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

[yin26]

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.

I agree and would add: I *enjoy* having to expand aggressively in the early game, but it just gets tedious when I *have* to expand coast to coast before the AI does.

The principle is great ... but the implementation just needs a little tweaking.

Firaxis: There have been some good ideas here. Did you try any of these in testing and found they didn't work?

[Stromprophet]

I still disagree about ICS. I don't think it's as relevant. 19 cities? What level are you playing on anyway. I've been playing Regent, and King. Which, ICS may work one v one against someone, but not against 15 comp opponents. Because you can't expand everywhere, because the computers do it before you.

Which is the point in the long run. You can't win with ICS in the long run. You have to have more culture, more resources, and more military. Or be wise in trades to get what you need.

I think one of the things that is now bothering me, is the corruption ammounts. They are very high. But I like the fact that I can't dominate the world. It makes it much more fun.

I think ICS problem will not exist in MP. One v One, possibly. You can pump as much as you like, but it's still expensive and clearly much more slow for us. I mean I had 19 cities on Deity by 2000 BC in Civ II. So it's very slow now.

It also destroyed the power of Mikes, and Hanging in Republic. Which was my favorite strategy.

[Kc7mxo]

Umm. Don't get too cocky about all these "wonderful" ideas you have. Most of them are rather dumb.


Contiguous borders? Right. . . . . . . do you have idea how damn annoying this would be? ick. The colonization of over continents had nothing to do with placement of previous colonies, and in fact many were the time the settlers tried to avoid contact.

Kicking out settlers? Damn good idea. But so what? You can do it now. And they use boats. Hmmm. Wouldn't really help.

The AI plays normal? Umm. I don't like what its doing either, but it IS a valid strategy. And if it doesn't ake up all that land. . . . um, won't you?

3 Pop settlers?

Forcing the player to do something is just going to piss people off. No one is going to like border restrictions on their cities.


On the other hand, I kinda like the revolting cities burn themselves down. Saves me the trouble.

I think what we really need is for them to go barbarian instead. If a city is losing too much corruption, then it declares independance and turns barb. wasn't this in the list?

I definetly wish barbs could capture cities. oh well.

[SITS]

A simpler rule would be that a city can be built anywhere as long as it doesn't affect anothers borders otherwise it has to be an connected to your own borders. Another way to cure it is to make a new city VERY vulnerable to anothers culture with a very real chance that in the next turn it will be taken over unless it is nearer its own cities. I think the second rule would be more in keeping of the game.

[yin26]

Contiguous borders? Right. . . . . . . do you have idea how damn annoying this would be? ick. The colonization of over continents had nothing to do with placement of previous colonies, and in fact many were the time the settlers tried to avoid contact.

It would be less annoying than what we have now, IMO. And the 'reality' argument fails here. It's about making the game more fun and strategically sound.

Kicking out settlers? Damn good idea. But so what? You can do it now. And they use boats. Hmmm. Wouldn't really help.

Can you share the hotkey? My dealing with the enemy settler captures him and starts a war. And so what if they use boats? That's good strategy. I should be patrolling. Read more carefully before you start with the 'reall dumb' comment, eh?

I've been playing Regent, and King. Which, ICS may work one v one against someone, but not against 15 comp opponents. Because you can't expand everywhere, because the computers do it before you.

I also play on Regent ... as China always next to India. Perhaps India is more aggressive in this regard?

[yin26]

SITS: Yes, your border idea might be more acceptable to more people.

[TechWins]

The AI plays normal? Umm. I don't like what its doing either, but it IS a valid strategy. And if it doesn't ake up all that land. . . . um, won't you?

Yes, the AI should take the land, yet in a sophisticated manner. The AI shouldn't do expansion in a manner that will make it have 15 1-2 pop size cities laying around in the year 10ad. Note that expanding in a sophosticated manner would be 'normal'.

3 Pop settlers?

If you read my post (unless you misunderstood) you would know that the 3 pop settlers idea goes along with this:

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.

Kicking out settlers? Damn good idea. But so what? You can do it now. And they use boats. Hmmm. Wouldn't really help.

Having to contact the other Civ four to five times before you are allowed to use the option of "leave my territory now or prepare for war" for diplomacy isn't quite as effective.

Umm. Don't get too cocky about all these "wonderful" ideas you have. Most of them are rather dumb.

I detect jealously in this comment.

Yin, you are not the only one who is being annoyed by the expansion of other Civ3; I constantly have the Romans trying to get into my land building cities. In fact they have done it three times but two of those times the city has converted over to me. Again a 'normal' AI would not have had this happen to them.

