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DaveWhite
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Hey Guys,
I'm the Lead Designer on CTP2 and I wanted to address your concerns about ICS in CTP2.
The problem is a pretty sneaky one and it seems like no matter what we do to prevent loopholes in the design, stuff like this crops up in every game. Hopefully we've considered all the angles for this one and we have it licked. One thing for certain is that there are a whole lot of you guys out there who will be trying to take advantage of every flaw and loophole in the game and just a handfull of us to try and catch them all before we ship that there's bound to be a couple. I just hope they're minor. =)
As for ICS, I think it would be good to describe how our City Growth system has changed as that has the greatest impact on this problem. The government city maximum are still there and have been reduced considerably but that's just a stop-gap and not really a solution itself.
Cities in CTP2 have an area of influence that they control. This area starts very small when a city is first built and gets larger as the city grows. Newly built cities can only control the 8 tiles immediately next to the city. The next size up goes two tiles out from the city and is the same shape as the standard city influence from CTP1. There are 3 more sizes beyond that so cities can get quite large.
Another significant change is that workers are no longer placed directly on the city tiles. All the resources from the tiles in the city radius are used to calculate what the city collects. I'll use numbers from the game to try to make this a bit more understandable.
The first influence level is used for cities from Size 1 to Size 6. All of the resources available within those 8 tiles are added up and divided by the number of Workers working the terrain. The number of Workers is calculated based on the number of Citizens in the city (based on City Size) not counting those Citizens that have been assigned as Specialists plus the number of Slaves. This is just a number used for the calculations, the Workers never actually have to be placed down. So, if you have only 1 Worker, for a Size 1 City, you will collect one-sixth of the total available resources from those 8 tiles around the city. 2 Workers collect one-third, etc until all the resources are being collected with 6 workers.
When a city reaches the next influence level the same thing happens with the newly controled tiles. You will continue to collect the maximum resources from the original influence area, unless there are less than 6 Workers assigned. The resources from the tile that the city is located on are always collected regardless of the number of Workers assigned.
The influence areas of different cities can never overlap. Tiles are claimed on a first come first served basis and cities can never be built within the influence of another city.
How will this affect ICS? Well, the closest you can build two cities to each other is with one tile seperating them and only the first city built will get the full resources. Any overlapping tiles of influence will be lost to the second city and will effect everything that city tries to do. Additionally as the cities grow and control greater areas of influence one of the cities will grow around the other further cutting it off from vital resources. This coupled with the government caps should help keep ICS from being an issue.
Initial city growth and empire expansion will always be a critical part of the inital strategies of the game but a point will be quickly reached where the empire that has larger cities will far outstrip the production levels and power of other empires.
Hopefully, this was clear enough and answers your concerns about ICS in CTP2. Design changes like this to the game were made based on feedback we've gotten from many of the die-hard players of CTP1, many of them right here on this board, and hopefully the game is much better for it. I'm real excited about how it's turned out and hope that you'll all get hundreds of hours of fun play out of it.
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Daniel Frappier
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Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Jan 1970
time: 05:14
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-----------------------------------------------------
... The resources from the tile that the city is located on are always collected regardless of the number of Workers assigned.
-----------------------------------------------------
This is that extra "free" worker that is the problem, but we will have to wait to see how all the other changes have made an impact.
I never understood why peoples says it's impossible to kill that free worker because it will make small cities to difficult to grow. In Civ II the food box's size is (population + 1) * 10 , this is that simple equation that is at the heart of the problem because as a city grow the ratio of extra food needed to grow again is less and less every time the city grows. A simple change of the food box's size to (population * 10) would have mean that a city (with no extra worker) would theorically take the same time to grow no matter the city size.
As an example if we have a size 1 city with a worker on grassland that produce 1 extra food it would take 10 turns to fill the food box.
A city of size 6 with 6 workers on grassland that each produce one extra food would also take 10 turns to fill the food box. (because it is 6 * 10)
Then ICS would no longer exist.
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hexagonian
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Gnawing on your mind...
Jun 1999
time: 23:14
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Regarding the worst terrain factor, if this is the setup being used.
Since terrain does play an important role in defense modifiers (an additional 50% to 100% per unit), a player will have to ask himself whether he would be better off building on bad production/defense terrain (such as swamps, desert, tundra) to gain some production, or build in a forest/mountain (sacrificing some production for the sake of defense).
It would help if the AI would pose more of a threat militarily, so this decision becomes more critical.
Of course, the easiest way to eliminate ICS altogether would be to eliminate the worker within the city (so a pop 1 city is truly a pop 1 city). All tiles within the city radius, including the tile which the city is built on would be worked.
With the new setup, a city probably will be more balanced overall in terms of producing food/production/gold, since you will be taking the entire radius into account. It sems that the new setup will equalize cities in the short term, making individual city growth management easier. I'm not sure this is progress, but until I play with the new setup, I cannot be too critical.
On the other hand, the trick will be in placement of cities in relation to one another - with a view for future growth.
A question - can you still emphasize food over production in a city (and vice versa) in the new setup (via different means, obviously), as you are currently able to do in CTP1 by moving workers?
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DR DOOM
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The Capitol
Sep 2000
time: 05:14
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1. What does ICS stand for?
2. Removing workers seems to restrict flexability.
3. Is this a move to balance the game cause AI cann't compete well is resource allocation?(I see AI as the weakest aspect of the game overall, duh it ain't human)
4. This is the most negative "enhancement" I've heard for CTP II yet and might delay my decision to purchase.
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Gedrin
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The responses to Slax seem to omit the root cause of ICS which is still present in this system.
