23-06-2001 03:07									#31
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quote: Originally posted by rah Damn, Ralf, chill a bit.

Oops! Sorry. It looks like im shouting, but I am not. I was just underlining & emphasizing.

quote: Of course it's built on assumptions, the darn game isn't even out yet. And I'm sure some of the things they've showed us will still be changed before the game is released.

Agree.

quote: That Worker unit everyone is referencing is one that goes out and builds roads and irrigation, not the worker that you place in your city screen.

Well, this is the same mobile worker I was refering to all along. In order to avoid further confusion one should perhaps differ between mobile workers and allocation-workers.

quote: So please cut me some slack while i express my fears. AND my OPINION that the -2 pop will not be enough to discourage ICSing. The people that I play with are pretty darn smart and will find any loophole in the programming. And I will too. [...] I would like to know what I said that caused your outburst, I don't believe I insulted anybody. I was just stating opinions. If I did insult you, I apologize.

No, you didnt insult me. But, its fun then ones replies gets commented, whether its mostly "thumbs up" or "thumbs down". I apologize too, by the way.

	23-06-2001 04:21									#32
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"Well, this is the same mobile worker I was refering to all along. In order to avoid further confusion one should perhaps differ between mobile workers and allocation-workers. "

Yes there has been some confusion in other threads too.

Thanks for the clarification.

With a free allocation-worker per city might seem to be the same as the extra-allocation workers that you would get with a size 3 city, I still think it's not quite equal since the new cities will grow to size three as fast as the original city will grow to size four. Add that to the original city growing as quickly back to size 3, I still think there will be value in creating the extra cities as fast as possible. Development can wait till all the good land is taken...Except for your core cities. (The new method may stop people from spitting settlers out of their cap once they have another city) I'll have to check the math on any other influences to see how it works.

RAH
I'm glad no hard feelings were generated on either side. I like discussing this stuff regardless of the lack of impact. (since we don't have anything else to do but wait, expect civ2 mp of course )

	23-06-2001 04:46									#33
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I think that one easy way for ICS to be defeated is to program barbarians to attack low-culture, low population villages. This is realistic since the barbarians would see this villages as vulnerable and easy targets for raids.

Thus if one used ICS strategy, one would quickly discover their villages being overrun by barbarians.

OTOH, if a more balanced strategy is used in which cities need to be developed more so they are of some size and have some culture, then barbarians will not attack as ferociously and there is greater chance of survival.

This will encourage more balanced expansion and development and should seriously tone down ICS as it becomes very risky because of tempting ferocious barbarian attacks.

	23-06-2001 04:59									#34
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Questions.

1. Why make small cities grow faster?

2. Why not just make big cities worth more.

Oh the 0 culture boarder thing for new cities I heard was to prevent land grabs.

And why does a backward civ with no tech and 2 tiny cities have to be powerful as a bigger rival? BAB may not be too great but its just logical.

	23-06-2001 06:08									#35
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quote: Originally posted by MORON Questions. 1. Why make small cities grow faster? 2. Why not just make big cities worth more. Oh the 0 culture boarder thing for new cities I heard was to prevent land grabs. And why does a backward civ with no tech and 2 tiny cities have to be powerful as a bigger rival? BAB may not be too great but its just logical.

If bigger is always better than how is it that China and India did not dominate the world but medium nations like Spain and England could have empires spanning the whole globe?

The answer is that in real life, nations don't progress linearly and keep on improving but suffer setbacks. (i.e. rise and fall of civilizations). They suffer from technological stagnation/regression, internal disunity and discontent, corruption, administrative inefficiencies, civil wars, rebellions/uprisings, temporary divisions, barbarian attacks, disease outbreaks, etc.

But since in Civ2, progression is linear and evolutionary, then ultimately the key is to expand, expand and expand like crazy in the beginning of the game despite the fact that it is unrealistic, destroys gameplay, and ahistorical.

	23-06-2001 17:55									#36
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quote: Originally posted by MORON Oh the 0 culture boarder thing for new cities I heard was to prevent land grabs.

Yes - that also. No more SMAC-style instant border-boxing.

In Civ-3 it becomes rather disadvantageous to found a city directly outside established enemy-borders - especially if that newbie city is alone, far away from the motherland. Before a new city have established its own borders, the more mature & established enemy-borders may have expanded - swallowing your tiny newbie-city up. You face a big risk that your newbie-city convert itself to its big empire-neighbor.

quote: And why does a backward civ with no tech and 2 tiny cities have to be powerful as a bigger rival? BAB may not be too great but its just logical.

