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Old September 20, 2000, 17:47   #1
Atahualpa
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Dont forget also that each government has a maximum number of cities it can support and if you exceed this number severe unhappiness follows. So that you actually have to spend time in bigger cities for effective research to discover more advanced governments to expand beyond the 10 city limit of tyranny!

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Old September 21, 2000, 00:38   #2
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Ics
We all know of the ICS problem present in all previous civ style games, caused primarily by the fact that a city size 1 works two squares. I think that the system selected for ctp 2, with the city harvesting its entire area of influence might exasperate this problem.
On the other hand it could serve to reduce it if the area harvested increases proportionally (or more) to size, providing the initial harvesting area would also fit on the resulting size area graph linearly.
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Old September 24, 2000, 07:00   #3
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I dont have a problem with ICS at CTP1. I always have the maximum number of allowed cities per government.
The solution is a problem for me.
But I think it has to be like that.

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Old September 26, 2000, 23:10   #4
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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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Old September 27, 2000, 00:30   #5
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Thanks again for going to the effort of explaining this to us.

quote:

All of the resources available within those 8 tiles are added up and divided by the number of Workers working the terrain


This got me a little confused though. I'm probably just interpreting this incorrectly, but shouldn't that be, "multiplied by (Workers/Possible # of Workers)"? eg. 2 Workers/6 = 1/3 of resources in city radius.

I've probably just confused the situation now. I think I've confused myself.

Anyway, where's all our resident ICS experts to analyse the new system?

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Old September 27, 2000, 03:41   #6
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MKL, Based on the rest of Dave's post and applying some logical thinking, I have to say that you are probably right.
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Old September 27, 2000, 11:17   #7
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Ahh, good. Thanks. Maybe I'm not going senile in my old age then. I'm 21 today!

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Old September 27, 2000, 11:40   #8
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Hmm yes MKL is right!

Nevertheless, I think with this new system you will have to place your cities real far away from each other.

Btw, I looked at a Civ2 map recently and I must say its crowded with grassland and plains. Whereas CtP maps are crowded with swamps and jungle and other unusable terrain.
Has the map generator from CtP1 been improved and if yes: How?

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Old September 27, 2000, 13:16   #9
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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."

Well it seems this answers your question about the city tile, but I think the mentioned changes will make ICS more difficult and possibly by enough of a margin to make it impractical to practice.
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Old September 27, 2000, 13:21   #10
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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."

Well it seems this answers your question about the city tile, Gedrin, but I think the mentioned changes will make ICS more difficult and possibly by enough of a margin to make it impractical to practice in most situations. If you have to space your cities so far apart you will soon reach the sea, or another civ. Moreover the city limit for the less advanced governments has been further decreased.

These changes do not address the main cause of ICS itself, but they may still succeed in solving it.
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Old September 27, 2000, 13:39   #11
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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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Old September 27, 2000, 14:11   #12
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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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Old September 27, 2000, 14:25   #13
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*Bonk* I never noticed that line and that is the sort of statement I was looking for... can I blame it on coffee?

Ok so it looks like it is option 2:
Lets not forget that in order to make ICS more difficult things must impact an ICSer more than a non-ICSer.

While City limits do impact an ICS first they also impact a non-ICSer that has simply taken over half the world dispite his sparse cities just as much. An ICSer would race quickly to that limit and then strive for the next more advanced government. It's the tortoise and the hare but this time I think the hare would win out.

Next consider terrain. An ICSer is looking for many small areas of good terrain where as a non-ICSer wants fewer large areas of good terrain. If large areas of good terrain are available they can be sub-divided into smaller areas of good terrain. Hence suitable ICS style terrain seems easier to come by... but I will grant it should be less so than at present.

Lets not forget the impact of happiness and city size. Cities get to a certain point where another pop does you no good anyway since they must go to entertainers.

Well let me just conclude here that it is exceedingly difficult to make ICS a non-viable option while the root cause of it, the free working of a tile, is still there.
By this I mean if you can express the tiles worked in a city as = c + fn(pop) where c is a constant != 0 then ICS in some form will likely be present.

Having said that I play with a few triggers.
1. Bureacracy Tax -> gold cost = fn(aveCityPop);
So many small cites is really really bad.
2. PopMigration -> a # of Citizens = fn(aveCityPop) will leave your smallest/newest city and join the civ with the fewest # of cities.
3. Disseminate which if you play with the Med Mod you already know about... this just really keeps the tech on the timeline as a result of my B-Tax trigger.

This sort of thing directly punishes anyone ICSing since low average City Pops are the halmark on an ICSer.

