Getting Rid of ICS - No free centre square

[Aeson]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Yes Aeson, but you're twisted.

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

Only 1 Settler. On turn 6 if I remember correctly. I'm pretty sure that 1 Settler is the limit from huts using the 'fixed' 1.17f .bic file. The Settler speeds up expansion by about 15 turns.

That max cities of 512 is just about the only real limitation on ICS (other than map size of course)... been razing cities like mad trying to keep room for my Settlers!

[notyoueither]

Ahhh.

New Improved ICS. Now with Ethnic Cleansing!
Get Your's Today.

I wonder what they'll do to patch that.

[Grrr]

The so manyith time we've discussed this. BAD IDEA. Civ is ICS. Civ without ICS is stupid.

[Dominae]

I'll just jump in here for a quick comment. I think the simplest solution in this case is the best one: put an upper limit on the number of cities your empire can have based on government type (and, of course, map size).

This solution would leave the game essentially unchanged for those of us who never employ ICS (assuming the max number of cities figures are well-tested), and completely eliminate ICS for everyone else.

The max number of cities would be low enough to prevent ICS but high enough to give all players something to work with (I like making Worker factories, for example). Democracy and Republic would allow the most freedom in this regard, meaning that builders would be advantaged for buidling cities (which seems right).

Note that the cap is on the number of cities that you can build, not that you can have; a Settler can never build a city beyond the max, but you can gain cities in other ways (conquest and culture).

Any solution that changes the rules of the game simply won't happen, because the rules are already really good (and well-tested): the rate of growth of cities is perfectly balanced to keep the game interesting in the early game. Slowing down the pace of the game is a job for QA, and I think they've already done their job.

So, my vote is for number of city caps.


Dominae

[Grrr]

Dominae is right, and the way he's thought it out, it won't be like CtP in which on will lose lots of happiness in the late game. However there needs to be a government which doesn't have this cap, otherwise, in the late game, it becomes impossible to get that resource.



Another solution is to have the cap lifted by population. In that, if you have an average city size of 6, you can build cities, but if your average city size is 1 or 2 you can't. This wouldn't apply to the early game though.

[Dominae]

Grrr, I was thinking that under Democracy there would be no cap to the number of cities, but even that could become sort of a problem. The game goes along fine until Democracy, then BANG you build Settlers like crazy and backfill your entire empire. The advantages of doing this are clear, making the strategy a no-brainer. Essentially, ICS would be delayed until Democracy.

I think the solution rests on the exact numbers for the caps. Take a game for an average player who only builds cities 4 tiles apart (on average), and count the number of cities after expansion is over. Increase this number by, say, 25%. Then this cap prevents ICS completely, but gives opportunities to those players who want to "suck the land dry" (I miss The Hive).

Tweaking the numbers to be just right could result in the same game, just without ICS.


Dominae

[Dominae]

I guess if you really wanted to ICS sometime (after all, some players do like ICS), you could tie the "no city cap" to a Small Wonder or something, which would only be available sometime during the Industrial Age (preferably later).

Anyway, this is just wishful thinking, because major changes like this simply do not belong in patches.


Dominae

[Grrr]

Or just put it in the editor. That would make it easy enough to change.

[Austin]

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

This is EXACTLY what I am talking about. In just about every single Civ game I've played the entire world is carpeted with cities barring one or two isolated islands. This simply did not happen in the real world till the industrial age because there are a lot of barriers to urbanization that can only be solved with more advanced technology, or really really favorable conditions that are not all that common.

Under Civ a civilization barely out of the stone age can carpet the entire world with cities given enough time (and it actually doesn't take very long). This simply could not have happened in the real world, and it's boring to boot.

What we should be seeing in the ancient and medieval eras is not being able to plunk a city anywhere the hell you want (except a large swath of mountains), but for there to be limits to what land is useable. As you advance your technology and get more advanced social models (governments) land that was previously unuseable becomes open for colonization.

So instead of the game being "landgrab, then exponential growth, then fighting because the world is full" there should be smaller more progressive landgrabs as technology advances. What we have now is not only unrealistic, but BORING.

I'd like to see some strategic choices more involving than "nail down every last hill and dale with a settler". As it stands now there is usually little choice between developing an existing city and founding a new one. If you choose to build up a few highly sophisticated cities, and the AI chooses instead to spew settler in all directions you have to follow suit or you simply get overwhelmed.

Perhaps ICS isn't the right term for what I'm describing, but I think that this "Infinite Urban Sprawl" is a problem.

Austin

[dunk]

Wait, is everyone saying that the Earth wasn't pretty much fully populated, by which I mean settlements all over the planet by 1 AD or so? I think it was. The corruption system in Civ III was implemented so that 90% of Aeson's cities are useless.

I think everyone here agrees that the AI doesn't build enough city improvements. That's the reason the player is "forced" into ICS. If the AI was programmed to focus on improvement rather than expansion, ICS wouldn't be necessary and we could all play nice, leisurely games.

BTW, you only have to do ICS if you're trying to get a high score, which IMO is nonsense.

Oh, and BTW, you can win the game with one city, even on Deity. Read through the board.

[Austin]

Originally posted by dunk999
Wait, is everyone saying that the Earth wasn't pretty much fully populated, by which I mean settlements all over the planet by 1 AD or so? I think it was. The corruption system in Civ III was implemented so that 90% of Aeson's cities are useless.

