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VetLegion
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ICS - Infinite city Spread, Sprawl, Sleaze... we all know the concept. The problem was that in old civ games, it was far more beneficial to have many small underdeveloped cities than it was to have few big, developed ones.
For those who haven't played, Civ III combats ICS through Culture, Corruption and Unhappiness. The concept of Culture is the most innovative way, now it really means something to have old cities with cultural infrastructure.
Do you find that adequate? Or do you find it lacking and would like to see some other way of making big cities count more than small cities?
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Fosse
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U.S.A.
Mar 2002
time: 23:33
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ICS is a game killer, in my opinion and that of many others.
And it may be a little weaker, but it is still an ugly and powerful beast.
The Civ 3 corruption and two point settlers don't do it, because when it comes down to it, having more cities still wins the game.
Perhaps more incentive to have larger cities are needed. As it is now, larger cities create unhappiness and provide only the meagre 1 shiled or commerce point for being City size (and then only if you have the right trait!). A model in which large cities generate increasing amounts of commerce might be helpful. As it is now, having 10 workers in 10 cities generates the same commerce as 10 in 1. That could stand some revision.
Also, I'm not so sure that culture combats ICS. It doesn't discourage the player from making more new cities... instead it encourages them to make more old ones. Hence, the All Powerful REX.
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Fosse
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U.S.A.
Mar 2002
time: 23:33
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Not ICS as we remember it from Civ 2 or Alpha Centauri. But what about the Ralphing strategy, building military camps, packing cities with densly overlapping radii, etc.
Also, to keep ICS alive, you can build dozens of 1 shiled cities, feed them with good food square, and turn them all into taxmen.
In Civ 3, just as in previous games, X number of cities are not as good as X+1. Quantity is still more important that quality.
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Brent
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I like ICS. I like having lots of cities to name.
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Fosse
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U.S.A.
Mar 2002
time: 23:33
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quote:
Originally posted by skywalker
quote:
eg size 6 for barracks |
And kill early war? |
Well, of course the numbers and improvments would have to be thought out.
But even if you needed a size six city to build a barraks, early war is hardly "dead." Just changed.
Big Crunch, you have a good point. I still think having requirements to build improvements is a good idea if it has zero impact on ICS (which would of course bring it out of this thread), but it could be a balance issue.... having more improvements that provide a bigger effect in the ancient age, and require population, might slow things down a bit.
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pg
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i think fixing or at least changing the nature of ics is very important for civ4. once you change ics you also drastically change the nature of civ so i figure it's not going to change much if at all(like civ3).
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Skanky Burns
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Skanky Bastard Quartermaster
Aug 2001
time: 14:33
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quote:
As it is now, having 1 worker in 10 cities generates the same commerce as 10 in 1. |
Other benefits to ICS include:
Not putting all your eggs in one basket
Who cares if someone just nuked one of your size 2 bases? You have hundreds more where that came from, and not much invested in that particular city. Someone nuking my size 15 city with many improvements, on the other hand...
Having multiple build queues
With 10 size 1 cities, I can build 10 cheap units each turn with rushing. With 1 size 10 city, I can never produce more than one unit a turn.
Interconnected defence
Placing cities that close together means that any city under thread can get reinforcements from multiple cities close by. Cities reaching higher sizes by necessity need more room so will not have as many cities close by.
Less wasted shields
Using SMAC as an example, up to 10 excess shields get carried over to the next project. With small cities, they rarely produce more than 10 excess shields so waste at the end of producing stuff is minimal. Larger cities will have command of more shields, making it much more likely that their full production will not be utilized. If they produce 50 shields and only need 20 to finish the current build, 20 shields are wasted. Decreasing the amount of shields carried over to the next build exacerbates the problem.
Civ 3 attempts to curb ICS
2-cost settlers just delay the building of cities. As shown by REX, masses of cities still get built.
Corruption/waste becomes a disincentive to build any cities after a certain point, regardless of their spacing from other cities.
Culture means that a few cities might need to be recaptured over the course of the game. See point 1 regarding the worth of these cities.
What it comes down to though is the phrase I quoted initially. If one size 10 city can outproduce ten size 1 cities then ICS will be less powerful from a pure gameplay point of view, hence will not be used.
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vulture
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Leeds, UK
Jun 2001
time: 05:33
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If one is unwilling to go down the 'no-control-over-founding-cities' route, then ultimately fighting ICS boils down to helping economies of scale, and preventing crowding.
The first one basically means that a size 20 city produces more than twice as much as a size 10 city. This can be done in several ways - the idea of only allowing factories, libraries, markets etc. above a certain size certainly works in this way, up to the minimum sized city able to build all useful improvements.
Another way to achieve the same effect is to have the output (in shields or gold) of a city not be a linear function of its input. As a crazy example, say that the no. of shields produced by a city went as (sum of shields produced by individual tiles) squared. A city working 5 tiles, each producing one shield, would have an output of 5*5 = 25 shields. This is obviously roo extreme, but the function used can easily be fine-tuned (raised to power 1.2 instead of 2, to give almost no difference for small cities, but a reasonable difference for bigger cities - by the time you get to 30 raw shields, the output of a big city doubles that to 60 (30^1.2 = 59.2).
This does the same job as the minimum size limits for city improvements, but on a continuous scale. It isn't necessarily any better.
Another factor is reducing crowding. Arguably, this already achieves that, since you need room for the big cities. This doesn't address Ralphing though. That can be combatted by either making settlers cost more (in population, shields, or whatever) so they can't be thrown around like confetti, or introducing some kind of penalty based on the number of cities within 3 tiles (or whatever) of any city. That way, plonking a military camp down next to a city can penalise the original city to a greater degree than the camp can make up for - so camps never boost the overall national output, only lower it.
That way, there is an incentive to stick to some kind of OCP (non-overlapping city radii) placement, or something close to it (maybe it can be worth cramping cities slightly to trade off the better early game state vs a weaker empire in the later game, other things being equal).
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06-01-2004 06:52
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