Proposals to Fix ICS in Civ3: Firaxis, please stop by...

[yin26]

ICS = Infinite City Sleaze. Basically the idea is simple: By sending out settlers at the earliest possible moment in all your cities, you can literally grow exponentially. Simply ignore city improvements, nice spacing between cities, etc. The power of numbers alone ensures victory (do a search on this site of 'ICS' if you want to understand this more).

It was Firaxis' top priority to fix this issue in Civ3. However, it is the opinion of a growing number of gamers, including myself, that the problem is actually worse. First, here are the 'fixes' Firaxis tried:

'FIXES'
1) Settlers now cost 2 population.
2) Enemy culture points can now cause small, undeveloped cities to join them.
3) The enemy AI itself expands like crazy.

'PROBLEMS'
1) This idea in and of itself fixes nothing. It only delays the amount of time it takes to make the next settler. So instead of timing your settler to pop out when your city reaches pop 2, you time it to arrive at pop 3. I am already getting down build oders for such a thing. So are others. So does the AI. Thus, this alone fixes nothing.
2) The concept of a superior culture eating up these cities is a great one, except that the AI itself is so consumed by spreading all over the place that its own cultural development is sacrificed for a good part of the early game. Now, if you take the cultural high road yourself, you might take over a few enemy cities that way, but the sheer number of AI cities by now wrapped all around (and even inside!) your empire will at the very least demoralize and perhaps infuriate you. Here again, you can try to go to war right off the bat, but that has a host of problems itself.
3) This one really exacerbates the problems already set up with 1 and 2: The AI (at least on Regent level, which is all I have played, sorry) will expand AT ALL COSTS! This means he will IGNORE your repeated pleas to get off your land. This means he will found cities right in the heart of your empire. This means that your nicely laid border meant to cut off his access to the land behind you is meaningless and you can count on the AI building all around you. On tundra. On anything he can reach. So you have options: Spread like a cancer yourself, go to war -- or a bit of both.

Frankly, I think there's a better way. I offer the following 'easy' solutions that I think will bring back a huge amount of fun and challenge.

1) "Continguous City Borders" -- CCBs

The idea is simple: You may found a city ONLY if its borders will touch your existing border. Now, if this means we should expand the initial borders a bit, fine. If the borders do NOT touch, you can only build a colony. And taking away the other civ's colony must NOT be considered an act of war. Building a colony should be a risk ... an important gamble to secure far off resources. That is what Firaxis intended, I think, but currently there is NO reason not to simply put cities helter skelter.

2) "Settler Deporation"

Another simple fix: If an AI with which you are not at war brings over his escorted settler into your land, any military unit you send to that stack will bring up the following two options: A) "Deport Settler?" or B) "Capture Settler? -- This will start a war." In fact, perhaps the entire stack should be able to be deported. Of course, if the AI refuses the deportation, you go to war and fight right on the spot. This will encourage you to patrol your borders diligently and gives back the player a vital early means of handling the AI's ignoring your borders.

I honeslty believe that those two solutions working together will make Civ3 vastly superior. Any thoughts? Thanks for listening.

[yin26]

Here you see me (light blue) taking the ICS at all costs route against India (purple). Notice that India started on the far left and STILL managed to walk through my borders despite protests to build on the far right. Had I not been pumping out my own settlers like crazy, he would have grabbed a huge amount of land. The date is 640 AD and I have 19 cities.

[Master Marcus]

I agree with 2)settler deportation, we can have also an Advisor informing the player as soon as friendly foreign units ( at peace treaty ), settlers or others, are entering the territory.

For 1) "CCBs", I guess this is more for an expansion than a single patch. Many details should be punched out here, like founding a city in another continent - small island, uncharted or not, etc....

[yin26]

Yes. Good point about islands or other continents. You should be able to found a city there ... and then the border rules continue. This will also encourage you to expand your borders by TAKING OVER cities on the other continents.

[Cougz]

Good Ideas!

Re Continguous City Borders - To avoid changing the current border expansion system, perhaps the ruling could be:

- New city border can be no more than 2 spaces from existing border (so two brand new cities can be built next to each other but still have room to use all their resources available.)

- Can not put down a city if the border, when placed normally, would cross another civs border. (So if you put your cities so their border's are initially 2 spaces apart, another civ can't come and plant a city between them.)

I think this is effectively what you are getting at, it means that the absolute jumble of cities can't really occur. I am playing a game right now where the Americans, Egyptians, Indians, English, Chinese, Aztecs and Zulus are fairly close on one large continent. YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH A MESS! It's unreal, as in it's not realistic. Almost all Countries have very defined borders, in fact the only time they don't is usually during war.

