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RobC
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 07-11-2001 03:57
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#100
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Re: Proposals to Fix ICS in Civ3: Firaxis, please stop by...
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quote:
Originally posted by yin26
ICS = Infinite City Sleaze. Basically the idea is simple: By sending out settlers at the earliest possible moment in all your cities, you can literally grow exponentially.
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This isn't ICS. ICS has to do with exploiting the free/extra production that the city square gets so that the citizen in a size-one city is more productive than a citizen working any other square in a bigger city. You should call this something else, like 'AAE - Annoying AI Expansion'
quote:
Originally posted by yin26
Frankly, I think there's a better way. I offer the following 'easy' solutions that I think will bring back a huge amount of fun and challenge.
1) "Continguous City Borders" -- CCBs
[snip]
2) "Settler Deporation"
[snip]
I honeslty believe that those two solutions working together will make Civ3 vastly superior. Any thoughts? Thanks for listening. |
I think that requiring contiguous city borders would negate the need to deport settlers, wouldn't it? After all, they can't build INSIDE your borders without going to war, and if they walk through your borders to the other side, then a new city wouldn't be contiguous with their other cities.
Personally, I think this isn't really necessary. Although I agree it's annoying, you really can deal with it through war for the impatient like me, or cultural expansion for the really patient folks. In the map you provided, you could eventually grab all those little cities along the eastern coast through eventual cultural assimilation. It's not aesthetically pleasing, and it *is* annoying, but I think it should be an allowable strategy.
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Ray K
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Allen, TX
Nov 1999
time: 23:16
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quote:
Originally posted by libredr
I like these two ideas to prevent ICS. There are other solutions however.
There is an Open Source/Free version of Civ which is called Freeciv (http://www.freeciv.org), which is an excellent clone of civII for Win, Linux, and other OSes. They have also worked on ways to prevent ICS (they call it "smallbox") by increasing the number of unhappiness citizens when the number of cities is too important and/or they are too close. They have completely solved the ICS issue. The whole thing is explained on http://www.freeciv.org/tutorials/nopox.html. However, I like your idea to use borders.
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I read this page and it seems little different from the Civ3 solution. You still have a cap on the number of cities, but you are affecting happiness instead of shields. That may be more effective at stopping ICS, but it still does not address the root problem.
THE ROOT PROBLEM:
--The city tile is always worked for free, no matter the city size. This gives a proportional advantage to smaller cities.
Related problems:
--For each point of population, the city "consumes" two food for each population point. Early in the game with no irrigated squares, the city needs that extra tile to grow.
--In addition, the starting Despotic government cannot benefit from the extra food provided by the irrigated squares.
--City tiles are automatically irrigated and laid with roads
How to solve the problem:
-- The city tile is the only tile worked in a size-1 city.
-- The city consumes only 1.5 food for each population
-- Despotic governments can benefit from irrigation
-- Force workers to irrigate and lay roads in the city tiles
What would happen:
If you founded a city on a grassland square, you would produce (after irrigation) 3 food and consume 1.5 for a net of 1.5 food per turn. In the current game, you would net either 1 or 2 depending on the second tile you worked.
With a size-2 city, you would enjoy a food surplus of either 1 or 2 depending on the second tile you work. This is about the same as the current game.
Allowing despotism to benefit from irrigation while reducing consumption to 1.5 per population increases the growth rate of larger cities, offsetting the benefit that small cities get from the smaller food box.
With a free worker at the start of the game, forcing him to work on the city tile is not that big of a deal. Also, this would place a larger premium on a good starting location for cities.
In my opinion, fixing the fundamental causes of ICS would be much better than simply setting a hard limit on the number of cities.
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TechWins
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Arizona
Apr 2001
time: 22:16
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First I'll tell you what 'normal' isn't. 'Normal' isn't building a ton cities just for the sake of building a ton of cities. Continously expanding to a point where it starts to hurt your Civ is not 'normal'. Having over ten cities with the highest pop size being 2 in the before BC age is over is not 'normal'. Coming into another Civ's borders and placing a city in between all of their great culture when very well the AI should know that the city will assimilate over into the other Civs because of culture is not 'normal'. The list could go on and on but now I will tell you what normal is.
