24-11-2003 16:37									#1
	DESIGN: Government City Caps Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

Discussing this with a friend online who i play MP with, he was telling me how he uses certain small mods to the game to make things more interesting including smaller city caps, along with the advantages and pitfalls. So if i missed something really embarrassing and obvious, it wasnt my idea

Good:

(1) Everyone would be spacing their cities wider and so would the AI, so less chance of the AI overlapping too early if its told to space far enough. At the moment its, cram cities in allowing for 2 borders, the AI doesnt know how to cram and i suspect it will be hard to tell it how to, not as good as a human anyway. So lower the city cap and tell it to space wider, that will help the AI sustain and keep growing food/commerce/production, into the modern age even. Telling the AI to space wider now with the default city caps just makes it waste good land and split its empire too wide, needlessly.

(2) make better use of the expanding borders. Before generally only 2 border bumps, crammed tight were necessary to sustain a good empire, thus totally bypassing a unique feature of CTP2.

(3) Reduces the late game tedium and makes specialists more important, because of larger cities sooner.

(4) slows down early science to better follow the timeline, but not too slow that it becomes a pain.

Bad:

(1) Some people think the caps are too small already, in conquests and such.
(2) ?

Heres some numbers +/- a few,

* Tyranny - 5

* Monarchy - 10
* Republic - 10
* Theocracy - 10

* Fascism - 20
* Communism - 20
* Democracy - 20

* Corporate Republic - 30
* Technocracy - 30

* Ecotopia - 40
* Virtual Democracy - 40

Im talking about changing the default game here, for the better (i think), not a mod, so if its a bad idea with the majority of people then it wont happen. Thoughts?

	24-11-2003 17:00									#2
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Well if you are talking about capping the max pop it is a can of worms with many governmental arguments to come I think in the past the amount of pop is normally determined by food

	24-11-2003 17:39									#3
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Good, cause im not talking about capping the max pop, just lowering the max cities.

	24-11-2003 18:40									#4
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well that’s mod dependent not a main game change

which should be left to moders or in any new apolyton mods

but putting a max pop flag into the government text could be usefull

	24-11-2003 18:46									#5
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No, thats what im saying, it should be a main game change for the reasons i mentioned, to help the AI, to balance the timeline, make border increases actually useful, reduce tedium, increase use of specialists etc

	24-11-2003 18:47									#6
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Personally, I have changed the city limits to be higher in my game. The low city limits generally annoyed me. They meant that, if I did any conquesting, there was no point building Settlers, which wasn't what I liked. I would then end up only building my initial cities, and conquering the others, all the time staying about my city limit... pah.

The way I have it, it's possible to both expand through Settlers and conquest, although city limit is still an issue.

	24-11-2003 19:27									#7
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Some more points made in here on city caps and other little things.

