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Senethro
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ICS isn't just spamming up the map with cities for the fun of it. Its the best way of generating resources and turn advantage. Due to zone-of-control rules in some games its also very defensible.
While the dominating tactic in Civ4 may not necessarily be ICS, the same people that made ICS will get out their spreadsheets and calculate what the best method of terraforming is. There will be an equivalent that you'll come to hate just as much.
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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:37
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Ah, now there you have it Dis. One of the key things, IMO, which will help to reduce City Spamming (ICS) is the strong link between:
Fresh Water--->Health--->Population Growth.
The second thing is that almost every bonus, luxury and strategic resource will have its own specialised tile improvement, thus meaning that not all cities will be 'created equal' (i.e. the choice is no longer between 'lots of farms' and 'lots of mines'). Hate to be positive in the negativity thread, but it does seem to me as though ICS has been given the 'Smack Down' on at least three fronts-city health, resource/improvement diversity and city maintainance costs.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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Dis
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Las Vegas, Nevada
Feb 2000
time: 21:37
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As an Aussie you should know that. At least if you are familiar with the deserts. Cities do not normally grow without water.
Granted I live in the desert. And most landscapes aren't desert in civ3, but bear with me. But speaking of desert environs, my city orginally was sustained through springs. No town in the west could survive without a spring or river. But a small spring can only do so much, we needed the Colorado river to really become large.
What I was thinking of, is limites to irrigation. This may be overly complicated and more micromanagement, but it's something to think about.
Is it reasonable that you can irrigate next to a river, and take that irrigation many, many tiles away? Perhaps limit irrigation to 1 tile away from the river. Though there will have to be more rivers in the game. As there are too few in civ3 (I had non in my last game- until I conquered a neighbor's city so I could build Hoover dam with a scientific great leader).
Other than that, I don't have any other ideas. But I would like to see population growth, and access to water more closely tied. Perhaps completely redoing the population growth model.
Even cities back east tend to be along rivers. Despite ample rainfall and being classified as grasslands on the civ3 model. Philadelphia, New York, Washington. I'm not sure about chicago, but they have a massive fresh water lake. St. Louis, Memphis, Kansas City. Denver may be an exception. I'm not sure where Denver gets it's water. I'm not that familiar with the city. But I'm sure they have some small rivers from smowmelt from the rockies.
We could of course, allow irrigation after electricity as civ3 normally does, however. As this allows for pumping of underground aquifers. But perhaps that might even be restricted.
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The_Aussie_Lurker
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Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
May 2001
time: 05:37
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Well, if it helps Dis, we do know that the population growth model has been reworked for Civ4. Though the details are still vague, there does seem to be a direct connection between Health and population growth. Though quantity andvariety of food plays a role in city health, it is no longer the sole determinant of population growth. Fresh water access-within your city radius-also apparently boosts city health. What I think this will mean is that picking sites close to fresh water and/or abundant food sources (bonus resources) will be a key to future city growth-especially before aqueducts. This would seem to put paid to the tactic of 'City Spamming', especially when combined with city maintainance costs. i.e. If you want a city to be self-sufficient, in the long term, then you will need to ensure that its population will grow large enough to work the surrounding tiles (which are now the direct source of income). The only way to get cities to grow will be to site them close to food and/or fresh water-thus severely restricting the 'cities, cities everywhere' approach.
Oops  , now I am being much too positive for this negativity thread.
Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.
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Senethro
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Point of information: When ICSing I site bases beside resources and rivers first, then go and fill in the gaps later when the terraforming technology improves.
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M. le Comte
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Last Aristocrat in Paris
Aug 2001
time: 06:37
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What I fear most is the inability of civilization developers to figure and implement the difference between strategic and tactic elements.
Think about all those inconsistencies:
- in fifty years, at the begining, your unit of warriors cannot walk farther than one tile. I understand they are primitives, but its still a nonsense.
- in one year, using roads, your armors cannot reach the other end of the continent.
- in one year, your motorised battleships cannot cross the Atlantic ocean (ten days of sailing for a middle-class ferryboat).
...
- the representation, on your strategic maps, of specialized unites, such as "marines" or "parachutists", although these units stand for whole armies (having a warrior on your map does not mean you have one warrior, but a group of)
Just before Civ3 was released, there where talks on this site to fix these inconsistencies:
- while not changing anything in the game: implementation of the concept of "logistic support" to figure the progress of "troops projection" through the ages, or adding special abilities to standards troops (for example, after the discovery of "amphibian warfare", the possibility to buy this special hability for existing armies"...
- with some changes on the game, setting up two levels of game, the strategic one would be the standard civ game, while the tactic one would be the possibility for the player to command operations, on the theatre, when he wants to.
I know some will answer that civ is just a game. But the reason why it has been my favourite strategy game for 13 years is that it is realistic.
Long life Civ !
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Mace
my worst fear: ICS is still the best strategy |
Agreed-- although its probably my second worst fear
My worst fear is that 4 will be more like 3 than it is 2 or Smax.
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Darkstar
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Huntsville, AL, USA
May 1999
time: 23:37
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Adm.Naismith, I think you missed my point. If you seperate out the production to units creator from the city, then players will be able to create all the unit makers that they can support. That won't be ICS... that will be driven by their strategic concerns.
Now, repeat that for each layer...
Commerce centers to create trade/production to money
Food centers to distribute food or ship food to commerce centers (for further conversion to money)
Religion centers to create culture and or national identity.
A city is then what? it is just a GOVERNMENT CENTER. That's right. It's purely an administrative center. For game purposes, I'd let it create only 1 unit... worker. The worker then builds everything else.
That's it. Now, your Government center would end up being transportation hubs. Population centers would grow up around that, as any place you have a used crossroads, you will get people.
Now, you have a natural system. Players would try to ICS at first, but they'd gravitate to:
Making as many workers as they think they need:
* to road everything in site (the "Road To" would keep down MM of this)
* to make new centers of other layers (military, commerce, food, etc)
Think about it. Then, we no longer have ICS, because just adding new Government Centers isn't what you want. As Civ players, we want units, money, and research. We could build all the unit creators we could supply... but we could only maximize that construction at the cost of our other interest. If all our empire/national production is going to make units, we won't have anything left to turn into research. If all our production is going to fuel research, we cannot be cranking out the vandal hordes to roll over our opponents.
It's trivial to stop ICS. It's trivial to turn Civ into a game about using your resource to make the kind of empire you want to play or what you need to survive. There would never be a focus on "cities". Building 4 new government centers will not also improve your resource harversting by 4 more collection centers. It will not immediately grant you 4 more tile->Unit makers. It will not immediately grant you 4 more tile->Money or tile->Research total.
That's how you stop ICS. Players will still want to expand, as fast as they can. They will still want to get all their resources on their land harvested as fast as possible, and to turn those harvested resources into what they want (units, money, and research). But they'll have to do it all while balancing what they spend their resources on, by protecting their transportation infrastructure, and by prioritizing whether they should build more unit producers or more research creators. Or even, both of those at once (shorting something else).
A game of strategic decisions and plans, from the very ground up.
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03-08-2005 18:47
to uniform city placement. 
Aussie: Good point! We need to be more negative for this thread!
. 
ure just like my firend, hes an aussie too :P well not really but hes got some blood in him.
hahahahaha oh that one almost made me cry!
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