PS. and a little off topic
My next trigger projects include:
-Terrorist strikes from independant radical groups for anyone with score well above the average score... embassy/government building bombings, that sort of thing.

-Civil Dissobedience for engaging in practices that might annoy your general populous. Like starting unjust wars, nuking indiscriminantly, capturing cities (this represents resistance groups in the occupied citizenry). My thoughts on this one are sparked by the rise and fall of empires concept and how they can fall from pressures both within and without. It will not be something you can affect directly either... at least not in the sort term. It will involve a delta and a rating. You can try to reduce the yearly delta but your empire may already have a future date with destiny.

I guess this last one is an attempt to turn it from strict resource management into a more accountable leadership model.

SLIC can do these things... course they'd be a lot easier with user defined arrays!
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Old September 27, 2000, 18:14   #14
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but does this mean that if each tile contained 1 unit resource, then

1 city of size 4 collects 6.33 res
4 cities of size 1 (packed) collects 7.83 res
4 cities of size 1 (dispersed) collects 9.33 res

1 city of size 6 collects 9 res
6 cities of size 1 (packed) collects 10.83 res
6 cities of size 1 (dispersed) collects 14 res

(note: the city packing pattern may effect the exact res collected)

Is this right?
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Old September 27, 2000, 19:16   #15
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There is one thing i'm not clear on. Say you build a city that has 4 good tiles and 4 useless tiles. Will all the tiles be worked on from the beginning - no matter how useless? Tundra for example.
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Old September 28, 2000, 00:11   #16
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I was having such a tussle in my head as to whether dividing by n was the same as multiplying by 1/n.

Mind blank!

It's going to be weird at first knowing how far away to place your cities. But then, that's part of the fun, I guess.

I'm really keen to hear what all the ICS experts think about this...

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Old September 28, 2000, 00:42   #17
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I actually don't think this negatively impacts ICS, or at least I do not have enough information to really tell. All this does IMO is affect city placement... maybe... I need more info... read on.

ICS has less to do with city placement, ie how close they are and more to do with how much extra resources are produced by a city over and above what actually worked by it's workers.

The question that needs to be answered is this:
Are any tiles worked if the city has no workers at all?
If a size 1 city has 1 entertainer does it produce anything?

Dave's explaination would suggest not since in this case there would be 0/6th of the 8 tiles around the city being worked. However why 8 tiles? What about the tile the city is on? I mean that is the tile that causes ICS. It has nothing to do with what the workers are doing. They can all be off whistling Dixie.

The real crux is do 2 size 1 cities work more tiles than 1 size 2 city? I see 3 options for this city tile:
1. It is not worked
2. It is worked 100% by default.
3. It is included with the other 8 tiles.

1. If that 9th tile that the city is on is not worked then it seems like for cities on identical terrain:
2 size 1 cities work 2*8*1/6 = 2.666 total
1 size 2 city works 1*8*2/6 = 2.666 total
and ICS is dead.

2. If on the other hand the city's tile is worked 100% by default then:
2 size 1 cities work 2*(1+8*1/6) = 4.666 total
1 size 2 city works 1*(1+8*2/6) = 3.666 total
and ICS is alive and well... even though your settlers do need to travel a little further.

3. Or perhaps the city's tile is also factored in to make it:
2 size 1 cities work 2*(9*1/6) = 3 total
1 size 2 city works 1*(9*2/6) = 3 total
and again ICS is dead.

So we see that the tile the city is on must be either averaged in or not worked at all to kill ICS. It's kinda funny that if it is not worked at all you need to find the worst tile available that has good tiles around it.

Now if the tile is averaged in there is also the issue of the ENV_CITY_BONUS that some may consider contributing to ICS but in reality it does not. Settlers cost production. If they cost the same amount as the PW would cost for tile improvements to offer the ENV_CITY_BONUS then ICS is again killed and settlers are effectively FREE since they have their PW effect built into the unit. If they cost less then it is more effecient to ICS. These ENV_CITY_BONUS are absolutely necessary since otherwise the city is unlikely to grow in any reasonable period of time... unless a totally different mechanism for growth was adopted.

Another mechanism that I've always liked the sounds of is instead of collecting food it should collect happiness points. The longer you keep your people happy the faster they grow. Rations become a means to that end but only 1 of a few... The others being wages and workday... of course then martial law would not affect the happiness but simply lower the riot threshold. I've never heard of anyone feeling happier about being held at gunpoint... they get a lot less likely to throw stones but not particularly more likely to have babies.

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Old September 28, 2000, 03:11   #18
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quote:

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?


