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

[Gaius Marius]

I really don't see what's so irritating about the AI or expansion system. In every game I have played, everyone (myself and the AI) has expanded rapidly, followed by a long period of working borders out.

The civ borders start oddly shaped, interleaved at places, etc. This is made more extreme by the small culture in each city. If you look at the map in the replay at this stage, the culture borders are very spotty, but you can watch them grow into relatively stable blocks...

Anyway, in this stabilization period, usually a number of cities change hands due to military or culture, and a civ or two is eliminated (completely or effectively). At a variable point in time dependent on geography, strategy, and randomness, the borders become stable. this happens very quickly when there are fewer civs, natural borders, and better land (=bigger cities, more stable culture).

For example, on my continent in the current game, the Iroquois (me) and Americans are large grassland-based empires. The Chinese are on a large peninsula, mostly plains. These borders were reached by rapid expansion and stabilization. Some cities at the edges have changed hands due to culture. Whatever. On the same continent, the Japanese and Aztecs have a small area of grass and tons of little jungle cities (wet world, so there's lots). Their borders are less defined and stable.

This is completely realistic, and one of the most interesting parts of the game. Geography shapes strategy which shapes international relations which shape borders. Watch the replay. It's really exciting to see the AI fight over continental schwerpunkten , etc.

HOWEVER, I do understand your gripe about the AI founding worthless cities on tundra, desert, etc. I think, however, that this strategy is actually a good one, and that most humans, myself included, don't adopt it because we are perfectionists with our cities, and because we don't want to bother with the effort to get a city like that producing anything. Cities never hurt (especially since you don't lose tech when they're taken, like in Civ 2).

The AI does not cheat in settler production or expansion - research and observation will show this, and Soren Johnson has clearly stated it. Quite frankly, if you think it is expanding annoyingly, it means the AI is playing a different strategy than you that happens to be very disruptive - making it a fantastic way to reduce your strategic capital and a lot of your time. Do it to the AI, too, if you want. Or fight it. Adapt. Watch your borders (you have to, since you MUST watch units move), use fortresses, and plan long in advance where you want your borders to be. Defend them jealously, and ignore everything else.

[jsw363]

Re: Good Ideas!

Originally posted by Cougz
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.

Often jumbled borders DO occur. Look at a map of early modern Europe. Borders were tangled, jumbled messes. The Spanish held the Low Countries and Naples; Papal lands extended out of the Italian peninsula; France claimed pockets of territory in Sicily, etc.; England had protectorates in Gibralter, Saxony, etc. The whole map of Europe was this messy for hundreds of years.

I'm not saying that Civ should be like this though. I get just as annoyed as anyone when the Indians build a new city in the middle of my territory.

The contiguous city rule wouldn't work for reasons stated previously. I think the problem needs to be solved with harsher transgression penalties. When the AI crosses your border, there should be diplomatic and military penalties applied. It should count against your reputation and effect your dealings with other civs. That's the only thing that would stop the AI from running amok.

[jsw363]

Re: Good Ideas!

Originally posted by Cougz
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.

Often jumbled borders DO occur. Look at a map of early modern Europe. Borders were tangled, jumbled messes. The Spanish held the Low Countries and Naples; Papal lands extended out of the Italian peninsula; France claimed pockets of territory in Sicily, etc.; England had protectorates in Gibralter, Saxony, etc. The whole map of Europe was this messy for hundreds of years.

America too, when it was being colonized looked like this. Think it was easy to tell the difference between the Sweedish, Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Russian and Native American territory?

I'm not saying that Civ should be like this though. I get just as annoyed as anyone when the Indians build a new city in the middle of my territory.

The contiguous city rule wouldn't work for reasons stated previously. I think the problem needs to be solved with harsher transgression penalties. When the AI crosses your border, there should be diplomatic and military penalties applied. It should count against your reputation and effect your dealings with other civs. That's the only thing that would stop the AI from running amok.

[saracen31]

I also think they should use a random seed at the beginning of a game to determine just how expansionist each civ is going to be. Right now, every AI civ just makes a mad dash to plop down cities anywhere they can. I don't mind if some civs do that, but to have EVERY civ do that EVERY game is just a pain in the ass.

Sometimes I want to play an expansionist game, sometimes I just want a few big cities. As it currently stands, I'm forced to play the expansionist in the early stages to combat the AI civ strategy. While fun, I hate to have to follow the same strategy every single game.

It would be cool if some of the AI civs didn't expand so rapidly. Make it a random seed for every civ, which differs each time you start a new game. Some games they all might be ancient expansionists, some games they would chill out. Some games there would be a mix. The human player can take action accordingly. Wouldn't be a difficult programming fix either.

[mhenders]

ICS is Fixed...

