Ics?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Metamorph
The city will also need to be able to trace a road route back to your capital (so much for Communism ). Cutting someone's nation in half, therefore, looks like it holds the potential for a devastating blow to someone's economy. Better: isolate the capital itself, and the rest of the nation's natural resource supply is cut off. Bizarre.

I guess civfanatics.com is wrong in that respect. Firaxis´mini-tutorial may be misleading: It talks about roads connecting to your capital, but the capital is the civ´s only city in that tutorial.

AFAIK, a road link to your capital is only needed if you want to trade the respective resource with another civ.

[mactbone]

Roads are important for the simple reason that to make use of a resource (iron, silk, etc.), the city has to be connected to that resource somehow. Let's say I have Silk near one of my cities, in my border. Silk is a luxury and makes people happy. I have a city elsewhere and they aren't happy, they want Silk. How do I get them Silk? First I build a road from the resource to my city that will work it (I'm assuming you work that square? Whatever, doesn't matter), the city that's close to the resource. Now I can either build a road straight from that city to my unhappy city, I build a network of roads meandering through every city I have until I reach the unhappy city, or I connect them with airports or docks. I think an airport would work like this. I don't want to build an airport in my resource city, I already have one in a city not too far away. I plunk down a road between the two cities. Then I either build an airport at the unhappy city, or I connect the unhappy city, by road, to a city with an airport. Same deal with docks. Hope this clears up the whole "why do we need roads?" thing.

[Metamorph]

Er...

MacTBone: "Roads are important for the simple reason that to make use of a resource (iron, silk, etc.), the city has to be connected to that resource somehow."

Yes, but what I don't understand is the reference of having a city 'close to' a resource. What about when the resource is *in* the city's workable radius? Adjacent to the city, even? Do I still need to build roads, etc. in order to harvest the resource -- even though I can simply work the square as normal?

From the ICSer's point of view, if I'm going to spend resources of whatever sort in order to be able to harvest the natural resource in the first place (workers and colonies and roads and what-not), why not just simply plunk a cheese city right next to -- or on top of! -- the natural resource itself and forego all of that?

Granted, this won't let me *distribute* the resource to other cities in my empire until I finish a road network; but without such a network, do I still get some benefits related to possessing the resource, i.e. 'make use' of it? In that city, or in my nation as a whole?

- Metamorph

[Ozymandous]

Several people seem to be insisting, or at least implying, that having this 'road network' is crucial for play. Is there a principle of which I'm ignorant in this regard? Roads are nice and all; they generate trade, increase movement... but how is production limited in such a fundamental fashion by their conspicuous absence? I'm confused.

Actually roads are (supposed to be) vital because a city that is not connected via road to either a resource or another city that is connected to a resource will not be able to benefit from that resource.

For example, your civ discovers the wheel and you can now build chariots if you have a horse resource connected via road to the cities of your empire. If you have that resource within your worker radius or cultural radius it means nothing until it's connected via road.

In addition, let's say that you build another city (or 5 or 10 via ICS) but don't connect those cities via road, then none of the cities would be able to use those horses. Alternatively, let's say a barbarian or rival Civ cuts the road between cities or the road out to the horses (assuming an interwoven road network), then all or some of your cities would now not be able to use those horses.

Horses might be a bad example in that they have limited usefullness, but what if the resource in question is a luxury type? If your civ suddenly lost access to the two luxury resources that were keweping your citizens content it's not hard to see cities revolting because of the pillaging of one or two road squares.

Hopefully this will slow down ICs a little more because you now must have roads connecting your cities to be as productive as possible. Sure one lone worker can do all that but it might take them a long time, especially if you have many resources to try to connect to your empire.

Aside from being obviously counterintuitive (particularly since you could have disbanded the worker that represents the population of that colony back into the city and gotten the pop back anyway), I really don't see what purpose it serves for Firaxis to just obliterate the colony rather than absorb it. It's only one pop point, after all, toward a city which is obviously already big (its radius expanded, so it must be sizeable).

Hmm, why is this counter-intuitive? I do agree that the city should get the population point back, but that would be the game balance issue to keep people from making a ton of colonies and then being able to mass-expand once their culture is high enough. It should be a trade-off to go after those resources outside your sphere of influence, and it is, otherwise you end up with a city suddenly gaining population points back and suddenly having the ability to build more cities, etc.

