Is FreeCiv more than an ICS slugfest?

[ChrisShaffer]

I'm trying to decide whether it's worth the effort to either run FreeCiv under Windows or try to get an X-Windows client to connect to my Unix account at work (something I've never done before).

However, the strategy and tips guides for FreeCiv leave me wondering.... they all seem to say "build as many settlers as you can, go for these techs, kill your enemies." Does anyone play FreeCiv in builder mode rather than warmonger mode?

[CapTVK]

Follow this thread in the FreeCivDev Archive
http://arch.freeciv.org/freeciv-dev-.../msg00199.html

[Jing]

Hi Chris,

Your suspicion is not unfounded. ICS is indeed the "official" strategy of Freeciv. You will find detailed reasons for that in the thread given above by CapTVK. I consider it a rather sorry state of affairs, and am trying to "fix" it. I think I have found a simply way of doing that, but apparently not many people agree with me.

Anyway, it's good to see more people who want to play in builder mode rather than warmonger mode. And I hope we will be able to do that in Freeciv soon.

[This message has been edited by Jing (edited January 17, 2001).]

[CapTVK]

Jing,

I've followed the thread and think you forgot to stress an important point of ICS: exponential growth a one size will always get two squares of production, a two size city has three. This means that it's far more economical to build settlers to build even more one size cities, who again build setters andsoforth. Once this 'wave' gets going there isn't much you can do.

If a player is patient and good in city management, an ICS'er will always come out on top of normal players, there's no way to counter it effectively. Players have proposed countless strategies to counter this, but there's always a catch whereby ICS wins out.

One of the ways to curve ICS is to put a limit on initial production squares if you reach a certain number of cities under a specific government. If you hit those limit you first have to build specific city improvements (granary to get food prod, marketplace to get shield/trade) to get full benefits of a square.


note:
ICS has been extensively discussed on these forums, if you want to know more about ICS (or I(nfite) C(ity) S(leaze) as it's called) do a search on the word ICS in the strategy forum or check out the great library there (all Civ2 mechanics known are also posted here). Also check out the civ3 suggestion list (this document is huge!)

[CapTVK]

P.S

Note to all Civ2 players who haven't played FreeCiv:
There's no working diplomacy model for AI players in FreeCiv at the moment. Meaning you can't make peace or alliances with the AI. So in practice this means your in a constant state of war with the AI. So if you meet an AI civ, you'll raise it to the ground. Peace is no option, only war.

And ICS is perfect for war...

[Jing]

CapTVK,

You are absolutely correct in pointing out that the root cause of ICS is exponential growth, i.e. a one size will always get two squares of production, a two size city has three, etc. We did our research on this problem, including reading the extensive discussions on ICS in this forum. I even wrote a patch to remove the free worker on the center square. There have been many other ideas and suggestions on the mailing list.

You are also correct in saying that there has to be some kind of limit when you reach a certain number of cities. And I believe the answer is (un)happiness. Of course, there is a catch in Civ2 that let you get around this. But this is easily fixed in Freeciv, and I have already submitted patch for it. Basically, leftover unhappiness factors will no longer be ignored, but has to be dealt with first before any citizen in a city can become content. This will defititely curb ICS after the initial expansion phase of the game.

[CapTVK]

Glad to hear ICS will be curbed in Freeciv, now a working diplomacy model and we're all set.

Nice to hear that the Apolyton forums are of use to the Freeciv developers. Why don't you drop by more often? We are the public that Freeciv is supposed to be for (well, as soon as there is a working windows version or if linux becomes more popular ). You can get very good feedback about gameplay issues here. If you asked a question about how to fix ICS in the strategy you would get tons of replies in a few days.

[St Leo]

Why don't you make the size 1 citizen the one in the centre square instead of removing the centre square production?

------------------
St. Leo
http://www.sidgames.com/hosted/ziggurat/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/

[Jing]

We will see what happens. And yes, diplomacy is being worked on too.

Indeed, Apolyton is a gold mine of information for Freeciv. And more and more prople are discovering Freeciv every day. And you are right again, this corner of the forum will become more active as the windows client becomes more stable and linux grows in popularity.

[Jing]

St Leo:

Actually, that was exactly what I did. In the end tho, I decided it caused more problems than it had fixed and abandoned the whole idea altogether. In any case, it is a rather major change in the basic game mechanics, and I think a less radical approach is preferred if one can be found.

[rp]

About ICS: Freeciv is very configurable and there is some experimentation going on to reduce the predominance of the ICS strategy by using existing configuration options. The main problem is: 2 cities of size 1 always produce much more than 1 city of size 2. One thing that might help is to make settlers insanely expensive, I don't think anyone has tried this yet.



About Apolyton: I think it's a great site, featurewise, but I much prefer to use my mailer or newsreader, it's much more flexible. much faster, and much less annoying. If Apolyton had a mailing list or Usenet interface I would definitely visit more often. If Freeciv mailing lists didn't already exist I would visit, too. I wonder if Apolyton have been thinking of offering a mailing list interface to the site, it shouldn't be all that hard to do.

[curtadams]

quote: Originally posted by rp on 01-21-2001 12:10 PM One thing that might help is to make settlers insanely expensive, I don't think anyone has tried this yet.

