Again!

Yoleus · November 22, 2000, 07:57

OK, I know it is the 3rd time I post this question, but i really think it is important and it affects middle and long term gameplay. I desperately need an answer from you guys before buying the game...

The question is (suspence):

what happens when a city radius is cramped by tiles controlled by other cities? Will I still need the same number of workers to gather 100% of the resources in the radius? I hope not, because this would be an efficiency disaster later in the game...
For example, if 3 tiles of the second ring of city expansion are cut because they are used by a nearby city, will I need 3 less workers to gather 100% of the resources of the radius? (remember, 3 tiles less are cutting painfully the total amount of resources in the radius).
If so, what will happens of these 3 useless

guys?
Will they be specialists? Will they be able to gather resources from the next expansion radius after the relative expansion eventually takes place?

Please excuse me for my insistence, and thanks for your really appreciated answers

Dauphin · November 22, 2000, 10:21

Thats a good point. I guess it would stop ICS if all workers were required.

Yoleus · November 22, 2000, 11:26

Absolutely.
But it would also make unefficient have big cities, because they are much more difficult to tile togheter minimizing overlapping and unreachable land, obtaining exactly the opposite effect the dynamic radius was planned for!!

Yoleus · November 22, 2000, 11:28

P.S.:
I really think the only way to kill ICS is the maximum city number...

Dark Renown · November 22, 2000, 15:10

the first city to claim the land keeps it, if a new ciys is built too close to a big ont then it will not get land.

Chaos · November 24, 2000, 11:28

forgive my ignorance.

what is ics?

Dark Renown · November 24, 2000, 14:25

it when someone builds 1000's of citys to take the resourses the city-tile provides.

Sarxis · November 24, 2000, 18:48

*Interweave *City *Strategy?

Haha, just kidding.

Falconeer · January 10, 2001, 16:12

quote:

Originally posted by Chaos on 11-24-2000 10:28 AM
forgive my ignorance.

what is ics?

ICS stands for Infinite City Sprawl. It is a strategy that works with many earlier Civ games whereby you plop a city down every 1-2 spaces and end up having hundreds of cities. Later versions of the Civ games have created counters to this by a number of means such as creating unhappiness if you have over X cities on different level settings and in the recent CPT2 by creating unhappiness if you have over X cities per government type.

jackbean · January 11, 2001, 01:14

I trippled the production cost of settlers, and changed the priority of settlers in AI strategy, and that seems to eliminate the ICS problem. i.e. if it costs so much to produce settlers, it may be worthwhile to grow existing cities. Of course, for this to work, every player must start with a few settlers or a few cities.

wheathin · January 12, 2001, 01:02

My understanding of the city growth mechanism is that you get a certain % of the resources in your outermost ring. If that ring is cramped, you don't get as much.

Example: a full second ring is 12 squares. So each citizen that you grow while in that ring provides ~8.33% of the total resouces in that ring. Average unimproved land territories have a total of 25 resouces (not desert and jungle or frozen). Total resouces in that ring are 12*25 = 300. The result is that each citizen in that second ring adds 25 resources. If you have one simple farm, you have 310 resources in that ring, so each citizen adds about 26 resources.

What if the ring is cramped? Say you lost one side - now the ring is only 9 squares, for a total of 9*25=225 resources. I think it still takes 12 citizens to grow to the next level, instead of merely 9. Each citizen (8.33% of the ring) now only gets you ~18.5 resources. It may be more efficient to use specialists if your ring is cramped. This is especially true for a large outer ring. You might end up with only 40% of a ring - each citizen generating a base of 10 resources. That sucks.

Questions:
1. If you reduce the number of workers (add specialists), does the area worked collapse? I.e. if your city grows to 19 and expands to the third ring, but you then make a specialist, does the city reduce back to only the second ring? Or is that third ring now claimed and thus inaccessible to other cities?

2. Why would you ever want to have your city working its outer rings if those rings were more than 60% cramped?

wheathin · January 13, 2001, 01:06

Again going back to Yoleus' initial questions:
Well, I did some testing last night...

Note that a size 1 city gets two free "pops" for purposes of working the inner ring. I.e. in addition to the city square itself, and the city bonus, a size 1 city gets 3/8 of the first ring of 8 squares. Thus, a size 6 city gets 8/8, or the entire ring, and size 7 goes to the next ring.

A city with a cramped ring is SCREWED.

If you lose half the 2d ring of 12 squares, each pop that works that ring still gets 1/12th the resources from it. You get 12 people on 6 squares. At that point, start making specialists! If you have such a city of all plains squares, with no tile improvements, and if you ignore government bonuses, pop number 7 adds only 5 food and 5 production, and 2.5 trade. *Any* specialist is a better deal.

Lessons:

1. If you can't get the whole ring, don't bother. This makes coastal cities particularly annoying.
2. In fact, slow your growth because if the city gains that 7th or 19th pop point, the land is claimed and is unavailable to other cities that might get full use out of it!
3. City placement is *really* obnoxious - now you have to micro-manage growth even more to ensure some cities grow fast enough to get expand first while others hold back.
4. Specialists are usually better deals than workers, despite the stupid "efficiency" rating.

jackbean · February 2, 2001, 15:59

Here is my understanding of how the city ring thingy works ...

1. yes, you have 2 workers with the city size of one, but they do not both work on the first ring. When the city has size of one, you have one default worker working in the zeroth ring, which is the square the city is on, and you have one worker working on the first ring, claiming 1/6 of the resources of each square on that ring. Notice it's 1/6 of the resources, so if you have a city size of 6, you can claim full resources from 8 squares of the first ring (unless the first ring is cramped), 6 people working in 8 squares, good deal.

2. no, you don't lose a ring by turning workers into specialists. of course, those workers turned specialists no longer work in the rings. So if you have a city size of 15, and you turned 3 of them into scientists, it's the same output as a city size of 12 + 3 scientists. so far so good. however, you may lose "goods" coverage by turning workers into specialists. So if you have a city size of 8, and you turn 2 workers into specialists, your city does not get the tradable goods that reside on the second ring.

3. most of the time cramping is not an issue because you really don't want to collect resources from the 4th and 5th rings, for four reasons: a. by the time your city grows to that size, your empire is probably much weaker than the other players because of the city placement. b. POLLUTION!!! better off turning them into scientists. c. 4th and 5th rings are less efficient anyway. d. public works cost too much, and it takes longer to realize their effects in the outer rings.

and I agree with wheathin, sometimes it's useful to slow down pop growth. extra population is a burden if they have nothing to work on. however, i believe specialists only become good deals after the city size becomes large.