Ics?

[yin26]

Skanky Burns: Ha! I cross-post the MP part. Yes, that is a valuable point.

[korn469]

And my point is that an ICSer will fill the entire area of a map, from coast to coast, with cities. As many that will fit without being next to another city.

Skanky Burns

this will be harder than it sounds

one settler in civ2 cost 20 (10) food and 40 shields
one settler in civ3 will most likely cost 50 (25) food and 40 shields

as you can see the factor that limits how quickly you can produce settlers is shields, if civ3 keeps the same cost in shields then food will become the limiting factor...it will take over twice the amount of food to build up two population and then you lose two population from your city, so the overall recovery time for building two settlers will greatly increase in civ3

lets say have a size one city that harvest 2 food and one shield from every square, it has no buildings and it is constantly producing settlers with no rushbuying

in civ2 it will take that city 17 turns to build its first settler which will make it a size one city with 14 food in it's food box, 32 (17 + 15) turns to build its second settler which will make it a size one city with 24 food in its food box, and 46 turns to build its third settler (17 + 15 + 14) which will make it a size two city with 2 food in its foodbox

in civ3 it will take that city 25 turns to build its first settler which will make it a size one city with no food in it's food box and an extra 25 shields it could devote to another purpose, 50 (25 + 25) turns to build its second settler which will make it a size one city with no food in its food box and an extra 50 (25 + 25) shields it could devote to another purpose, and 75 turns to build its third settler (25 + 25 + 25) which will make it a size one city with no food in its foodbox, and an extra 75 shields (25 + 25 + 25) it could devote to another purpose

so in civ2 a single city could produce 3 settlers in less time than what it would take a single city to produce two settler in civ3

[yin26]

Korn:

Any ideas what this will do to the pacing of the early game? My feeling stated long ago is that this approach to fixing ICS has essentially killed early game pacing whether you ICS or not. Any comments?

[korn469]

yin (and others) please check over my math, because the way the growth model works it might add an extra turn in for growth, but those numbers should be close

as for pacing, it would slow down the game for players who are agressively expanding no matter if they are using ICS or not...but a perfectionist shouldn't see as much of a slow down...but this will really effect the ICS player...in the numbers i presented above the newly founded cities would also be producing settlers, and i just thought of something else...my figures are wrong because i forgot to add in the effect of food the settler uses...should i fix it?

the point i'm trying to make is that i didn't add in growth for the extra cities which they will have three extra cities in civ3 in the same time it took to found 2 extra cities in civ3...those three extra cities will found nine new cities in the same amount of time as it will take the civ3 player to found four new cities...it really looks like ICS won't be as good in civ3 as it was in civ2

on the same hand, when you add in culture the perfectionist should be in an even better position than in civ2

[dearmad]

Yin and Korn, think about THIS: That "settler" you just built can't even spare a few turns along the way to founding a new city to build you a road or any irrigation! It CAN'T! You need to build a worker unit first!

Seems to me expanding at ALL before your city reaches some sweetspot of resource units and food is about wiped out in the early game- you need WORKERS TOO now! The attack on ICS was not a left jab, it's a one-two punch.

[yin26]

So what about the guy in the middle...the non-perfectionist, non-ICSer. The: "ICSer with some perfectionist tendencies." I am such a player. I like robust cities, but I also see the value in eating up the map. I think I'm really going to feel a sluggish start...something like CtP.

[Urban Ranger]

Yin,

Not sure about that. After all Firaxis should have tons of experience and feedback on scouting.


korn,

I was just thinking how all the new features tie together. Slowing down regular expansion during early in the game will make the expansionistic ability that much more powerful. Extra civ advances, money, free mercs, and even an advanced tribe or two. It is the advanced tribes that will make the difference.

[yin26]

The attack on ICS was not a left jab, it's a one-two punch.

Yes, but I think it is killing the OVERALL game-pacing in the process.

[yin26]

If what we are doing is slowing down the production of cities but making production in a perfectionist city better, then we are still left with a troubling issue early on: You have very few cities. This means: Few units, longer time before you engage the enemy, longer time to do just anything...at least in the first part of the game. This worries me a great deal.

[korn469]

dearmad

lets say you build a worker (20 food 20 shields) for every four settlers (50 food 40 shields) in an ICS setup this means that the the total cost in food and shields for 4 settlers and a worker would be 220 (110) food and 180 shields in civ3 compared to 100 (50) food and 200 shields for five settlers in civ2...so in civ3 food, and especially WLTKD will be the backbone of your strategy if you are going ICS, but this will take ICS out of the early game

however later on in the game, when cities are slightly larger then WLTKDs could power ICS, but it still won't be as powerful as what it was in civ3, but you can still do it

Urban Ranger

i agree, early advanced tribes will be a very good addition to any empire, and this could give a player the with expansionist ability an edge

[saracen31]

How far in the future is the game going? With settlers now costing 2 pop points, I just can't see myself with a spaceship in time on Deity level.

[korn469]

saracen31

as far as we know the game ends in 2020

but i don't think that 2 pop settlers would prevent you from beating the game on deity with the space ship

getting 10-15 cities should be easy to do, and it shouldn't take forever to do that either if it really does take about 30 turns to produce a single settler in civ3 in 100 turns you could certainly have about 8 cities and your core cities could be fairly well developed

2 pop settlers won't nerf expansion completely, but will instead hopefully slow it down so that it doesn't allow ICS to dominate once more

[Father Beast]

Oh My Gosh!

I totally forgot about We Love the Consul Day!!

That changes everything. with republic as few techs away as monarchy, a player could shoot for republic and hold WLTCD's as neccesary to be able to pump out settlers at will WITHOUT waiting for the city to grow!!

the hell with the food box, just get the city booming.

of course, then you run into martial law, but if you've got a religious civ, you can switch govs without anarchy back to a martial type, just republicing for WLTCD's

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Will we have WLTCD in civ III?

[Nikolai]

I also thought We Love The King Day was gone, but I can't find any link... I can't believe that Firaxis would keep this feature, though.