This goes to you as well Crunch:

Reading Daves Post the situation is that all the resources of the 8 tiles of the city are added together and then divided by the number of workers. So the Production of 3 Forest Tiles + the Production of 2 Swamp Tiles + the production of 3 grassland tiles are added together and then for a size 4 city are mulitplied with 4/6. Lets assume a Forest tile has 25 production a swamp 5 and grassland 5. This would make. 3*25+2*5+3*5=100. Now only 4 workers work the terrain so this gets multiplied with 4/6 and we get 66.66667 production. So a size 4 city produces 66 production.

So I guess you wont be able to emphasize anything cause you add all Production together and divide through the number of workers and how should you be able to emphasize some tiles when ALL are added up?

Correct me if I am wrong but I think this is what Dave meant.

I think this is a good solution as you neednt care at any time how effective your city grows, because you cant increase or decrease its effectivness.

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Old September 28, 2000, 04:59   #19
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There are of course farmers, laborers, merchants and scientists. So you can emphasize certain resource types by assigning citizens as specialists.
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Old September 28, 2000, 06:56   #20
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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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Old September 28, 2000, 09:07   #21
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Ok Paul! You are right. You can still emphasize certain parts using specialists. I Forgot that. sorry.

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Old September 28, 2000, 10:28   #22
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Ata - in your example, I think you are missing the tile the city is on, which, I assume, collects 100% of the resources it has.
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Old September 28, 2000, 10:31   #23
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It's somewhat of a challenge to take a small city and have to do some shifting of workers to get needed food or production. Currently, using specialists in a very small city is impratical, so to get some much-needed food, you have to shift a worker and sacrifice production.

With the new setup, a city will be able to draw from the surrounding tiles. Bad tiles will balance out good tiles - making management of that city a whole lot easier in the early going. (i.e., no decision-making other than what to produce)

Personally, I like having to consider other issues than what item to produce for those small cities.

A possible solution is a set of sliders that you could adjust for the percentage of workers creating food/production/gold for each city.

Example - I may have a population of 1 in a city - couldn't I delegate 50% of that worker to food, 40% to production and 10% to gold - currently it sounds like I am limited to 33% across the board.

Then you could also have a button to allocate a worker as a scientist/farmer/merchant that would bring in more for that specialty, as opposed to that specialist remaining as a worker - which is going to be implemented in CTP2

With the new setup it still looks like all a player will have to do is to look for the most defensible terrain to place his city on (in fact he would be foolish not to do so), and space his cities to allow for future growth.

The end result though will be the same - place your city in an area with poor terrain and your city will reach a point when it won't grow anymore.
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Old September 28, 2000, 10:42   #24
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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).

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Old September 28, 2000, 10:55   #25
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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).

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Old September 28, 2000, 13:30   #26
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Slax: Not a bad idea in principle however what happens when the pop decreases? I have not learned of any way to destroy a building with SLIC. Would be nice though.

But hey it is CTPII we are talking about... which is close enough to release for this to be a moot point anyway.

I will make my SLIC triggers available in a few days and start a thread explaining them and the impacts in the CTP-Creation forum. After all that's a far more relevant place than CTP2-General.

I will include the
BureacracyTax-gold cost/subsidy based on ave City Pop.
PopMigration-Citizen defection based on ave City Pop.
Refugees-Citizens flee to original civs cities when a city is captured.
Terrorists-Senseless violence by foreign funded radicals based on player's score vs average score (currently in testing).
Popular Uprisings-Civil Dissobedience/Loyalty based on actions by and against a civ (ideas in development).
Ah go the CTP-Creation and I'll outline my thoughts on that one now...

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Old September 28, 2000, 15:00   #27
Slax
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Gedrin - You're right. I guess with my method when population decreases the improvement's effects must stop. Like a plant shutting down temporarily.
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Old September 28, 2000, 16:13   #28
hexagonian
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Will this alteration be compatible with the Med Mod??????

Here's hoping it will, as that is all I play in single-player now.
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Old September 28, 2000, 16:22   #29
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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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Old September 28, 2000, 17:16   #30
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Some excellent points, Pintello.

I like the fact that the inner circle of tiles remains at 100% when going to size 7. The new tiles thus have a lower precentage of resource collecting, somewhat reflecting distance to the city.

From Dave White's post, we do not really know what ratios (the 1/6 multiplier) are used for cities larger than 6 (or do we?).

Perhaps it is in the distinction between city size classes (and this collection multiplier) that larger cities begin to win out. I don't think we know for sure from Dave's post.
[This message has been edited by Slax (edited September 28, 2000).]
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