It might be a drag to lose population from colonies, but look at all the good you got out of them while they were out collecting that resource beyond your borders. It's like paying $2000 for a computer that lasts 3 years (way back when), sure you pay a lot compared to now (small pop city making workers vs large pop city making workers) but you also got 3 years of value from the PC you wouldn't have had otherwise.

I hope all this makes sense.

[Metamorph]

A preponderance of ponderings

Ozymandous: You raise some good points. I suppose I keep falling into the trap of applying what are clearly Civ3 principles to the Civ2 environment. My knee-jerk reactions no longer [necessarily] apply.

I'll withhold further critiques on the micro-economics, therefore, until the game is in hand. (Translation: I'll stfu now. )

- Metamorph

[Edward]

Great discussion! I hope Civ3 tones down the ICS possibilities (as it seems like it will).

The whole reason ICS is attractive in the first place is that the city square is a "bonus" worked square. Not only do you work it for free but it has roads and irrigation for free. (The fact that is hard to stop a small city from growing if you tried while large cities take forever to grow ("We Love" excluded) is also a big factor.) Why didn't Civ3 eliminate this free bonus? Would new cities be too unproductive? Perhaps they should be.

Metamorph responding to lockstep
"OTOH I´m a newbie. Maybe I´ve ignored something."

It's been my experience that the newbies, generally, have a much more objective (and therefore perceptive) view of these sorts of games than some of the so-called, self-purported 'veterans' who turn out to merely be Sid lemmings.

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki

posted by GP
Yeah...you're the guy who said you had tanks running around in the BC...And we finally pulled it out of you that you play on Prince!

Argument ad hominem. I think DaveV and others have proven ICS's power at Deity.

---

My understanding of city radii is the same as Skanky Burns's. Cities can always work all 21 squares regardless of how small and uncultured they are. (Special resources are another matter.)

Roads will be more important in Civ3 than Civ2, but my few ICS attempts have included intercity roads and I didn't feel set back by building them.

Assuming cities are connected with roads it'll be much easier to cut off a perfectionistic few-citied high-pop civ from needed resources than a many-citied low-pop one. In ICS all your cities are very close together. An enemy would have to march their pillagers right next to a city to block ICS roads. A normal or perfectionistic civ will have roads much further from it's cities. In fact, they would more likely be dependent on those fragile far-flung colonies, whereas an ICSer would certainly have a city right on top of the special resource. Also the ICSer's civ will likely posses 2 iron (or whatever) resources to every one perfectionist's iron by virtue of the ICSer covering so much land. And with nothing required to build settlers, I think the ICSer won't be hurt even if a lot of his cities didn't have access to special resources.

As for luxury resources, I guess we'll have to see how Civ3's happiness system works. In Civ2, ICS civs are NOT kept happy by luxuries or happy buildings. They avoid having large cities and really only contend with the riot factor. That factor is negated by wonders (and later by governments like communism). It'll be interesting to see if Civ3's small wonder/great wonder system makes it easier or harder to sedate your population with happiness wonders.

Overall, I think the 2 pop cost for settlers will be the biggest crimp on Civ3 ICS. Can't wait to play!

[Steve Clark]

Metamorph, it will be such a pleasure to have your presence in the upcoming Civ3-Strategy Forum.

[PGM]

What a great thread! This guy would make up a Wonder named The River if he could! Welcome Metamorph, I'm sure once you finish reading that page at CivFanatics, your opinions will prove invaluable to us all.

I'm still a bit surprised about ICS strategy, which I've only read about in this thread. I play CIV2 for some many years now, my goal has always been to build giant cities, and sharing tiles between them was always a no-no. It looks now as if I've been making a mistake on my basic strategy.
At first sight, it seemed to me that ICS would rarely be able to build important Wonders. Sure, 5 small cities work more tiles than a big one, but that single one would focus its entire capacity towards a single goal (a Wonder, for instance), while 5 small cities wouldn't be able to join their production to build the same Wonder. Also, is it better to build an Elephant in 10 turns and wipe out all those little cities, or to build 5 elephants in 50 turns after you're already dead? Or is it that the revenue of extra cities would allow you to buy the whole thing?
I'm probably wrong somewhere, no doubt, and I'd love to read more about it, if you have the time. Thanks and don't stop posting.

