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The diplomat
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Terre Haute, IN USA
Sep 1999
time: 23:12
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I think we can divide ICS into three sub-problems:
1) eternal expansion
To solve this problem I want to propose my own version of the "bureaucracy points" idea. It involves an administration costs. Put simply, each city (the capital city would be exempt), proportional to its population, would require a certain amount of money to be paid from the national budget. This administration cost would vary depending on the government type. The more totalitarian your gvt was, the higher the administration costs would be. Expansion should not be impossible but it would require careful planning. Also, administration costs would simulate managing an empire pretty well, so it would deal with the discussion about how to portray the rise and fall of empires. If you could not pay the cost for a city, that city's loyalty would decrease until you resumed payment or it would eventually revolt and declare independance.
(note: the specific amount for the administration cost could easily be changed by the user in a .txt file. You could increase it to make expansion harder, if you wanted a challenge, or even set the cost at 0 to "turn off" this rule)
The main advantage of this idea is that it is fairly easy to implement since it is similar to the maintenance cost for city improvements. And, it simulates empire management pretty well.
2) small cities being better than large ones.
The simplest way to make a village less "useful" than a larger city is through an accurate pop growth method. Let's say for example that each "farmer" citizen produces enough food for 1.5 citizens. This means that 2 farmers produce food for 3 citizens. This would mean that a city of pop 3, would have two citizens producing food and one citizen free to do something else (like building a city improvement). But a city of pop 2 could only produce food. Therefore, under this example, a city of 2 or less pop would be unable to produce things until it grew. So for example, 12 cities of pop 1 could only produce food for themselves, compared to 1 city of pop 12 which would have 4 citizens free to build something or wage war. So, a player would want to build up the population rather than just settle new cities. Especially that you could only send out a new settler once you had a "free" citizen. So, with the previous example, only a size 3 city could send out its first settler.
The number of people that one citizen could feed would increase with certain technologies. it might be 1.2 for example at the beginning of the game but in modern times it might 3.5 (one "farmer" citizen can feed 3.5 citizens). Like in reality, in modern times the percentage of your pop that has to produce food for the rest would be smaller and smaller.
3) supporting units
It has been said before but I think a unit should require food, gold and shields as support, not just shields. This is a realistic limit on unit production. Furthermore, the number of units a city can support should be limited by the total pop. How can a city have a larger army than its total population ?!
last, I think that disease should definitely be modeled in civ3. It could be a random event.
------------------
No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.
[This message has been edited by The diplomat (edited February 27, 2000).]
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Theben
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Dance Dance for the Revolution!
Jan 1970
time: 00:12
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quote:
Originally posted by raingoon on 02-27-2000 04:01 PM
Also here is an idea for something you all have been discussing and seem to grasp better than I -- the problem with the population model.
One word, really -- GERMS. I've been reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel," a book about why civilization evolved down the peculiar paths it did, and why North American Indians, say, did not discover Spain in 1492, rather than the other way around.
Very interesting. But truly profound is the effect that germs have had on population growth and migration over the years. The title of the book is no accident -- germs are right there alongside guns for exactly the reason you would think.
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So you finally got around to reading it, eh?  I don't suppose you could do me a favor. Go to the MISCELLANEOUS thread and look over my Diseases & Plagues idea- and then apply what you learned from "Guns, etc." and tell me what you'd change (written before I read the book).
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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Surely the easiest way to solve this problem is to take away the FREE WORKER.
THe free worker is where you have just built a city but have two workers, the one working in the "production centre" and the one working somewhere else on the map. This is where the main problem lies take away this and lower some of the values to balance it all and I believe you would reduce the problem big time.
