Ics

[MidKnight Lament]

I was having such a tussle in my head as to whether dividing by n was the same as multiplying by 1/n.

Mind blank!

It's going to be weird at first knowing how far away to place your cities. But then, that's part of the fun, I guess.

I'm really keen to hear what all the ICS experts think about this...

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- MKL
"I'm OK. How are you? Thanks for asking, thanks for asking."
Shameless Plug: http://www.poetic-license.org
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited September 27, 2000).]

[Gedrin]

I actually don't think this negatively impacts ICS, or at least I do not have enough information to really tell. All this does IMO is affect city placement... maybe... I need more info... read on.

ICS has less to do with city placement, ie how close they are and more to do with how much extra resources are produced by a city over and above what actually worked by it's workers.

The question that needs to be answered is this:
Are any tiles worked if the city has no workers at all?
If a size 1 city has 1 entertainer does it produce anything?

Dave's explaination would suggest not since in this case there would be 0/6th of the 8 tiles around the city being worked. However why 8 tiles? What about the tile the city is on? I mean that is the tile that causes ICS. It has nothing to do with what the workers are doing. They can all be off whistling Dixie.

The real crux is do 2 size 1 cities work more tiles than 1 size 2 city? I see 3 options for this city tile:
1. It is not worked
2. It is worked 100% by default.
3. It is included with the other 8 tiles.

1. If that 9th tile that the city is on is not worked then it seems like for cities on identical terrain:
2 size 1 cities work 2*8*1/6 = 2.666 total
1 size 2 city works 1*8*2/6 = 2.666 total
and ICS is dead.

2. If on the other hand the city's tile is worked 100% by default then:
2 size 1 cities work 2*(1+8*1/6) = 4.666 total
1 size 2 city works 1*(1+8*2/6) = 3.666 total
and ICS is alive and well... even though your settlers do need to travel a little further.

3. Or perhaps the city's tile is also factored in to make it:
2 size 1 cities work 2*(9*1/6) = 3 total
1 size 2 city works 1*(9*2/6) = 3 total
and again ICS is dead.

So we see that the tile the city is on must be either averaged in or not worked at all to kill ICS. It's kinda funny that if it is not worked at all you need to find the worst tile available that has good tiles around it.

Now if the tile is averaged in there is also the issue of the ENV_CITY_BONUS that some may consider contributing to ICS but in reality it does not. Settlers cost production. If they cost the same amount as the PW would cost for tile improvements to offer the ENV_CITY_BONUS then ICS is again killed and settlers are effectively FREE since they have their PW effect built into the unit. If they cost less then it is more effecient to ICS. These ENV_CITY_BONUS are absolutely necessary since otherwise the city is unlikely to grow in any reasonable period of time... unless a totally different mechanism for growth was adopted.

Another mechanism that I've always liked the sounds of is instead of collecting food it should collect happiness points. The longer you keep your people happy the faster they grow. Rations become a means to that end but only 1 of a few... The others being wages and workday... of course then martial law would not affect the happiness but simply lower the riot threshold. I've never heard of anyone feeling happier about being held at gunpoint... they get a lot less likely to throw stones but not particularly more likely to have babies.

Gedrin

[Atahualpa]

quote: A question - can you still emphasize food over production in a city (and vice versa) in the new setup (via different means, obviously), as you are currently able to do in CTP1 by moving workers?

This goes to you as well Crunch:

Reading Daves Post the situation is that all the resources of the 8 tiles of the city are added together and then divided by the number of workers. So the Production of 3 Forest Tiles + the Production of 2 Swamp Tiles + the production of 3 grassland tiles are added together and then for a size 4 city are mulitplied with 4/6. Lets assume a Forest tile has 25 production a swamp 5 and grassland 5. This would make. 3*25+2*5+3*5=100. Now only 4 workers work the terrain so this gets multiplied with 4/6 and we get 66.66667 production. So a size 4 city produces 66 production.

So I guess you wont be able to emphasize anything cause you add all Production together and divide through the number of workers and how should you be able to emphasize some tiles when ALL are added up?

Correct me if I am wrong but I think this is what Dave meant.

I think this is a good solution as you neednt care at any time how effective your city grows, because you cant increase or decrease its effectivness.

Ata

[Paul]

There are of course farmers, laborers, merchants and scientists. So you can emphasize certain resource types by assigning citizens as specialists.