No, this is a misunderstanding. Also you give us an unlikely and obviously extreme example.

In order to achieve the full extent of the BAB-benefit, your smaller-then-10 cities empire must in return consist of very well-developed cities. Since your not invest so much in pop-detracting settlers, your cities will grow much faster. Also; you will have much more time to furnish your cities well, with all kinds of trade-, science-, food, happiness & culture-boosting city-improvements.

The only added new BAB-feature here, that helps pushing small (but well-developed) empires to be a more viable and much more competitive alternative - is the gradually lower small-empire city-happiness penalty. You still have to build some counteracting happiness-improvements, of course. But small empires with few cities (lets say around 5-10), let your cities grow faster and more freely, without so many city-riots breathing down your neck.

On the other hand: such empire-size happiness-benefit doesnt have to turn into a penalty, effecting bigger and bigger empires, with even harder and harder happiness-penalties (like it does in CTP-2). The happiness-penalty may very well stay flat beyond a certain number of cities. In fact, I would much more prefer increasing economical restraints (due increasingly cost-heavy administration, unit-upkeep & corruption) in order to place some late game ICS-city rubberband-limits.

	23-06-2001 19:27									#37
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quote: Originally posted by polypheus I think that one easy way for ICS to be defeated is to program barbarians to attack low-culture, low population villages. This is realistic since the barbarians would see this villages as vulnerable and easy targets for raids. [...] This will encourage more balanced expansion and development and should seriously tone down ICS as it becomes very risky because of tempting ferocious barbarian attacks.

This idea have potential. And it shouldnt be that hard to implement.

The more early pioneer cities you have established, without proper road-connection and guard-unit protection, at any given time - the more the AI dynamically increases the number of barbarian scumbags from surrounding uncovered squares and barbarian huts.

Likewise; the more you choose build roads to expected city-foundations in advance - and the more you accompany settlers with guard-units, enabling immediate protection of cities, the more the AI dynamically decreases the number of barbarians from surrounding uncovered squares & huts.

They STILL going to visit you though - this idea only dynamically tweaks the numbers somewhat, depending on your expanding-style. And sometimes a more risky expanding-style can turn out to be more beneficial also.

	24-06-2001 04:04									#38
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I always assumed that the culture rating played a big part in anti-ICS.

Say if a low culture civ placed cities next to a high culture civ, you run the risk of having the low culture cities rebel to neutral or join the other civ.

I think the "free worker" is the settler in civ2 that never settles, just keeps building improvements. Which means that the worker idea may only slightly hinder ICS by making city settlement less opportunistic (you have to plan ahead to settle).

Also I see one of Rah's points, that smaller food boxes fill up quicker. Thus cities that build settlers will grow back to their original size quicker than anticipated. Unless settlers also cost more food (for the 2 pop points)?

	24-06-2001 12:28									#39
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I agree polypheus, that may be the best way to combat ics without making other drastic changes. As long as it didn't kill the first 10000 years, when you wouldn't have much anyway.

RAH

	24-06-2001 13:12									#40
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When Firaxis was trying to fix the idea that bigger is always better, I hope they also still made it possible to have bigger is always better still have the ability to hold true. Except this time it would be bigger is sometimes better. Meaning that they can't take away the wanting to have a big nation because of the severe disadvantages of having a big nation to just counter part the fact that bigger is always better in Civ2.

	24-06-2001 14:34									#41
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quote: Originally posted by TechWins When Firaxis was trying to fix the idea that bigger is always better, I hope they also still made it possible to have bigger is always better still have the ability to hold true. Except this time it would be bigger is sometimes better. Meaning that they can't take away the wanting to have a big nation because of the severe disadvantages of having a big nation to just counter part the fact that bigger is always better in Civ2.

Yes - the idea is that both the huge empire approach and the small empire approach should (roughly) be equally attractrive & viable alternatives. Although not in the same areas.

A really huge communistic or nationalistic (but still well-managed) empire should give you an undeniable advantage in some areas (perhaps mass-production capacity, strong combat-morale and very effective uprising/happiness control). A small republic/democratic (but still very well-managed) empire should give you an unbeatable advantage in the economical/trade area (cities can grow uniquely huge with comparibly less happiness-problem - giving you a huge tax-base, but with less total amount of costly city-improvements/ combat-units needed).
Also in science, these well-managed democratic mini-empires can keep reasonably even steps, because of their proportionally bigger city-populations.