If I recall correctly, the sleazy version of ICS was a very specific sort of exploit--move a settler the shortest possible distance away from your city, plop down a new city, and then wash, rinse repeat, ad nauseum. An ICS player ending up with a hugely dense grove of cities--basically they were packed in every two squares or so.

I forget exactly how the numbers worked out, but it ended up to be hugely profitable in Civ2 and SMAC to sleaze rather than build up existing cities. Generating a new city was a more efficient use of population, mainly because as cities grew, the food requirement for the next pop point increased, so keeping cities small and spawning settlers allowed a sleazer to grow population far faster than letting cities gain population. In Civ2 and SMAC, population was power, and the AI and/or non-sleazer players could never match the population or power of a sleazer Civ. Thus, sleazing was an instant reciple for domination, and most everyone who ever gave it any thought felt that it was an exploit of flawed game mechanics.

Anyway, my point is that as an exploit, ICS seems to be fixed in Civ3. Two-pop point settlers, lower food cost for big city growth, culture, and corruption combine to eliminate the sort of easy dominance that Civ2/SMAC sleazing recipes guaranteed. The main complaint on this thread seems to be that the AI is always aggressively expansionistic in the early game, and is also generally contemptuous of borders. Both of these are problems, but they're not the Infinite City Sleaze that ruined Civ2 and SMAC.

So, it might be more productive to ask Firaxis for a little variety in the AI's style--an insular perfectionist wonder hogging AI would be loads of fun to play against. But you should realized that a common complaint about the Civ2 and SMAC AIs was that they never expanded fast enought to compete with a savvy non-sleaze but aggressively expansionist player. Thus, the current behavior is good testimony to the fact that Firaxis listened to feedback. Now they just need to add a little behavioral variety to AI's arsenal.

Later,
MTH

[Louis Cyr]

Originally posted by yin26

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

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

Maybe a new wonder that allow the city who buit it to "support" (in some way)
a new city on an island/other continent. Then the border rules continue.

[saracen31]

Originally posted by mhenders
So, it might be more productive to ask Firaxis for a little variety in the AI's style--an insular perfectionist wonder hogging AI would be loads of fun to play against. But you should realized that a common complaint about the Civ2 and SMAC AIs was that they never expanded fast enought to compete with a savvy non-sleaze but aggressively expansionist player. Thus, the current behavior is good testimony to the fact that Firaxis listened to feedback. Now they just need to add a little behavioral variety to AI's arsenal.

Exactly what I just said in the post above. And all it would take is a random seed to determine the AI strategy.

[AceCiv]

I'd like see a new concept introduced to units in CIV 3.

When the right of passage is NOT active, AND the "trespassing" unit is not at war with culture within whose borders it lies, then there should be a CUMULATIVE demoralizing factor eventually leading to DEFECTION . But how long should these intruding units be allowed inside one's borders before defection is certain? I figure 1 turn within the other's border is an oops! - with no penalty - each turn thereafter the odds increase that the offending unit will defect.

[Master Marcus]

All right, one free city in an available territory of a new continent/island , then the border rules applies.

Whatever new rules we can suggest fo future fixes, I think the ICS will still be there - especially on huge maps. Les lois sont faites pour êtrent contournées. Need a translator?

Personally I would have coded something more drastic about civil disorder in distant cities: when a corrupted city ( more than 50% corruption & waste ) has experienced a second civil disorder, it is razed to the ground by the "rebels" immediately within the turn or something like that.

[Leonid]

Cygnus, its more than an eyesore. Your forgetting about strategic resources. If those little cities in the middle of your empire happen to be the only sources of rubber, iron, coal, and oil. Then I think you might be a little more ticked off.

[CygnusZ]

Originally posted by Leonid
Cygnus, its more than an eyesore. Your forgetting about strategic resources. If those little cities in the middle of your empire happen to be the only sources of rubber, iron, coal, and oil. Then I think you might be a little more ticked off.

Those little buggers usually defect to me after awhile, and if necessary, there are also ways to work around this issue:

A)Take over the city (obvious)
B)Offer to trade for the resource
C)Embargo, then put up that city as a condition for removing the Embargo.

BTW, it should be noted that I totally agree with you that the enemy AI is being increadibly idiotic by setting up little size 1 cities in the middle of deserts and tundra just so it can have an extra scrap of land. Totally off the wall.

But trading for strategic resources almost always works. Just cancel the trade after you've built up your army

[MustPost]

I would have thought that capturing cities giving you a tech would have discurraged ICS. I didn't really go onto the civ/SMAC boards that often so im not really sure why it was taken out. But it seems that if your enemy gained a tech whenever thay took over a city, you would build up your cities more or risk losing them and one of your advaced techs going to the opponent. Of course this won't matter in many of the cases because when your ICS you often fall behind in tech so you wouldn't have any tech worth taking.