[gamadict]

I havn't really thought of how this would effect the balence, but I really think you should be able to attack any unit crossing your territory in your terriritory without many repercussions. At least, not among any civs but the one's you attacked. Especially with military units. I mean, without provocation or permission, countries just don't go traipsing through other countrie's borders with their military without any expecting any resistance, unless they're just so superior that the other nation's can't do anything about it. I also agree with the people who suggest that settling in the middle of your countries' empire should be considered some kind of agressive act. I'm not a history expert, but I'm sure someone can point out a scenario where this caused a lot of conflict in the Real World...

[korn469]

i think they have fixed ICS

ICS isn't the same thing as expansion, ICS was basically a way to exploit the game mechanics in order to achieve an advantage, in the same way a player would station a bomber over a stack of units to keep them from getting killed

ICS existed because of the following reasons

*by building a settler 1 pop essentially became 2 pop with the free settler
this is fixed in Civ3

*a large number of size one cities supported far more units than a few large cities with equal pop
this is partially fixed in Civ3

*size one cities grew exponentially faster than really large cities
this has pretty much been taken care of in civ3

civ3 has done a fairly good job of breaking the mechanics that made ICS work but what's left is a situation where it's either expand or die, and you can say the exact same thing about starcraft...plus larger cities are more valuable in civ3 than what they were in civ2, so exceptions to the expand or die rule will exist

[yin26]

Yin, you are not the only one who is being annoyed by the expansion of other Civ3

And I think we are saying the same thing here: AI expansion is great! Awesome, in fact! But the AI will expand at the expense of his own empire and common sense regarding borders. India in my game has wrecked himself sending his escort teams literally to the other side of a large continent just to settle in tundra. If that same settler had stayed at home, the production value would have been much much higher. Not to mention he also had to pull troops far far away from his capital to escort them.

I will say this about my game: India was trapped in a corner. In a sense, I respect that the AI tried to expand at all costs instead of rolling up and dying. This is great!!!

But force him to go to war with me, then, by trespassing all over the place. Have him make allies to attack me from two fronts if he's in that spot. But the 'fix' allowing him to run across my land despite protest just is not satisfying.

gamadict: Perhaps another answer could be that once you discover Nationalism, any enemy cities not connected to its primary borders AND surrounded by your borders on all side gets automatically swallowed up by you? Before nationalism, I could accept the idea of loose city-states.

[yin26]

Korn: I understand that they fixed the 'free pop' aspect of ICS. But what is NOT fixed is the fundamental 'make cities until you drop' dynamic. I would not have been against the free pop part of ICS to begin with. It's the messy and tedious city expansion part I disliked.

And that part has been emphasized in Civ3, even if the free pop issue has been addressed.

[CygnusZ]

Originally posted by 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.

Isn't there room for a middle ground? I agree it's beyond stupid to have colonial AI making cities in the tiny little gap in your tremendous empire. Forcing the border's to actually be contingous in the start though? C'mon... what your suggesting is more restricting (and tedious) than just being able to do what you want.

Keep in mind, that I really think the start where the concept of defined borders comes into play is one the most facinating aspects. Despite some cries, it does work really well and eventually the shape of a nation becomes well defined.

[yin26]

A more flexible solution like SITS mentioned would be better. But I would also add: What are colonies for? As the game stands, they are next to useless when you can so easily just send out cities.

[CygnusZ]

Well, to tweak colonies I would make it so that they wouldn't be swallowed up by national borders.

I agree with you that there should be sane national borders. But it creates a huge problems. For example, in my current game me (greece) and Egypt teamed up to take down Rome. I got southern Rome and Egypt took western Rome. Western Rome is not connected Egypt however, it's connected to me and I think egypt deserves the spoils.

It *IS* sane for egypt to get that continuous land mass interrupted by my nation. For issues like these I'm wary about changing the system.

Unless the contingous borders interfere with my "mushrooming" practice (valid strat) and especially not mess around with conquering problems such as these, not to mention slow down the already slow beginning, I don't see how this would be viable.

[korn469]

yin

yes i agree with you about the expand to infinity and beyond syndrome, and there is more of a focus on expansion in civ3 than in civ2

Another way to cure it is to make a new city VERY vulnerable to anothers culture with a very real chance that in the next turn it will be taken over unless it is nearer its own cities. I think the second rule would be more in keeping of the game.

well i have been playing as much as possible since getting the game on wednesday...and i would say that is a good 25 hours at least, and in that time i have seen exactly one city switch sides because of culture and that was like a size five city that i had captured from the Greeks, i have seen more leadera than i have cultural assimilation

however Sits idea is a really good one in my opinion, and it would be nice if in addition to cities switching sides, that if the player has over extended theirselves too much that cities would revolt and become independent civs