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

[Fidel]

two years ago:
1> "we want AI that is not like CTP AI and will expand really agressively". we want AI to kick ass!
2. november 2001: "AI is even more agressive than we are! help! argh! it is annoying! it plays like a civ2 vet!"
hehehe, well, one can not satisfy them all....
so when is the patch out?
yin are you enjoying the game? i am glued to the screen

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by yin26
Well, I just tested it again. Same two civs but just a few turns later. Same AI settlers, actually. This time, it did NOT work.

Now, I hate to scream 'bug' at this point, but I honestly can't see what the nice feature that worked just a few turns ago does not work a few turns later?

If Firaxis could keep the 'one warning then next turn you must declare war if still on my land' rule in place, that would really help this situation.

There is a system in place to determine when you can just warn the AI to get out and when you can demand that they get out in lieu of war. It depends on the number of turns they have been in your territory, how close they have come to your cities, how many of the units are combat units, whether they are on land or sea, etc. At any rate, the AI follows the same rules you do in this regard... it can only demand that you get out if your incursion has reached the "second level."

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by LaRusso
two years ago:
1> "we want AI that is not like CTP AI and will expand really agressively". we want AI to kick ass!
2. november 2001: "AI is even more agressive than we are! help! argh! it is annoying! it plays like a civ2 vet!"
hehehe, well, one can not satisfy them all....
so when is the patch out?
yin are you enjoying the game? i am glued to the screen

LOL!!

If they tone it down then more people will complain that the AI doesn't expand enough and are too easy to beat.

Me thinks people should work to win, or deal with the game situation through dipolmacy and culture if they refuse to expand.

Oh well, I like assimilating enemy cities the AI founds near my borders, means less settlers I have to build..

[player3]

Dissenting Opinion

Yin, I disagree with some of your solutions to the ICS problem. I know your opinion on them has evolved a bit since your first post in this thread, but for simplicity I'll respond to the points made in the initial post;

1) CCBs: Other people have addressed the problem with this already, stating that you can't start new cities on other continents. My other problem is that people's strategies (including my own) don't necessarily follow your 'flowering' analogy. Consider the following situation: you start a game where there are two areas rich in resources separated by a natural barrier of mountains and jungle. Many players would rush to build citys on both sides of the barrier and later link them with roads. This would be impossible with CCBs, and would force you to build citys in the jungle/mountain region before you could access whatever lies beyond. Personally I'd rather build cities on both sides first and then link them with roads later.

Foreign settlers building citys within your empire can get annoying but I don't object to it since you can do the same to them. It's an interesting strategy; they're effectively disrupting your empire in a 'peaceful' manner. Furthermore, I can see how the player could use this to THEIR advantage (for example, found a city in somebody else's territory to cut off their trade route without going to war!!)

2) Settler Deportation: This sounds like the 'Expel/Kill Diplomat' option from Civ2. This is reasonable, except in most of my games the settler is escorted by a military unit. This would also do nothing to stop settlers transported by naval units. Also, I've noticed that sometimes it will give you the option to demand that they leave/else declair war, as Soren noted. But I've had instances where I would ask a foreign worker to leave several times and 5 turns later he's nowhere closer to leaving than when I first told him. Ugh.

With regards to ICS in general, the introduction of new corruption conditions, the culture factor and bonus resources for large cities makes ICS less feasable in my opinion. More tweaking may be needed, but we don't need something extreme like CCB, IMHO.

[Arrian]

Here are my thoughts on the matter, having played several games now (mostly on Warlord):

- AI expansion, by and large, is a good thing... it makes me work. Access to resources is critical, so early expansion is obviously key.

- The latter stages of AI expansion are silly. The AI, as Yin pointed out, will expend time and energy (and attempt to violate your borders) in order to plunk down cities that are on bad terrain/are too far away from his Cap. to be useful/will be assimilated by your culture anyway. If there is a scrap of land ANYWHERE, the AI will build a city there.

- I personally wonder how the AI seems to get to islands in the middle of nowhere so quickly (especially when they are using only galleys) in the game. It would be nice to stumble upon a small piece of empty land (say big enough for 4-5 cities) during the Industrial era... ala colonial times.

- Regarding kicking people off your land... in my latest game I didn't have a problem, really. I managed to prevent them from walking through my territory to found cities (the zulus tried no less than 6 times). I think what helped was that due to the geography, in order to get by me they had to get through a bunch of territory. If the border was only, say... three squares deep, they probably could've just waltzed right on through.

- Slightly off the topic of the thread: colonies. Twice now I've built a colony in neutral territory in order to gain access to a key resource. This was because the surrounding land was pretty bad and thus not worthy of a city. The AI came along a little while afterward and plopped down a city one square over from the colony, thus swallowing the colony. Apparently, this is totally kosher. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing... but my initial reaction was WTF!

-Arrian

[Ralf]

Originally posted by yin26
1) "Continguous City Borders" -- CCBs

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

The way you describe this problem (havent played the game yet) certainly sounds alarming. I have no problem with completely occupied modern-era maps (on the contrary; I hated those large areas of Civ-2 style no-mans-land) - but the expansion must be slower and more natural for all participants.

