Getting Rid of ICS - No free centre square

[Capt Dizle]

Korn made a great post about ICS and why it was fixed sufficiently. I think I agree with him. True infinite city sprawl is building cities in a checkerboard pattern only one tile apart and is not nearly as overpowering a strategy in Civ3 as in previous games.

[Capt Dizle]

ICS and REX are too different things.

[Capt Dizle]

Korn post pasted without his knowledge or permission:

agree with many of your takes on the game and have tried to fix those things in the blitz mod, but you got one completely wrong

quote:

30 - ICS has become even more a horrible necessity than it was in civ2. REX compounds the problem. Players used to work like hell to secure that perfect setting for a city; a river running through it, a nice patch of grassland, rich resources within hinterland radius… now it just doesn’t matter. Filling up the map is an immediate necessity, and it doesn’t matter where you choose to settle. Huge mistake.



civ3 fixed ICS and you should take it off of your list, here's why:

ICS worked because it exploited the rules in civ2, REX is completely different, and it doesn't present the same game breaking problems as ICS in civ2 did, ICS was a problem that ruined civ2, REX is easy to fix

but if you want a more comprehensive breakdown of ics, here you go
_____________________________
1) It exploited the growth rules. Ten size one cities grew much faster than one size ten city.
2) It exploited the unit support rules. Ten size one cities supported far more units than one size ten city.
3) It exploited the production rules. Ten pop points worth of settlers would give the player an equivilent of twenty pop points worth of production.
4) It exploited the happiness rules. Ten size one cities were far happier than one size ten city.
5) It reinforced the bigger is always better philosophy. No matter how many cities you had, a few more always made your stronger. The only limit to expansion was the player's patience
6) Once you started ICS it was self sustaining. Using ICS principles to continously churn out settlers meant that each settler came faster and faster since settler production was limited only by shields.

Civ3 has implemented various solutions to most of the exploits so that it really takes away the power of exploits.

1) Each city level has a fixed size food box which completely eliminates the smaller cities grow faster exploit. A size ten city in Civ3 with a granary takes the exact same amount of food to grow as a single size one city without a granary does.
2) With the different support levels for each city size means that larger cities aren't as poor support wise as what they were in Civ2.
3) In Civ3 it takes twenty pop points worth of settlers to give you the equivilent of twenty pop points worth of production.
4) No changes here
5) Corruption kicks in after you go beyond the optimal number of cities. This means that infinite expansion can slow your overall rate of production down.
6) Population limits means that in Civ3 continuosly churning out settlers isn't an advantage.

[Ribannah]

[1] Ten small cities still grow significantly faster, because you don't have to improve so much land. Once you have the Pyramids, the difference gets greater.
[2] Irrelevant, since you won't need to build so many units, or at least it's not the bottleneck.
[3] However, the city square is always good. This makes it easy enough to continuously build Settlers, or before the Pyramids with a temple/military unit in between.
[4] Ten small cities are still much easier to keep happy. Also note that marketplaces and banks now cost more shields to build and if you don't have many luxuries, they don't help much to keep large cities happy.
[5] But it's now relatively cheap to rushbuild settlers.
[6] Why?

So it boils down to this: does the increasing corruption outweigh the easy victory condition (culture) and the fact that happiness doesn't deteriorate with the number of cities? Note that culture is unaffected by corruption.

[Capt Dizle]

Well, I depise culture in Civ3 and I also think happiness from luxuries sux.

But, ICS is not a problem IMHO.

[Geoff the Medio]

# tiles worked = city pop

Why get rid of the Center tile? wouldn't it be simpler to state that instead of the current 2 food, 1 production, 2 trade, we raise the food by one and eliminate the EXTRA TILE that size one cities use. so a size 1 city ONLY works the center tile, instead of the center tile and one other.

Or just let the player pick any *ONE* spot in the city radius to work. This could be the city square if no better squares are available... but wouldn't have to be.

The city square could be made to always produce 1/1/1 more than a given terrain type would if it were irrigated/roaded/mined. This way, cities on grassland/plains would always have a square capable of supporting and growing the city. Cities on hills would be unable to grow without assitance (tile improvements in neighbouring tiles). Cities on mountains could be founded, but without a better tile available for growth, they would starve -> tradeoff for better defence, would allow cities to be surrounded and starved off -> seige warfare.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ribannah
So it boils down to this: does the increasing corruption outweigh the easy victory condition (culture) and the fact that happiness doesn't deteriorate with the number of cities? Note that culture is unaffected by corruption.

Culture is effected by Corruption in a round-about way. Corruption is a break on run-away Culture due to the inability of far-off cities to build all the Culture producing buildings.

Admittedly, not a big effect, and certainly not what you probably meant. If excessive Corruption led to negative Culture, that would be a large effect.

[Geoff the Medio]

... oh yeah...

The city square could be made to always produce 1/1/1 more than a given terrain type would if it were irrigated/roaded/mined.

... of course having no extra tile worked would cause a problem if the city went into unrest... what with it then starving...

maybe the city square should produce 2 more food than a normal tile would... and no size 1 city should go into unrest.

maybe reduce the 2 extra food to 1 for a size 7+ and no extra food for 13 + city size... (and increase commerce according, as someone suggested)

the extra food kinda makes sense too... you can do more work if you don't have to trek hundreds of km/miles to get to your field

re: point 3 from points 1-6 above

Could now change back to settler = 1 pop point. makes more sense than a pop point disappearing to found the new city

[star mouse]

Here's how I would do away with the free tile:

Citizens eat 3 food
Cows, wheat and game are more common
Despotism penalty is different
Cows +2 food, +1 trade
Wheat +2 food
Game +1 food

Grasslands: produce 4 food, irrigation 6, rails 8
Plains: produce 2 food, irrigation 4, rails 6
Flood Plains: produce 5 food, irrigation 7, rails 9

Boost the production of the food-producing tiles, and you can counter ICS.

Edit: increased irrigation effect from 1 to 2.

[Az]

what is REX?

[Ecthy]

Stop spamming this place, Dal

[Az]

are you stalking me , Andreas , dear?

[notyoueither]

Ming is REX.

MarkG is REX, absolutely.

[Aeson]

Just a little screenshot for anyone who thinks ICS isn't a bit overpowered. Deity, 315 cities in 500AD.

[notyoueither]

Yes Aeson, but you're twisted.

BTW. How many Settlers out of Huts in the first 2000 years?