be boring The game needs to be fun, and Civ2 proved that the old model works.

As for ICSing, as much as i agree that it should be discouraged, to eliminate it completely would unbalance the game as the most important thing in the whole game would be finding settlers in goody huts. Whoever found the most settlers and cities in goody huts would be the winner! Pure luck is even less skillful than ICSing

Of course, we could eliminate goody huts altogether, but i'm sure all would agree that this would detract from the game. The other thing i mentioned long ago would also detract from ICSing, and that was natural disasters. Small, fledgling cities would be more vulnerable to natural disasters than large cities, because a size 1 city dropping in city size by 1 would be destroyed, while a large city would suffer minimal damage.

The 2 population point drop in city size is a great idea, and will balance the game. The only better way of reducing ICS is to eliminate the bonus worker in each city, so a size 1 city only has the square it sits on to produce food. It's not as silly as it first appears. If you built a mining city, it would stay small, rather than develop into a city of millions of people, which doesn't really happen in reality. However, you could prop up the city by supplying food by a caravan. This would drastically change the game, and make IC sleazing impossible, as no net food gain could be acquired.

The Lung's genius at work again

[Grumbold]

I think they would have to readdress the issue of how much food each tile produced if a size 1 city only harvested its own tile. Under the current rules only grassland cities would expand. Plains would subsist and every other terrain type would starve immediately. Many city types would be unable to build anything at all. That more or less demands a complete restructure of the tile harvesting scheme. If they were going to go that far they might as well consider a more sensible model than basing expansion entirely on gluttony.

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by rah

Father Beast
How many cities did you have? It only works if you only have the one city. We're using MP gold with the lastest patches.

RAH

sorry, RAH, I was originally doing a quick test with each game on chieftan, I just did another test with each game (except AC) on emporer or deity, and it allows you to build "free" settlers out of a size1 city at those difficulties.
Weird, that it would not allow that at lower difficulties, but allows you to basically "cheat" on the higher difficulties...

They really need to fix that....

[Father Beast]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I think they would have to readdress the issue of how much food each tile produced if a size 1 city only harvested its own tile. Under the current rules only grassland cities would expand. Plains would subsist and every other terrain type would starve immediately. Many city types would be unable to build anything at all. That more or less demands a complete restructure of the tile harvesting scheme. If they were going to go that far they might as well consider a more sensible model than basing expansion entirely on gluttony.

Under current rules, yes. but the simple solution (suggested in the ultimate ICS thread months ago, probably never to be implemented) would be to simply have one citizen eat one food.
Oh yeah, in keeping with the auto irrigation of city square, forests, jungles, and swamps would become grasslands or plains when built upon.
Grasslands, plains and hills would grow, deserts subsist, and mountains impossible (To Heck with Alexanders Horse!) with 1 citizen eating 2 food, NO lands would grow under despotism.
under this model, cities would actually grow faster as they grew larger, until specialists dominated.

Problems: some serious rebalancing would be neccesary to keep from having all your cities jumping to aqueduct limit too fast. also, they're used to the old system and will probably never give it up...