[Bleyn]

Originally posted by PGM
I'm still a bit surprised about ICS strategy, which I've only read about in this thread. I play CIV2 for some many years now, my goal has always been to build giant cities, and sharing tiles between them was always a no-no. It looks now as if I've been making a mistake on my basic strategy.
At first sight, it seemed to me that ICS would rarely be able to build important Wonders. Sure, 5 small cities work more tiles than a big one, but that single one would focus its entire capacity towards a single goal (a Wonder, for instance), while 5 small cities wouldn't be able to join their production to build the same Wonder.

I will admit that I'm not an ICS-style player in Civ2, but I don't see why you couldn't build Wonders at some point with the ICS strategy. You just need to be willing to dedicate the production of a few cities to caravans. Get 10 or 20 cities cranking out caravans, and you'll have those wonders up in no time.

Shoot, you don't even really need caravans to do it. The basic warrior unit will work just fine. Just start cranking them out, send 'em to the city building the Wonder and disband 'em. No you can't get all of their production back. But you get some out. And with the numbers of cities that you might be dealing with by even mid-game, they should still go up quickly enough.

No telling yet how well it will go over in Civ3, but it will be interesting to find out.

[Father Beast]

Metamorph-

Thanks for this thread, it gives me a chance to rant...

the 2 pop settler and the resource model are band-aids to the possibility of ICS. Awfully big band-aids to be sure, but the blood will come seeping around, eventually...

The only true cure for ICS is to eliminate the free tile. new cities founded by a 2 pop settler would be size 2, and work the city square and one other tile. In other words- Each Tile Has To Be Worked By A Citizen. That was what I thought they were doing when they announced the 2 pop settler.

Looks like I was wrong, though. (sigh)

I predict that ICS will still make it's ugly head felt in Civ3. There still is the advantage to small cities because you don't have to feed the city tile producer, and the food box is smaller on smaller cities, making for faster growth. It will be slower than in civ1/2, but with enough room to get started, the effects will be seen.

As for the need for resources slowing you down, I don't think so. From everything they've said, it looks like any resource that is connected to your Capitol by road will be available to All your cities, provided it is within the cultural radius of a city or has a colony on it. I don't think you need to get a culture radius for most of your ICS cities, just build them on the resource, and connect it to your capitol. every new city gets access to the resource automatically.

I wish they could get DaveV or somebody like that to beta test their game. This band-aid won't hold the blood back for long.

I know I've said otherwise in other places, But I've had a while to think about it now.

[Metamorph]

Wow!

And here I was thinking this thread had already up and died...

Edward: "Why didn't Civ3 eliminate this free bonus? Would new cities be too unproductive? Perhaps they should be."

Having stared for literal days at the Civ2 economic model, I can confidently tell you that simply eliminating the city tile production is not a viable solution. That free resource generator is an inherent component of the system. To really stab ICS through the heart, one would have to rewrite the entire model, including city growth, production, the whole nine yards.

This isn't inconceivable, of course. But Sid'n'Friends have obviously chosen to NOT do that. Instead, they're going to try and force the same silly ol' model to work. Thus the band-aid theory.

And band-aids, per se, aren't such a tragedy either. No game is ever perfect; and any new economic model they come up with is sure to have its subtle flaws as well. Rather than experimenting in the dark, wouldn't one rather that Firaxis work with materials with which everyone is familiar?

Assuming, of course, that the band-aids do the trick...

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." - Shunryu Suzuki

Just so.

"Overall, I think the 2 pop cost for settlers will be the biggest crimp on Civ3 ICS. Can't wait to play!"

The biggest band-aid of them all. I agree with the rest of your points about ICS in finer detail.

Steve: "Metamorph, it will be such a pleasure to have your presence in the upcoming Civ3-Strategy Forum."

I appreciate that. It's great to be back under such hopeful auspices.

PGM: "This guy would make up a Wonder named The River if he could!"

LOL!!!

"At first sight, it seemed to me that ICS would rarely be able to build important Wonders."

