Do you think ICS has been solved adequately?

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Arrian
The way around that, I guess, is to tie growth more to happiness and/or prosperity than to having excess food.

Amen.

[OPD]

Originally posted by Arrian
The bonuses... well, maybe give +2s/+2c (or 3, even) to the city tile every time the city hits a new size bracket. Towns (which, IMO, should start at size 2 or 3, with size1s being villages) could get +50%, cities (starting around size 8) could get 100%, and metros (starting around 14) could get 150% and some sort of guerilla militia.
-Arrian

Yeah anything that would make not building a load of settlers early would be a good. Or perhaps just to provide an alternative to the typical initial rex phase.
More differentiation between the small city sizes would be cool. Also perhaps the early builds could be stronger and more abundant, choosing between an early temple/library or another city is typically no contest.
I think the thing where culture value becomes more effective after 1000 years is cool perhaps buildings could even increase in effect after a certain period of time so as to encourage early infra-structure builds.

Basically I think it would be good if you had to make a choice over the early settlers or infrastucture/growth so that a few strong cities could be more valuable than many smaller cities

On the other hand you could just balance the out the effectiveness of rex/ics by increasing the food cost of settlers to a certain point.

[pg]

i think the one thing this thread shows is how many obviously and relatively simple ways there are to combat or eliminate ics. i can't help but think ics should have already been fixed in civ 3. if ics doesn't drastically change in civ 4(gone or severly reduced) couldn't we basically say civ is ics? it's much like mmorpgs where the leveling treadmill is so strong one can argue the only gameplay left is the grind to level up. if you master ics you basically have mastered civ. there are many other elements of gameplay but none as important as ics.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Food shortages don't decrease the standard of living if merchant trading to make up the shortfall is taken as given. There are, and have been in the past, many areas that do not grow enough food to support themselves and import the necessary shortfall from another part of the country/empire without batting an eyelid.

Shortage of food in one area drives up the price of food. Thus the decrease in quality of life -- perhaps temporarily.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Drachasor
I prefer player control over this aspect. This represents that the government can influence what is going on.

Influence != control

Originally posted by Drachasor
Also, you avoid messy AI issues that might crop up (and take forever for an official patch)*.

Nothing to do with AI.

Originally posted by Drachasor
Lastly, players might find new and creative ways to apply the system that the computer AI wouldn't think of.

These generally are known as exploits and are frown upon.

Originally posted by Drachasor
This is effectively the same as increasing the distance minimum distance between cities.

Maybe, but without the artificiality.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dauphin
I agree. City location is one of the most important decisions in Civ. It has to be a human decision and not indirectly controlled.

Direct control leads to cities in deserts and on top of mountains.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Direct control leads to cities in deserts and on top of mountains.

Just like Las Vegas in the middle of the Mojave and Quito at an altitude 9,000 ft?

[Arrian]

Yep. Although I could definitely see tying building cities on certain terrain to the acquisition of technologies (like in MOO - wanna settle a nasty place? Research, unless you're the Silicoid...).

-Arrian

[Drachasor]

Though, it doesn't take much technology to have a city on a mountain...it might take a fair amount to have it grow to a large degree. Also, there might be good reasons to found a city there, that some weird

Lastly, governments can and do say where cities will be. It doesn't always work this way, but I seem to recall Alexander making decisions about where to put many cities. Maybe a broader set of names for them would have been nice, but that's not the point. Also, while influence doesn't always equal control, it often can mean that. Anyhow, this is a game afterall, and with regards to your own empire, control over influence tends to be more fun, and realistic enough.

Again though, you aren't going to have a lower quality of life in the people producing food. They'll be getting goods and money from trading and will therefore have a *Higher* quality of life.

-Drachasor

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dauphin
That would be in the running for the prize for the most annoying feature.

How so? I actually played with it for quite a while, until I got Conquests (and didn't bother to transfer my self-mod over).

