The ultimate ICS thread: analysis and solutions

[UltraSonix]

quote: Simple Way to Eliminate ICS: Remove the Settler unit Create another unit that can transform terrain but cannot build cities.

This has already been done in SMAC. There's colony pods for building cities, and then there's formers. This system was good because it allowed for different formers that could do different things.

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[S. Kroeze]

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 06-21-2000 01:51 AM I also don't think that a large civ needs to spend a lot on research just to preserve knowledge. Again, I am using China as a reference. The central government never had any interest in science other than astronomy, yet a large body of scientific and technical knowledge was maintained by the people.

Dear Urban Ranger,

Sometimes I really doubt if you ever in your life read one good historical study.

I am not a China specialist, but have enough knowledge about Confucianism to know that learning -which perhaps is not identical to science, but certainly is a prerequisite to it- played an essential role in this philosophical system. And compared with other religious systems, Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, it is rather rational and centres on this world as it is here and now, not on 'the other world'.

The education of a Persian boy consisted of learning to ride, to use the bow and to speak the truth. In medieval Europe it was sufficient to be a Christian and have a lofty pedigree to be considered fit to rule.
'A boy would learn to ride, to fight, and to hawk, the three chief physical elements of noble life, to play chess and backgammon, to sing and dance, play an instrument, and compose, and other romantic skills. The castle's private chaplain or a local abbey would supply his religious education, and teach him the rudiments of reading and writing and possibly some elements of the grammar-school curriculum that non-noble boys studied.
(source: B.W.Tuchman:'A Distant Mirror',1978;a study of the fourteenth century)

Lets compare this with China:
'The Confucianists won out over the other schools of Warring States philosophy because they claimed to be, and became, indispensable advisers to the emperor. In its broad historical context this meant, as Arthur F. Wright phrased it, that "the literate elite... had entered into an alliance with monarchy. The monarch provided the symbols and the sinews of power: throne, police, army, the organs of social control. The literati provided the knowledge of precedent and statecraft that could legitimize power and make the state work. Both the monarch and the literati were committed to a two-class society based on agriculture."

The Han emperors stressed the worship of Heaven as their major rite and also maintained hundred of shrines to deceased emperors, but their high officials at court became most concerned with the precedents set by former rulers as recorded in the classics. Han Confucianism came into its own when the imperial academy was founded in 124BC. The Han emperors, who had already asked for talented men to be recommended for examination and appointment, now added classical training to the criteria for official selection, plus written examinations in the Confucian classics. By the mid-second century AD, 30,000 students were reported at the academy, presumably listed as scholars, not resident all at once.

The examination system became an enormous and intricate institution central to upper-class life. During a thousand years from the Tang to 1905 it played many roles connected with thought, society, administration, and politics.

The first two Song emperors built up the examination system as a means for staffing their bureaucracy. The yin privilege by which higher officials could nominate their offspring as candidates for appointment still operated to make the official class partly self-perpetuating. But where the mid-Tang had got about 15 percent of its officials from examinations, the Song now got about 30 percent. Song examiners tried to select men ready to uphold the new civil order, who would be "loyal to the idea of civil government,", says Peter Bol (1992).

A declining rate of success was shown in the legislated pass-fail ratios as the number of candidates grew: 5 out of 10 were allowed to pass in 1023, 2 out of 10 in 1045, 1 out of 10 in 1093, 1 out of 200 in 1275. As more competed, fewer passed.

Thus, becoming classically educated and taking the examinations had become a certification of social status, whether or not one passed and whether or not one became an official. An exemplary community study by Robert Hymes (1986) traces how growth of the scholar class far outstripped the growth of state posts, leaving most examination degree-holders unable to enter the professional elite of the civil service. Among the 200,000 registered students, about half were candidates for examination in competition for about 500 degrees that would let them enter the civil service of, say, 20,000 officials. Thus, the road to office was blocked for most students. In this situation the growth of rural market communities with their need for local leadership attracted scholars to their home localities. An elite family's status in southern Song began to depend less on office-holding by a family member and more on the family's wealth, power, and prestige in the local scene.'
(source: J.K.Fairbank :'China: A New History',1992)

You could only defend your position by restricting science to the exact sciences and technology. I don't have literacy rates at hand, but China would doubtless compare very favourably with contemporary Europe. It is of course no accident that Europe experienced a 'Renaissance', a rediscovery of the culture of the Ancients, while China did not: in China this knowledge never had disappeared! But in Europe culture and learning had been neglected during a considerable time. Most kings of the Dark Age(400-1000AD) couldn't write! The Han empire was after 400 years reunited, the Roman empire remained divided for ever: the political skills of central government had been definitely lost.

