Offical Civ III Webpage Updated!!

[Wazell]

I'd like to know if the current difference in settler food consumption between ancient and modern governments is still there. It's now somewhat easier to ICS in monarchy than under other governments because settlers only eat 1 food. However the difference is not too big if they're only used for founding a city, when those settlers actually used for land improving strained city growth for a long time. So if in Civ3 settlers will eat two times more food than workers, it's the right way to go.

Another thing naturally is that now city founding becomes more expensive, which means that if military costs remain unchanged, peaceful builder civs will have MUCH trouble against aggressive warriors. This would lead Civilization becoming another wargame, and that's bad. Make wars realistic, make them really expensive, and we'll have a civilized game.

[jglidewell]

It is starting to get interesting.

• The culture value of your civilization directly affects your borders (among other things). This encourages even the most war-prone players to invest in the culture of their civilization.

Question, what are the among other things?

ICS is effected by Trade as well now. If you don't have the resource and the interconnecting transportaion it will be hard to defend that isolated city now.

The goto will improve the game 100%. (should have been in civ II)

Also, I am extremly happy that the design is now adding the slipery idea of culture in the game

[This message has been edited by jglidewell (edited April 09, 2001).]

[dennis_caver]

quote: Originally posted by Father Beast on 04-09-2001 02:43 AM Maybe I'm missing something, but why is that people complain about civ being too easy to beat, then when something comes along to fix the great ICS (The Civ equivalent of the RTS tank rush. all build and no brain), then we complain that playing without ICS is BOOORING? I can't win at king, and that's probably because I don't ICS. I love my cities. building up my first city to something useful before I expand is a labor of love. "Dang it, why'd they take out the civ1 settler cheat? it's the only thing that made the game fun!" Oh, Please

Hi Myopic Beast,

If you reread my post I didn't say anything about ICS. After doing
ICS a couple of times and conquering the AI around year 1000AD, I
don't use ICS. I usually use what I call TCS for fun. (Targeted
city strategy). The idea here is to have fun winning the game. And
having fun in each era of the game. Build an empire, enjoy making
great cities, and of course conquering Rome with a pack of Elephants.

My point was that, depending on implimentation, the first part of the
game could be so slow that you might as well skip it. Pushing the
next turn button trying build an empire until the year 500AD isn't
what I call fun.

Someone else made a point that 3 cities of 4 pop is more effective
then 1 city of 12 pop. Unless were are playing a fantasy game this
is how the real world works. 4 small cities have a large advantage
in trade and a smaller advantage in production, military and
science. In the real world most nations start with alot of small
defendable cities and later progress to a mixture.

Also the beginning of the game could be made a little more realistic
by adding some barbaric things humans did to each other. CTP added
slavery. How about in the early governments you could add tribute.
If one city decided not to pay tribute then the local chief/Lord had
the right to either wipe out the rebels or move some of their pop
to his favorite city. Trading between cities could include horses,
weapons and females. Not only could you have barbarians but you
could have cannibal raids. People could live in temporary shelters
like nomads.

Cavin forever,
Dennis

[Ralf]

quote: Originally posted by dennis_caver on 04-09-2001 04:01 PM Someone else made a point that 3 cities of 4 pop is more effective then 1 city of 12 pop. Unless were are playing a fantasy game this is how the real world works. 4 small cities have a large advantage in trade and a smaller advantage in production, military and science.

Tokyo alone is (or at least was before the japanese economic recession in the 90:ies) more powerful, industrially and economicly, then Great Britain is. Just thougt I should mension that.

Anyway, its important (in order to combat BAB: the Bigger-Always-Better problem) that a really small, but well-cultivated late-game empire, of lets say only 6-8 cities, is compensated by the benefit of building really huge 25-30+ sized mega-cities, thus generating great wealth. A benefit that any huge empire consisting of 25-30+ founded cities + even more conquered, simply shouldnt have.

I dont care about real-world comparisons - its a question of game-balance. And doing something about the BAB-problem. Poll: Strategy-game or world-history simulator

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited April 09, 2001).]

[ChrisShaffer]

quote: By the mid- to late-game, however, you can expect people to be 'booming' (ICS-ing) as they always have with very little changes overall. So what if my size 18 city drops to 16 so I can start a new city? There's virtually no reason NOT to do so (unless there are other factors at work here we haven't been told). This might add just a bit more strategy as the WHEN to ICS, but the necessity to ICS (at least against a human player) is still with us.

This raises a very interesting question. I hope they eliminate population booming. No more WLT*D please. You'll care about that drop from 18 to 16 if you can't pop-boom it back to 18 and it takes you 75 years to grow those people back.

[Sirotnikov]

quote: Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui on 04-07-2001 10:58 PM Hence the ICS problem. By making a settler worth 2 population points you counteract the free 'production tile' (thanks Ralf) that each city gets. The previous Civ2 model lent itself to cheating simply because 10 cities of size 1 were much better than a city of size 10. Why? Because those 10 cities of size one combine for 20 producing tiles because of the free production tile for the city square. This is a cheat... A BIG cheat.

Well ok, so eliminate the extra worker.

I'm not talking about ICS when you base all your empire on 30 size 3 cities. I'm talking about the fact that it is only logical to have the expansion come before developing your civilization, that is you first make all your cities build settlers and when your reach enough or a certain time limit passes you stop.

My personal way is about 3 - 5 settlers for each new city. Ofcourse if the city isn't fit for that it builds buildings. And the later cities stop building settlers.

Planned expansion is the early normal step of civ simply because building new cities after a certain time is already ineffective as I explained in my previous post.

What they did does hurt ICS but also severely hurts the expansion phase. Sure some people play and stay in expansion mode until the end of the game, for which they are penilized with unhappyness.

However if we hurt the expansion time, when the time comes for developing city infrastructure around your empire you don't have enough cities to support your empire.

Sure it could be tweaked so 7 cities are considered a big empire. That's how it was in CTP. But it is very boring and not believeable. I don't want to have each city as a province. I want 6 provinces with 4 cities each.

[yin26]

Yes, I share those concerns as well. I think the expansion phase will have to be delayed, which is fine if other interesting things are put in to compensate.

[Imran Siddiqui]

quote: OK, Yin, the strategy of cranking out hundreds of cities will still be an option. I don't think that's what we mean about ICS. to me ICS is is the phenomenon where 5 size 1 cities have a lot more production than 1 size 5 city. It all depends on whether you have the free city tile or not.

I totally agree. Perhaps Yin thought of something else as ICS. I mainly consider it to be the 'free' production tile.

quote: Planned expansion is the early normal step of civ simply because building new cities after a certain time is already ineffective as I explained in my previous post.

But historically, you had city states in the beginning that later on decided to expand outward. This idea allows that by curtailing early expansion (which I thought was a definite problem in Civ2).

[Father Beast]

Simpson-
Looking at the city screen in the CGW preview, it seems that in a city with 16 heads, only 16 food is eaten. That would mean the growth at the beginning is still a factor to reckon with, and it isn't slow (and BOORING).
if so, the one food per citizen actually allows for faster growth at higher pop levels, interestingly enough.