It was populated, but not by a dense cluster of urbanization, which is the problem I have with it. Even the Roman Empire at it's height, 90% of the population lived in farms and villages. That's how I always view all those squares in Civ that are within your cultural boundary but are not part of a city.

I think everyone here agrees that the AI doesn't build enough city improvements. That's the reason the player is "forced" into ICS. If the AI was programmed to focus on improvement rather than expansion, ICS wouldn't be necessary and we could all play nice, leisurely games.

Still, the ability would remain for both AI and human to simply carpet the world with cities from day one.

BTW, you only have to do ICS if you're trying to get a high score, which IMO is nonsense.

Oh, and BTW, you can win the game with one city, even on Deity. Read through the board.

And the challenge there is deliberately letting the AI carpet the world, thus increasing the difficulty for yourself by increasing the mass you are fighting against. This isn't a new strategy setting, it's simply weighting the game in the AI's favor.

Austin

[Aeson]

The corruption system in Civ III was implemented so that 90% of Aeson's cities are useless.

Actually, those cities can produce a worker in 10 turns or a Settler in 30. Far from useless. And as the Iroquois I can switch to despotism every 40 turns, pop rush 300 Mounted Warriors (disconnecting Iron and/or Saltpeter where necessary), then switch back. Corrupt cities serve many purposes.

Consider an 'unlimited expansion' map (every city site with at least 2 tiles of 2 food or better, no actual map boundaries). Let every city be corrupt. Each of these cities can produce a Settler in 30 turns. In the 540 turns that means the number of cities can double 17 times. 2^18 = 131072, and another batch of 131072 cities would produce a Settler before the end. Of course there is the time needed for each Settler to get to their city site, which limits the turn around time in most cases. I think it still shows how valuable corrupt cities can be over the course of a game.

Combined with rushing Settlers (mostly by gold), my productive cities, and demanding cities from the AI, I can usually double my number of cities every 20 turns. Of course thats only to the point of domination, free territory, or max cities limit.

Wait, is everyone saying that the Earth wasn't pretty much fully populated, by which I mean settlements all over the planet by 1 AD or so? I think it was.

There are still vast tracts of land unsettled by humans on this earth. The smallest city in Civ III terms is 10,000 people, which many of the settled areas wouldn't even match. There weren't many settlements of over 10,000 people in the BC's.

BTW, you only have to do ICS if you're trying to get a high score, which IMO is nonsense.

Some people just enjoy maxing out efficiency in games. I've always tried to 'perfect' any game I've played at least once, just to see where the limits are. Still a lot of improvement left in figuring out Civ III

[dunk]

It's true ICS is a very powerful strategy. And, yes, the cities are far from useless for a pop-rusher (which I never do). But, I don't play that way. I only put cities in nice city spots. I've stopped playing on huge maps because there are simply too many cities and too much territory. Even large maps are too big for me. I've only had problems with the AI building cities on my borders two or three times. But, that's life. You can win Civ III all you want, but it's much more fun to play it without overexploiting the weaknesses, IMO.

[Deornwulf]

I agree with Dominae and think that the number of cities you can build should be limited by the type of government you employ. Doing so could add the Colonial Age to the game as a specific time period instead of during the entire game.

Great and Small wonders could be added to allow an empire to grow beyond the governmental limit.

Distance from capital should also be a limiting factor. One should not be able to start marching a settler unit across the board in the beginning of the game and build a city half a world away from the capital and still be considered a part of your empire. Perhaps this distance limit could even be extended to units. (Many space based civ games already have this feature). In terms of realism, it's very silly to think that a unit can instantly report on the terrain no matter how far from the nearest city that unit may be.

Colonies become much more important in the early game if empire size is curtailed. As a civilization advances and is able to expand farther, the importance of the colony diminishes.

For the empire cap to work without slowing the game down too much, the city radius would also have to be more flexible (like in CTP 2), expanding to fill the available space, maybe out to the same distance as the culture border.........but each square should belong to a specific city. The idea of switching workers around to free up those squares shared by cities to maximize their usage is just plain silly.

[Dominae]

I think we should all be clear as to what ICS actually is.

ICS is not expanding until your borders fill all the land mass in your continent (or multiple continents). If this were ICS then the AI would be guilty of using it in every single game; the AI has been programmed to get as much land as it can within its borders.

Loosely, ICS is building cities in a tightly packed fashion in order to exploit the fact that, in Civ3, more cities is better than fewer cities. This will always be true, unless the game dynamics are drastically changed.

Aeson's pop rushing example is perfect. Playing the Iroquois, I can maybe pop rush maybe 15-20 MWs in one turn (in a normal game). With the same land mass and using ICS, Aeson could probably crank out around 50 (at the same point in the game). I don't think this is a problem with pop rushing.

By the way Aeson, I'm not getting on your back here, just using you as an example because you're the only one that admits to using ICS.

Gaining more territory, even in the BCs, is fun. Rapid expansion will remain part of the game, whether it is historically accurate or not. The fun aspect of ICS, on the other hand, is dubious (hence the point of this thread).

The fact is, ICS is not really a problem as long as MP isn't around. If you don't like ICS, don't do it. If MP ever gets here, prepare to see a lot of urban sprawls if ICS still exists.


Dominae