At the end of the day, however: If you create a huge & well-managed democratic empire; that should give you the final edge in most areas. But, yet again - only so much, and definitely not in each and every areas. In each and every empire-size + government combination, there should both be an unquestionable advantage and an sensitive "Archilles heel" wrapped together. This is why the BAB-problem is a rather tricky one.

The democratic government-type for example, shouldnt - on top of everything else - also be viable counquer-the-world alternative (as it in fact often could be in Civ-2). Defending ones motherland (or helping a democratic ally, being attacked) is one thing - but if you want to invade (and assimilate) other cultures forever; you MUST choose a more warprone & dictatorial government-type. I dont care about real-life "maybe in future" arguments. Democracy shouldnt be the best possible solution in every area - its a question of game-balance, if nothing else.

	24-06-2001 16:24									#42
	Why is everyone so against ICS? Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

You will never stop them.

	24-06-2001 19:01									#43
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whatever system they come up with, some one wil lfind a loophole to exploit and make the game less fun for everyone else... I love developing my civ, builsing all the damn city improivments and conencting al lby rai land builsing farms,, i love building lots of citys too... but when you play MP you tend to not do as much as you need to keep up with the damn ICSers who IMHO arent so much fun to paly with...

	25-06-2001 23:33									#44
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Horse, Rasputin, I disagree.

The basis of ICS advantage is that for one pop point settler, you get two allocation-workers (dang, that's a lot of typing, just call them aw's). that means that although the pop of a new city was listed as 1, the actual production was for 2.
in the glorious new world, we will be paying 2 pop for every 2 pop starting city. what it says the pop of the starting city is doesn't matter, except in one case. when you disband a city size2 into a settler, you are actually paying 3 AW's for that privilege.
I wish they would have the game notation conform with reality, so as to eliminate that imbalance.

in the old ICS, you could pay 1AW for a 2AW city, which was the basis of the grand ICS advantage.

RAH, I'm aware of the building settlers before your capitol reaches size2 trick. If they can't make that obsolete, I will be VERY surprised. I think it already doesn't work with one of the versions I use.

Moron, you made a good point about the culture radius making it so that massive city planting doesn't mean the land grabbing you thought it would. That will also discourage the bigger is better mentality.

I just read a post where some ICSer (think it was scouse gits) says they don't have cities, just hundreds of villages.

between the culture radius and the 2pop settler, I don't think any artificial barrier to growth is neccesary. If you can sprawl across the land, it will be because you have built the infrastructure neccesary to do so. more power to you.

Of course we will break the game eventually, it just won't be by ICS. don't forget, we also broke the game by the OCC. tell me the designers thought that would happen.
we'll get it, and suggest fixes for the next gamebreaker in the civ4 suggestion list

	25-06-2001 23:35									#45
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Rasputin, I just read your post again and I agree with you after all. I thought you were saying that ICS will come back, no matter what . sorry

	26-06-2001 04:01									#46
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I still wish that the anti-ICS crowd will not make Civ into a one city game.

Can some one explain to me the logic of smaller cities growthing faster than big ones? I thought the reverse should be true, until overcrowding and resources becomes a problem.

	26-06-2001 04:07									#47
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It takes less to fill the food bin which adds an extra row for each pop count.
1-2 20
2-3 30
3-4 40
4-5 50
etc.
which means a city can grow to size 3 in the same time a city grows from 4-5 (if terrain is similar) And the larger a city the longer it takes it to grow one more.
So i expect that future ICS will evolve to a lot of size 3 cities spitting out settlers. (but you never know what other changes will influence it.) It does look like they've put some thought into it, but as stated before, I'm sure the designers didn't think you could win with one size one city. The people here are very clever.

For the logic side, suburbs to main cities follow the same logic. To grow twice the size becomes increasingly difficult as the population grows. Small suburbs usually grew quickly but then leveled out as resources/choice land was used, but would continue to grow at a slower rate as the more undesirable land was put into use.

RAH

	26-06-2001 08:20									#48
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Here's something I wrote in a seperate thread that I think will give another disadvantage to ICS. "I think if your culture rating is low than your cities should be able to be bribed more easily. Also the smaller your cities are the greater chance that they could be bribed. If bribing would work this way it would be another way too counter act ICS."

quote: It takes less to fill the food bin which adds an extra row for each pop count.