[smellymummy]

firaxis could always just dump the old model of cities and think more about people..

that is, on the map, we would see huts/houses/buildings all over the place, just as population disperses itself, where food permits etc, in RL.

the player would then have to create town centers, maybe like a city hall or a feudal mansion of sorts, and then win the support of the people through entertainment, employment, temples and other things that can be built. through culture, or whatever other means of border expansion, a town center's area of influence would grow, and therefore control more and more population.

as such, population would then be linked to a global function, where of course a player's action would influence it's growth or reduction. Instead of having population fully dependant on individual cities that can be built over and over again.

and what about production limitations? there's no point in limiting a city to produce one military unit per turn. If industry permits, why not allow a city to spit out a stack of 5 warriors a turn instead of just one?

think about it, if I can build two cities within a few tiles, and each reach a population of 10+ million, there's something seriously flawed in that. Are all the citizens just crammed thightly like a can of sardines in my one city?

sure this brings up many many more issues that change how civ is (military units that can pillage and raid population all over the place, among many other things) and well civ4 should change everything anyway

myself, i'd enjoy something fresh

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Kucinich


How so? I actually played with it for quite a while, until I got Conquests (and didn't bother to transfer my self-mod over).

If you don't start the game near a river or fresh water you aren't going to build an aqueduct until you get construction, and so you have only a size 2 city until you get construction. Great fun.

The only viable course of action is to look around for fresh water at the start, which is a major disadvantage compared to other players who start with fresh water close by..

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Dauphin
If you don't start the game near a river or fresh water you aren't going to build an aqueduct until you get construction, and so you have only a size 2 city until you get construction. Great fun.

Easy solution: make the Palace act as an aqueduct.

[Dominae]

IMO, two things are needed to fix the ICS problem:

1. A few big cities needs to be better than many small cities.

Civ3 tried to achieve this with its Corruption system, but more or less failed (although it was a drastic improvement over its predecessors). The reason is that ICS and the "big cities" strategies reach economic parity far too late in the game: until the late Medieval or early Industrial, ICS-type city placement always beats out a sparser arrangement; only with the advent of Industrialization does it really make sense to have a small number of powerul cities. But the game is more or less "over" by this stage of the game. If "big cities" are to be an important part of Civ3, there needs to be better incentives earlier on. Many good such incentives have been proposed above. I would like to add:

a. Wonders can only built in cities of size >x.
b. Only cities of size >x generate Culture.
c. Cities of size x can only benefit from y Luxury resources.

2. Local geography needs to play a more important role in a city's usefulness.

Strangely enough, this idea appears in space-based 4X games but in the Civ series: MOO and Galactic Civilizations each assign a quality rating to planets, and penalize the settlements with poor living conditions (and reward paradises).

Here's the idea translated into Civ:

Let the game calculate a "quality" metric for each and every square of the game. If the quality metric of a tile is low, a city founded there woud incur penalties to everything it does; if the quality metric is high, the city would kick butt without too much effort.

This metric would be a combination of each of the 21 tiles the city would eventually have access to (tiles closer in could be worth more since they're more readily exploitable). A powerful River-adjacent Bonus resource tile would be worth a lot; an crappy Desert tile would be worth very little. Notice that casual Civ players employ a similar metric already, regardless of the distance between cities: "I'll put my next city over there because it looks like a good spot".

Here's the interesting part: pre-existing cities within a site's 21-tile radius would factor in negatively toward that location's metric. So, all other things being equal, putting three cities within a confined area would be less effective than spreading them apart. Of course, if the local geography is amazing, it might be a good idea to place those cities close together. Thus there would still be interesting decisions to be made with respect to city placement (as opposed to GalCiv and MOO).

The reason this "solves" ICS is that in past Civ games all you need was one or two Grassland tiles per city to make it contribute to the empire. Put all those cities together and you get a serious contribution. The rest of the tiles in the city's radius could be very poor (Desert, Tundra, in use by another city, etc.), but it would not matter because you would never use those. With the "quality" idea, players would have to chase down city-sites that have high long-term potential. Most of the real world's big cities (especially in ancient times) fit this description.