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:12
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Xin Yu
could you explain your idea better? i do not understand what you mean when you say 2x production do you mean on a per square basis? even if you did cap the per square productivity at 3-3-3 this could lead to two problems...
one is that if productivity was capped at 3-3-3 per square all of the squares would become very similar and civ3 would suffer from SMAC's big problem...that you basically only need one set of tile improvements (forests)
the second problem is that while the base square is needed, a big ramp up in total base output is not needed
the diplomat
my idea has as much to do with the real life as any civ game does...absolutely nothing
the basic problem is that the base square is needed for little cities to do anything
the goal of this thread is to solve the problem of ICS but not introduce a new problem...namely that the super city strat would become best
ok if a worker works the base square, and it only yeilds 2 food, then a city could never grow...if it yeilded three food, then every size one city would grow at the exact same rate, in fact if every first worker had to work the base square then every single size one city would be identical...which should not be the case
the best part of my idea is that the way it works, there are some locations that could not support cities at first until some form of irragation takes place...my idea would introduce a great deal of variety in size 1-3 cities, much more than either having a normal base square like in civ2 or having the base square being worked by the first worker
here is an comparison of my idea to SMAC (i forgot how much a base square in Civ2 produces) and to the diplomats idea
the wastelands: each square produces 0-1-0
my idea, a worker produces 0-0-0, the base square produces 0-0-0, the city will die of starvation
SMAC, the worker produces 0-0-0, the base square produces 2-1-1...the city experiances no growth
the diplomats idea, the worker produces 2-1-1, the city experiances no growth
the badlands: each square produces 1-1-1
my idea, the worker produces 1-1-1, the base square produces 1-1-1, there is no growth
SMAC, the worker produces 1-1-1, the base square produces 2-1-1, the city will grow in 40 turns
the diplomat's idea, the worker produces 2-1-1, the city experiances no growth
green pastures: each square produces 2-2-2
my idea, the worker produces 2-2-2, the base square produces 2-2-2 the city will grow in 20 turns
SMAC, the worker produces 2-2-2, the base square produces, 2-1-1 the city will grow in 20 turns
the diplomats idea, the worker produces 2-1-1, the city experiances no growth
the fertile cresent: each square produces 3-3-3
my idea, the worker produces 3-3-3, the base square produces 3-3-3, the city will grow in 7 turns
SMAC, the worker produces 3-3-3, the base square produces 2-1-1, the city will grow in ten turns
the diplomat's idea, the worker produces 2-1-1, the city experiances no growth
my aim is not to base my solution on real life, but it is to base my solution to ICS on good game play fundamentals...
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited February 29, 2000).]
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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Dipomat : You've got my point exactly.
Korn: I know that some balancing would be needed. If we keep to the system whereby irrigation is automatically added in. Then grasslands will produce 3 food allowing for growth in 40 turns. Then after this there would be differences between size 1 cities. Of course if we could have the terrain slightly more complex allowing for a + or - of upto 0.5 for each terrain square, decided at the beginning of the game but not known to the player. This would represent the fact that you don't know how fertile the land is to begin with. There could of course be someway to find this out. The programmers would probably multiply all values by 10 as this allows integer maths rather than slow floating point maths so in the example below I will do the same.
City 1 on grassland (automatically irrigated) that happens to be very fertile so has 35 food produce. One citizen requires 20 food so 15 is available for growth and 400 food is require for growth. So thats about 27 turns required.
City 2 on grassland that happnes to be normal so has 30 food produce. 10 food available for growth and 400 food is required. So thats 40 turns
City 3 on grassland that happnes to be less fertile so has 25 food produce. 5 food available for growth and 400 food is required. So thats 80 turns
Of course 1 and 3 would be extreme rare cases and values between 28 and 32 more normal.
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supremus
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Well, Well, very good stuff here. Firstly we should know if civ 3 will be historically inspirated like civ 2 or will be a free assumption of the future (very good assumption btw) like SMAC. If it will be historically accurate I see no wrong with ICS. When europeans started the american collonization, they did ICS a lot. Spanish defined the occupation of California coast founding one city per distance of a horse walking day. There's no wrong with this strategy to dominate a terrytory and you can use it in Civ II or SMAC. The problem is the disadvantage of a perfeccionist strategy and I think it is a real problem, but, maybe, It could be solved with money $$$$$$. Yes, the larger cities could have an additional amount of money per turn to compensate that.