[DR DOOM]

1. What does ICS stand for?
2. Removing workers seems to restrict flexability.
3. Is this a move to balance the game cause AI cann't compete well is resource allocation?(I see AI as the weakest aspect of the game overall, duh it ain't human)
4. This is the most negative "enhancement" I've heard for CTP II yet and might delay my decision to purchase.

[Atahualpa]

Ok Paul! You are right. You can still emphasize certain parts using specialists. I Forgot that. sorry.

Ata
[This message has been edited by Atahualpa (edited September 28, 2000).]

[Slax]

Ata - in your example, I think you are missing the tile the city is on, which, I assume, collects 100% of the resources it has.

[hexagonian]

It's somewhat of a challenge to take a small city and have to do some shifting of workers to get needed food or production. Currently, using specialists in a very small city is impratical, so to get some much-needed food, you have to shift a worker and sacrifice production.

With the new setup, a city will be able to draw from the surrounding tiles. Bad tiles will balance out good tiles - making management of that city a whole lot easier in the early going. (i.e., no decision-making other than what to produce)

Personally, I like having to consider other issues than what item to produce for those small cities.

A possible solution is a set of sliders that you could adjust for the percentage of workers creating food/production/gold for each city.

Example - I may have a population of 1 in a city - couldn't I delegate 50% of that worker to food, 40% to production and 10% to gold - currently it sounds like I am limited to 33% across the board.

Then you could also have a button to allocate a worker as a scientist/farmer/merchant that would bring in more for that specialty, as opposed to that specialist remaining as a worker - which is going to be implemented in CTP2

With the new setup it still looks like all a player will have to do is to look for the most defensible terrain to place his city on (in fact he would be foolish not to do so), and space his cities to allow for future growth.

The end result though will be the same - place your city in an area with poor terrain and your city will reach a point when it won't grow anymore.

[Gedrin]

The responses to Slax seem to omit the root cause of ICS which is still present in this system.

Doom: ICS is Infinite City Sleaze which is not new to CTP and has always been present in Civ style games to date because 4 size 1 cities work more tiles than 1 size 4 city. This is due to the 'free' tile worked on the city square itself. This promotes the strategy of building many many many small cities.

Slax:
Your numbers are bang on IMO.
Although I am not sure what you mean by packed... I think you mean cities spheres overlap... yep the numbers seem to indicate such.

Others: do not forget that the number of 'unit tiles' worked is equal to (1+workers*8/6) when 1<= workers <= pop <= 6.
The tile the city is on is worked 100% while the 8 tiles around it are worked only to workers/6.

In addition since big cities can no longer exclude poor tiles within the city radius, small cities may be placed with more effeciency and maintain higher average output per tile... further enhancing the ICS strategy since small areas of good terrain will always be more available than larger areas of good terrain. [easily proved since large areas can be subdivided]

The net result of all this is I expect tests will show ICS to be even more effective in this scheme than it is presently. It's a shame. On the surface I thought it would work but I am now fairly convinced it makes ICS worse.

I've given a great deal of thought to ICS and have only ever come up with 2 general ways to stop it.

1. Tiles worked is a function of pop with no free tiles. With such a change would also recommend a pop cost of 2 when building settlers and new cities start at size 2 to prevent a production -> pop loophole.

2. Low average pops result in some negative effects as compared to high average pops. Which I have mentioned that I have implemented as a BureacracyTax and PopMigration triggers (I believe I am ready to call these fully tested if anyone would like them).

Gedrin

[Gedrin]

The responses to Slax seem to omit the root cause of ICS which is still present in this system.

Doom: ICS is Infinite City Sleaze which is not new to CTP and has always been present in Civ style games to date because 4 size 1 cities work more tiles than 1 size 4 city. This is due to the 'free' tile worked on the city square itself. This promotes the strategy of building many many many small cities.

Slax:
Your numbers are bang on IMO.
Although I am not sure what you mean by packed... I think you mean cities spheres overlap... yep the numbers seem to indicate such.

Others: do not forget that the number of 'unit tiles' worked is equal to (1+workers*8/6) when 1<= workers <= pop <= 6.
The tile the city is on is worked 100% while the 8 tiles around it are worked only to workers/6.

In addition since big cities can no longer exclude poor tiles within the city radius, small cities may be placed with more effeciency and maintain higher average output per tile... further enhancing the ICS strategy since small areas of good terrain will always be more available than larger areas of good terrain. [easily proved since large areas can be subdivided]

The net result of all this is I expect tests will show ICS to be even more effective in this scheme than it is presently. It's a shame. On the surface I thought it would work but I am now fairly convinced it makes ICS worse.