What about colonies, and other such "functional" cities? Would they have a role? Sure! Just that they would never prosper much if founded within a bad area. Actual Colonies (as built by Workers) might become that much more important.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by Dominae
IMO, two things are needed to fix the ICS problem:

1. A few big cities needs to be better than many small cities.

a. Wonders can only built in cities of size >x.

Agreed. And not just wonders. Most improvements should have some kind of minimum population requirement.

b. Only cities of size >x generate Culture.
c. Cities of size x can only benefit from y Luxury resources.

2. Local geography needs to play a more important role in a city's usefulness.

Here's the idea translated into Civ:

Let the game calculate a "quality" metric for each and every square of the game. If the quality metric of a tile is low, a city founded there woud incur penalties to everything it does; if the quality metric is high, the city would kick butt without too much effort.

And this is the biggie. It should definitely be implemented. Strangely enough, it isn't even a new idea - it was in Master of Magic.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by lajzar
Agreed. And not just wonders. Most improvements should have some kind of minimum population requirement.

And this is the biggie. It should definitely be implemented. Strangely enough, it isn't even a new idea - it was in Master of Magic.

Both are excellent ideas. The one was a favorite part of MoM, I had almost forgotten about that.

[lajzar]

Another thought...

Solar plants should take up a huge amount of area. Given that the sun gives 1.4 kw/m2 when giving direct light, if you assume a 45 degree latitude and account for day/night cycles, you are down to 1/4 of that. This means to get a 1000 MW solar plant at maximum theoretical efficiency, you'll need to gather from a field of 3 km2. Factor in current efficiency ratings, and you're easily looking at 20 km2.

Perhaps the solar plant should force you to use up a tile? I'd suggest that hydro plants and wind power plants also require a tile.

[Vince278]

When you get to that size you may as well make the solar plants orbital. I always thought space was largely ignored in Civ although I didn't entirely like how CtP handled it either.

[lajzar]

1000 MW is pretty large for a plant I admit. When it comes to advanced plants, I decided to flip through simcity and see what they had...

(asterisked ones are already in civ)

Numbers below are my guesstimate for production and pollution indices.

*Coal -- 1.5 -- 1.5
Gas -- 1.5 -- 1
*Nuclear -- 1.5 -- 2/3 (ie no pollution change)
Wind -- 1.5 -- 2/3
*Hydro -- 1.5 -- 2/3
*Fusion -- 2 -- 0.5
*Solar -- 1.5 -- 2/3
Microwave -- 2 -- 0.5
Antimatter -- 2.5 -- 0.4

Wind, hydro, and solar will require a tile. The tile is still useable, but the large area requirements of the improvement mean that normal tile improvements cannot be built there.


- Wind should require hills or mountain in the city radius.

- Solar should require that the city be close to the equator (max 45 degrees north/south)

- Hydro should requrie a river in city radius.

The microwave plant is basically an orbital solar collector and a huge antenna type receiver to receive the beamed energy. You don't want that energy beam to miss! Certain of these power sources should have a small chance of catastrophic failure.

[Kuciwalker]

The only real danger from microwave is really just that planes might fly into the beam and get fried.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by lajzar
- Wind should require hills or mountain in the city radius.

Some of the consistantly windiest places I've been to were quite flat over huge areas. When I was in Oklahoma it was so consistantly windy that I've seen many trees growing at a slant.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by Kucinich
The only real danger from microwave is really just that planes might fly into the beam and get fried.

I did note that you don't want that beam to go off-course. As long as it is running properly, it generates no pollution (no more than if it wasn't there in the first place anyway). But when it goes wrong, it will go wrong badly. Imagine that beam gets mis-aimed and does a runner through a residential zone. The only danger is from catastrophic failure situations, a danger that doesn't apply to most conventional power sources.

[Kuciwalker]

I did note that you don't want that beam to go off-course. As long as it is running properly, it generates no pollution (no more than if it wasn't there in the first place anyway). But when it goes wrong, it will go wrong badly. Imagine that beam gets mis-aimed and does a runner through a residential zone. The only danger is from catastrophic failure situations, a danger that doesn't apply to most conventional power sources.