quote: Maquiladora: (1:50 PM) i dont think anyone is gonna agree with me in that thread lol Solver: (1:51 PM) Apparently Maquiladora: (2:02 PM) dont you think if theres less cities to conquer it will be easier to defend an empire? so no more rolling through a city a turn Solver: (2:02 PM) Yes, but I also will find myself highly unsatisfied if I build 5-6 cities in the Ancient era and have to stop. Solver: (2:02 PM) Besides then, razing cities is the only really viable option... Solver: (2:03 PM) While it helps the AI, I think that the gameplay fun price is too big Maquiladora: (2:03 PM) but the fun is making those 7 initial cities as efficient as possible and exploring the land too Maquiladora: (2:05 PM) why do you feel unsatisfied with only 5-6 cities? is it memories from civ? its good to understand the reasons Solver: (2:05 PM) not enough fun... expansion is the biggest factor early on Solver: (2:08 PM) Memories from civ... not enough of a "grand" feeling. 5 cities are more like a game to micro these cities, not a real empire game Solver: (2:09 PM) I've played with low limits and high limits... high limits way more fun Maquiladora: (2:09 PM) so youre a builder? Solver: (2:09 PM) generally, yes, and that's another issue i wanted to bring up in the forums today Solver: (2:10 PM) the fact that you play the game to conquer the world, no real alternative. basically, even if you build econ, it's just so that you can then produce more units than your enemy Solver: (2:10 PM) like, i always build during middle ages... but it's so that I can get Cavalry & Cannons before others get Gunpowder, for instance Solver: (2:11 PM) while what i want is a way to sit on my continent in peace, develop, do diplomacy, etc. Solver: (2:11 PM) with high city limits, conquerors will also be satisfied, being able to fight wars over bigger chunks of land, etc Maquiladora: (2:11 PM) well if theres no alternative enonomic goal...... but you also need to research those units, for defence purposes Solver: (2:13 PM) Yes, but normally, I'd put a higher priority on infrastructure to win an alternative victory, spaceship (civ 1/2/3), economy (smac) or something... while CtP2 science victory is generally far away, AND requires control of lots of land (conquest) Solver: (2:13 PM) to that extent, i prefer the Alien victory... and give me a diplomatic or economic or cultural win, too... simply put, in ctp2 there's really no way you can play while only having an army for defensive purpose Maquiladora: (2:13 PM) yeah i didnt understand why they had that in the gaia victory, sort of contradictory Solver: (2:13 PM) exactly Maquiladora: (2:14 PM) is the sci victory too far away in general? Solver: (2:15 PM) well, look at the amount of techs in ctp2. remember the fact that you're unlikely to develop a new tech in 2 turns... that makes the gaia victory a *very* long-term goal Solver: (2:15 PM) in civ 3, at least, by the time i have my empire set up as i want it to, i can already start thinking about an alternative victory Solver: (2:15 PM) i'm fine with leaving gaia as far as it is, but give me another alternative, as said Maquiladora: (2:16 PM) economic victory? controlling all goods of a certain type, on the planet Solver: (2:16 PM) for instance, or having some uber trade, dunno... but an econ victory, as a concept Solver: (2:17 PM) yeah, ctp2 has the diplo victory, but generally, AI hates alliances and won't keep em Solver: (2:17 PM) that boils down to conquest for me... kick them till they are ready to sign it, lol Maquiladora: (2:17 PM) lol so true, threatening them for peace is the quickest way Solver: (2:18 PM) you get my point - hard to call that a diplo victory Maquiladora: (2:18 PM) well the civ that wins the game has to have some amount of military, or its just unrealist too Solver: (2:19 PM) yes, but that need not be offensive. sure, you must have a strong defensive army, but ideally, you should be able to win the game with solid defense, but little offense Solver: (2:19 PM) i made a goal once in civ3 to only make defensive units... and won Maquiladora: (2:20 PM) well thats the combat system isnt it, but i see your point Solver: (2:20 PM) of course, with a very strong defense during my game, and that was hard, but possible Solver: (2:20 PM) well true yes you will need knights in ctp2, but i want to win without sending my stacks all over the world, but leaving them inside my borders to protect the land there Maquiladora: (2:21 PM) you can do that in ctp2 but it involves building forts on no-mans land then building obelisks there, its ugly Solver: (2:22 PM) true. besides, another thing i want to ideally see, is no no-mans land. look at civ 3 again, everything gets colonized, which makes sense Solver: (2:22 PM) another reason not to lower city limits btw, as that will create a world with tons of no-man land Maquiladora: (2:23 PM) yeah it does, and thats a plus point (one of few) for not lowering the city cap, but its also because theres so much bad tiles to build on in ctp2 Solver: (2:23 PM) as for the limits, you'll see more arguments in the thread Solver: (2:24 PM) btw, how about you repost this converstation at forums? someone might have some good points... Maquiladora: (2:24 PM) yeah ill post it in the thread Solver: (2:25 PM) fine then let's see what the people say Maquiladora: (2:26 PM) maybe im looking through blinkered MP-glasses..... Solver: (2:26 PM) also possible