I've given a great deal of thought to ICS and have only ever come up with 2 general ways to stop it.

1. Tiles worked is a function of pop with no free tiles. With such a change would also recommend a pop cost of 2 when building settlers and new cities start at size 2 to prevent a production -> pop loophole.

2. Low average pops result in some negative effects as compared to high average pops. Which I have mentioned that I have implemented as a BureacracyTax and PopMigration triggers (I believe I am ready to call these fully tested if anyone would like them).

Gedrin

[Gedrin]

Slax: Not a bad idea in principle however what happens when the pop decreases? I have not learned of any way to destroy a building with SLIC. Would be nice though.

But hey it is CTPII we are talking about... which is close enough to release for this to be a moot point anyway.

I will make my SLIC triggers available in a few days and start a thread explaining them and the impacts in the CTP-Creation forum. After all that's a far more relevant place than CTP2-General.

I will include the
BureacracyTax-gold cost/subsidy based on ave City Pop.
PopMigration-Citizen defection based on ave City Pop.
Refugees-Citizens flee to original civs cities when a city is captured.
Terrorists-Senseless violence by foreign funded radicals based on player's score vs average score (currently in testing).
Popular Uprisings-Civil Dissobedience/Loyalty based on actions by and against a civ (ideas in development).
Ah go the CTP-Creation and I'll outline my thoughts on that one now...

Gedrin

[Slax]

Gedrin - You're right. I guess with my method when population decreases the improvement's effects must stop. Like a plant shutting down temporarily.

[hexagonian]

Will this alteration be compatible with the Med Mod??????

Here's hoping it will, as that is all I play in single-player now.

[Pintello]

Hi All,

I have been following this discussion with intrest and thought I would throw in my 2 cents. My observations are as follows:

1) According to previously released information from Activision, you will be able to setup your cities to concentrate on Growth, Production, Gold, Science, etc..., from the city screen box. I suspect this is similar to the way you can currently do this in CTP, but taking the new system of resource aquisition into account. Probably what this means is that depending on what you select, the "harvesting" of your city's resources will be weighted in favor of the specified Goal.

2) There are a couple of things to consider in the ICS discussion that have not been brought up yet also. One of those things is the lower government city number thresholds. In CTP Tyranny, for example, could only support up to 12 cities I believe. In CTP, according to what Dave White said, that number will be lowered significantly. We can use the number 8 as a rough guess. That means that the most cities you can have under Tyranny is 8 before you start having upset people. This, combined with the new resource aquisition system, would encourage the development of 8 larger cities instead of 8 small cities. This would also encourage you to select your city locations carefully with maximum resource aquisition in mind.

The other issue is the Distance from Capital issue. Because of the expanding city radius, up to 5 from spaces from the city in very large cities, you will need to place your cities further apart to ensure enough future growth. The optimum distance one city needs to be from another is 10 spaces compared to just 4 spaces in the old system. To optimize the usefulness of your cities, you need to place them 2 and 1/2 further from each other than in the old system! This means that you can build fewer cities before unhappiness do to distance from capital kicks in.

I think these two things combined with the way resource aquisition is done now means that the effectiveness of ICSing is greatly reduced. In the very early game some gain can be made from this strategy, but by the later part of the early game I think Civs with fewer but larger cities will begin to out strip those with many but small cities. Especially if the Civ with the fewer cities really concentrates on growth. 5 size 6 cities would be the equivalent of 15 or more size 1 cities and a soon as you pass the size 6 treshold, the civ with the smaller cities better look out! I would also point out that even under the old CTP system, you cannot have 15 cities under Tyranny. In the new system, you may not be able to have that many cities under Monarchy either.

I look forward to hearing your responses.

Regards,

Timothy Pintello



[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited September 28, 2000).]

[Slax]

Some excellent points, Pintello.

I like the fact that the inner circle of tiles remains at 100% when going to size 7. The new tiles thus have a lower precentage of resource collecting, somewhat reflecting distance to the city.

From Dave White's post, we do not really know what ratios (the 1/6 multiplier) are used for cities larger than 6 (or do we?).

Perhaps it is in the distinction between city size classes (and this collection multiplier) that larger cities begin to win out. I don't think we know for sure from Dave's post.
[This message has been edited by Slax (edited September 28, 2000).]