ICS is, of course, a wonder-machine, if you'll pardon the pun. With nothing better to do, the ICSer suddenly finds a curious temptation to build not just *some* wonders (Bach's Cathedral, et al), but ALL of them! He bends the ridiculously powerful will of his nation toward building a zillion caravans in simultaneity. These caravans then all show up at the city capital (it's *most* efficient for the ICSer to build all of the wonders in the same city; the 'happiness bonus' for wonder presence is otherwise meaningless for such small cities, and it's easiest to defend all the Wonders if they're all in the same place). And the ICSer drops the wonder 'from orbit', building a Wonder the turn after its relevant technology is discovered.

*Plunk!*

"Also, is it better to build an Elephant in 10 turns and wipe out all those little cities, or to build 5 elephants in 50 turns after you're already dead?"

Heh. The careful ICSer (it does, as lame as it is, have some tactical merit) will put fortified phalanx in every city, eventually. These in turn becomes upgraded to Musketeer once gunpowder is discovered (which usually doesn't take long at all. [actually happens automatically once Leo's is *plunk*ed down]).

Alternately, the ICSer can build a zillion elephants himself, and roll over a nearby nation, should it suit his fancy. I tend for a combination; I defend the majority of my border cities, then pop out a few combat units (presuming I don't have enough from huts already) to annoy the crap out of my neighbors (pillaging, destroying new cities, etc). I rarely mobilize for war; it's so passe.

The part that's hard to really appreciate until one sees it for one's self (I was exacxtly the same way) is how insanely fast the ICSer really does get ahead in the game. It's exponential growth in every respect. At one point your Civ will be making *thousands* of gold; inventing a new tech every turn (I once invented two advanced techs in *one* turn!!!); and still growing, covering every single square inch of land you can come across. Having every Wonder helps a lot, too, particularly since your [computer] opponents won't have any.

Ridiculously enough, the generation of shields is pretty useless to an ICSer. There are no meaningful buildings that need to be built in cities, aside from some of the ones that cost 1 maintenance (eventually 0 with some Wonder or other); but they're all cheap as dirt. No military units are needed; one defensive unit or two per city, a few roving bandits, and you're set. Eventually, your nation will be so big that building settlers will only be done by the outer edges. Most of those cities eventually get turned toward capitalization -- once you have enough caravans standing around to build some of the various Wonders.

But in the earlier stages of the game, while you're producing settlers, you can, any turn you want, and in any cities you want, swap the production of a settler over to a military unit. There's no production penalty for this, and the very next turn *every single city in your nation* that was working on a settler instead pops out a cheaper (many units cost significantly *less* than a settler), technologically advanced (ICS absolutely crushes in technology right from the start of the game) swarm of military units. Plunk, indeed.

Bleyn: "Shoot, you don't even really need caravans to do it. The basic warrior unit will work just fine. Just start cranking them out, send 'em to the city building the Wonder and disband 'em."

Though far less efficient, this has been done in the past in a particularly close Wonder race, yes. I have to admit, though, that Wonders rarely loom large in the ICSer's worldview; if it comes down to a choice between sacrificing a significant portion of my nation's growth for a few turns and losing a Wonder race, I tend to go for plan A. But the point, one which I believe we share, is that this is up to the ICSer, and not his opponents.

"No telling yet how well it will go over in Civ3, but it will be interesting to find out."

Indeed.

Father Beast: "Thanks for this thread, it gives me a chance to rant..."

Ranting is my middle name!

"the 2 pop settler and the resource model are band-aids to the possibility of ICS. Awfully big band-aids to be sure, but the blood will come seeping around, eventually..."

The potential for a vastly appropriate analogy.

"The only true cure for ICS is to eliminate the free tile. new cities founded by a 2 pop settler would be size 2, and work the city square and one other tile. In other words- Each Tile Has To Be Worked By A Citizen. That was what I thought they were doing when they announced the 2 pop settler."

As I mentioned previously, the current model would not survive such a slash; the game would have to be reworked on a fundamental level. Do we really trust Firaxis to the job?

"I predict that ICS will still make it's ugly head felt in Civ3. There still is the advantage to small cities because you don't have to feed the city tile producer, and the food box is smaller on smaller cities, making for faster growth. It will be slower than in civ1/2, but with enough room to get started, the effects will be seen."

