INTERESTING New Screenshots with ICS implications

[Sarxis]

In one of the recent interviews, Briggs did actually mention ICS (Infernal City Sleeze) by name. He mentioned the new pop cost of settlers and 'other' balancing features to combat all sleezyness.

[yin26]

hehe and here i thought that they only used people from firaxis...but i know they wouldn't have let something like ICS slip into Civ3 right guys?

This gets back to the heart of the matter. A pre-release demo with the note: "Please try to ICS me" would have turned up an absolutely rabid response that within a week would have matched a month or more of in-house testing.

Anyway, Korn, you still recall "THE PLAN"...right?

[korn469]

Anunikoba

yes i do think that Civ2 style ICS is dead, firaxis did a great job of killing it...but i think we are glimpsing at what could be the new and improved ICS 3.0

60 shield settlers are more of an ICS hinderance than 2 pop settlers under the new grow rules

but it still should be impossible to do, it'll be more of a mid game happening than an early game strategy

[yin26]

Which raises the question: Is it all that different? We are all hampered until mid-game...after which ICS takes off again...delayed but still dominant?

[korn469]

yin if the plan you refer to is what we discussed in PMs and email, then yes i still recall it and i am waiting on a responce from Dan and Mark

new opening game strat

choose the English or Americans (Exp/Com Exp/Ind)
first thing you build is a granary...then it will only cost 60 surplus food to grow your city from size 1 to size 7

somewhere before size 7 build a worker and use it to build a high mine so you can have a high shield tile, then switch to settlers and crank them out, adjusting your citizens between a high food setup for rapid growth and a high shield setup for rapid production of settlers

[yin26]

Yep. That's "THE PLAN"

Second: Why, oh why, weren't you testing for Firaxis? BTW, did you see my comments about the Essential List in my List comparison thread? Amazing stuff there, Korn.

[korn469]

yin26

well i will PM them again tonight to see what they think...but dan sounds ok with it

as to why i'm not testing for firaxis hehe if only i knew
but no i didn't see your comments, and basically i just organized the EC3 list (the one thread that i really took to was the nuclear weapons thread which the owner didn't even submit to the list! ), but i think that it did have an impact on firaxis so they are listening!

anyways firaxis could minimize the damage caused by breeder cities with a few rule changes

#1 allow growth over the limit without a hospital but make it cause double unhappiness (ie the 9 citizen is unhappy and makes another citizen unhappy too)
#2 require all cities to have at least one civilian working a tile
#3 allow heavily repressed cities to have a chance of switching sides as if they had been assimilated through culture

those three could minimize the abuse of ICS breeder cities (and army laundering and abuse of the happiness system)

[yin26]

#1 allow growth over the limit without a hospital but make it cause double unhappiness (ie the 9 citizen is unhappy and makes another citizen unhappy too)

Simple. Elegant. Heck, realistic (greater pop w/o adequate health care causing disease outbreaks, etc.).

[korn469]

yin

it's not perfect, because it could cause you to have to build settlers, but i can't think of anything else that would combat it

[yin26]

But if the unhappiness wrecks the productivity of that city, then you're going a long, long way toward making ICS a kind of dead-end road until much, much later in the game when you can afford it all. As it stands, it looks like ICS is feasible still a bit too early in the game.

[Shiva]

Perhaps there is a harsher version of the too many bases thing from smac? Possibly if you go over so many cities with too low a culture you get beat over the head with some sort of penalty? Something like that?

[korn469]

yin

i think that civ3 has gone a long way towards addressing ICS, but that there might still be lots of ways to abuse the system

i haven't played the game yet, but the fixed size 20 foodbox looks a little small (especially with granaries) however it is an improvement over population booms from WLTKDs, since it is slower than that, plus the AI can take full advantage of it...on positive thing is that it will make Civ3 play faster than civ2 because of the quick early growth in the game

another thing that could hinder ICS would be to add in additional unhappiness penalties when a city was too far away from the capital (or forbidden palace) this could discourage early game ICS

our assumptions can't be proved till we have played (and played) the game, but it does look like mid game ICS could be a problem...then again it might not be

hopefully firaxis will listen to us on easy to implement ways of dealing with balance problem that arise in civ3...for each problem we find i suggest that we try to get as much feedback as possible and then find a consensus and beg firaxis to make the changes

EDIT: Shiva, having a decent culture shouldn't be too hard, i mean on deity the player is going to have to at least build temples and build them early

i still wanna see culture in action, i am in doubt as to what kind of effect it will have on civ3

[yin26]

Well, you can't permanently 'solve' Civ 3 on food production alone. This fix Firaxis has given addresses EARLY GAME ICS, which is perhaps a good way to leave it since completely pounding ICS throughout the ages could really make the game crawl.

[korn469]

yin

which is perhaps a good way to leave it since completely pounding ICS throughout the ages could really make the game crawl

you might be right, if the player and AI are closer in output going into the early game and the AI is smarter than the SMAC in both military tactics and strategic choices then ICS might not matter once you have armies showing up on your doorstep (especially if the AI can halfway manage armies)

plus with the no collateral damage rule the AIs huge stacks might be able to actually do something...i remember countless times in SMAC playing as the Spartans and i would use three elite rovers with better tech in a choke point kill zone that i had setup to destroy hundreds of AI units (mostly yang and miriam) but using the power of collateral damage the AIs tactics of stacking tons of units together would always fail

so this is one rule change that should help massive attacks (especially by the AI)

[yin26]

Yes. I think the rule of the day should be: If you don't harass your enemy, you deserve to have him ICS you.