[yin26]

It would be helpful to me if the people who don't see this as a problem would post the level of difficulty. I think below Regent, the comp doesn't really do what I described.

Also, if you click the link I provided above, you will see that I *did* adapt. I have 19 cities by 640 A.D. and could have had more with a bit more practice.

My point is ... that's nearly an hour or more of JUST LAND GRABBING in a way that detracts from building up the cities and culture that Civ3 was supposed to encourage. Sure, it's kind of fun to deal with this for 20 or 30 minutes, but an hour in and you really begin to get bored by it.

Again, I wouldn't mind it so much if the comp didn't so blatantly run over my borders. I purposely scouted with 2 warriors from very early, found my nearest neighbor, and totally cut him off from coming my way.

And yet he did by violating my borders and not listening to my request. "Well, go to war, Yin!"

Sure, I could. But that just means the expansion AI is forcing me into wars every game. It shouldn't have to play that way. Again, look at my link above to see what the purple AI did and how I responded in a very Civ2-esque kind of way. My cities are NOT spaced out properly for a reason: To eat up as much land as humanly possible before the AI settler walked across my empire and gobbled it up.

Please let me deport settlers!

Please let borders have more meaning!

[yin26]

As for wanting to start cities far apar from each other and work them back in, I understand the strategy behind it. But I still say that your cities should 'flower' out from your capital. Make the initial borders bigger to compensate for the CCB.

Also, every random map I have played has the continents separated by water. So the 'free city' idea when founding your first city on a continent is easy to solve. On the world map, I'm sure they could code a 'continent divide line' such that the program would know that even if the land connects, for border purposes, it's considered a new continent.

And, in fact, starting your Empire 2 on a new continent SHOULD be slowed by the contingous borders concept to replicate the difficulty of expanding so far from home. Again, you could speed this up by taking over enemy cities there. This is also a 'makes sense' proposition.

As it is now, many people are realizing the simpy razing enemy cities is preferable to do anything useful with them since they convert back so often. This (using that city as a new spot for contiguous borders) might be a good reason to make them work out better.

[TechWins]

The problem with Civ3 is how you have to do ICS. In ICS it was the player's option to do ICS, where as in Civ3 you are forced to do ICS to win the game. This is because the AI does ICS itself and in order for you to win you have to match the AI's dirty tricks. Now I never used ICS in Civ2 (I liked to have fun when playing) and I continously have to use ICS in Civ3. Where is the fun in that? You are right, Yin, ICS has got worse.

A proposal I have for containing ICS.

1)A city can build a settler but now at the cost of 3. Ultimately this will do nothing but it's still a nice, little deterent to ICS.

2)If a city builds a settler, then the city will have to wait for two more project (wealth doesn't count) completions to finish. There is a way to get around this, though, you can build a settler consecutively or bi-consecutively, but after the settler is built half of the remaining citizens in the city will become unhappy. The realistic reasoning for this is that the city needs time to recooperate after losing a lot of citizens (3; that's where this comes into play) and will become unhappy if they are not able to do so.

3)The AI decides to play normal and not like a mad expansionist. If the AI would build up it's infastructure a bit the player is not forced to ICS themself. The AI also needs to be a little less predictable. Knowing that the AI is going to go into a frenzy of expansion will entice you do the same. This isn't a direct ICS container, more less something that will improve the gameplay, though.

4)The previously mentioned option of "deporting a settler". To expand on this, you should have four diplomatic options come up, besides ("prepare for war" & "that's it, goodbye" & "propose a deal"), those four would be "leave out territory now or prepare for war", "please leave out territory now, in good faith of our mutual peace", "leave our territory now and never to enter it again", and "care to discuss a right of passage deal". The first one would be very forceful and might offend the Civ, but has the possibility of being the most effective. The second one will most likely only be listened to if the other Civ is very respectful towards you. The third one will be the second most effective in that you are using force but are not giving the other Civ a war ultimatem (sorry for spelling that wrong). The last one will take you to a window in which you can propose an offer to the Civ, so they can enter your territory. If the last one is chosen you will get the better end of the deal proposition; meaning that you might get a lump sum and a right of passage agreement in exchange for a right of passage agreement to the other Civ.

I didn't mention having Yin's rule number one because it would cause problems elsewhere. Yes, it is a good idea for stopping ICS a bit, but the restrictions it will put on the game will be far greater than it's upsides it will bring to the game.

This is amazing, in just a few minutes other and I have come up with many ideas that could stop (contain) ICS, yet Firaxis had professional game designers spending a few years on this matter and only made ICS worse.