Do you think ICS has been solved adequately?

[VetLegion]

ICS - Infinite city Spread, Sprawl, Sleaze... we all know the concept. The problem was that in old civ games, it was far more beneficial to have many small underdeveloped cities than it was to have few big, developed ones.

For those who haven't played, Civ III combats ICS through Culture, Corruption and Unhappiness. The concept of Culture is the most innovative way, now it really means something to have old cities with cultural infrastructure.

Do you find that adequate? Or do you find it lacking and would like to see some other way of making big cities count more than small cities?

[Fosse]

ICS is a game killer, in my opinion and that of many others.
And it may be a little weaker, but it is still an ugly and powerful beast.

The Civ 3 corruption and two point settlers don't do it, because when it comes down to it, having more cities still wins the game.

Perhaps more incentive to have larger cities are needed. As it is now, larger cities create unhappiness and provide only the meagre 1 shiled or commerce point for being City size (and then only if you have the right trait!). A model in which large cities generate increasing amounts of commerce might be helpful. As it is now, having 10 workers in 10 cities generates the same commerce as 10 in 1. That could stand some revision.

Also, I'm not so sure that culture combats ICS. It doesn't discourage the player from making more new cities... instead it encourages them to make more old ones. Hence, the All Powerful REX.

[Kuciwalker]

I haven't seen ICS as much of a strategy in C3.

[Fosse]

Not ICS as we remember it from Civ 2 or Alpha Centauri. But what about the Ralphing strategy, building military camps, packing cities with densly overlapping radii, etc.

Also, to keep ICS alive, you can build dozens of 1 shiled cities, feed them with good food square, and turn them all into taxmen.

In Civ 3, just as in previous games, X number of cities are not as good as X+1. Quantity is still more important that quality.

[Brent]

I like ICS. I like having lots of cities to name.

[Myrddin]

How about a minimum size requirement for building city improvements

eg size 6 for barracks
size 12 for university

[muxec]

I'm for reduced corruption

[muxec]

I'm for reduced corruption

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Myrddin
How about a minimum size requirement for building city improvements

eg size 6 for barracks
size 12 for university

I like this from the realism perspectiv, and it's ICS potential.

I also strongly dislike the corruption model. It's been said before, and will be said again and again, but... "Just because Seattle is thousands of miles from DC doesn't mean it takes twenty years to..."



I think that corruption should no longer be used as a tool to hamper ICS, and instead make bigger cities worth more. We can discuss corruption in a forum more suited for it, and likely will one of these days...

[Kuciwalker]

eg size 6 for barracks

And kill early war?

[Dauphin]

I'd be for the minimum city size to build an improvement or unit, but I wonder if that will really make much difference. If you are ICS-ing you tend not to build many improvements in your cities because they take too long and don't provide that much benefit.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by skywalker

Quote:

eg size 6 for barracks

And kill early war?

Well, of course the numbers and improvments would have to be thought out.
But even if you needed a size six city to build a barraks, early war is hardly "dead." Just changed.

Big Crunch, you have a good point. I still think having requirements to build improvements is a good idea if it has zero impact on ICS (which would of course bring it out of this thread), but it could be a balance issue.... having more improvements that provide a bigger effect in the ancient age, and require population, might slow things down a bit.

[Dauphin]

Perhaps if population (as seen in the demographics screen) paid 'taxes', say 1 gold per 50,000 population, then large cities will become more desirable as they can raise a lot more funds.

5 size 1 cities would collect 1 gold per turn in taxes, whilst 1 size 5 city would provide 3 gold per turn.
1 size 20 city would produce 42 gpt, whilst 4 size 5 cities would only produce 12 gpt.

[pg]

i think fixing or at least changing the nature of ics is very important for civ4. once you change ics you also drastically change the nature of civ so i figure it's not going to change much if at all(like civ3).

[wrylachlan]

Big Crunch

Or, alternatively to using gold, what about commerce in the city center tile. Then you have the option of using the bonus for gold, or for luxury, or science.

[Skanky Burns]

As it is now, having 1 worker in 10 cities generates the same commerce as 10 in 1.

Other benefits to ICS include:

Not putting all your eggs in one basket
Who cares if someone just nuked one of your size 2 bases? You have hundreds more where that came from, and not much invested in that particular city. Someone nuking my size 15 city with many improvements, on the other hand...

Having multiple build queues
With 10 size 1 cities, I can build 10 cheap units each turn with rushing. With 1 size 10 city, I can never produce more than one unit a turn.

Interconnected defence
Placing cities that close together means that any city under thread can get reinforcements from multiple cities close by. Cities reaching higher sizes by necessity need more room so will not have as many cities close by.