You will probably argue that the larger part of this Chinese investment in education wasn't paid by the government. That would make sense, but Civ doesn't distinguish a private sector. To preserve knowledge and its application, a society is obliged to invest a great deal in education. Research is only needed to expand knowledge, but again: without education no research!

[TheLimey]

What i'm saying here... is that the 1 worker per pop HAS been tried in mods in CtP... and was discontinued, because it didn't 'work' in a real game environment.

The unhappiness model is working in a real, demonstratable environment- CtP with CD/Med Mod.

No conjecture about it.

[Urban Ranger]

quote: Originally posted by UltraSonix on 06-21-2000 02:52 AM This has already been done in SMAC. There's colony pods for building cities, and then there's formers. This system was good because it allowed for different formers that could do different things.

What I meant is to take away the ability to build cities arbitrarily. No settlers, colony pods, whatever.

[Father Beast]

I'm going to ignore the history lesson by Kroeze.
I'm afraid I haven't played CTP, and due to talk, I probably won't until it becomes shareware, so I don't have the experience that TheLimey talks about. but I do have opinions:
while not universally loved, I believe the banishing of the extra worker square is the key. the problem of difficult terrain can be dealt with.
start by setting the food eaten by citizens to 1, not 2.
city square is automatically irrigated, so hills and plains (and tundra?) produce 2 food, which will cause growth.
assume that your citizens clear the land, so building in a forest square will turn it to plains, jungles and swamp turn to grassland. (This is something that always bugged me in civ2. I'm tempted to build a city in a jungle surrounded by mountains or desert and watch it starve).
You can't build on a mountain or glacier square.
the deserts are a bit problematic. you build and it becomes irrigated, producing 1 food, which is just enough to feed your citizen. I actually think this is okay, even if it bothers people. in later eras, you can build a supermarket and watch your city start to grow. but in earlier times, it's less a city than an outpost. unless you want to send another settler to increase the pop.

And I think the unhappiness program is another workaround that doesn't address the problem and has its own unseen pitfalls.

[yin26]

Perhaps, then, part of the solution is to have "City Expansion" be a kind of government policy. In other words, at different times in the game and according to the kind of government you have, ordering a new city to be established would first require the requisite materials. And, given the distance the new city would be from the capitol and other such factors as proximity to an enemy/ally/unknown territory, etc., the price of the city would change. So you pay the money, wood, oil etc. and a city pops up in the selected location (no settler unit required).

By tying expansion with your OVERALL economic ability, there will necessarily be a limit to how fast you can expand. And with increasingly costly cities, you can either spend huge amounts on expasion and ignore military, or try to balance.

If done well, certain government types would be labled "expansionists" or "isolationists" etc., reflecting how costly (or cheap) it is for them to make new cities.

Early in the game, of course, this expansion should be relatively cheap, but toward middle and end game, adding a new city under most government types should be prohibitively costly such that one simply cannot wage war and expand at the same time, thereby making sustained peace quite an important part of having time to expand. This, in turn, would make the diplomacy model far more open to crucial decisions:

"We have learned of your expansion toward our border. We ask that you either disband this city or sign a permanent peace treaty with us and join in our fight against the Greeks, for which we ask that no fewer than 15 chariots be sent to our capitol city as a sign of good faith. Refusal on this matter will result in war within [10(?) game turns]."

HOWEVER, please (Firaxis) don't make the game harder simply by making all the AI civs want to kill you for no good reason. Sure, make them harder negotiators, but not madmen. And don't let them cheat with resources, either--though perhaps they can get **ahem** "productivity bonuses" at a higher level.