	24-11-2003 19:44									#8
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Difficult one to call. On a personal level i think the city caps should be much lower from the opening part of the game until around the middle ages(pick a time). As this would better reflect 'real' populations and maybe also have a slower pop growth at this time.
Still that would too claustrophobic for many people i'm sure.
So for the gameplay aspect maybe we could just slow down population growth and leave city caps as is, hmmm i'm not sure on this either - its a difficult one to balance.
One of the frustrations with the early game can be the large amount of time it takes to build units etc and do stuff, so maybe if we were to try to better model the ancient period, how about reducing the city cap but also decreasing the amount of build time for ancient stuff? So when you reach the right time(middle ages?) you can relax the city cap but increase the build time? something like that.............

Still not sure though.....

Last edited by child of Thor on 24-11-2003 at 20:05

	24-11-2003 19:48									#9
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quote: One of the frustrations with the early game can be the large amount of time it takes to build units etc and do stuff, so maybe if we were to try to better model the ancient period, how about reducing the city cap but also decreasing the amount of build time for ancient stuff?

But thats the great thing about lowering the city cap, you have less cities but each one is more developed and so can produce things faster, so you can have dedicated cities, which you cant really do in the default game until you have 20 or so cities and one or two grow beyond 12 pop.

	24-11-2003 20:12									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

right lets look at the real world

City caps in the real world don't happen it just gets that the city is to far from the capital so that communications is difficult

which depend on local conditions tech and distance

what i am saying is that city caps were intended to reduced the amount of cities a player can have to all the ai to keep up and most importantly to keep the save file and system drain small

I don't think we should have a limit instead lets just try to work on the AI long term there will probably be quick fixes in the code but the problem will be that we jeopardise enjoyment of a game and get people frustrated when they conquer a enemy civ then see there country torn apart because they accidentally went over the max cities

If I remember right one of the people on apolyton may have had it right

I can’t remember who said it but they suggested customizable governments

Were you could reduce your civ production to average to get more cities so penalizing the player for having to many cities without a revolution

I think I ranted on to long

	24-11-2003 20:18									#11
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True Maq, true..........

I think the way Civ3 went with it initialy was IMHO not the right way. ICS is just wrong, especially in a game thats meant to reflect actual history

So in principle i agree with you - to encourage the player to take more care over his initial cities, rather than feeling forced into expanding to grab as much territory as possible, then later building them up.

Still you need to make this smaller scale more interesting, less time to discover/build etc - maybe have a much more compact tech tree with more minor discoveries? But then if it comes too quick and easy you can lose track/interest in the process. Which was one of my (few) complaints about Smac, things came so fast in the weapons race that often a tech was obsolete before it came into service.......

And Big MC, yes that would be a neat way to do it - give the player an in game option, 'ok i want more cities(to get the land before the Ai does), but its going to cost me the flexibility of using max production etc'. Those kind of choices are all good IMHO

	24-11-2003 20:20									#12
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Good points, but indeed, the ancient improvements (well, not only ancient) in CtP2 take quite some serious time. I know that, if I built my 5 cities, and after that only had to worry about improving them and doing stuff, I would find myself certainly bored. For an early warmonger start, getting only a few cities up might be a good idea, but that should be optional...

	24-11-2003 20:24									#13
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There have recently been a couple of quite civilized discussions of CTP over at CivFanatics:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...&threadid=69385

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showt...&threadid=67356

It's not just "CTP suks", but some actual constructive criticism. The first one has a few comments on governments. Now that we can do pretty well whatever we want, I think we should play close attention to what people didn't like about CTP and see if we can come up with ways of satisfying their objections.

One thing that occured to me would be to allow players to customize the difficulty level they're playing on at the start of the game. They did this in Imperialism II: you could either choose "Easy", "Medium", whatever, or press a "Custom" button which would take you to a sequence of screens where you could adjust lots of parameters on a cases by case basis. I've attached a bitmap of one of them. (Had to zip it, it's too big.) So, although the city limit caps are not really part of the diffDB, perhaps we could put in a parameter that would allow the player to modify them. (Details need working out.)