An alternative to above "Continguous City Border" idea, could also be that a new city cannot be founded unless its road-connected to another city.
In other words; you must prepare in advance, by building a road from an already existing city to that prefered city-placement. As the icing of the cake; you found that new city in conjunction to the newly built road.
The first city on islands/continents previously uninhabited by your people, is obviously excused.

[Arrian]

one more thing...

I almost forgot...

I was pondering the AI's tendency to violate the human player's borders when something occurred to me - have you ever mistakenly ordered a combat unit to move into an AI unit? Remember what happens? There is a pop-up box which gives you two options: 1) Oops, didn't mean that; and 2) Yes, KILL!

Simple solution: same thing w/borders. "Supreme leader, such a move will violate the sovereign territory of China, and will lead to a major international incident." 1) Oops. 2) Consequenses Shmonsequences!

This would obviously have to apply to the AI as well as the human player. Thus, borders would act as barriers, unless you are willing to invade.

This makes the most sense to me... after all, civilian airliners have been shot down in real life because they strayed into the wrong airspace.

-Arrian

[libredr]

Another solution

I like these two ideas to prevent ICS. There are other solutions however.

There is an Open Source/Free version of Civ which is called Freeciv (http://www.freeciv.org), which is an excellent clone of civII for Win, Linux, and other OSes. They have also worked on ways to prevent ICS (they call it "smallbox") by increasing the number of unhappiness citizens when the number of cities is too important and/or they are too close. They have completely solved the ICS issue. The whole thing is explained on http://www.freeciv.org/tutorials/nopox.html However, I like your idea to use borders.

What is funny is that Civ3 will have an "open source" rule improvements from now (hope so !). If, like for Freeciv, Firaxis uses the ideas and critics found in this forum, the game could be really brilliant. IMO, they are too far away of the "Civ" game style, e. g. I don't like the planes movement system : I prefered to move the airplanes myself... But I love borders.

[Admiral PJ]

Well I suppose having to join your cities together for new cities would be good, perhaps something to do with far colonies being too expensive to maintain unless you have a leader :doitnow: or something better (like a famous explorer/christopher columbus /James Cook for new zealand etc).

A game that did this was Birth of the federation, by having a 'fuel' limit to how far you could travel with medium class ships, which included settler colony ships so you had to make outposts and other colonies nearby before you could settle.

[eMarkM]

I disagree that anything needs to be changed, though the idea of far off cities going barbarian is interesting. Many have made points that you need to defend your borders and this has worked for me. Not everytime, of course, but I keep my eyes peeled for those pesky little settler/warrior combos and rush units over to out flank 'em. Not just from coming into my empire, but trying to claim those open spaces between our empires that are open to all. Often they retreat back into their own territory even if they can normally slip by w/o ZOC. This is very compelling early game action that NEVER occurred in Civ2. Far from being annoyed, I like this feature.

A lot of people saying the AI builds cities in "silly" spots like mountains, tundra and jungles. In Civ2, no one built cities in these areas and they would remain unclaimed throughout the game. But with strategic resources, there's no such thing as a silly spot to claim territory. Jungle, mountains, tundra, desert and other "silly" terrain is where the great bulk of strat resources lie. Look at the terrain table in the manual and see what kind of terrain they appear in. Grassland with a shield and a river next to it is great, but you're not going to find uranium there. Oil, for example only appears in desert, tundra and plains. So that ugly, unproductive spot of desert you don't want may be unappealing now, but when the civ that claims it has the only petro on your continent, you'll be kicking yourself for not having in your borders.

e

[Admiral PJ]

I like the idea of needing roads connecting land before you settle a city.. I might add that in my big game i'm making

Some games like MOO have different nearby settlers and remote settlers, this might work here.. use pioneers for distant settlements.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Soren Johnson Firaxis


There is a system in place to determine when you can just warn the AI to get out and when you can demand that they get out in lieu of war. It depends on the number of turns they have been in your territory, how close they have come to your cities, how many of the units are combat units, whether they are on land or sea, etc. At any rate, the AI follows the same rules you do in this regard... it can only demand that you get out if your incursion has reached the "second level."

Thanks for checking in, Soren.

I'm glad that the AI follows the same rules.

[Stuie]

Double post! Bah!!

[Ralf]

Originally posted by Admiral PJ
I like the idea of needing roads connecting land before you settle a city...

I think this road-connected newbie-cities idea could be easy to implement a an option. After all; its not that big difference, game-mechanically speaking, if a colony must be road-connected in order to produce output, compared with a city that must be road-connected in order to produce output, is it? Of course, the AI must be able to adjust, of course.

A compromize would be: Lets say you could found a city anywhere, but unless its road-connected (or harbour-connected) it wont grow beyond 1 pop.

I think this idea would solve Player3:s argument as well:
"Consider the following situation: you start a game where there are two areas rich in resources separated by a natural barrier of mountains and jungle. Many players would rush to build citys on both sides of the barrier and later link them with roads. This would be impossible with CCBs"

[Ralf]

Double-post. Sorry!