Except the beam is a constant thing, it's always pointing at the receiving station. And even if it did sweep through a residential neighborhood, that would have no effect whatsoever on civ scales. So a few thousand people die, absolute max? Who gives?

[Dauphin]

How you can you be so sure the beam will always point the right way? The transmitter would constantly be re-aligning to the correct direction, mechanical or software error could mean its no longer pointing in the right direction. Anyway, I think a city that just had a 1,000 people killed by an errant satellite might just be unhappy about it.

[Kuciwalker]

So maybe you'd see 1 more unhappy face. Really, it's a completely minor thing on civ scale.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Dauphin
Just like Las Vegas in the middle of the Mojave and Quito at an altitude 9,000 ft?

Exactly. They are against population mechanics.

[Dauphin]

I thought you were a proponent of cities appearing without the control of the player.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Dauphin
How you can you be so sure the beam will always point the right way? The transmitter would constantly be re-aligning to the correct direction, mechanical or software error could mean its no longer pointing in the right direction. Anyway, I think a city that just had a 1,000 people killed by an errant satellite might just be unhappy about it.

That assumes there isn't extensive software testing to make sure it will work, which I suppose depends on the government. A reminder of how the US runs its nuclear power plants compared to how the USSR did is in order. (I trust I don't need to elaborate anymore than this).

It would be relatively easy to set things up so that you wouldn't hit anyone. GPS satellites already provide the necessary precision to avoid hitting anyone (just give the collector buffer-room), and there are already no-fly zone provisions in law systems. There's nothing to be afraid of.

It would probably be very expensive to implement though, given our current launching technologies.

-Drachasor

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by Dominae
IMO, two things are needed to fix the ICS problem:

1. A few big cities needs to be better than many small cities.

Civ3 tried to achieve this with its Corruption system, but more or less failed (although it was a drastic improvement over its predecessors). The reason is that ICS and the "big cities" strategies reach economic parity far too late in the game: until the late Medieval or early Industrial, ICS-type city placement always beats out a sparser arrangement; only with the advent of Industrialization does it really make sense to have a small number of powerul cities.

I have to admit, it's realistic... until the industrial era, most cities (except a few capitals and other important ones) were very small. BTW, IMO industrialization should have a much greater impact. Factories are way to expensive if you consider that they give such a low production bonus.

Originally posted by Dominae
Many good such incentives have been proposed above. I would like to add:

a. Wonders can only built in cities of size >x.
b. Only cities of size >x generate Culture.
c. Cities of size x can only benefit from y Luxury resources.

Good ideas.

[Arrian]

In response to Dominae's 2nd idea:

I'm not sure I like the idea of having the city tile itself have much of an effect besides possibly happiness (which in turn could have an effect on other things). Building on a desert tile, IMO, should not directly effect production. But indirectly, because the people are pissed off you plunked them down in a desert, it wouldn't be as good as a city built on grassland next to a river.

Additionally, I think the happiness bonus/reduction should be calculated not only based on the city tile itself, but also based on the full radius of the city (this is where other cities nearby would come into play - other cities actually falling within the 21-tile radius should result in a nasty happiness hit, say -2). Two cities built on grassland next to rivers are not necessarily the same. Maybe one has some wheat and 2 wine tiles. That's gonna be a happy place (+3?). The other city may have no really good bonus tiles. It will still be nice (+1?), but isn't going to match up to the wine city in happiness.

...

Another thing I was pondering: Dominae correctly states that a big factor in the ICS issue is that fewer, bigger cities don't overtake an ICS layout until the mid-industrial age, once hospitals & factories and whatnot show up. Boiled down to its basic component, this is about the size12 cap.

How about this:

Cities with a Great Wonder or a certain level of culture can keep on growing. That won't have a huge effect, because there are only so many wonders of the world, and I was envisioning a high number for the culture limit.

But hows about adding in some sort of medieval version of a factory that can only be built in cities size 10 or larger? A guild hall or somesuch. Less powerful than a factory, or more expensive in upkeep, or both, but still good enough to be worth building. Available with Invention...

-Arrian