I think it is simpler and remain ICS as it is now, what I think is good. And it is accurate too, when compared to real world. And with money you can do what you want (make faster improvements in your city, buy more units, go faster to a Wonder etc. etc.).What do you think ?
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MadWoodster
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A wierd and mad place called Southampton
Jan 2000
time: 05:12
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I still think it is unrealistic to work two tiles with a size one city (that is 2tiles per citizen) and only 21 tiles with a size 20 city (that is 1.05 tiles per citizen)!
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:12
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MadWoodster
that is one of the problems that must be addressed before ICS will go away...what to do about the base square...we know that...
the base square is evil, stupid, unrealistic, and causes ICS
that without the base square most small cities don't have a chance of growing or building anything
ok so if we do go with the diplomat or madwoodster ideas about the first citizen works the base square, then what are we going to do about city growth?
maybe have the land under the base square count as fully upgraded and then possibly give a 1.5 times food in the square
so if you built in a desert you'd get 1 food +1 times the bounus or if you built on a food special you might get 4 food plus a 2 food bonus...this small bounus amout of food would certainly be better than the current ICS situation...especially if all cities require the same amount o food for growth...do you think that is a good compromise? the one positive is that cities would get to work up to 21 citizens now
youngsun
i like your idea about barbarians limiting civ expansion...i think this thread is spawning ideas about three different areas of civ gameplay
1. ICS (Infinite City Sprawl): a technical study of how the rules of growth, production, and support make it better to have 10 size one cities compared to 1 size ten city
2. ICS (Infinite China Syndrome): a study of how empires last from 4000bce to 2000ce virtually intact, and that over the course of hundreds of games less than ten cities will declare indepedence or revolt out of the thousands of cities you build
3. ICS (Infinite Civ Stratofication): ok i was reaching on that one  but what i mean is that once a civ gets to be a certain size about mid way through the game then that civ will win in almost all cases...the fact about civ is that a small civ has no advantages over a large one...this makes for boring games
youngsun i am mostly just concerned with the technical issues of ICS in this thread but i think i am going to open a thread for the other two ICS problems...as for barbarians, maybe they could work like this...
when civ starts off each civ has borders like in SMAC, however most of the land outside of those borders are divided into different barbarian territories...there would be no cities in barbarian territories but barbarian units would roam this territory with a number of units...barbarians would start out with just horsemen but they would steal military technology by osmosis (kind of like the great library, when it comes to a military technology the barbarians could build any unit that three civs could build)...when you sent units in barbarian territory barbarian units would head out to attack unit units, and if you built cities in barbarian territory, barbarian units would come and try to attack it...if you had a city in their territory for long enough it would assimilate the territory, and push the barbarian borders back...barbarian units would rarely leave their territory but they sometimes would go on raids into the nearest civilized territory...you could sign treaties with the barbarians and ask them to attack your neighbors...barbarians would have around a fixed number of units...though massive settlement of their ands would cause them to spawn even more units, after a barbarian unit died a new one would respawn in a few years (5-15) time...there would be a random chance of a barbarian area becoming civilized...if it did, cities would pop up in that barbarian's territory and then they would be a civ
how does that sound?
korn469
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The Mad Viking
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of the Great White North
Feb 2000
time: 05:12
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Great thread!
I agree completely that the problem lies in the giving a new city founded by one settler, two squares to work. It's illogical and non-sensical, and it's the main reason why ICS works.
As discussed, an additional 1 food bonus would suffice to provide growth. You could also reduce the number of food required to grow from size "0" to size 1.