Works beautifully in Alpha Centauri. The cost of a settler determines the point at which you stop city development for territory growth. Think of a settler as just a city improvement which you can build an infinite number of. It has a cost, and a benefit - a free worked square, extra support (depending of gov't), and faster growth. A rough equivalent is 6 food, 4 shields, and a trade. If the cost is raised to the point which corresponds to that, ICS isn't a problem since settlers aren't a better deal. The benefit equates to about a marketplace, a granary, and a factory. I'd say a fair price, then, is 150-200. Note: that isn't insanely expensive, it's a reasonable price. The current cost is insanely cheap, and that's why ICS is a problem.

[Thue]

It would be cool to seperate the settler and worker abilities out into seperate units. There is more code to do that in freeciv currently, but the AI needs a little work on that point.
That would allow people to raise the cost of settlers.

Did anyone mention the possibility of making a settler cost more than one pop point?
[This message has been edited by Thue (edited May 19, 2001).]

[Darkstar]

Hummm... FreeCiv is supposed to be Civ...
OF COURSE IT'S pure ICS!

Sorry, but that's just obvious.

Unless you drop the Civ model, it will always stay that way. Civ has some extra code to make sure that the Artful Idiots war on you, but even without that, it would be a pure ICS conquest game.

If you want to make the Builder, and I don't mean "Dark Side Builders", a truly valid strategy (Ie balanced versus ICS war) then you have to destroy the Civ base. Sorry.

Civ is ICS because:
* Each city is your resource harvestor/processor (Max one)
* Each city is your production center (Max one)
* Each city is your money generator (Max one)
* Each city is your research center (Max one)
* Each city is your army support mechanism. The more cities you have, the more units you can support in the field.
* Each city can only produce ONE unit/thing.

The free bonus tile is just gravy. Without it, Civ is still ICS. Why? So you can have a horde of cities. Each city helps spread out the cost of those armies, so you can have HORDES and still chunk them out from you production centers. Run them out to other cities (waterfall is most efficent), and keep their cost from dragging down you manufactoring.

After a point, high production is useless for war. Because you can't chug out 2 units in a turn, even if you had the resources. That's just silly.

And since you want to research better then your opponents, and cities are your only research, you have to have MORE to outrace them to those important war weapons and your favorite red herrings (and those great ICS benefitter wonders).

And to pay the costs of all those buildings, you have to have cities to collect the trade that turns into gold that turns into building maintence.

The whole model FORCES you to ICS. It's part of the base design. SMAC was an ADVANCE, but the base didn't change. If a base could turn out 4 jets in a turn, in production capability, it didn't matter. You just got one jet.

To change that, you have to:
1) Make it possible to build multiple things. If I have a city making a unit, and it can build 1.5 of them in a turn, then I should get 3 of them in 2 turns. Not 2.

2) Make it possible to have seperate queues. Maybe it takes a special building (and has prerequisite of X workers/other buildings/whatever). Now, that great city of yours can now chug out multiple things. Adding in more of those, and now you have yet another more build queue.

3) Repeat that process for business (money) and research. Each business center has a greater effect. So you WANT a big city... it's where you make all your money. Not little towns...

4) Change the upper limit of tile resourcing. Big cities can actually max out, and easily. But a LARGE city utilizes far more resources then just those in easy range of it's workers to retrieve. Otherwise, it couldn't support itself. Once again, SMAC made strides in that, with it's "Supply crawlers". CtP used a simplier method as Destiny (although CtP used pop and Destiny used pop and buildings); both use expanding radius. Still, they were both limited to a set range from the city. That's now how real life works. We ship resources and bits all over the world. That's how big cities support themselves. There are plenty of methods to do this.

5) Change how war has no minuses. Right now, War is the ultimate answer to EVERYTHING in Civ style games. War should not be the final answer. If it was, more then just Alexander would have conquered the world. War has it's own repercussions. In lost people and morale, if nothing else.

6) Change the COST to maintain units. Logistics is one of the single BIGGEST limiting factors throughout history to war and army size. The main base of this is simple... it costs more to maintain a unit away from it's supply base. Make units that are to X amount away from a depot costs more to maintain! The X is based on your deployed techs. YOUR Cities (and your allies, if you have this arrangement) count as supply depots. Now, you have to build depots to field an army halfway around the world. And it costs you... enemies can make strikes on your depots and destroy your armies if you can't keep them up. Units whose maintence isn't paid deteroiate. Low morale may desert and/or dissolve.

7) go from a city state system to a NATIONAL system. This spreads out the costs of maintaining units. Research and gold are national resources already. But not armies. Going to a national system de-emphasises the city as your army support structure.

Raising the cost of settlers/pods just slows down ICS. It won't stop it. Removing the extra tile bonus won't stop it.

Without those basic changes, Civ design based games will forever be ICS. It's all about tile utilization and processing. Whether it's trade or food or shields. And the only thing that can utilize a tile is a CITY. Expansion yeilds more tiles utilized. War yields new tiles utilized while taking them away from the enemy. Ultimately, it's all about those tiles and their processing.

[Darkstar]

And there are OTHER things that can be done to address Civ1/2's over favoritism of Conqueror versus Builder. But that's another thread...