Is FreeCiv more than an ICS slugfest?

[Darkknight]

What if you make it so that not only do you need 80 or so shields and your one pop point to build the settlers you need to give them excess food maybe 50 food to get them going. This way the small cities you would have if you used ICS would probably have to wait after building the settlers before you would be able to move them. This would slow down the whole process and also entise People to build up there cities to 5 or 6 so they wouldn't have the wait.

[Thue]

But that would make it expensive to improve the land around your cities. The solution to that is to have seperate settler and worker units. I have a patch that make that possible, which I will apply after 1.12.0 is out.

[J Bytheway]

Master of Magic (has anyone heard of that) made newly built cities take 10 turns to develop before they could start doing anything. That was an interesting move.

[Adalbertus]

Civ is ICS - obvious

Even more than obvious. Basically it's about resources, to grab most of them, and in a competitive environment to grab most of them quickly. The original - mankind - behaves much the same way if it can (America going east or settlement in Sibiria) - ICS until space is filled. The reason why it did not usually happen is that there was no empty space (already occupied by other groups) or no available resources (like in desert). In Civ games, you have lots of empty space and if you don't settle it, the others will do. The conclusion would be: Fight for new settling space nearly as strong as for a well defended enemy city.
So, changing this, really requires a new game, where space is rare. Then you have to develop your cities. Some suggestions:
- Initially, a size 1 to 3 city needs all the available space to feed itself. A bit like Call to Power 2 (which in my opinion discourages a strong overlap of city radii), but it should be more difficult to grow. Also keeps the density of cities low.
- large areas of the world map are unusable without tech -> need to improve what you have, or send hoards of formers (Alpha Centauri slang) to improve a new city site.
- Stronger barbarian/nomadic empires or tribes who try to defend their hunting grounds, but also offer trade, and, perhaps, respect your borders. Essentially modelling those groups who made the (definitely existing) loose contact between Mesopotamia, Egypt (A leader of one of those groups was called Abraham), India, China, and later Greece and Rome.
Basically, this means that barbs are more for occupying space than a military threat.
- Later, you will have to decide if you found more cities between your old ones or if you improve your existing ones.
- IMHO a builder game requires a much more flexible diplomacy and an AI which respects treaties more than usually.

Adalbertus

[J Bytheway]

Originally posted by Adalbertus
- large areas of the world map are unusable without tech -> need to improve what you have, or send hoards of formers (Alpha Centauri slang) to improve a new city site.

Hmmm...

My Civ2 Mars scenario does this. The whole map is desert (actually fines...) to begin with except for one city radius around your first settler and so you need to go round irrigating like mad with your settlers to change the desert to plains in order to expand. This killed expansionism to a large extent. I played against another human with him expanding as per usual and me stopping at 5 or 6 cities and we both researched at the same rate for most of the game (until we stopped and started playing something else).

John

[Martin the Dane]

Hmm. Why not suggest improving the value of large cities is stead of ways to make ICS impossible. (Someone might want to play ICS)

I have a few suggestions.

• First make setler and 'formers' two different units (have been propos)
• Make buildings that are available only to cities of a certain size, and realy wort building
• Give each city a say .25 special specialist per pop, rounded down.
• Make gov and tech based city limits, with unhapiness that can be felt. (this is anti ICS)

As for buildings: Make a mill, ups production, per working pop plus a percentage. Markets, Libraries, Banks, etc. should also give some bonus per pop.

As for the special specialist: this specialist should be able to generate either gold, food, or shields at a rate comparable to a good fully developed tile.

Martin the Dane

[Kevin Ar18]

Perhaps CivIII's new model of workers, settlers requiring 2 people, and culture may be the start of a solution to ICS.
It may not solve it completely, but it may offer a more build-like approach like some of you mentioned.

[Jing]

I sure do hope so. It seems some real effort has been put into solving this problem in Civ3. I am really looking forward to woking on a Civ3 ruleset.