[Urban Ranger]

Warning: Essay Ahead!

S. Kroeze,

Though I don't like to read essays I read through yours anyway. You didn't establish a strong enough case to counter my point.

"Sometimes I really doubt if you ever in your life read one good historical study."

No. Yes. Maybe It depends on what you mean by "good." Although John King Fairbank is supposedly a Chinese specialist, he really isn't as good as Joseph Needham. Have you read Needham's magnum opus Science and Civilization in China? You don't have to read more than the first book to see my point.

Or maybe you prefer to go to the primary sources: the Chinese history books? You can get by by having just Sheu Gi (trans. The Annals of History), which records Chinese history from the legendary times to the Han dynasty, and the 25 Histories, the totality of the 25 official (read: compiled by imperial historians) history books. These are considered to be authoritative sources by scholars.

"I am not a China specialist, but have enough knowledge about Confucianism to know that learning -which perhaps is not identical to science, but certainly is a prerequisite to it- played an essential role in this philosophical system."

You are entirely correct that learned men are revered in this system. The social ranking -- unofficial, of course -- in ancient China was: scolars, peasants, laborers, and merchants. Alas, the sort of learning required had nothing to do with science and technology. It was all literature, ethics, Confucianism, etc. Sadly, knowing how to write flowery prose was more important than knowing how to build a steam engine.

"And compared with other religious systems, Christianity, Islam or Buddhism, it is rather rational and centres on this world as it is here and now, not on 'the other world'."

This is to be expected, as Confuscianism is not a religion.

"'The Confucianists won out over the other schools of Warring States philosophy because they claimed to be, and became, indispensable advisers to the emperor."

Sounds facinating, but unfounded in facts.

1. There was no emperor per se during the Warring States, as there was no central government to speak of. The various "kings" and "lords" and "archdukes" were a bunch of warlords jockeying for power.

2. During the time of the Warring States there were at least 10 major schools of philosophy. Confuscianism was only one of them, albeit one of the Big Three. The other two were Taoism and Fa' ("Law").

3. The Confuscians made bad advisors since they were bad strategists and their lieges got beaten. During the Warring States the lords had no use for talks such as propriety, as that would give them no edge in their struggles for power.

4. The first unified China, under Qing, was not a Confuscian state. The emperors relied on the Fa' people as advisors.

5. The first three emperors of the Han dynasty did not revere Confuscianism. They were taoists, more or less, and rightly so. The idea of letting the country to heal itself was correct for the time, after hundreds of years of ravages of war.

"In its broad historical context this meant, as Arthur F. Wright phrased it, that "the literate elite... had entered into an alliance with monarchy. The monarch provided the symbols and the sinews of power: throne, police, army, the organs of social control. The literati provided the knowledge of precedent and statecraft that could legitimize power and make the state work. Both the monarch and the literati were committed to a two-class society based on agriculture."

Sounds reasonable, and has some basis in fact. However, this misses the one major point of Confuscianism: predestination.

It had been found a very useful tool to control the populace. This was the opiate of the masses: He is an emperor because he was born that way. You are a peasant because you were born that way. This is all destiny. You cannot fight destiny.

Anybody who accepted this would be a lot less inclined to start a revolt even when the going gets rough, until he has nothing left to lose.

Also, there were four major social classes, as I pointed out above (the social classes were different during the rule of Mongols, even the Manchurians accepted this Confuscian classification).

"The Han emperors stressed the worship of Heaven as their major rite and also maintained hundred of shrines to deceased emperors, but their high officials at court became most concerned with the precedents set by former rulers as recorded in the classics."

Kroeze, where did you get all this from?

1. There are, and were, no shrines to deceased emperors. There are shrines, however, to individuals whom the people thought as great men (mostly).

2. The Heaven had always been viewed as the ultimate seat of power in China. People would do anything to link themselves with the Heaven to legitimize their actions. Ancient emperors had been doing that for a long time. So that's not something new the Hans emperors did.

"Han Confucianism came into its own when the imperial academy was founded in 124BC."

Never heard of that before, if by "academy" you refer to a place of learning, complete with students and teachers.