'Normal' is the appropriate manner the AI should perform. This playing manner of the AI should always vary a bit for gameplay purposes. Expand to a point where it will still benefit your empire. Take a little time to build some infastructure and let your cities grow. Trade a little in a reasonable fashion. Strengthen your military, so you don't get taken over. My point is that the AI needs to play in a way that will continously beneift their Civ. Spreading all over the map, for the sake of expansion, and not paying attention to other aspects of your empire is not beneficial. In all reality I find the AI to be much easier and boring than Civ2 because they are predictable, too spread out, and have too low of a culture always. At least in Civ2 I didn't always know that every AI Civ would be completely compiled of mega amounts of useless cities.
quote:
Is 'normal' simply sitting there with only two or three cities waiting placidly for another AI or Human player to destroy your civilization? I think not. |
I would much rather the AI have two or three extremely powerful cities than them to have ten to twenty weak cities. Now that's now what the AI should do but it is still more efficient for the AI. The AI should play 'normal' (refer to my previous two paragraphs).
quote:
'Normal' would be trying to ensure the survival of your civilization by grabbing as much land, and hence resources, as soon as possible. |
No, that is not the correct way to ensure survival. In the game I'm playing right now the Romans would have been able to dominate me, but instead they went to any means neccesary to expand and plopped a few cities in the middle of the empire, while neglecting growth and infastructure in all of their cities. Now those few cities have assimilated into my culture and I am much stronger than them with many 6-12 pop cities with very good culture. Where as the Romans have about the same amount of cities but with very little to no infastructure and having their cities at 1-2 pop size. If the Romans would have backed off of expansion, started to build infastructure in their cities, and let their cities grow some then they would be much stronger than, but now it is quite the contrary.
quote:
Yes, this does mean that the AI will expand like crazy, which is fine because as a player I expand as fast as possible myself. |
Expand yes but don't do it in a crazy way. Do it so in an effective way (refer to 'normal').
quote:
All these 'solutions' are very narrow minded. |
I fail to see your logic in this comment, sorry.
quote:
1. Have a 3 pop cost settler. Say what? So now the expansionistic phase lasts longer? |
For this proposal to become effective my second proposal will have to be taken into account as well.
quote:
The only problem I have seen is that the AI settles in some of the worst possible places like the middle of a desert or in an area with all tundra, hills & mountians. |
Maybe you got a different version of Civ3 than me.
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Jolard
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We cannot have the contiguous solution (only allowed a new city if it is contiguous or close to another). This makes no sense historically (Australia, America anyone) or gameplay wise. Why should you be forced to settle a desert when there is good land on the other side? Think of Australia, you have Perth way out on the other side of the continent, pretty much alone. Or think of the American West, with huge areas that were unpopulated while the West Coast was populated. Gameplay wise this would restrict your options, and the argument so many have is that they feel restricted to having to expand rapidly now!
As far as the units setting a city down in the middle of my civ, I have had this happen in every game, and it is never a problem. Every single time, I just wait long enough and it is absorbed into my civ. Not a problem. If you are impatient, take it quickly and sue for peace. But please don't restrict me in where I can settle. The whole distance/corruption equation already makes that difficult enough, you don't want it to be even worse.
I love this game, and I think a big part of the problem is that it is just different, and different strategies are needed. I loved and was good at civ II, but my first game of civ III was harsh and eye opening, I was dead before 200 AD. My second was on the large world map, and was a long hard slog, where I only won through points, (I consider that a minor victory, major would have been one of the victory conditions). My third game is almost over, random map, medium size, and it has been wonderful! Changing the settlement options is not an option, as they work well now.
However, that said, I can see the value of possible having more of an ability to expel foreign settlers. Unless they have a right of passage, they should have to leave or declare war on me if I ask. I think that is reasonable.