I think, however, that the notion of food surplus as the population growth is another problem. Cities grow because of trade and jobs (prodution) Food is needed, and may be quite important in ancient times, but a modern city with tons of trade and production not growing because it doesn't generate enough food? Please!
Also, I think small "cities" should suffer from limitations on square production like Despotism. Up to a certain size, can't get more than two trade or production from a square. Because only larger cities become centres for Trade and Industry. That will kick the s*** out of ICS.
O/T? A lot of people complain about the 21 square model and the relative scale in miles it represents. I think the base square represents the actual urban centre, with all the improvements, and each square worked is a nearby village or suburb, economically linked the the city.
Korn - your Barbarians ideas are great - but maybe take it a step further - and all rival CIVs start as "Barbarians". Have 30+ tribes and you don't know which ones will become major civs, minor tribes or stay nomads until they're wiped out.
Megalopolis - I think once cities are connected by rail, they should automatically link their windows, and pool all their resources. And yer, if production is high enough, you should be able to build a spy, an Armor and a libary in the same turn. (This doesn't solve ICS)
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Xin Yu
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Emeryville, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 21:12
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Korn: Paul has answered your question for me. You play SMAC so you may not be familiar with double production.
Now I have another proposal.
Let me start with a population model:
dP/dt=A*P-B*P*P
where P is the current population, dP/dt is the rate of change in population at the current time. A and B are positive numbers: A is normal in scale but B is quite small.
The model basically says that, when population is small (thus B*P*P is neglectable), the population growth rate is proportional to itself (dP/dt=A*P); but if it grows to a certain size, then due to 'competition' (the term -B*P*P), the growing rate will decline and finally halt.
We can impliment the model to the game. Let A be proportional to the total resource available in the city radius, and let B be proportional to the number of cities in an area surrounding the city (say a 10*10 square). The size of the food box is proportional to 1/(A*P-B*P*P). Thus if there is more resources (can use 'food + 1/2 trade') in the city radius, A is bigger hence the food box is smaller; on the other hand, if there are more cities in the surrounding area, B is bigger and the food box is bigger.
An example: Suppose A=100 and B=#of cities in surrounding area (including the city itself). Food box=1000/(A*P-B*P*P).
A perfectionist puts 4 cities in the area, hence B=4. A size 10 city will have a food box size 1000/(100*10-4*10*10)=1.33.
An ICS player puts 40 cities in the surrounding area, B=40. A size 1 city will have a food box size 1000/(100*1-40*1*1)=13.33, or ten fold the perfectionist's food box at size 10.
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wheathin
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Awesome thread! 2 Observations:
City growth is indeed totally unrealistic - in fact, Civ/SMAC/CtP gets it backwards! Until modern improvements in public health, most cities only maintained size thru immigration - the city was a totally unhealthy environment, with disease, fire, and crime, and deaths greatly outpaced births. Rural areas had to continually replace the losses of cities with new workers. And those workers only came to find jobs. So if there were no jobs in an town, it would not grow. In fact, if the employment base dried up, the city would shrink very rapidly as many died and more fled.
It follows that the presence of so many people creates a demand for food that must be met. Rome imported vast supplies of grain from Egypt to feed its people, and most of the large Medieval cities maintained population with food imports, usually from central europe via the Baltic Sea, or thru the Med.
Jobs draw people, who demand food. Not Food creates people, who work jobs.
As to ICS, the problem is indeed based on the free base-square. The 2-for-one deal creates the exponential ICS growth rate. To combat it, you need to reduce it to an arithmetic growth rate (or very close to it). At that point, the natural economies of scale that infrastructure improvements afford will tilt the balance to non-ICS strategies.
But giving, say, +50% to the base square only gets you back where you started: all those additional base squares get the same +50% bonus. I think the answer is three fold:
1. eliminate the free base square, (you can work it like any other square, and can be improved - a city is never the size of one of the map squares)
2. make city growth at least flat: same food for each pop point, and
3. provide a limit on the size required to build settlers - maybe 3? No community of 20,000 is going to send half the pop away to found a new city.