Attachment: imp.zip
This has been downloaded 5 time(s).

	24-11-2003 20:26									#14
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Talking about history:

You think that thye roman empire, the Egyptans, Chinese ever had a city limit?

Same goes for the mayas/inkas.

And mayas/inka/egyptans/chinese never really went out of despotism/monarchie.

Actually in RL, is is more that the new governments had more people in the same amount of cities. So maybe we shall rethink.

Instead of having a city limit, we might want to decrease the possible size of the cities. (leaving only the capital untouched, as the capitol was always better/bigger........)

	24-11-2003 20:30									#15
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Or ditch the city limit altogether, but make corruption increase strongly with distance from capital...

	24-11-2003 20:44									#16
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One more thing I can never understand. Stealth units. Why do so many people hate them? I hear those named usually as one of the worst CtP feautures, while Lawyers and the like are one of the things I (and I assume most of you) love about CtP.

	24-11-2003 20:54									#17
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Damn you people and youre civ hangovers I knew no-one would dare to question history for gameplay

quote: Still you need to make this smaller scale more interesting, less time to discover/build etc - maybe have a much more compact tech tree with more minor discoveries? But then if it comes too quick and easy you can lose track/interest in the process. Which was one of my (few) complaints about Smac, things came so fast in the weapons race that often a tech was obsolete before it came into service.......

Well as ive tested it doesnt actually knock the scale off at all, because youre cities are growing BIGGER rather than building more small cities, you still have the same amount of Population in your whole empire, its just all collected into less and bigger cities and not in lots of small cities. Lots of small cities in Civ3 = Good (same as always) Tactic. Small cities in CTP2 = Low (bad) Production.

quote: One more thing I can never understand. Stealth units. Why do so many people hate them? I hear those named usually as one of the worst CtP feautures, while Lawyers and the like are one of the things I (and I assume most of you) love about CtP.

I guess its because most of them are tacky, mainly the Future ones. The main ones i like are Spies and Slavers, they take up too much support though i think.

	24-11-2003 20:55									#18
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quote: Originally posted by Solver Or ditch the city limit altogether, but make corruption increase strongly with distance from capital...

This, me think, is not a good idea. It will favour more the human again than the AI. We are more flexible working around those limits as the AI.

And we already have an unhapiness modifier based on distance.

	24-11-2003 21:11									#19
	Re: DESIGN: Government City Caps Support Apolyton

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora (1) Everyone would be spacing their cities wider and so would the AI, so less chance of the AI overlapping too early if its told to space far enough.

No the Ai wouldn't do it automaticly you have to adjust this in strategies.txt and then there is no need to decrease the city cap.

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora At the moment its, cram cities in allowing for 2 borders, the AI doesnt know how to cram and i suspect it will be hard to tell it how to, not as good as a human anyway. So lower the city cap and tell it to space wider, that will help the AI sustain and keep growing food/commerce/production, into the modern age even. Telling the AI to space wider now with the default city caps just makes it waste good land and split its empire too wide, needlessly.

It is not a problem to make the AI to leave bigger gaps between its cities for instance with MinSettleDistance 7 it wasted to land between its cities with MinSettleDistance 3 the cities are too close together, so you have to find a balance between, also dependent on the AI personality. The real problem is that the AI doesn't settle fast enough at least in the default game but that can be changed by modifying the strategies.txt. The only problem is that the AI doesn't switch to another strategy when the city cap is reached and expands beyond it. So we need another strategy: STRATEGY_TOO_MANY_CITIES added to the strategies.txt that is used when the city cap is reached.

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora (3) Reduces the late game tedium and makes specialists more important, because of larger cities sooner.

I don't see why the cities should grow faster, their population is limited by buildings, so the game would be slowed down. And that is bad I don't like this as player, I want to have many cities that grow and prosper and not a game where I wait for eternity that my empire does something, in my lastest verson of GoodMod (unfortunatly not released yet) I have use AI empires which expand as long as the city cap is not reach and conquer very aggressivly as long as the opponent is on the same continent.