Less wasted shields
Using SMAC as an example, up to 10 excess shields get carried over to the next project. With small cities, they rarely produce more than 10 excess shields so waste at the end of producing stuff is minimal. Larger cities will have command of more shields, making it much more likely that their full production will not be utilized. If they produce 50 shields and only need 20 to finish the current build, 20 shields are wasted. Decreasing the amount of shields carried over to the next build exacerbates the problem.

Civ 3 attempts to curb ICS

2-cost settlers just delay the building of cities. As shown by REX, masses of cities still get built.

Corruption/waste becomes a disincentive to build any cities after a certain point, regardless of their spacing from other cities.

Culture means that a few cities might need to be recaptured over the course of the game. See point 1 regarding the worth of these cities.

What it comes down to though is the phrase I quoted initially. If one size 10 city can outproduce ten size 1 cities then ICS will be less powerful from a pure gameplay point of view, hence will not be used.

[Robert Plomp]

The easiest answer would be that you won't have a worker on your center-tile automaticly.

Besides that cities should grow in tile-size as well over time, big cities can merge and create metropoles that spaw several tiles.

Further I think it might be a good idea to let people who live in very crowded areas (much cities) are less happy. They need green and parks and hapyness. Not cities as far as the eye can see.

[Rasputin]

simply adjust the minimum distance between citys, instead of one tile make it 3-4

[Robert Plomp]

Nah, that sucks. Sometimes I just want to build cities close to each other.

[Skanky Burns]

But then as per your suggestion they would join together.

[Robert Plomp]

Indeed.
Or if the citizen of both cities would not like to join, they can continue as two seperated though totally connected cities.

We have plenty of those overhere in The Netherlands

[Urban Ranger]

The simpliest way to elimate ICS is to eliminate the ability to start cities willy-nilly. Sure, that will require a complete redesign of the underlying population model and growth mechanics, but it's something that's long* overdue.


* Ever since Civ came out

[Skanky Burns]

How would that work? Have set sites on the map where cities are allowed to be built?

[Rasputin]

i prefr my very simple solution

[Urban Ranger]

I think Clash of Civilizations has the same model.

Put it simply, each grid square (or hex) has some people in it - empty space is not truly empty. How many depends on the local food situation, possibility of trade, water, and existence of special resources, etc. Once you seed the map with population, grow the population each turn. Once you have enough people in an area, a city forms by itself.

In other words, cities appear by the underlying population model.

[Urban Ranger]

You can also put a population requirement on city improvements.

[Skanky Burns]

You don't build improvements when using ICS. A pop requirement for city improvements is irrelevant where ICS is concerned.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
You can also put a population requirement on city improvements.

Like the employment model in MOO3?

[vulture]

If one is unwilling to go down the 'no-control-over-founding-cities' route, then ultimately fighting ICS boils down to helping economies of scale, and preventing crowding.

The first one basically means that a size 20 city produces more than twice as much as a size 10 city. This can be done in several ways - the idea of only allowing factories, libraries, markets etc. above a certain size certainly works in this way, up to the minimum sized city able to build all useful improvements.

Another way to achieve the same effect is to have the output (in shields or gold) of a city not be a linear function of its input. As a crazy example, say that the no. of shields produced by a city went as (sum of shields produced by individual tiles) squared. A city working 5 tiles, each producing one shield, would have an output of 5*5 = 25 shields. This is obviously roo extreme, but the function used can easily be fine-tuned (raised to power 1.2 instead of 2, to give almost no difference for small cities, but a reasonable difference for bigger cities - by the time you get to 30 raw shields, the output of a big city doubles that to 60 (30^1.2 = 59.2).

This does the same job as the minimum size limits for city improvements, but on a continuous scale. It isn't necessarily any better.

Another factor is reducing crowding. Arguably, this already achieves that, since you need room for the big cities. This doesn't address Ralphing though. That can be combatted by either making settlers cost more (in population, shields, or whatever) so they can't be thrown around like confetti, or introducing some kind of penalty based on the number of cities within 3 tiles (or whatever) of any city. That way, plonking a military camp down next to a city can penalise the original city to a greater degree than the camp can make up for - so camps never boost the overall national output, only lower it.

That way, there is an incentive to stick to some kind of OCP (non-overlapping city radii) placement, or something close to it (maybe it can be worth cramping cities slightly to trade off the better early game state vs a weaker empire in the later game, other things being equal).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rasputin
i prefr my very simple solution

Too artificial. There are lots of real examples where cities are close to each other.