One obvious result is that it takes a while to get cities up to speed because of slower growth - so then just make food/nutrients more abundant!
...or just recognize the underlying flaws and abandon the model altogether.
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:12
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The technical ICS Issues Summary:
Growth: the nutrient(food) box should be the same size for all cities, and once that food box gets filled the city grows in size by one population. I propose that this nutrient box be size 40 nutrients(food). This is the growth box.
In a side note, after building a granery, cities should be able to direct some of their food into another box. This box can hold up to ten food per citizen. This represents the stored food in your city. If for any reason you run out of food in the growth box, then your city will drawn on food stockpiled in this granery box. This will allow you to stockpile food in case of sieges, droughts, famines, ect. Until the discovery of refrigeration, a very small percentage of the food in this box will be lost to decay. This loss should be around one unit of nutrients per turn.
Cities should have to be size three before they can build a settler.
Support: The amount of free support generated by your empire should be based on three things. One is population. Two is support generating facilities. Three is your civs Social Engineering Support level. Your SE Support level would act as a modifier to the first two categories. We would use the following formula to calculate support.
S(P+I)
Where S equals SE support level, P equals population and I equals support increasing infrastructure. Units would not be supported by cities. Instead your civ would generate a number of support units based on the three categories. Each unit would cost so many support points. After your civ had exceeded the number of support points it generated, then shields from random bases would be converted into support points. SE Support leves would determine exactly how many support points each shield would generate. This process would happen automatically and the player would not be involved in it. Support generating facilites should be military structures (barracks) and advanced manufactoring structures (factories).
Production: Take away the free base square. Instead have it where the base square can be worked. The base square counts as an irragated square and produces 50% extra food.
Also when a city builds an advanced manufactoring facility it should add in another production slot. So that a civ that had a nanoreplicator could make two units at the same time. A city that had a nanoreplicator and a quantum converter could produce three units at the same time.
Happiness: For cities size 1-4 there should have to be one worker for each pysch specialist, with there always having to be one worker. If the worker was discontent(a drone) then the city would riot and revolt. For larger cities, size 5-20 there would have to be one worker for every two specialist, with a minimum number of three workers. If these workers were discontent they would riot and revolt. For the largest cities, size 21+ there should be a minimum number of seven workers but an unlimited number of specialists. If the workers were discontent the city would riot and revolt. Now only police, happiness spending, or happiness facilities could pacify this minimum number of workers. They could not be turned into happiness or any other kind of specialists.
Additionally all specialists should take three food to support instead of the normal two food for workers.
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 02, 2000).]
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:12
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The Infinite China Syndrome Summary:
-The chance of civil wars raised if you were a large civ. The chance would be even higher if you had a very polarised civ (like great difference between the individual cities in wealth etc), which would also be more likely in a large civ.
-Every civilization should spend part of its research points on education, just to preserve the knowledge it has: a larger civ should always spend/pay more on education just to ensure that no knowledge disappears; if it spends too little, doesn't have enough libraries, advances/knowledge will disappear (like a substantial part of the knowledge of the Romans after the Great Migration); as it has more people in it, it needs more administrators, more priests, more lawyers, more scientists just to run the empire!
Assimilation: This should definately be included, but I think it should be done by including nationalism, and not just have it so that after x turns a city is assimilated. Assimilation should be gradual, and determined by your actions against the ethnicity the city belongs to, the happyness in the city, the use of police, the amount of improvements you build in the city etc. A city should be able to concist of 20% americans, 70% Germans and 10% Russians.
you have alot of good ideas! they have got me thinking...how about this...use a modified prototype system like in alpha centauri...
when your civ discovers a new technology
then a check is made by checking your sphere of influence
a sphere of influence is this, 5 times the speed of your fastest unit. then apply that distance like how borders are applied in SMAC
the check follows this preliminary flow chart
1. does your civ have the strongest military?