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Comrade Tribune
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Vienna, Austria
Nov 1999
time: 06:16
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quote:
Originally posted by korn469
ICS isn't the same thing as expansion, ICS was basically a way to exploit the game mechanics in order to achieve an advantage, in the same way a player would station a bomber over a stack of units to keep them from getting killed
ICS existed because of the following reasons
*by building a settler 1 pop essentially became 2 pop with the free settler
this is fixed in Civ3
*a large number of size one cities supported far more units than a few large cities with equal pop
this is partially fixed in Civ3
*size one cities grew exponentially faster than really large cities
this has pretty much been taken care of in civ3
civ3 has done a fairly good job of breaking the mechanics that made ICS work but what's left is a situation where it's either expand or die, and you can say the exact same thing about starcraft...plus larger cities are more valuable in civ3 than what they were in civ2, so exceptions to the expand or die rule will exist |
Korn, I totally agree with this post: 'Expand or Die' is not as bad as ICS.
Yin: Your solution is too restrictive. Furthermore, I don´t quite get this: What´s the problem with enslaving his settlers? You get 2 workers, he gets nothing: Great deal? Then threaten his cities, make peace with him, if he sends settlers again, enslave them again! 
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Meneer Popken
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I skipped over some parts of this thread, so I hope this hasn't been mentioned yet, but my ideas about this problem are:
Borders should be respected always. You only cross borders to attack or if you have agreed that it is allowed to cross them, this would make the game more realistic and would solve the problem of the AI building cities in enclosed areas of another civ's empire. Bad side might be that it would be possible to cordon off an area and stop all growth of an enemy, but the AI is handy enough with boats, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Second thing is to make borders of high culture cities not retract when someone else builds a city next to the other city. Now an enemy gets all 8 surrounding squares if they lie in 3rd or beyond culture range of a city. It's not realistic and allows for stealing resources etc without causing a war.
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yin26
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This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:16
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What I mean is that the AI needs just a bit more tweaking as regards to where it sets its cities. If, for example, it can slip behind me and start grabbing great tracts of land ... well, that makes sense, especially if the AI can't expand backwards because it is next to an ocean or something.
Those kinds of expansions are awesome and a great lift to the game IMO. Yes, I do the same in that situation.
But: Even if we argue that settlers 'don't cost all that much,' we have to agree that yes, in fact, settlers and cities that are destined to do nothing but get swallowed up are a bad idea for the AI and a bad idea for the player. That same settler either A) put in a better position or B) left to help grow its orginal city would produce better results.
Now, I understand that for both the AI and the human player, this is always a luck and risk factor. That is cool. And I'm not saying the AI should never try to found a city unless it has some magical 100% assurance of success.
But there clearly are a number of times that the AI cities could never get him anywhere. I suppose this is a bit of "Throw enough at the wall, and some of it will stick." It's a solution of raw force that will have increasingly dimished returns as players learn to counter it better.
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The one way to stop ICS is ask Firaxis to recode the AI not to build on Tundra at all, can only build in Jungle after clearing, and on desert tiles only if 6 of the 8 surrounding tiles are grasslands or plains. Another is stop the trespassing unless right of passage is given.
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yin26
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This space reserved for Darkstar.
Apr 1999
time: 14:16
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quote:
But as to whether the AI benefits from building worthless citys in your territory; in the scenario above they definately benifetted, but this is rare. I think if they've already filled their territory then it only makes sense to colonize whatever open space they can find, even if it only serves to disrupt YOUR empire. |
Well, I'm almost certain it was just lucky. Again, throw enough and something will stick. But I take issue with the second part of the quote: Actually, if their territory is filled and if there is no reasonably good territory to grab they should INVEST IN INFRASTRUCTURE! [sorry, I'm not shouting at you  ].
Again, this is particularly so since they don't disrupt your empire in any significant way with those cities but they DO disrupte themselves. Even in the spectacular case where your trade route was severed (something I'm sure you'll simply watch out for next game), I bet you could easily have built roads or just waited until you absorbed his city with your superior culture.
Basically, I think there is a 'sweet spot' that the AI needs to hit, and I feel as it stands the AI was turned to 'maniacal' on the expansion setting perhaps to hit us all hard as we first learn the game, in which case it is somewhat disruptive.
Two months from now, though, I think we'll be begging for a smater AI, and one of the most important things we'll analyze then is better placement of AI cities and its know when to stop expanding and invest all the saved resources in its culture and army.
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This slow server is a nightmare. MarkG - if you read this; delete above copies.
@ Ralf... a quadriple post!! Thats a first 
Simple and elegant.
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