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora (4) slows down early science to better follow the timeline, but not too slow that it becomes a pain.

If you are on pair with the AIs there is no change necessary.

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora (1) Some people think the caps are too small already, in conquests and such.

The real problem is that one set of city limit is ok a certain map size but completly rediculous for another map size, so the city cap should be coupled to the map size more precisly be coupled to the number of tiles that are on the according map available, of course also in releaton to the number of tiles a city can cover. A middle city spacing should be the base. So Tyranny can cover 10% of the world and Virtual Democracy can cover 100% of the world and everything else something in between.

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora Heres some numbers +/- a few, * Tyranny - 5 * Monarchy - 10 * Republic - 10 * Theocracy - 10 * Fascism - 20 * Communism - 20 * Democracy - 20 * Corporate Republic - 30 * Technocracy - 30 * Ecotopia - 40 * Virtual Democracy - 40

Well these values might suitable for a small world map but not for a big one.

quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora Im talking about changing the default game here, for the better (i think), not a mod, so if its a bad idea with the majority of people then it wont happen. Thoughts?

No, the just plan reducing of the city cap for all map sizes is a bad idea.

-Martin

	24-11-2003 21:42									#20
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Peters suggestion(and one i have thought that many games could benefit from) of a much more configurable setup screen, would be the icing on the cake. It would let each person play the game how they prefer to.

Still it would be a massive/impossible(?) task to say get the AI to change the way it plays because player A wants less cities, while player B wants more, and all the different strategies the AI would need to employ?

I have played Imperialism 1 and it also has a very comprehensive set of start up options. I also liked this aspect to the Warlords games(well it had it in the second one). Many,many customisations

And the stealth units are great - they make sense, they work and can just be plain fun(sneaking that spy across half a continent to get that enemy tech, only to have him fall at the last momment! etc) - although i think maybe they should cost more as they are very powerful?

	24-11-2003 21:46									#21
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quote: Originally posted by Martin Gühmann No the Ai wouldn't do it automaticly you have to adjust this in strategies.txt and then there is no need to decrease the city cap.

I know the AI wont do it automatically, im aware of strategies.txt

quote: I don't see why the cities should grow faster, their population is limited by buildings, so the game would be slowed down.

Population is limited by buildings, but you research those buildings before your growth slows down, so any slowdown is from bad tactic.

Larger cities produce faster, so your choices become more flexible than one Cavalry every 15 turns then an Arena in 30 turns....

quote: And that is bad I don't like this as player, I want to have many cities that grow and prosper and not a game where I wait for eternity that my empire does something,

Actually, it depends on your outlook to the game on where your empire goes, not expecting a city to grow without farms.

quote: The real problem is that one set of city limit is ok a certain map size but completly rediculous for another map size, so the city cap should be coupled to the map size more precisly be coupled to the number of tiles that are on the according map available, of course also in releaton to the number of tiles a city can cover. A middle city spacing should be the base. So Tyranny can cover 10% of the world and Virtual Democracy can cover 100% of the world and everything else something in between.

Well this is a side issue i didnt even comment on. I dont think i said ALL map sizes. A reduction in general, would improve many areas of the game, including the AI, but unfortunately i can see this isnt going to happen, only in a mod

It wasnt my intention to change the game for the sake of it, but to actually change it for the better, but if its a mod, then so be it.

	24-11-2003 21:49									#22
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I read the CFC threads, and suggest everyone else does. Indeed, one of them does contain good constructive criticism (although a few standard CtP sucks notes too), including also things that we have mentioned in our discussions.

	24-11-2003 22:20									#23
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Well i read both threads from start to finish and came to a few random conclusions.

75% of civ fans dont like future techs.
80-99% dont like stealth units, id agree with that except for the good ones (slaver spies).
Whenever someone likes CTP2 over civ3 they always type civ3 all in lower case and CTP2 properly.

