Ics

[Darkstar]

I've seen some intertesting comments on ICS so far, throughout the GGS discussions...

However, I think some people may benefit from this. Or at least consider it when designing GSS...

ICS...
ICS is designed into Civ. (And it sounds like you are designing it into GGS.) It's the foundation of the game.

ICS is created in Civ due to these design decisions:
* Cities will be the only resource processors (food, minerals, trade).
* A city may only produce one item.

Civ could have been designed to allow a bigger city to be worth more then a smaller one. But they didn't.

Cities are the GGS equivalent of regions. Which means in the early stages at least, people are going to Infinite Region Slime. (IRS! Look out!)

I see GGS taking good corrective measures down play stream... regions get BIGGER, collecting more resources to be processed, over time. But in the beginning? Colonist! Colonist! Colonist! Colonist! Send em to a good spot, and toss in your "found region/admin/control" facility. All you have done is exchanged the name City for Region. And any player that doesn't do this versus others... will be too far behind to compete. Face it. The basic model is one of geometric power growth, not linear. So those early foundings of successful regions is a heck of a lot more important then late ones.

Is that the game you are out to make? He or she that IRSes the best always wins? (Without random events to level the playing field.) Being the new village idiot, I have to ask.

If you don't want IRS, what can you do to stop it?
Well, as I said, the regions growing was definately a point in favor to trying to GROW a player's region.

Are you going to model the Civ1/2 one city makes one thing, and one thing only, during a turn? If so, your players won't have a reason to concentrate on growing the REGION... merely in making more. So that they can chug out more production.

Are you going to maintain that to get more researching done, you have to build another city? Then research oriented players will be founding new cities just to add to their nation's research potentional.

Are you going to model Civ's1/2 one city makes all the money? Again, players will then build regions just to pay for infrastructure. Go tax those serfs! Go trade your goods!

In Civ, a City is:
* Shield Harvestor, and Converter to Units/Facilities.
* Trade Harvestor, and Converter to Research/Credits.
* Research Center and refiner (libraries, colleges, etc)
* Credit Harvestor and refiner (marketplaces, stock markets, banks, etc)
* Food harvestor

And that's setting aside the fact that a city is also your unit logistics.

So... just how much IRS do you REALLY want to build into your system? I'm curious.

[VetLegion]

I posted in the thread "The return of the city" an overview of how regions will behave with an accent on why ICS will not be possible. You can reply me there why it still is?

[amjayee]

I agree with Vet, we have long since concluded that ICS will not be an issue in GGS. I will make some quick points to prove that to Darkstar and others too.

1. You don't find regions like you found them in civ. There will not be a settler system with which you could indefinitely (ok, as long as there is room left) enlarge your lebensraum.

2. The size of your empire depends on the amount of people. The population growth follows the natural growth patterns, and it cannot be boosted by building more cities/regions.

3. The number of citizens, not the number of regions, decides how much you can produce. Citizens produce workhours to build stuff.

4. You can build as much stuff as you wish (or as much you have resources, let them be either material or human resources).

5. Trade income depends on the volume of trade you have, not on the amount of cities/regions.

6. Scientific development depends only on the quality and amount of scientific work that is done, not on the amount of regions.

So, if you read our design docs and discussion carefully, regions are only a way to organize you government. All kinds of production is done by the people, so the more people, and better trained, and the more resources you have, the more you will produce. So ultimately, you benefit more by creating one good and well controlled region than lots of small ones. I hope this convinces you, I don't have the time to tell more about the game systems, but all information can be acquired from the design doc or the appropriate discussions.

[Darkstar]

Amjayee, VetLegion...

I have read your design documents throughly (and I've been digesting the contents of this forum slowly). And nowhere in them did I see anything that said what you just SAID, Amjayee. That's VERY important to put in your design docs.

From what I'd seen so far in this forum, a Region was Civ's equivalent of a CITY. So therefore, your players would just IRS.

Now, what do you mean I can't build my own cities/regions? According to what I've read in your design docs and the discussions here... yes I can. Now, whether the people will want to STAY in a city or not, that was a matter of the people model. Last I read. But you are going to have some form of Administration Control building. Which means I can indeed build regions. And tons of them. Over time, as tech improves, the small regions would merge into fewer but bigger regions.

Here's a few questions for those around. From what I have read...
THERE IS NO CONNECTION BETWEEN REGIONS. Well, not for resource sharing. People, disease, and trade. Yes. Production? No. Which means each region is its own production center. IRS... How about research? Will players be able to build a bunch of government labs in a region? If so, they'll probably stack them in clusters. If not... you are pushing your user to IRS.

What about food? How do material transport between regions? If you can transport material between regions, that would lend to less IRS... because that colony IRS with all the raw resources can ship that back to where it's needed by the production centers.

As I find active or semi active threads that discuss stuff, I comment on them. Or start new threads to ask my silly questions.

But amjayee, your points weren't listed in the docs I read on the web. Someone might want to put them up there. They may have been in the logged IRC chats or mail list archives. I haven't gone through those yet. I intend to, just a matter of time.