Arrogant as I am, I admit I cannot perceive what the ramifications of this change will be when coupled with the various other alterations, upgrades, and fixes that have been implemented in Civ3. One saving grace, however, is that Firaxis *claims* that they made this change (among others) for the explicit purpose of thwarting ICS. From this, I dare to infer that they are beta testing with ICS in mind.

A stretch? Perhaps. But at this point, I'll eat anything.

"As for the need for resources slowing you down, I don't think so. From everything they've said, it looks like any resource that is connected to your Capitol by road will be available to All your cities, provided it is within the cultural radius of a city or has a colony on it. I don't think you need to get a culture radius for most of your ICS cities, just build them on the resource, and connect it to your capitol. every new city gets access to the resource automatically."

Someone on this thread purported that cities disconnected from the 'main hub' would not be able to use capital-supplied resources. Thus, cutting the capital off from the nation would be akin to cutting the head off of the snake. There seems to still be some equivocation on this point, admittedly; I've yet to get it all straight.

"I wish they could get DaveV or somebody like that to beta test their game. This band-aid won't hold the blood back for long."

God forbid. There are actually quite a number of loyal fans who hang around in this forum and others who would make for excellent beta testers. If I worked for Firaxis (and I haven't killed myself yet ) I would ask MarkG to construct a list of those forum members he deigns worthy of a beta test CD, and FedEx 'em.

But what could we possibly know? We're just the players, right?

- Metamorph

[tniem]

Originally posted by Father Beast
The only true cure for ICS is to eliminate the free tile. new cities founded by a 2 pop settler would be size 2, and work the city square and one other tile. In other words- Each Tile Has To Be Worked By A Citizen. That was what I thought they were doing when they announced the 2 pop settler.

Yeah but have they said that?

I always believed that your two pop settler would found a one pop city. Otherwise their is no reason to have two pop cities. So when you build a city you are losing a pop point. It is gone. It forces you to think about building that city and weighing the costs.

[Skanky Burns]

Re: Wow!

Originally posted by Metamorph
"As for the need for resources slowing you down, I don't think so. From everything they've said, it looks like any resource that is connected to your Capitol by road will be available to All your cities, provided it is within the cultural radius of a city or has a colony on it. I don't think you need to get a culture radius for most of your ICS cities, just build them on the resource, and connect it to your capitol. every new city gets access to the resource automatically."

Someone on this thread purported that cities disconnected from the 'main hub' would not be able to use capital-supplied resources. Thus, cutting the capital off from the nation would be akin to cutting the head off of the snake. There seems to still be some equivocation on this point, admittedly; I've yet to get it all straight.

Ok, ill attempt to explain it First, the resource square. In this example, the resource is iron. This either needs a colony on it, or it is inside your cultural influence with a road on it. The iron is now being gathered by your civ. (Note: This square doesnt need to be 'worked' by people in a city, gathering food/shield/trade from the square - in city production and 'gathering iron' are two seperate things)

Now that the iron is being gathered, it needs to be connected to places that can use it - your cities. If the iron is connected to a city, then that city can use the iron - build legions or whatever. Even if your capital is not connected, the cities connected to the iron can still use that iron. This iron can also travel between cities that have airports and/or harbours.

There is a special case for resources - that is when you trade them. To be able to trade the iron with another civ, the iron must be connected to your capital. If there is only one iron connected to your capital via the road/air/sea network, and you want to trade it with another civ, then no cities can build units requiring iron. If you have 2 iron resource squares connected to your network, and trade one, then all your cities connected to the network can build units requiring iron.

Hope that clears things up a bit

[Father Beast]

Okay Burns, You may have me on that point. I had thought that any cities connected to the resource by road, airport, harbor could use the resource, Or connecting a resource to your capitol could provide to all your cities. My bad.

But it makes little difference. just have a worker or 2 running around building roads between your dinky zillion cities (which are built on resources, needing no culture to access them), and go to town.

BTW, I recently read that you not only need to have a resource connected to your capitol to trade it, but your capitol needs to be connected to the other capitol, too.

[Shadowstrike]

Does anyone other then me feel that the new worker concept is forcing our hands to play with the "holding settlers back" strategy, that is keeping settlers walking around upgrading cities? I used to have them do two/three upgrades then run off to build their own city. Now, I can't even do that. I have to build a worker to upgrade. I expect that a lot of us will end up with tons of spare workers running around. At least we could drop them into a city's population, right?