	24-11-2003 22:28									#24
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The caps are a great idea in principle - They are there to stop unlimited expansionism (infinite city sleaze). The whole idea of some sort of penalty for large empires is historical too. CTP2 currently places exceeding the city cap as an unhappiness/crime penalty.

When establishing caps, you also have to take several variables into consideration - map size/land and sea percentages, and number of civs in the game. A cap will play out differently if those settings are different.

Personally, I prefer keeping the caps low in my games, because it offers a greater degree of challenge to maintain an efficient empire.

However, we (the Modders) may have gone about using the cap in the wrong manner. In the default game, the unhappiness modifier kicks in at 75 but you didn't have a large chance of a riot until you got below 72. This was a 3 point margin for the player. If you are at 74 in a city, you might suffer a riot, but you also will suffer increased crime - go lower and crime rates/riots increase even more.

It was terribly easy to manage - to most players, it was merely a speedbump to expansionism. And the AI usually wasn't near the cap in the default game, so it wasn't affected.

In Cradle, the cutoff point for unhappiness/full riot was at 75 - and if you fall below 75, you had a great chance of falling into a riot state - and Cradle also greatly increased the unhappiness penalty if you exceeded the cap. The end result was the caps made it brutal to the player (...but challenging in a good way), but at the same time, the AI had a hard time managing it once it was prompted in later builds of Cradle to increase expansion.

Perhaps we need to go back to the setup as it was (75 happiness/68-72 full riot), but rather than increase the happiness penalty for exceeding the cap, we greatly increase the crime rate as you fall below 75, and have a more gradual riot chance. The end result are cities that produce very little, but are not in a riot state.

All of a sudden, crime rate becomes even more important to manage - almost just as important as unhappiness.

The end result is that crime reduction buildings become a lot more important to build. As it is now in Cradle, crime buildings reduce crime, but their effect is negated in cities in a riot state - and since the unhappiness/riot margin is so small in Cradle, their importance is low.

And the AI does not have a problem constructing buildings in Cradle, so the AI problem is eliminated.

	24-11-2003 22:38									#25
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quote: Originally posted by Maquiladora Well this is a side issue i didnt even comment on. I dont think i said ALL map sizes. A reduction in general, would improve many areas of the game, including the AI, but unfortunately i can see this isnt going to happen, only in a mod

In my opinion it is the real problem, the problem that a fixed city cap works only on a certain map size. So we can decide what number of city is needed to cover the whole map and then if we decide that we should make it very difficuilt to cover the whole map then we chose the lower limit. So with the best government you would only be able to cover let's say 65% of the world.

Another aspect is that it was intended that you have the choice to space your cities close together or leave huge gaps. But in practise you are rewarded for building as much cities as possible and it doesn't matter if there is a gap of 3 tiles or 7 tiles between them, you can feed a size 60 city with less then the maximum tiles such a city can cover, I think you don't need the outer ring for that task, but I don't like to reduce the maximum radius. So too wide spacing is not rewarded and take Cradle for instacnce it take ages that the cities fill the second ring, so I am rewared for sticking the cities tight together, because in the end I have more production, because I have more cities.

So I suggest for the city cap a formular, that contains a factor in the govern.txt with a modifer of city number depending on the government, another one that takes the map size into consideration, another one that takes max city size into consideration and finally one for the level of difficuilty:

DiffFact * MapSize * MaxCitySquares * GovFact

In the current game a city can have as maximum 68 tiles (I think) a gigantic map has 140 * 70 quares that are 9800 quares through 68 is roughly 144, so 144 does fit on such a map if you use maximum spacing without overlapping and best use of space, well in praxis you lose some space during the cycle nature of the city radii, so we can reduce this by some cities.

So one value is MapSize/MaxCitySquares the next factor is given by the DiffFact or we can also call it setting fact, when we want it somewhere in the settings. Let's say we want to make it so that you aren't be able to fill the map with cities so you take a factor smaller zeoro like 0.5. So that means you can't fill the whole map just 50% of it.