I'm not sure but I think Moron understands the system it's just that he doesn't find it to be reasonable. As I agree, when a city gets bigger it should start growing even faster. I hope the growth of your city isn't depended on the surplus of your food still. There are many more factors than that. Such as how is the city doing. Is the culture good, are the citizens happy, certain improvements, enough protection, surrounded by good terrain, etc... I know that having all these would be too complex but there just has to be a better system than more food=more growth.

	26-06-2001 18:03									#49
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Yeah, you're right, he probably did understand it. I think I figured that out about halfway through writting it and was too lazy to erase it. So I wrote the last part about the logic of it.

But I still believe that city growth in the real world is a rapid growth to a point, and then continued (but reduced growth)
This is one reason that I never really had a problem with WLTKDs. You get the city to a point, everyone happy, and it just attracts people untill it get to a certain point, then it levels off. Even though that growth is one of the most unbalancing notions in the game. I guess I just saw the perverted logic behind it.

You point about bribing is good. But for some of us, the impact of that will be minimal. When we play MP, most of us don't allow city bribing. And since I assume you've been reading the other threads, there are quite a few people that would like it to be a game option whether it should be allowed.

Yeah, my focus is on MP so I guess I'm looking at things from a slightly different angle. I have no faith in the AI being a challange (god, I hope I'm wrong) real people are the only challange. And since my focus is MP, ICS is an important issue. Which is probably why I get so irrational about it.

RAH

	27-06-2001 01:38									#50
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RAH, I just ran a quick check on all my civ games, trying out building a settler before my first city reaches size 2. Maybe I've got the patched versions or something, but it doesn't work with any of them. civdos, civwin, civnet, civ2, TOT. All of them just keep adding more production past the max until the city reaches size2!
the only one it seems to work with is AC. I seem to be able to build endless colony pods from a size1 base without penalty. maybe the rules are different....

	27-06-2001 01:45									#51
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Some of the ideas in Polypheus's thread "An Improved Barbarian/Insurgent Model" would also take away from the greatness of ICS.

My opinion on ICS is that there is going to have to be a lot of little things to stop it because too many big, radical implementations to just stop ICS could very well make the game not fun.

	27-06-2001 17:51									#52
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Techwins, I agree. I'm paranoid that they will do something big and screw the pooch. (# city limits by gov. model like CTPII)

Father Beast
How many cities did you have? It only works if you only have the one city. We're using MP gold with the lastest patches.

RAH

	28-06-2001 06:09									#53
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IMO the reasons for ICS are

1. Inlogical faster growth
2. Two tiles worked for the price of one, which adds to 1.

As for Barbarian/Insurgent, I doubt it would work that well. Mind worms didn't stop massive polluting in SMAC (instead, energy farming). We might have similiar results if the cities are very close together and road connected, meaning its easy to defend and the larger production of ICS and the existance of 'free support' under certain gov. systems will mean that a large army would be ready once the ICSer builded up.

Happiness based on distance also faces the problem of close cities and discourage the founding of large cities because its hard to find good spots for them and the 21 tile overlap thing, and as a result they are further apart.

The only thing we're left with is pop/cities based unhappiness model, or fixing the top two.

	28-06-2001 07:31									#54
	Embracing ICS Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Although I am no fan of ICS, I am beginning to feel that perhaps maybe there is no way to defeat ICS.

An alternative then might be for Civ3 to embrace ICS.

1. Program the AI Civs so that they can effectively perform ICS to match the human player.
2. Explicitly state that ICS is the method of choice in the manual so it is clear that Civ3 is designed to be an ICS style game.

If the AI can exploit ICS as well as the human player then at least the game is balanced and challenging even though there will be massive numbers of closely spaced cities everywhere.

	28-06-2001 09:38									#55
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I have a suggestion that will solve the ICS problem. The fundamental issue here is that in the current versions of Civ and their clones cities grow due to the availability of food. This premise is clearly incorrect. If food is readily available then towns will spring up to service the farms. Blacksmiths, carpenters, tailors, publicans, prostitutes etc, etc. It is COMMERCE that causes a town to grow. An extreme example is a gold-rush town. It springs up overnight but when the gold runs out the town dies. Take the city of Rome circa 0 AD. Its food (grain at least) came from Sicily and North Africa, many miles from the city. Rome owed its existence to being the political/cultural/commercial centre of the Roman empire. Availability of food had nothing much to do with it.