Therefore the only way a jumble of cities should be possible is because of conquest, not by settling.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

The idea is simple: You may found a city ONLY if its borders will touch your existing border.

Bad idea. How are you going to build cities on another continent?

f an AI with which you are not at war brings over his escorted settler into your land, any military unit you send to that stack will bring up the following two options: A) "Deport Settler?" or B) "Capture Settler?

(1) AI should not be able to resist this deportation
(2) If you tell the AI to get its units off your terrirtory and it doesn't, you can attack its troops without a declaration of war. If the AI does declare war on you, it goes against their reputation.

[yin26]

Bad idea. How are you going to build cities on another continent?

You get one 'free' city to found there. Then the border rules continue. This encourages you also to take over cities.

(1) AI should not be able to resist this deportation
(2) If you tell the AI to get its units off your terrirtory and it doesn't, you can attack its troops without a declaration of war. If the AI does declare war on you, it goes against their reputation.

1) Yes, I agree. 2) Interesting. I like it.

[Cougz]

Rep

Agreed on (2) L of A, reputation hit for anyone not leaving someones lands upon request.

They can ask for right of passage agreements instead.

[Dida]

Let's do this, if the new city you found does not touches your existing border, the corruption will be very high, the waste of shelt would be very high, citizens would likely be unhappy. And thus, very high chance of revolting. This chance increases as distance from the existing border increases.
Therefore, you can found a new city anywhere, but it will be very difficult to control that city. If the new city is located across the sea, then you have to build harbor quickly.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

You get one 'free' city to found there. Then the border rules continue.

Good idea.

[Kindbud]

I think this is a great idea. I agree with the idea that a new city should be within 2 spaces so that maximum city resources can be utilized. The one free city on an island or new continent makes good sense as well. That pic of the two civs intermingled would drive me crazy as the game went on watching EVERY single unit of theirs dance around. Still, I wonder how much longer that player had to go before he could begin to expect his culture to "absorb" some of those citys. Unfortunately, the manual doesn't really detail how to maximize a player's ability to use culture as an expansion technique.

[CygnusZ]

Yin.. I have a problem with this solution...

I often will set up two "nations" on either side of the equator (which is normally desert), and over time they connect due to expanding cultural influence. The desert maybe settled by other civs but will almost always become assimlated eventually.

For that matter, I've had little cities within my borders that are just terrible cities so I leave 'em alone. It's an eyesore, but doesn't really make a difference. When was the last time an enemy civ settled a *GOOD* spot in the middle of your empire?

The fact is, I think the AI should be fixed so that they don't settle the middle of your empire because it's a prime example of Artifical Idioicy. But I don't think that you should be limited by simple having city cultural boundaries touch.

[Blackadar1]

I'm not sure I agree with the "cities touching" theory, as some of us may like to space ours out (especially initial ones) a bit more. But I LOVE the idea of being able to deport settlers (or other units) that are in my territory, sort of like deporting the spys from Civ II. Frankly, I think that founding a city inside another Civs culture border should be an act of war.

[El hidalgo]

I like the ideas, and the subsequent developments. But I thought the whole point of borders was to keep the AI from founding piddling little cities in the middle of your empire and to force it to respect your territory (which it didn't do in Civ 2). If it doesn't do this then the borders concept appears pretty worthless to me.

Problems with 1) -- the problem of settling new continents -- were already mentioned. But what's a continent, in game terms? Is Africa? You see how it barely attaches to Asia, but it attaches nonetheless. Is it a separate continent then, in terms of the game? Or what about Europe and Asia? In game terms would that be one continent? That's even harder than Africa. How about N. America and S. America? But the idea is basically good. I can't think of any civs in real life that founded cities thousands of miles away from their capital when all the intervening territory was under another civ's control...

[yavoon]

I don't know how you can still call it ICS, is that just like giving it a bad name? cuz unless yer playing a different game than I am, there aint nothing infinite about it. I assume yer refering to how its still perceived to be desirable to rapidly build yer cities very close together? then I can more relate to your concern.

I think there are definite and obvious reasons to maybe not wna do this, especially with the reality that you can't always add "one more city" w/o yer empire's corruption goin kinda psycho. but still in a mathematicaly bland environment, it gives turn advantage.


if u wnt to encourage ppl to stop building bases so close together, why not take away the corruption modifier for distance? I don't know, maybe I'm just too simple of a thinker for yall. but it seems to me that yer border touching thing would encourage the ICS we have right now, as ppl would plop cities down closely in rapid succession, and I don't see how it solves the problem at all. it also seems like a very artificial fix. just kinda imposed on the whim of abstractness.