So the updated formular is:

DiffFact * (MapSize/MaxCitySuares)

We we want to be able to fill the map with more cities then the minum city size we use a factor of 1.25 for DiffFact so we can fill the map with 25% more cities then there is space for as large as possible spaced cities.

And now we to introduce the government factor so all governments have a procentual factor, we can write it as precent into the text file or as fractal like 0.05 for 5%.

So let have a GovFact for Tyranny lets say:

GovTyrFact = 0.05
MapSize = 70*140 = 9800
MaxCitySize = 68
DiffFact = 1.0

Then we have:

1.0 * (9800/68)*0.05

Rounded down it quals 7. So according to this formular we have reduced the max number of cities on a gigantic map from 10 to 7.

So the final formular looks like:

MaxCity# = floor(DiffFact * (MapSize/MaxCitySquares) * GovFact)

In that formular DiffFact and GovFact are floats/doubles and MapSize and MaxCitySquares are integers.

Of course we can also introduce another factor that takes into consideration the number of land tiles that are available before the tech that allows sea colonys.

-Martin

	24-11-2003 22:43									#26
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian However, we (the Modders) may have gone about using the cap in the wrong manner. In the default game, the unhappiness modifier kicks in at 75 but you didn't have a large chance of a riot until you got below 72. This was a 3 point margin for the player. If you are at 74 in a city, you might suffer a riot, but you also will suffer increased crime - go lower and crime rates/riots increase even more.

Actual in the default game it cicks in at 73, you have a small chance that it riots at a happiness level of 72 and at 71 it is more likely and at 70 or 69 it is very high.

-Martin

	24-11-2003 22:59									#27
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quote: 75% of civ fans dont like future techs. 80-99% dont like stealth units, id agree with that except for the good ones (slaver spies).

Remove those and I will like CtP2 much less...

	24-11-2003 23:26									#28
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Martin, i'm a tired , so the exact specifics of what you said kinda went over my head, but from what i did understand i agree - if there was some kind of 'balanceing' formulae, then that would be great.

Of on a tangent slightly: Ok lets look at the current(and never to be won ) Democracy game.

The way both the German and English nations have squeezed many cities into their borders looks wrong to me. Are they all being productive? I doubt it very much so why has it built so many? Particularly the Germans seemed to have gone crazy in an ICS fashion.
So this is why i agree with Maq and others on the notion of trying to stop the ICS - we need to make other things more attractive to the AI(and player) - a more cultured,crimefree,productive,and happy city with many improvements, should IMHO be the goal of all rulers(human and AI). Try to aim for a more natural look on the game map, something less cluttered and artificial looking.

To throw in the counter view to Gilgs(all hail the Emperor ) comment about the Egyptians,Rome etc - well they all did reach a point of implosion, when they got too big to effectivily run themselves. Ok compared to other civs they did pretty well, Rome in particular - but it was in a way the sheer size of the empire Rome was governing that caused many of its problems.
So in a way there was a city cap in effect

	24-11-2003 23:49									#29
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quote: Originally posted by child of Thor The way both the German and English nations have squeezed many cities into their borders looks wrong to me. Are they all being productive? I doubt it very much so why has it built so many? Particularly the Germans seemed to have gone crazy in an ICS fashion. So this is why i agree with Maq and others on the notion of trying to stop the ICS - we need to make other things more attractive to the AI(and player) - a more cultured,crimefree,productive,and happy city with many improvements, should IMHO be the goal of all rulers(human and AI). Try to aim for a more natural look on the game map, something less cluttered and artificial looking.

The problem here is that the AIs here have no idea about the city cap and therefore they go beyond, I am shure with my latest script I wouldn't see it, well they AI wouldn't even bother your cities if it is over the cap.

-Martin

	25-11-2003 00:24									#30
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Bah, look at some Civ 3 games where people played without ICS. A relatively small amount of cities, and upgrading them.

Yes, I'd love to have the choice of having a small or medium sized empire with developed cities appealing. But, I'd hate to have that choice pressed down upon me with caps or such stuff! I already hate how Civ 3 forces you to fight an Ancient war, whether you want it or not...