My idea, then, is to tie population growth to commercial activity. No commerce - no growth. Commerce depends critically on the presence of a suitable resource. A town plonked in the middle of a plain without a nearby resource would simply not grow. Admittedly this would require a major rethink of the commerce generated by various tiles but then this was never going to be easy.

	28-06-2001 11:08									#56
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Sorry about this but I probably didn't spell it right out in my previous post. Take the example of a city built next to gold resource in the mountains. The commerce value of the gold might allow a population of 30, however the lack of food will prevent growth above, say, 3. Perhaps an advanced farm is built which would then allow a modest growth in population. Compare this to a city built in the plains with a food potential to support a population of 30. The low commerce value however limits the population to say, 5. (There is nothing for people to do - massive unemployment.) Such a city would grow with the addition of commerce generating improvements such as marketplaces and banks. Both these cities would be stagnant compared to a city with a high commerce AND a high food potential.

	28-06-2001 13:02									#57
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While it would be a better model to base city growth on economics, it would open up a can of worms in regards to game development. You would probably need to redesign the whole game from scratch. Besides, if the game was completely real it would be boring The game needs to be fun, and Civ2 proved that the old model works.

As for ICSing, as much as i agree that it should be discouraged, to eliminate it completely would unbalance the game as the most important thing in the whole game would be finding settlers in goody huts. Whoever found the most settlers and cities in goody huts would be the winner! Pure luck is even less skillful than ICSing

Of course, we could eliminate goody huts altogether, but i'm sure all would agree that this would detract from the game. The other thing i mentioned long ago would also detract from ICSing, and that was natural disasters. Small, fledgling cities would be more vulnerable to natural disasters than large cities, because a size 1 city dropping in city size by 1 would be destroyed, while a large city would suffer minimal damage.

The 2 population point drop in city size is a great idea, and will balance the game. The only better way of reducing ICS is to eliminate the bonus worker in each city, so a size 1 city only has the square it sits on to produce food. It's not as silly as it first appears. If you built a mining city, it would stay small, rather than develop into a city of millions of people, which doesn't really happen in reality. However, you could prop up the city by supplying food by a caravan. This would drastically change the game, and make IC sleazing impossible, as no net food gain could be acquired.

The Lung's genius at work again

	28-06-2001 14:38									#58
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I think they would have to readdress the issue of how much food each tile produced if a size 1 city only harvested its own tile. Under the current rules only grassland cities would expand. Plains would subsist and every other terrain type would starve immediately. Many city types would be unable to build anything at all. That more or less demands a complete restructure of the tile harvesting scheme. If they were going to go that far they might as well consider a more sensible model than basing expansion entirely on gluttony.

	29-06-2001 21:20									#59
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quote: Originally posted by rah Father Beast How many cities did you have? It only works if you only have the one city. We're using MP gold with the lastest patches. RAH

sorry, RAH, I was originally doing a quick test with each game on chieftan, I just did another test with each game (except AC) on emporer or deity, and it allows you to build "free" settlers out of a size1 city at those difficulties.
Weird, that it would not allow that at lower difficulties, but allows you to basically "cheat" on the higher difficulties...

They really need to fix that....

	29-06-2001 21:32									#60
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quote: Originally posted by Grumbold I think they would have to readdress the issue of how much food each tile produced if a size 1 city only harvested its own tile. Under the current rules only grassland cities would expand. Plains would subsist and every other terrain type would starve immediately. Many city types would be unable to build anything at all. That more or less demands a complete restructure of the tile harvesting scheme. If they were going to go that far they might as well consider a more sensible model than basing expansion entirely on gluttony.

Under current rules, yes. but the simple solution (suggested in the ultimate ICS thread months ago, probably never to be implemented) would be to simply have one citizen eat one food.
Oh yeah, in keeping with the auto irrigation of city square, forests, jungles, and swamps would become grasslands or plains when built upon.
Grasslands, plains and hills would grow, deserts subsist, and mountains impossible (To Heck with Alexanders Horse!) with 1 citizen eating 2 food, NO lands would grow under despotism.
under this model, cities would actually grow faster as they grew larger, until specialists dominated.

Problems: some serious rebalancing would be neccesary to keep from having all your cities jumping to aqueduct limit too fast. also, they're used to the old system and will probably never give it up...