"The examination system became an enormous and intricate institution central to upper-class life. During a thousand years from the Tang to 1905 it played many roles connected with thought, society, administration, and politics."

I see the examination system as on the periphery, even in its completed form, starting in the Song dynasty.

It was as a selection process for mandarins (officials for the central burreaucracy). While this was an important role in its own right, the significance of the examination system should not be overestimated. Afterall, most of the population was content being the peasantry.

"The yin privilege by which higher officials could nominate their offspring as candidates for appointment still operated to make the official class partly self-perpetuating. But where the mid-Tang had got about 15 percent of its officials from examinations, the Song now got about 30 percent."

There was virtually no other entrance other than the examination system ever since the Song dynasty. Sure, a high ranking official could use influence to get some of his friends, sons, newphews, etc., to be appointed, however, since there was an entire department (similar to human resources departments we have today) in charge of such matters, and the head of this department is the equivelant of a secretary or minister, the percentage of such appointments, as compared to those got in through exams, was very small. There were a total of 6 deparments (HR, Defense, Labor, Justice, Traditions & Propriety, Home/Interior), and a couple higher then these ministers, there weren't more than 10, 15 officials who had enough clout for such influences. The higher the position, the more clout was needed.

Selection criteria: fluency with the Confuscian classics.

There were three parts to the exam. The prelimary test (Village Test) took place in villages. Those who passed this one is eligible is known as Shou Chi. They had certain previledges and were eligible to register for the second part of the exam.

The second part of the exam took place at provincial capitals. Those who passed this part are known as G'hu Yin. They were eligible to register for the final part of the exam, and could be appointed as petty officials.

The last part of the exam took place in the imperial palace. Those who passed are known as G'hun Xe ("g'hun" = "becomes", "xe" = "an official"). They were those who wer eligible for appointments. The men who ranked first, second, and third have special titles. The numero uno might also be offered marriage to one of the princesses.

"A declining rate of success was shown in the legislated pass-fail ratios as the number of candidates grew: 5 out of 10 were allowed to pass in 1023, 2 out of 10 in 1045, 1 out of 10 in 1093, 1 out of 200 in 1275. As more competed, fewer passed."

While I agree with you on principle, I am very curious as to where you got those figures from. They look too exact to be real.

Thus, becoming classically educated and taking the examinations had become a certification of social status, whether or not one passed and whether or not one became an official."

IIRC, a man had to pass the first part of the exam to have an elevated social status: he became a scholar, head of the pack.

"Among the 200,000 registered students, about half were candidates for examination in ompetition for about 500 degrees that would let them enter the civil service of, say, 20,000 officials."

1. Registered students: IIRC, no such thing, unless you mean "students registered for the coming exam." Most students do their studying at home, as a lot of them came from poor families.

2. Those who passed exams could be hired by merchants (as a family teacher, accountant, advisor, etc.) or become aides to local officials.

"An elite family's status in southern Song began to depend less on office-holding by a family member and more on the family's wealth, power, and prestige in the local scene."

This is only partly true. As a local official is a minor despot, being judge, jury, executioner, and administrator, all rolled into one, anybody who wished to hang on to wealth had to have some kind of "protection."

"You will probably argue that the larger part of this Chinese investment in education wasn't paid by the government. That would make sense, but Civ doesn't distinguish a private sector. To preserve knowledge and its application, a society is obliged to invest a great deal in education. Research is only needed to expand knowledge, but again: without education no research!"

Maybe we should create a new category of civ wide spending named education? This would make sense.

[Father Beast]

OK, if we're throwing out the idea of hitting at the root of ICS, here's another idea.
I think it was raingoon who came up with this in another thread. (if not, I'm sorry, please correct me.)

the idea was that you not only had to assimilate conquered cities, you also had to assimilate your own population in newly founded cities. If you failed to do that, they might rebel and set up their own kingdom.

[S. Kroeze]

Dear Urban Ranger,

Thanks for your quick and detailed response! It seems our opinion on the essentials does more agree than it seemed.