if no prototype cost is normal
2. does the second strongest military have at least 80% of your strength?
if yes prototype cost is normal
3. is your civ twice as strong as the second place civ?
if yes add 50% to cost of prototype
4. is your civ twice as powerful than the second and third place civ?
if yes add 100% to cost of prototype
5. is your civ more power than all of the other civs in your sphere of influence?
if yes add 150% to cost of prototype
6. is your civ twice as powerful as all of the other civs combined in your SoI?
if yes add 200% to cost of prototype
7. do no other civs exist in your sphere of influence?
if yes add 300% to cost of prototype
in addition i think that prototype costs should be higher than in SMAC, somewhere between +100 to +200 percent
so in that model your first unit could cost up to six times the cost of a normal unit...the same system could be applied to technology and everything
going to edit this
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:12
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The idea of having all cities grow the same way (with a 40 food box that needs filling for the city to grow) is great. If we include, that this box's size can be increased/decreased due to the SE growth rate, the happyness and the amount of trade per pop in the city this system could truly revolutionize growth in Civ games.
I also like the idea of a city having to be size 3 to grow. It not only solves some ICS problems, it is also realistic, as people don't move out of cities untill they become overpopulated.
I like the prototype system, all though it would propably be most useful for research. It would make you need other civs in your area. Great idea!
Looking forward to more summaries!!
BTW go check out my thread on the x10 model. It could really be a great addition to civ3.
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Xin Yu
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Emeryville, CA, USA
Jan 1970
time: 21:12
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Korn: The basic model of Malthusian theory is assuming that population growth rate is proportional to the current population:
dP/dt=A*P
This means, suppose a city grow from size 1 to 2 in 5 turns, then it will grow to size 4 in another 5 turns (the speed of growing at size 2 is twice of that at size 1), and to size 8 in another 5 turns, and so on. This is called a geometric growth. According to the original theory, since consumption goods increases at a much lower rate, people will become starving and standard of living will decline. War and epidemic desease will be the only things to reduce population.
A later theory adds a term of 'competition' to the equation:
dP/dt=A*P-B*P*P
The competition term has little effect when population is small but will be more and more significat in reducing the population growth rate when the population is larger.
Carefully chose A and B will give a balanced growing for large and small cities. My previous example was, eh, just an example. If you feel it was an overkill, you can scale it back. You can add government type as a factor in deciding A and B, thus allow population grow faster in better governments.
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supremus
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I respect all the posters in this thread that once indentified a problem worked hard and with creativity trying contribute to solve it. But I would like to assert again I SEE NO WRONG WHIT ICS. So the problem is not a problem, or, at least, the problem is in another area.
A large state that made ICS a lot in its history is more powerfull than smaller ones. That's what history tell us. In the WWII USA and Soviet Union won because they had a immense territory and it gives them much more critical mass than Germany or Japan. (Of course it is a simplification, for several other important nations won too among the allies.)
The overall production is always higher when you dominate larger areas, mainly in agriculture and simpler industries where technology is not essential.
Otherwise, Japan and Germany are two economical superpowers and it gives them critical mass in the economical battlefield.
So, If we eliminate the advantages of a great terrytory (ICS) in CIV 3 we are going to be inaccurate historically. 20 cities of size 1 are obviously much more powerfull (even in a military strategical sense) than one city size 20, because 20 smaller cities gives you control over a much larger territory. Economically a size 20 city is more powerfull than 20 size 1 , and that's what can be improved in CIV 3, because that is the point where the real problem is. The solution should be giving to larger cities some additional financial advantage.
With this economical plus, players who prefer a perfeccionist strategy can use the extra money to import goods that he/she does not produce, to buy military units, to influence the global diplomacy, etc. etc. , exactly like in real life. And of course they can win, exactly like in real life.
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28-02-2000 10:05
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