Doom: ICS is Infinite City Sleaze which is not new to CTP and has always been present in Civ style games to date because 4 size 1 cities work more tiles than 1 size 4 city. This is due to the 'free' tile worked on the city square itself. This promotes the strategy of building many many many small cities.
Slax:
Your numbers are bang on IMO.
Although I am not sure what you mean by packed... I think you mean cities spheres overlap... yep the numbers seem to indicate such.
Others: do not forget that the number of 'unit tiles' worked is equal to (1+workers*8/6) when 1<= workers <= pop <= 6.
The tile the city is on is worked 100% while the 8 tiles around it are worked only to workers/6.
In addition since big cities can no longer exclude poor tiles within the city radius, small cities may be placed with more effeciency and maintain higher average output per tile... further enhancing the ICS strategy since small areas of good terrain will always be more available than larger areas of good terrain. [easily proved since large areas can be subdivided]
The net result of all this is I expect tests will show ICS to be even more effective in this scheme than it is presently. It's a shame. On the surface I thought it would work but I am now fairly convinced it makes ICS worse.
I've given a great deal of thought to ICS and have only ever come up with 2 general ways to stop it.
1. Tiles worked is a function of pop with no free tiles. With such a change would also recommend a pop cost of 2 when building settlers and new cities start at size 2 to prevent a production -> pop loophole.
2. Low average pops result in some negative effects as compared to high average pops. Which I have mentioned that I have implemented as a BureacracyTax and PopMigration triggers (I believe I am ready to call these fully tested if anyone would like them).
Gedrin
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Gedrin
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The responses to Slax seem to omit the root cause of ICS which is still present in this system.
Doom: ICS is Infinite City Sleaze which is not new to CTP and has always been present in Civ style games to date because 4 size 1 cities work more tiles than 1 size 4 city. This is due to the 'free' tile worked on the city square itself. This promotes the strategy of building many many many small cities.
Slax:
Your numbers are bang on IMO.
Although I am not sure what you mean by packed... I think you mean cities spheres overlap... yep the numbers seem to indicate such.
Others: do not forget that the number of 'unit tiles' worked is equal to (1+workers*8/6) when 1<= workers <= pop <= 6.
The tile the city is on is worked 100% while the 8 tiles around it are worked only to workers/6.
In addition since big cities can no longer exclude poor tiles within the city radius, small cities may be placed with more effeciency and maintain higher average output per tile... further enhancing the ICS strategy since small areas of good terrain will always be more available than larger areas of good terrain. [easily proved since large areas can be subdivided]
The net result of all this is I expect tests will show ICS to be even more effective in this scheme than it is presently. It's a shame. On the surface I thought it would work but I am now fairly convinced it makes ICS worse.
I've given a great deal of thought to ICS and have only ever come up with 2 general ways to stop it.
1. Tiles worked is a function of pop with no free tiles. With such a change would also recommend a pop cost of 2 when building settlers and new cities start at size 2 to prevent a production -> pop loophole.
2. Low average pops result in some negative effects as compared to high average pops. Which I have mentioned that I have implemented as a BureacracyTax and PopMigration triggers (I believe I am ready to call these fully tested if anyone would like them).
Gedrin
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Pintello
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Deltona, Florida
Jan 1970
time: 05:14
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Hi All,
I have been following this discussion with intrest and thought I would throw in my 2 cents. My observations are as follows:
1) According to previously released information from Activision, you will be able to setup your cities to concentrate on Growth, Production, Gold, Science, etc..., from the city screen box. I suspect this is similar to the way you can currently do this in CTP, but taking the new system of resource aquisition into account. Probably what this means is that depending on what you select, the "harvesting" of your city's resources will be weighted in favor of the specified Goal.
2) There are a couple of things to consider in the ICS discussion that have not been brought up yet also. One of those things is the lower government city number thresholds. In CTP Tyranny, for example, could only support up to 12 cities I believe. In CTP, according to what Dave White said, that number will be lowered significantly. We can use the number 8 as a rough guess. That means that the most cities you can have under Tyranny is 8 before you start having upset people. This, combined with the new resource aquisition system, would encourage the development of 8 larger cities instead of 8 small cities. This would also encourage you to select your city locations carefully with maximum resource aquisition in mind.
The other issue is the Distance from Capital issue. Because of the expanding city radius, up to 5 from spaces from the city in very large cities, you will need to place your cities further apart to ensure enough future growth. The optimum distance one city needs to be from another is 10 spaces compared to just 4 spaces in the old system. To optimize the usefulness of your cities, you need to place them 2 and 1/2 further from each other than in the old system! This means that you can build fewer cities before unhappiness do to distance from capital kicks in.
I think these two things combined with the way resource aquisition is done now means that the effectiveness of ICSing is greatly reduced. In the very early game some gain can be made from this strategy, but by the later part of the early game I think Civs with fewer but larger cities will begin to out strip those with many but small cities. Especially if the Civ with the fewer cities really concentrates on growth. 5 size 6 cities would be the equivalent of 15 or more size 1 cities and a soon as you pass the size 6 treshold, the civ with the smaller cities better look out! I would also point out that even under the old CTP system, you cannot have 15 cities under Tyranny. In the new system, you may not be able to have that many cities under Monarchy either.
I look forward to hearing your responses.
Regards,
Timothy Pintello
[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited September 28, 2000).]
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21-09-2000 09:38
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