I have to say though, that discussing things with you is extremely difficult because I think you don't read very carefully. Did you recognise the fact that my post was about 75% citation, mostly of Fairbank? When he really wrote such a bad general textbook about China as you think he did, I would invite you to write a better one and publish it. At least he (and I) did our homework: we do give our sources, which you never do; you just play the all-knowing Oracle, which isn't scientific at all and makes all serious discussion impossible. We once had a collision about the Manchus in China, where I had used the Britannica, which did more or less support my view. From your reaction I could see that you hadn't understood my main point and only tried to attack the Britannica on details. Of course a general Encyclopaedia has mistakes in it and as a rule hasn't included the most recent research. I would say: search for studies that do support your view -or even better- publish an article in some respected journal. Though I am very busy, I would take the time to read it.

I once asked if you could recommend a better study than the Cambridge History of China. You didn't react at all, so I still can't check your sources, which would be essential for a serious historical debate. Many users of the forum here obviously don't like long posts, but I still think that for clarity of discussion it is essential to have the possibility to know how someone arrived at a particular conclusion. Fairbank gives his source: the study of Robert Hymes. Because I am not lazy I'll give you the complete bibliographical details:
Robert P. Hymes: 'Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and Southern Sung' (Cambridge UP,1986), which studies a local community of elite families

And of course you missed my main point:

quote: Learning -which perhaps is not identical to science, but certainly is a prerequisite to it- played an essential role in this philosophical system. You could only defend your position by restricting science to the exact sciences and technology. I don't have literacy rates at hand, but China would doubtless compare very favourably with contemporary Europe. It is of course no accident that Europe experienced a 'Renaissance', a rediscovery of the culture of the Ancients, while China did not: in China this knowledge never had disappeared!

It seems you only value technology and exact sciences. I do not, neither does Civ: it also values thought, society, administration, and politics. In my opinion it should value literature and ethics too! Cultural unity does help to preserve political unity. Doubtless it was only one among many causes, but it certainly helps to explain why the Roman empire was never restored, while the Han empire actually was.

quote: Afterall, most of the population was content being the peasantry.

This is the sort of remarks where I begin do call into question your general understanding of history. Because any historian should know that before Industrialization
'Much more important than any human action in most people's lives were natural disasters like crop failures and epidemic outbreaks of disease. Even the sporadic ravages of armed raiders partook of the character of natural disaster from the point of view of the plowing peasants who were their principal victims. Scope for deliberate conscious action remained very small. Human beings were part of an ecological equilibrium whose impact on their survival was not cushioned by anything like our modern skills, organization, and capital. Custom and immemorial routine provided precise guidelines in most life circumstances.

Getting enough to eat was the central task of life and presented a perpetual problem for most persons. Everything else took second place. The industial basis of large-scale enterprises though real enough -public works required tools as much as armies required weapons- was a trivial element in the sense that acces to tools and weapons was seldom felt to be a real limit upon what human beings could or did undertake.

The commercialization, followed in due season by the industrializaion, of war began to get under way, in a more meaningful sense, only after 1000AD. The transformation was slow at first; it attained runaway velocity only in very recent centuries.'
(source: W.H.McNeill:'The pursuit of Power',1983)

Summarized: Most people (peasants) had no other choice than to work constantly just to ensure survival. War, education, research, art, public works, government was all luxury!
Remaining illiterate was no conscious decision.

When I have time I will certainly start reading J. Needham. Thanks!

It seems some posters have lost the relevance of this debate. The Eternal China Syndrom centres on the question why a very large unified empire, like China for most of its history after 221BC, didn't dominate the entire world, because in Civ it would. It would have the most research points which gives it an enormous edge on its opponents. This makes the game less interesting since the final result, an easy victory for the largest Civilization, becomes inevitable. And this is not the way history works, as China clearly shows. Around 1000AD it was far ahead in all aspects of Civilization. But the small and politically divided Europeans clearly won, for the time being. So the Joker and I developed the following idea:

quote: -Every civilization should spend part of its research points on education, just to preserve the knowledge it has: a larger civ should always spend/pay more on education just to ensure that no knowledge disappears; if it spends too little, doesn't have enough libraries, advances/knowledge will disappear (like a substantial part of the knowledge of the Romans after the Great Migration); as it has more people in it, it needs more administrators, more priests, more lawyers, more scientists just to run the empire!

