Civ3 tried to discourage ICS and failed

[Pembleton]

At least in the early game. It actually encourages you to use ICS. Here's why.

I played my first games on Chieftain and Warlord since I don't like using exploits and refuse to use such things that are "cheap" such as the wombat maneuver.

On Prince level and higher you get fewer content citizens (it is 2 on Regent and King whereas it's 3 and 4 on the previous levels). The way to make them happy in the early game is to make a temple, or an entertainer when your pop hits 3 (or have luxuries). So the best thing to do to prevent doing this is just to make another settler after you make military units when your pop hits 3.

The computer uses ICS. I'm disappointed. They haven't learned the lesson or they haven't stopped it enough.

I haven't played a game since yesterday because my last save including my last 2 autosaves got corrupted and I just made a lot of complicated diplomatic agreements (because of lack of coal for railroads in my territory) and the computer units were doing the minutes long go back and forth dance so I quit.

EDIT: changed "fewer happy citizens" in second paragraph to "fewer content citizens"

[Yolky]

What is ICS again? I forgot.

Davor

[Pembleton]

It's an strategy that people used in the Civ games called "Infinite City Sleaze" or "IC Sprawl". It's where the main priority in the game is to make as many cities as possible and as close together as possible without regard to city improvements. In the long run it is just more efficient and you just end up having more production, and everything else if you don't overdo it.

The computer does it *now* in Civ3. If you ever look at their cities they have very few improvements and someone even showed a screenshot of a computer city that had pop 2 and a settler finished (but can't be produced until the pop hits 3).

To me it's really boring, and I miss my old naive days where I didn't know about it or do it. Sometimes too much knowledge can ruin a game.

[natlampe]

Originally posted by Yolky
What is ICS again?

I've seen both Infinite City Sleaze and Infinite City Sprawl mentioned. The term describes the huge amounts of cities that were often created in CivII.

Edit: Gah. Beaten to it.

[TCO]

It's within the nature of the game to reward expansion.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by GP
It's within the nature of the game to reward expansion.

But at the cost of almost completely ignoring your infrastructure? The penalties should be more severe.

The complaints I've heard of corruption, which I believe was also included as a hindrance to ICS, was more of an annoyance than anything that has discouraged me from doing it.

[Leonid]

I never used ICS. Really ruins the game and makes it boring and unfun.

[yavoon]

I think u still open up w/ massive expansion in mind, which of course is best suited by lotsa bases very quickly and close together. but the infinite part has definitely been taken out. u bust past those corruption limits and ur empire just grinds to a hault.

[NakaNaka]

I haven't used it in my game I have fought really hard in several big wars to win some key strategic cities ... However the Persians in the game have a huge stretch of land (which was given to them on start and they only had to win a couple of minor battles) and they have a ton of cities and pretty close together.

The game I'm playing has turned pretty isolationist because of this everyone has their cities and their space, I'm the only one who has made any massive war movement in the last 400-500 years.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by yavoon
I think u still open up w/ massive expansion in mind, which of course is best suited by lotsa bases very quickly and close together. but the infinite part has definitely been taken out. u bust past those corruption limits and ur empire just grinds to a hault.

That doesn't happen until the late game. At that point you don't make cities, you "take" them from other civs. And it doesn't matter if they have corruption to the point of producing one shield in cities with 12 pop. The point is that the other civs NO LONGER HAVE THE CITY.

[Dida]

i think CTP has city limit, which each government type would only support a given amount of cities, if you exceed this, you will face very bad consquence (unhappiness). Maybe CivIII should inplement something like tha.t

[yin26]

Since Pemby here has me on ignore for his own silly reasons, I guess he'll miss this part: The AI is given you are great early game challenge. Adapt. Get used to it. It's fun. It gives the AI a chance.

[Pyrodrew]

# of cities & distance from capital are currently the only 2 things which cause corruption, as Soren stated.

I think u still open up w/ massive expansion in mind, which of course is best suited by lotsa bases very quickly and close together. but the infinite part has definitely been taken out. u bust past those corruption limits and ur empire just grinds to a hault.

I agree the "infinite part" should stay out also. However that should be impacted much more on the # of cities one owns rather than distance from the capital. When it is vice-versa you still have ICS, but it is simply in a small area with cities packed tight. 2nd, heavy Distance Corruption means I can only expand 1 direction - slowly outward from the center of my empire. This heavy Distance Corruption forces who gets what land ALL THE TIME. If I'm in England & discover South America before you, who are in North America, I might as well kiss it goodbye & focus back on France because the Distance Corruption is FAR too high for me. ForbiddenPalaces are impossible to build at 1 shield/turn. Leaders are helpful, but very rare (as they should be). And the Forbidden Palace's impact to decrease corruption is very small compared to the power Distance Corruption has. 3rd, since the AI expands like crazy decreasing distance corruption would make the AI better (that's a good thing too)!

Soren listed some of things which impact corruption, I was glad to see culture wasn't included. Ideas for what else could have minor impacts on corruption, if they don't already:

Happiness# - If a worker isn't happy with the way their government it is more likely they will find ways around the rules or even break them. "We Love the King" Days only helps with shields & is a 1-time shot.

ResistancePeople - A city recently taken over from an enemy civ is less likely to follow it's rules, taxes, etc.

Republic - This government needs to be more useful. I rarely see people use/like this government. If you view the governments in the editor Democracy is in no danger of becoming weaker to Republic so helping the Republic would be good, especially since game balance is more important.

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew
# of cities & distance from capital are currently the only 2 things which cause corruption, as Soren stated.

I should add that the distance part of the calculation is much easier to solve. IOW, the courthouses and government types affect distance corruption a lot more than they affect the # of cities corruption.

What I am trying to say is that bunching your cities together is not going to have an appreciable affect on your corruption if you take other steps to stop it.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by yin26
Since Pemby here has me on ignore for his own silly reasons, I guess he'll miss this part: The AI is given you are great early game challenge. Adapt. Get used to it. It's fun. It gives the AI a chance.

Well since this is *my thread* I read it.

And ICS is not a challenge. It's so easy a computer can do it. When did I ever say it was a challenge or hard.

I would like to use another strategy if possible. *That* would be fun. Doing the same strategy over and over is not fun.

And if you want to point out that there is another strategy and that I'm not skilled enough to find out what it is, fine. Someone else find it and tell me so I don't have to use it to guarantee a win.

And I know that arguing with you is just going to end up futile, but hey I'll see what happens. I will try to stop as soon as possible because I can't win an argument with you because you will always find a way to skirt the issue or refute some other point that I'm not even making.

EDIT: Grammatical errors and typos.