It may not be the final answer, but it would certainly help to combat ECS!

Just two examples of knowledge/skills that actually did disappear in China because the government didn't support them any longer:
-the Iron industry of the Northern China during early Sung
-the Naval expeditions of Cheng Ho during the early Ming

[tobyr]

My view is that ICS is encouraged primarily by two easily correctable matters:

(1) small cities are not vulnerable enough to desturction. It should be easy to get a city started, but it should need real miltary protection to be likely to survive.

(2) Settlers and workers are the same and cost the same. It should be more expensive to build a settler that can found a new city. A worker ( who can do everything else a settler does) should cost about what a settler costs now.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[general_charles]

Hi, I haven't read all of the above, however, I'd like to put some of my ideas here:
There sure needs to be something done with the cities, the fact to base growth on other factors than food only is good, but maybe the food a civ produces should be more of a general production. Let me explain: If a city has 6 food surplus and an other has 1 food shortage, how about saying that a city which has more than 2 food surplus gives the rest into a kind of "melting pot" and it is then redistributed?
I also think that military units should have to get food, and maybe if you produce too many units, your population decreases.
The idea to merge several cities together seems a bit ridiculous, it means that if you take one by military conquest, you get all of them? What if somehow canadians took new york, would they get washington as well without an additional fight?
More to come....

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-- Capitalism slaughterer --

[Father Beast]

I just reread one of yin's comments and have another thought.
One of the problems that contributes is that new undeveloped cities generate income, but don't cost anything. with some martial law, you can have several citizens working nd generating income without having to pay out for improvements. this is increased if you have the HG or another happiness WOW.
What I'm thinking is that new cities should be barely self sufficient in income until some improvements are built. the idea of having to almost support a new city from existing ones should keep uncontrolled expansion down to size.

Oh, and Gen. Charles, The idea of excess food distributed to needy colonies was used in MOO2, but they had a different formula for growth. Right now Civ uses food abundance to stimulate growth, how would it work under your idea?

[pikachu]

I suggest that discussion of Chinese History not crucial for solving ICS be done in Off-topic forum.
Without quoting the source (don't have any on hand), Chinese science knowledge and tradecraft were preserved by Mentor-apprentice system. Literacy rate was not very high postulating from the fact that most of the Chinese were farmers. And the literates did not farm (they thought that it was below their status).
To validate, I may need to check one of the greatest library collection (Literally called Four Warehouse Encyclopedia) done in the Manchu period. I think there was not much tradecraft skills mentioned in the index of that collection.
If any of you want to employ me as a research assistant, I would gladly help you cataloguing it.

[UltraSonix]

I sorry if I seems a bit stupid, and I haven't read all of this thread, but I've read the start post by korn469 and I'm still wondering, what's wrong with ICS? It is unrealistic, but it makes the game more enjoyable and faster, because more cities = more stuff to control. Being restricted to only a few cities at the start of a game is just too boring. Please comment!

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No, in Australia we don't live with kangaroos and koalas in our backyards...

[yin26]

Growth models, unit support costs, etc. are all set according to the intended limits of the econ system. Now, if you find a "cheap" way around these limits, such as by sleazing cities all over the place all of the time, suddenly most of the challenges built into the game simply go away. What was once a tough decision simply becomes a no-brainer click as you can support almost anything anywhere anytime once enough cities are in place.

And keep in mind, as korn already nicely wrote, this can be accomplished with hardly any attention to "perfecting" your cities or making anything remotely like a careful decision. Just expand expand expand. In such a case, most things resembling strategy are tossed out the window in favor of rather mindless duplication of a rote process. Just expand expand expand. (Thought I'd repeat that for literary effect. )

Alhpa Centauri tried to remedy this situation with various penalties and government models, but the basic ICS loophole still applied.

Your basic point about wanting to handle lots of stuff and enjoy a quicker game is well-taken, but certainly there must be a more thoughtful and ultimately rewarding method put into place for Civ3 that requires more than simply creating new cities like mad at every possible turn.
[This message has been edited by yin26 (edited June 28, 2000).]